PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
SOME PEOPLE (ALMOST) MENTIONED IN WALDEN:
PÈRE JEAN DE BREBEUF AND THE JESUIT PACIFISTS
Henry Thoreau knew that torture was as American as apple pie, and warfare as sacred as Mom. Nevertheless he paid attention to the activities of some folks in Canada who had been brave enough and audacious enough to worship God — without a single weapon in either hand.
WALDEN: The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being PEOPLE OF burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their WALDEN tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those, who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
THE JESUITS
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1593
March 25, Sunday (New Year’s Day, Old Style): Jean de Brébeuf was born at Condé-sur-Vire in Normandy, France.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1600
There were probably fewer than 20,000 individuals in the five tribes of the Iroquois at this time. The Iroquois were sedentary rather than nomadic, living in clans in longhouses in fortified agricultural villages. These longhouses were covered with elm bark and might well be over 200 feet in length.
Their history begins with the twin brothers, Enigorio and Enigonhahetgea (good spirit and evil spirit), their creatures the Eagwehoewe (people), and their enemies the Ronnongwetowanca (giants). The earliest people were championed by the hero Donhtonha and the less heroic Yatatonwatea and plagued by the mischievous Shotyeronsgwea. These early people were also threatened by, but survived, the Big Quisquiss or mammoth, the Big Elk, the great Emperor who resided at the Golden City to the south, the great horned serpent of Lake Ontario, and the blazing star that fell. Their monstrous enemies included the Konearaunehneh (Flying Heads), the Lake Serpent, the Otneyarheh (Stonish Giants), the snake with the human head, the Oyalkquoher or Oyalquarkeror (the Big Bear), the great musqueto, Kaistowanea (the serpent with two heads), the great Lizard, and the witches introduced by the Skaunyatohatihawk or Nanticokes. When the creation was renewed and restored, the Five Nations/Six Nations tribal alliance was formed and would intermittently be rescued by the intervention of Tarenyawagon, the Holder of the Heavens. The Five Nations was a tribal alliance, or Ggoneaseabneh (Long House), formed in order to effectively oppose the power of the Sohnourewah (Shawnees), Twakanhahors (Mississaugers), Ottauwahs, Squawkihows, Kanneastokaroneah (Eries), Ranatshaganha (Mohegans), Nay-Waunaukauraunah, and Keatahkiehroneah. Important figures in the history include headmen Atotarho I, Atotarho II, Atotarho III, Atotarho IV, Atotarho V, Atotarho VI, Atotarho VII, Atotarho VIII, Atotarho IX, Atotarho X, Atotarho XI, Atotarho XII, Atotarho XIII, the war headmen Shorihowane and Thoyenogea, Sauwanoo, Queen Yagowanea, and the allied or friendly Dog Tail Nation and the Kauwetseka. These were the original Five Nations in this tribal alliance: • The Teakawrehhogeh or Tehawrehogeh (Mohawks) • The Newhawtehtahgo or Nehawretahgo (Oneidas) • The Seuhnaukata or Seuhnowkahtah (Onondagas) • The Shoneanawetowah (Cayugas) • The Tehooneanyohent or Tehowneanyohent (Senecas) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
This tribal alliance was later joined by the Kautanohakau (Tuscaroras), to make up a Six Nations tribal alliance.
The league’s primary law was the Kainerekowa, which simply stated that Iroquois should not kill one another. The Iroquois League’s organization was prescribed by a written constitution based on 114 wampums and reinforced by a funeral rite known as the “Condolence” — shared mourning at the passing of sachems from the member tribes. The council was composed of 50 male sachems known variously as lords, or peace chiefs. Each tribe’s representation was set: Onondaga 14, Cayuga 10, Oneida 9, Mohawk 9, and Seneca 8. This League was formed prior to any contact with white people and thus owed nothing to European influence. The Iroquois considered themselves Ongwi Honwi, superior people. Their isolation inland would protect them to some degree during the initial European epidemics along the continental coast, so that later on they would begin to wield a great deal of influence in the native American world. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
John Bartram’s 1751 diagram of an Iroquois longhouse and the town of Oswego. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1609
June: Having established a settlement at Québec, the French had reached west with their trade in furs to the vicinity of Montréal. They found the area so devastated by intertribal warfare that it was possible for them to travel along the St. Lawrence for days without glimpsing any human being. The Algonkin and Montagnais were being so harassed by Mohawk war parties that they usually were remaining well clear of the river. What the potential fur-trading partners for the French wanted was not so much trade goods, which were nice, but assistance in fighting the Mohawk, an Iroquois nation. At the suggestion of some Ottawa warriors, eleven lightly armored French fusileers took their firesticks along with a Huron, Montagnais, and Algonkin war party of some hundreds, to make trouble to the south along the shores of Lake Champlain. When the opposing parties were massed for close combat, Samuel de Champlain fired once, killing one Iroquois leader and seriously injuring another with the same bullet. The ranks of the Iroquois broke and ran and then there was
some general slaughter. (The Mohawk would quickly learn that they needed to discard such mass formations, and shuck their ineffective wooden body armor, and in the future they would attempt to counter French firearms by dropping to the ground just before firearms were discharged.) As a result of this fateful encounter, the Iroquois confederation would ally themselves with other tribes and with the Dutch, and permanently become the intractable enemy of everything French. “Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.” — Executive Vice President of the NRA (National Rifle Association) Wayne LaPierre speaking in the Regency Ballroom of the Washington DC Marriott Wardman Park Hotel to the Conservative Political Action Conference at 10:15-10:45AM on February 27, 2009 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1610
Not having caused enough of a mess already, Samuel de Champlain, armed and dangerous, took his firestick and joined in yet another native attack, this time against a Mohawk fort on the Richelieu River. Soon the Mohawk would be driven from the valley of the St. Lawrence and the Algonkin and Montagnais would achieve ascendancy over this area and its fur trade. Meanwhile the French would be pushing west to the villages of the Huron. However, with Dutch traders arriving in the Hudson Valley of New York, more than willing to sell guns and powder and lead and steel blades, the Iroquois would be able to solve a part of their weaponry problem.
“Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.” — Executive Vice President of the NRA (National Rifle Association) Wayne LaPierre speaking in the Regency Ballroom of the Washington DC Marriott Wardman Park Hotel to the Conservative Political Action Conference at 10:15-10:45AM on February 27, 2009
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1617
November 8, Saturday (some say October 5, Sunday) (Old Style): At the age of 24 Jean de Brébeuf became a novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Rouen, France as a scholastic (actually, what he had wanted was to become a lay brother).
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1621
Captain John Mason, who had been acting as Proprietary Governor of Cuper’s Cove on the coast of Newfoundland since 1616, returned at this point to England. He would not be replaced and nevertheless the colony would endure for the remainder of the century. Back in England, he would consult with Sir William Alexander about the possibility of establishing a new colony, this time on Nova Scotia.
In Canada, the Iroquois began their system of extermination, and carried on the most sanguinary and destructive warfare in the history of the world. A mission was sent to France to represent the defenceless state of the colony. The patent for the colony was transferred to William and Emeric de Caen.
In France, the normally very robust Jean de Brébeuf experienced some sort of collapse of his bodily health. It would not be possible for him to continue theological studies. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1622
February (1621, Old Style): Due to ill health, Jean de Brébeuf was allowed an early ordination into the priesthood. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1624
Henry Thoreau would make a record under the rubric “Huckleberries” that “Gabriel Sagard, a Franciscan Friar, in the account of his visit to the Huron Country in 1624, says, ‘There is so great a quantity of blues, which the Hurons call Ohentaque, and other little fruits which they call by a general name Hahique, that the savages regularly dry them for the winter, as we do prunes in the sun, and that serves them for comfits for the sick, and to give taste to their sagamite [or gruel, making a kind of plum porridge], and also to put into the little loaves (or cakes, pains) which they cook under the ashes.’ According to him they put not only blueberries and raspberries into their bread but strawberries, ‘wild mulberries (meures champestres) and other little fruits dry and green.’”
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1625
June 19, Sunday (Old Style): Father Jean de Brébeuf arrived in Québec with the Recollect, Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon. Although the captain of the vessel, a Calvinist, was threatening to carry him back to France, he found a way to remain. Although the colonists were suspicious of the Jesuits, they became friendly enough with him personally to allow him to secure a site for a residence on the St. Charles, at a point at which Jacques Cartier had initially landed, and began to live in a native wigwam.
Winter: Father Jean de Brébeuf experienced five months of Canadian winter with the Algonkian Montagnais close to Québec (we have his account of this experience). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1626
From this year into 1628 the Jesuits would be maintaining a mission in Québec, New France (Canada). (This follow-on effort of the Jesuits to maintain missions in the New World, like the first one during 1611 and 1612, would prove abortive — the initial try had been routed by the Virginian Samuel Argall and this follow- on effort would fail with the English defeat of the French at Québec City. These efforts had been reported upon by Pierre Biard in 1616-1618 and would be reported upon by Charles Lallemant in 1627 — but apparently Thoreau did not see these records.)
Next effort:
July 25, Tuesday (Old Style): Since merely 28 baronets had been created in the plan for the Scottish settlement of Nova Scotia, even if Sir William Alexander had been able to vend each one for the full sum of 3,000 merks, he would have actualized only the grand sum of £4,666 13s. 4d. to finance this projected colony. This was considerably less than the £6,000 that he had already expended during his 1st such attempt, and yet his warrant from King James I of England for attempting this still remained unpaid. Accordingly, on this day King Charles I of England authorized a committee of his council to meet frequently at stated times to vet the various petitioners for the dignity of a knight-baronetcy in the New World and verify that Sir William was satisfied with them and was prepared to surrender to them the strips of lands specified, and to award to them the dignity of their new titles. This would, however, be the watched pot that never boiled: only one such Scottish supplicant for a New World baronetcy would appear during the following year. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Father Jean de Brébeuf and elderly Father Anne de Noüe set out from Québec with local native Americans on a canoe trip to Lake Huron. They would arrive at Toanché, a village of the Bear Clan of the Huron, where they would attempt to learn the language. Then they would establish their initial mission among the Hurons at Ihonatiria near Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. Then Father Anne de Noüe would be recalled in 1627 and Father Jean de Brébeuf would be alone with the natives.
Afterward, Father Jean de Brébeuf’s companion would be Récollet Father Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon, who would be recalled in 1628,1 and he himself was recalled by his superior to Québec in June 1629. The occasion for this would be the imminent capitulation of the settlement to the Kirke brothers who were fighting on behalf of English interests.
1. Récollet Father Joseph de la Roche d’Aillon was from Anjou in France. Leaving Dieppe on April 24, 1625, he had landed at Québec on June 19th. His superiors having sent him to assist Father Nicolas Viel, a missionary to the Hurons, he had gotten as far as Trois-Rivières in the company of Father Jean de Brébeuf when he learned that Father Viel was dead. On July 14, 1626 he would set out again by canoe, and he would at last arrive at the Huron village of Toanché where after staying a short time with the Hurons he would proceed on October 18, 1626 toward the territory of the Neutrals. He would spend some months studying their language and attempting to catechize them and then, narrowly escaping death at their hands, would return to the Huron country. Back in Québec in Autumn 1628, he would be able to serve as Latin interpreter on the occasion of the capitulation of Québec. He and the other religious would embark for Tadoussac on September 9, 1629, and he would reach Dover on October 29th and proceed from there to Paris, thus concluding his trajectory as a missionary. He would die in Paris on July 16, 1656. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1628
July: War being then the state of affairs between England and France, King Charles I of England had granted authority to David Kirk and his kinsmen to conquer the French dominions in America. Kirk appeared before Québec, after having captured the resupply fleet that Cardinal Richelieu had directed toward that place, and ordered the settlement to surrender. Not having the means to effect a surrender, in the face of Samuel de Champlain’s defiance he then committed some face-saving depredations and sailed away.
(Champlain had, however, been in great need of those intercepted supplies for the sustenance of his colonists, and after a winter of great distress he would reluctantly capitulate his settlement to Louis Kirk and David Kirk on July 19th, 1629.)
July 17, Thursday (Old Style): Father Jean de Brébeuf arrived back in Québec from Ihonatiria near Georgian Bay, having been summoned because of the danger of extinction to which the entire colony was then exposed. This was just as well, because the Jesuit had been getting exactly nowhere with the native Americans at Ihonatiria, the only “converts” being those who received the rite of baptism during the winter just before dying.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1629
July 17, Friday (Old Style): Father Jean de Brébeuf arrived at Québec with 20 canoes loaded with grain, intended to relieve the blockade of that settlement.
July 19, Sunday (Old Style): The forces of Louis and Thomas Kirk, brothers of David Kirk, had appeared threateningly before Québec, the inhabitants of which having been again deprived through David Kirk’s capture of another supply fleet bound for the relief of that settlement. Threatened not only with starvation within the garrison but also with an invasion by the native Americans, the colonists finally on this day capitulated. The turnover of power would be so well managed that the majority of the colonists would choose to remain with their conquerors. Samuel de Champlain, however, would be packed off to safekeeping in England, and most of the Jesuits would be remanded under free passes back to France.
“Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.” — Executive Vice President of the NRA (National Rifle Association) Wayne LaPierre speaking in the Regency Ballroom of the Washington DC Marriott Wardman Park Hotel to the Conservative Political Action Conference at 10:15-10:45AM on February 27, 2009
Once back in France, Father Jean de Brébeuf would be assigned to a round of minor administrative duties (“Oh, no, Mr. Bill!”) in the Jesuit houses of Normandy. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1630
In Amsterdam, a patent was registered and confirmed for settlement up the valley of the Hudson River. A town was organized to “carry out the whale fishery in that region” while cultivating grain and tobacco. Control of this process of settlement was assigned to Samuel Godyn, who arranged for “patroons” to invest in the project. Company agent Gillis Hossitt was to be at the locale and administer this new settlement. The colonial office in Holland was to be organized by David Pietersz. de Vries. Captain Peter Heyes would ferry the personnel in the Walvis (“Whale”).
During the following two decades, the Beaver Wars would be spreading westward. The Iroquois were allied with the Dutch. Because of this and because of past hostility, the French continued to avoid them. Despite the limited trade agreement that the Dutch had concluded with the Mohawk in 1627, the Dutch would concentrate their efforts on trade with the Huron, who had strong trading ties to the western Great Lakes. The Huron were powerful enough that the Iroquois needed their permission in order to maintain their trade with the Dutch by hunting in the prime beaver territory to the north and west of their homeland. When the Iroquois League sent emissaries to the Huron council, however, the Huron refused to grant permission. The Huron killed the members of an Iroquois hunting party in this disputed territory, and war erupted between the two tribes. Although the Huron and their allies outnumbered them more than two to one, Iroquois war parties moved into southern Ontario in an attempt to cut the Huron link through the Ottawa Valley to French traders at Québec. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1631
Father Paul Le Jeune was named superior of the Jesuit mission in Canada and embarked for Québec.2
2. Father Paul Le Jeune had been born in 1591 near Châlons-sur-Marne in the Champagne region of France. He was a novice in preparation for the Jesuit priesthood from 1613 to 1615. He was ordained in 1624. He would be the superior of the Jesuit mission until replaced by Father Barthélemy Vimont in 1639, and would return to France in 1649 and there serve as mission procurator for New France until 1662. He would die in 1664. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1632
The 1st edition of Gabriel Sagard-Théodat’s LE GRAND VOYAGE DU PAYS DES HURONS. . . . AVEC UN DICTIONNAIRE DE LA LANGUE HURONNE (Paris: Chez Denys Moreau), on the civilization and language of the principal native American tribe encountered by the French in Canada, the Huron. Although the dictionary was set up in type separately, both works were covered by the same official permission to publish and the two works usually were bound together.3
3. Henry Thoreau would copy the following materials into his Indian Notebook:
The great fish which they call assihendo which is a fish as large as the largest cod ... but much better — to see this fishing he ... went to an island near the north side where many savages collected for the same purpose.... Every evening they carried their nets about half a league or a league out into the lake, and in the morning at day break they went to raise them and brought back always a quantity of good great fish, such as assihendos, trout, sturgeons, and others, which they gutted & opened. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
With the signing of the treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye between King Charles I of England and King Louis XIII of France, control over New France was recovered and the French began to return to Nova Scotia and to the valley of the St. Lawrence River. Samuel de Champlain, who had been held for years in England, would at this point be allowed to return to Québec as viceroy with extension of his powers and a large accession of settlers. By this point, the Iroquois were dangerously close to gaining control of the upper St. Lawrence and southern Ontario. Large Iroquois war parties ranged freely through southern Ontario and the Ottawa Valley. The French would attempt to restore the earlier balance of power between tribes in the region by selling “hunting” firearms, powder, and lead to their trading partners. At first the French attempted to make such “hunting” equipment available only to converts to Christianity and in order to preclude any use against themselves, paid careful attention to the amounts of powder and lead they were selling. However, even this limited armament was sufficient to allow the Huron, Algonquin, and Montagnais to counter the Iroquois.
“Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.” — Executive Vice President of the NRA (National Rifle Association) Wayne LaPierre speaking in the Regency Ballroom of the Washington DC Marriott Wardman Park Hotel to the Conservative Political Action Conference at 10:15-10:45AM on February 27, 2009
Samuel de Champlain’s VOYAGES DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE OCCIDENTALE, DICTE CANADA; FAITS POUR LE SR DE CHAMPLAIN XAINCTOGEOIS, CAPITAINE POUR LE ROY ET LA MARINE DU PONANT, & TOUTES LES DESCOUUERTES QU’IL A FAITES EN CE PAIS DEPUIS L’AN 1603; JUSQUES EN L’AN 1629... (Paris: C. Collet, 1632). SAMVEL CHAMPLAIN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
July 5, Thursday (Old Style): The treaty of St. Germaine-en-Laye having restored New France to the French, on this day Father Paul Le Jeune arrived in Québec to make a 3d attempt to set up a Jesuit mission in New France. (This follow-on effort of the Jesuits to maintain missions in the New World would be more successful than the abortive attempts of 1611-1612 and of 1626-1628. These efforts had been reported upon by Pierre Biard in 1616-1618 and would be reported upon by Charles Lallemant in 1627 — but apparently Thoreau would not see these records. Father Le Jeune would publish a BRIEF RELATION in Paris in 1633, but since Harvard Library did not acquire a copy of this initial volume of the Cramoisy series it would not be among the 41 volumes he would be able to consult.)
Next record: HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1633
Samuel de Champlain had immediately upon his return to Québec with three well-equipped vessels from Dieppe been reinstated as governor. He caused to be erected on Richelieu Island a fortification, and founded Three Rivers. He would establish a botanical garden and send plant specimens to the Robins in Paris.
Father François Le Mercier’s volume of JESUIT RELATIONS (LeJeune, Le Mercier, and Father Rasles 1632- HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1673). The following extract and others would be made in Henry Thoreau’s Indian Notebooks #7 and #8:4
We collect words from the mouth of the savages as so many precious stones.
CANADA
March 23, Saturday (1632, Old Style): France’s colony of Québec having been restored to her, Father Jean de Brébeuf again set sail for Canada. By this point he had taken solemn vows as spiritual coadjutor. He was accompanied by Father Anthony Daniel and Father Ambroise Davost.
4. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
May: Father Jean de Brébeuf attempted a return to Georgian Bay on Lake Huron, but was turned away by the native Americans of Ihonatiria and forced back to Québec. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1634
The Jesuit order made another penetration into North America, this one by way of Cape Breton. The JESUIT RELATIONS of 1634 (Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, and Father Rasles 1632- 1673).5 Henry Thoreau would copy the following material into an Indian Notebook:
In a chief’s cabin were 3 fires 5 or 6 feet in the middle of the ground covered with fir (sapin) branches. The eloquent savage indulges in tropes & metaphors — he uses nature as a symbol ... his metaphors are not far fetched — they are not concealed in the origin of language — but he translates entire phenomena into his speech. He looks around him in the woods ... to aid his expression. His language though more flowery is less artificial. They have no equivocation in their language as we have in ours. One word to say I use if I mean a bonnet, another dif[erent] termination word if I mean his bonnet — a dif[ferent] still, if I use an animate thing & c & these dif[ferent] verbs have dif[ferent] moods — tenses & persons, & conjugations.
April 30, Wednesday (Old Style): Father Julien Perrault arrived in New France.6 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
July: Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Anthony Daniel set off on a month-long journey from the settlement at Three Rivers to the old missionary site at Ihonatiria near Georgian Bay on Lake Huron. The reason why this took a month was that the more straightforward St.-Lawrence-River-and-Lake-Ontario route was being intercepted by Iroquois intend on destroying the Huron tribe preventing it from engaging in the fur trade, and therefore they needed to ascend the Ottawa River to the Mattawa River and cross Mud Lake and Lake Nipissing to the French River and then descend that river into Georgian Bay.
5. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637
6. Father Julien Perrault had been born at Nantes in 1598 and had entered the Society of Jesus on December 13, 1613. He would return to France in 1635 and die at Orleans on November 24, 1647. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1635
A college was founded at Québec by Jesuit Father René Rohault.
August 13, Thursday (Old Style): Father François Le Mercier arrived in Huronia, where for 15 uninterrupted years he would devote himself to missionary work (except for a brief visit to Québec on mission business during Summer 1639). He would be given the Huron name Chaüosé (when among the Onondagas he would be known as Teharonhiagannra).7
7. François Le Mercier had been born in Paris on October 4, 1604 and had entered the Society of Jesus there on October 19, 1620. He had taught in succession all the classes of grammar and humanities in the local Jesuit college, and had been dispatched to New France upon his completion of his own philosophical and theological studies. He had disembarked on July 20, 1635, and had set out with Father Pierre Pijart for the Huron country on the 3d day after landing. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1636
The result of a year of missionary work was that the Jesuits of New France had baptized twelve Hurons: four infants, and eight adults who were at the point of death.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
The People of Walden “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1637
8 From this year into 1664, publication of volume after volume of JESUIT RELATIONS, from which Henry Thoreau would extract much:
PEOPLE OF WALDEN
TIMELINE OF WALDEN
WALDEN: The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those, who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
THE JESUITS
8. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau would write, for instance, while he was adventuring in Canada, that: TIMELINE OF CANADA In an account of a voyage up this river [the St. Lawrence], printed in the Jesuit Relations in the year 1664, it is said: “It was an interesting navigation for us in ascending the river from Cap HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Tourment to Québec, to see on this side and on that, for the space of eight leagues, the farms and the houses of the company, built by our French, all along these shores. On the right, the seigniories of Beauport, of Notre Dame des Anges; and on the left, this beautiful Isle of Orleans.” The same traveller names among the fruits of the country observed at the Isles of Richelieu, at the head of Lake St. Peter, “kinds (des espèces) of little apples or haws (semelles), and of pears, which only ripen with the frost.”
A YANKEE IN CANADA
Thoreau would make a record under the rubric “Huckleberries” that: LeJeune, the Superior of the Jesuits in Canada — residing at Québec — in his Relation for 1639 — says of the savages that “Some figure to themselves a paradise full of bluets.”
Father Jean de Brébeuf drew up a list of reminders for Jesuit missionaries destined to work among the Huron. • You must love these Hurons, ransomed by the blood of the Son of God, as brothers. • You must never keep the Indians waiting at the time of embarking. • Carry a tinder-box or a piece of burning-glass, or both, to make fire for them during the day for smoking, and in the evening when it is necessary to camp; these little services win their hearts. • Try to eat the little food they offer you, and eat all you can, for you may not eat again for hours. • Eat as soon as day breaks, for Indians when on the road, eat only at the rising and the setting of the sun. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
• Be prompt in embarking and disembarking and do not carry any water or sand into the canoe. • Be the least troublesome to the Indians. • Do not ask many questions; silence is golden. • Bear with their imperfections, and you must try always to appear cheerful. • Carry with you a half-gross of awls, two or three dozen little folding knives (jambettes), and some plain and fancy beads with which to buy fish or other commodities from the nations you meet, in order to feast you Indian companions, and be sure to tell them from the outset that here is something with which to buy fish. • Always carry something during the portages. • Do not be ceremonious with the Indians. • Do not begin to paddle unless you intend always to paddle. • The Indians will keep later that opinion of you which they have formed during the trip. • Always show any other Indians you meet on the way a cheerful face and show that you readily accept the fatigues of the journey.
JEAN DE BRÉBEUF
June: Father Jean de Brébeuf converted Pierre Tsiouendaentaha, his 1st Huron adult convert in good health.
Summer: The Jesuit order was founding its initial settlement of its own (what they were terming a “reduction”) in New France, 60 miles out of Québec, Hôtel Dieu at Sillery. Meanwhile, up the slow-flowing Musketaquid River from Boston Harbor on the Great Road up the Nashobah Valley to the native villages of what would become southern New Hampshire, at the site of an existing village and fishing weir, the 1st inland European settlement in New England was being established, and was being (re)named Concord (not on the map as yet except as Musketaquid, because the existing map had been drawn in 1634). Six square miles were to appearances being purchased for mere wampum, hatchets, hoes, knives, cotton cloth, and a suit of clothing by two ministers, the Reverends Peter “Big Pray” Bulkeley and John Jones, and a soldier/merchant, Major Simon Willard. WHITE ON RED, RED ON WHITE PETER BULKELEY SIMON WILLARD
Town tradition has it that this ceremony took place under the large oak in which the town bell would be hung, to be referred to thereafter as “Jethro’s tree,” and this tree is supposed to have stood in front of what is now the HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Middlesex House. According to Volume I of the Suffolk Record of Deeds, No. 34, and from Chapter I of THE HISTORY OF CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS, passim,
Among these first white settlers of Concord were John Miles and his first wife Sarah, fresh from England. At the time they were spelling their family’s name as “Myles.”
[I HAVE MISPLACED THIS REFERENCE] implies in Book II, Chapter III, pages 48-9 that there is a reason why the land around the white settlement called “Concord” was let go so cheap by its tribal owners: said land was actually not sold at all, but leased, and said lease was merely for a purpose, the raising of cattle — so that what the Christian sachem Nattahattawants was undertaking on behalf of his tribe in return for some wampum and a suit of clothing was merely that the members of his band would take care not to use the land in the vicinity of Concord town in such a manner as to harm any of the cows let loose there to graze by the white people. And if despite this any of the white people’s cows should be harmed, they of course pledged that they would provide appropriate compensation. The writing specifically does not say “we relinquish all rights and will go away,” or anything like that; in fact you don’t have to be a lawyer and you don’t have to be attired in HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
a three-piece suit to see that what this piece of paper implies is quite the opposite:
Nattahattawants, in the year 1642, sold to Simon Willard, in behalf of “Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Dudley, Mr. Nowell, and Mr. Alden,” a large tract of land upon both sides Concord River. “Mr. Winthrop, our present governor, 1260 acres, Mr. Dudley, 1500 acres, on the S. E. side of the river, Mr. Nowell, 500 acres, and Mr. Allen, 500 acres, on the N. E. side of the river, and in consideration hereof the said Simon giueth to the said Nattahattawants six fadoms of waompampege, one wastcoat, and one breeches, and the said Nattahattawants doth covenant and bind himself, that hee nor any other Indians shall set traps within this ground, so as any cattle might recieve hurt thereby, and what cattle shall recieve hurt by this meanes, hee shall be lyable to make it good.” [In the deed, Nattahattawants is called sachem of that land.] Witnessed by The mark of ¤ NATTAHATTAWANTS. three whites. The mark of WINNIPIN, an Indian ¤that traded for him. The name of this chief, as appears from documents copied by Mr. Shattuck, was understood Tahattawan, Tahattawants, Attawan, Attawanee, and Ahatawanee. He was sachem of Musketaquid, since Concord, and a supporter and propagator of Christianity among his people, and an honest and upright man. The celebrated Waban married his eldest daughter. John Tahattawan was his son, who lived at Nashobah, where he was chief ruler of the praying Indians — a deserving Indian. He died about 1670. His widow was daughter of John, sagamore of Patucket, upon the Merrimack, who married Oonamog, another ruler of the praying Indians, of Marlborough. Her only son by Tahattawan was killed by some white ruffians, who came upon them while in their wigwams, and his mother was badly wounded at the same time. Of this affair we shall have occasion elsewhere to be more particular. Naanashquaw, another daughter, married Naanishcow, called John Thomas, who died at Natick, aged 110 years.
The historical record with which Thoreau was familiar stated “I have sought in vain for the Indian deed” to the land of Concord. The document in question had to be “reconstructed” by deposition in white court on October 7, 1684. Had there ever actually been a title transaction by which the land of Concord passed HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
from the red people to the white people? –The white owners’ explanation is uniformly taken with great seriousness by all the serious white historians, yet to my way of thinking, as a plausible explanation, “I must somehow have misplaced my deed as I can’t seem to place my hands on it at this moment” ranks right up there with “the Devil made me do it,” or perhaps with “the dog ate my homework,” or perhaps even with “Eat my shorts!”
On or about November 11, 1837 Thoreau would indicate a familiarity with the contents of at least pages 2-3 and 6-9 of Doctor Lemuel Shattuck’s A HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF CONCORD;..., which had recently appeared.
August: Father Jean de Brébeuf converted Joseph Chiwatenha, his 2d Huron adult convert in good health. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1638
Upon being replaced as superior in Huronia by Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Jean de Brébeuf moved to the Huron village of Teanaostaiae. He and his companion Father Chaumonot would be beaten in an uprising. Eventually, after a failed missionary journey to the Neutral tribe, Father Jean de Brébeuf needed to return to Québec to mend a broken left clavicle. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1639
August: Father Barthélemy Vimont came a 2d time to the New World, this time to Québec. Also arriving in New France at this time were Marie-Madeline de Chauvigny de la Peltrie, lay founder of the Ursulines of Québec, and Marie de l’Incarnation, the local religious head of the Ursuline order. Father Vimont would become the 3d superior of the Jesuit Mission in Canada, succeeding Father Paul Le Jeune, and would function in that capacity until 1645.9
9. Father Barthélemy Vimont had been born in Lisieux, France on January 1, 1594 and had entered his novitiate with the Society of Jesus at Rouen in 1613. He had studied philosophy at the Collège at La Flèche as a student of Énemond Massé. He had first ventured toward the New World on June 26, 1629 at the age of 35 but the expedition of four ships and a bark commanded by Captain Charles Daniel of which he had been a part had been scattered in a storm off the Newfoundland Banks. The ship bearing him and the expedition commander took refuge during August 1629 at Cape Breton Island, where they established Fort Sainte Anne. He was recalled to France the following year. Vimont wrote the only contemporary account of Jean Nicolet’s 1634 voyage to the interior of North America, which was published in Paris in 1642. He would die on July 13, 1667 in Vannes, France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1640
In this year or the following one, the map “Nouvelle France” was compiled from data taken from Samuel de Champlain’s maps, a Huron map acquired by Father Paul Ragueneau, and information supplied by travellers into Mohawk country. This map was one of the few of the Eastern Great Lakes drawn between 1632 and Sanson’s map of 1650 that was not a direct copy of Champlain’s work. CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Publication of a volume VOYAGES DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE (1603-1629) containing an indifferently executed abridgment of Samuel de Champlain’s previous voyages, which included a continuation from 1619 to 1632 (interesting features of this volume were prayers and a catechism in two of the languages of the aborigines).10
Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Chaumonot attempted to evangelize the Neutre tribe that lived north of Lake Erie. After a winter of hardship the missionaries would be forced to return in failure.
At the age of 18 in Canada, Pierre Boucher entered the service of the Jesuit Fathers and was sent to their Huron missions at Georgian Bay.
10. In 1830 this would be reprinted in Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1641
Pierre Boucher returned to Québec from the service of the Jesuit Fathers at their Huron missions on Georgian Bay in Canada. He would become a soldier of that city’s garrison.
From this year to 1644 Father Jean de Brébeuf needed to be at Québec in order to obtain provisions for the Huronia missions of Georgian Bay.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1642
At Québec, Father Jean de Brébeuf was entrusted with the care of the native Americans at the reservation at Sillery.
Another Jesuit, Father Isaac Jogues, was captured in an ambush. After being kept around as a slave for some time in an Iroquois village, he would be tortured and murdered and in 1646 his head would be impaled on the village’s palisade. As a comparison situation to what has happened in regard to the memory of the martyred Metacom, we place on record here that there is now a marble statue at the scene of this historic crime against a white man, in Auriesville, New York, a spot which wants to be known as the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
The memento mori statue at the site depicts Father Jogues, already missing parts of two fingers to the torture of the Iroquois, in the act of carving the name of Jesus into a tree. There is of course no comparable memento mori at Mount Hope, reflecting the dismemberment of Metacom in 1676, neither because this native religious leader would omit to carve the name of Jesus into a tree, nor because he fails to qualify as an authentic martyr — but because he utterly flunks our test of skin color. No proper commemorative plaque marks the spot in Salem at which that red martyr’s head was impaled. MARTYRDOM THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS
After Fathers Isaac Jogues and Bressani had been captured during effort to reach the Huron country, Father Jean de Brébeuf was appointed to make a 3d attempt. He succeeded. With him on this journey were Fathers Noel Chabanel and Garreau, both of whom would afterward be murdered. They reached St. Mary’s on the Wye, which was the central station of the Huron Mission. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1643
Father Isaac Jogues wrote to his Superior in New France. The letter is presented here per J. Franklin Jameson, ed., NARRATIVES OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1609-1664 (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909): I started the very day of the Feast of Our Blessed Father Saint Ignatius from the village where I was captive, in order to follow and accompany some Iroquois who were going away, first for trade, then for fishing. Having accomplished their little traffic, they stopped at a place seven or eight leagues below a settlement of the Dutch, which is located on a river where we carried on our fishing. While we were setting snares for the fish, there came a rumor that a squad of Iroquois, returned from pursuit of the Hurons, had killed five or six on the spot, and taken four prisoners, two of whom had been already burned in our village, with cruelties extraordinary. At this news, my heart was pierced through with a most bitter and sharp pain, because I had not seen, or consoled, or baptized those poor victims. Consequently, fearing lest some other like thing should happen in my absence, I said to a good old woman –who, by reason of her age, and the care that she had for me, and the compassion that she felt toward me, called me her nephew, and I called her my aunt– I then said to her: “My aunt, I would much like to return to our cabin; I grow very weary here.” It was not that I expected more ease and less pain in our village, where I suffered a continual martyrdom, being constrained to see with my eyes the horrible cruelties which are practised there; but my heart could not endure the death of any man without my procuring him holy baptism. That good woman said to me: “Go then, my nephew, since thou art weary here; take something to eat on the way.” I embarked in the first canoe that was going up to the village, always conducted and always accompanied by the Iroquois. Having arrived, as we did, in the settlement of the Dutch, through which it was necessary for us to pass, I learn that our whole village is excited against the French, and that only my return is awaited, for them to burn us. Now for the cause of such news. Among several bands of Iroquois, who had gone to war against the French, the Algonquins and the Hurons, there was one which took the resolution to go round about Richelieu, in order to spy on the French and the savages, their allies. Certain Huron of this band, taken by the Hiroquois, and settled among them, came to ask me for letters, in order to carry them to the French, hoping, perhaps, to surprise some one of them by this bait; but, as I doubted not that our French would be on their guard, and as I saw, moreover, that it was important that I should give them some warning of the designs, the arms and the treachery of our enemies, I found means to secure a bit of paper in order to write to them, the Dutch according me this charity. I knew very well the dangers to which I was exposing myself; I was not ignorant that, if any misfortune happened to those warriors, they would HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
make me responsible therefor, and would blame my letters for it. I anticipated my death; but it seemed to me pleasant and agreeable, employed for the public good, and for the consolation of our French and of the poor savages who listen to the word of Our Lord. My heart was seized with no dread at the sight of all that might happen therefrom, since it was a matter of the glory of God; I accordingly gave my letter to that young warrior, who did not return. The story which his comrades have brought back says that he carried it to the fort of Richelieu, and that, as soon as the French had seen it, they fired the cannon upon them. This frightened them so that the greater part fled, all naked, abandoning one of their canoes, in which there were three arquebuses, powder and lead, and some other baggage. These tidings being brought into the village, they clamor aloud that my letters have caused them to be treated like that; the rumor of it spreads everywhere; it comes even to my ears. They reproach me that I have done this evil deed; they speak only of burning me; and, if I had chanced to be in the village at the return of those warriors, fire, rage and cruelty would have taken my life. For climax of misfortune, another troop –coming back from Montreal, where they had set ambushes for the French– said that one of their men had been killed, and two others wounded. Each one held me guilty of these adverse encounters; they were fairly mad with rage, awaiting me with impatience. I listened to all these rumors, offering myself without reserve to our Lord, and committing myself in all and through all to His most holy will. The captain of the Dutch settlement where we were, not being ignorant of the evil design of those barbarians, and knowing, moreover, that Monsieur the Chevalier de Montmagny had prevented the savages of New France from coming to kill some Dutch, disclosed to me means for escape. “Yonder,” said he to me, “is a vessel at anchor, which will said in a few days; enter into it secretly. It is going first to Virginia, and thence it will carry you to Bordeux or to La Rochelle, where it is to land.” Having thanked him, with much regard for his courtesy, I tell him that the Iroquois, probably suspecting that some one had favored my retreat, might cause some damages to his people. “No, no,” he answers, “fear nothing; this opportunity is favorable; embark; you will never find a more certain way to escape.” My heart remained perplexed at these words, wondering if it were not expedient for the greater glory of our Lord that I expose myself to the danger of the fire and to the fury of those barbarians, in order to aid in the salvation of some soul. I said to him then: “Monsieur, the affair seems to me of such importance that I cannot answer you at once; give me, if you please, the night to think of it. I will commend it to our Lord; I will examine the arguments on both sides; and to-morrow morning I will tell you my final resolution.” He granted me my request with astonishment; I spent the night in prayers, greatly beseeching our Lord that he should not allow me to reach a conclusion by myself; that he should give me light, in order to know His most holy will; that in all and through all HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
I wished to follow it, even to the extent of being burned at a slow fire. The reasons which might keep me in the country were consideration for the French and for the Savages; I felt love for them, and a great desire to assist them, insomuch that I had resolved to spend the remainder of my days in that captivity, for their salvation; but I saw the face of affairs quite changed. In the first place, as regarded our three Frenchmen, led captive into the country as well as I: one of them, named Rene Goupil, had already been murdered at my feet; this young man had the purity of an angel. Henry, whom they had taken at Mont-Real, had fled into the woods. While he was looking at the cruelties which were practised upon two poor Hurons, roasted at a slow fire, some Iroquois told him that he would receive the same treatment, and I, too, when I should return; these threats made him resolve rather to plunge into the danger of dying from hunger in the woods, or of being devoured by some wild beast, than to endure the torments which these half-demons inflicted. It was already seven days since he had disappeared. As for Guilllaume Cousture, I saw scarcely any further way of aiding him, for they had placed him in a village far from the one where I was; and the savages so occupied it on the hither side of that place, that I could no longer meet him. Add that he himself had addressed me in these words: “My Father, try to escape; as soon as I shall see you no more, I shall find the means to get away. You well know that I stay in this captivity only for the love of you; make, then, your efforts to escape, for I cannot think of my liberty and of my life unless I see you in safety.” Furthermore, this good youth had been given to an old man, who assured me that he would allow him to go in peace, if I could obtain my deliverance; consequently I saw no further reason which obliged me to remain on account of the French. As for the savages, I was without power and beyond hope of being able to instruct them; for the whole country was so irritated against me that I found no more any opening to speak to them, or to win them; and the Algonquins and the Hurons were constrained to withdraw from me, as from a victim destined to the fire, for fear of sharing in the hatred and rage which the Iroquois felt against me. I realized, moreover, that I had some acquaintance with their language; that I knew their country and their strength; that I could perhaps better procure their salvation by other ways than by remaining among them. It came to my mind that all this knowledge would die with me, if I did not escape. These wretches had so little inclination to deliver us, that they committed a treachery against the law and the custom of all these nations. A savage from the country of the Sokokiois, allies of the Iroquois, having been seized by the upper Algonquins and taken a prisoner to the Three Rivers, or to Kebec, was delivered and set at liberty by the mediation of Monsieur the Governor of New France, at the solicitation of the Fathers. This good savage, seeing that the French had saved his life, sent in the month of April, some fine presents, to the end that they should deliver at least one of the French. The Iroquois HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
retained the presents, without setting one of them at liberty, which treachery is perhaps unexampled among these peoples, for they inviolably observe this law, that whoever touches or accepts the present which is made to him, is bound to fulfil what is asked of him through that present. This is why, when they are unwilling to grant what is desired, they send back the presents or make others in place of them. But to return to my subject: having weighed before God, with all the impartiality in my power, the reasons which inclined me to remain among those barbarians or to leave them, I believed that our Lord would be better pleased if I should take the opportunity to escape. Daylight having come, I went to greet Monsieur the Dutch Governor, and declared to him the opinions that I had adopted before God. He summons the chief men of the ship, signifies to them his intentions, and exhorts them to receive me, and to keep me concealed — in a word, to convey me back to Europe. They answer that, if I can once set foot in their vessel, I am in safety; that I shall not leave it until I reach Bordeaux or La Rochelle. “Well, then,” the Governor said to me, “return with the savages, and toward the evening, or in the night, steal away softly and move toward the river; you will find there a little boat which I will have kept all ready to carry you secretly to the ship.” After very humbly returning thanks to all those gentlemen, I withdrew from the Dutch, in order better to conceal my design. Toward evening, I retired with ten or twelve Iroquois into a barn, where we passed the night. Before lying down, I went out of that place, to see in what quarter I might most easily escape. The dogs of the Dutch, being then untied, run up to me; one of them, large and powerful, flings himself upon my leg, which is bare, and seriously injures it. I return immediately to the barn; the Iroquois close it securely and, the better to guard me, come to lie down beside me, especially a certain man who had been charged to watch me. Seeing myself beset with those evil creatures, and the barn well closed, and surrounded with dogs, which would betray me if I essayed to go out, I almost believed that I could not escape. I complained quietly to my God, because, having given me the idea of escaping, Concluserat vias meas lapidibus quadris, et in loco spatioso pedes meos. He was stopping up the ways and paths of it. I spent also that second night without sleeping; the day approaching, I heard the cocks crow. Soon afterward, a servant of the Dutch farmer who had lodged us in his barn, having entered it by some door or other, I accosted him softly, and made signs to him (for I did not understand his Flemish), that he should prevent the dogs from yelping. He goes out at once, and I after him, having previously taken all my belongings, which consisted of a little Office of the Virgin, of a little Gerson, and a wooden Cross that I had made for myself, in order to preserve the memory of the sufferings of my Savior. Being outside of the barn, without having made any noise or awakened my guards, I cross over a fence which confined the enclosure about the house; I run straight to HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
the river where the ship was — this is all the service that my leg, much wounded, could render me; for there was surely a good quarter of a league of road to make. I found the boat as they had told me, but, the water having subsided, it was aground. I push it, in order to set it afloat; not being able to effect this, on account of its weight, I call to the ship, that they bring the skiff to ferry me, but no news. I know not whether they heard me; at all events no one appeared. The daylight meanwhile was beginning to discover to the Iroquois the theft that I was making of myself; I feared that they might surprise me in this innocent misdemeanor. Weary of shouting, I return to the boat; I pray God to increase my strength; I do so well, turning it end for end, and push it so hard that I get it to the water. Having made it float, I jump into it, and go all alone to the ship, where I go on board without being discovered by any Iroquois. They lodge me forthwith down in the hold; and in order to conceal me they put a great chest over the hatchway. I was two days and two nights in the belly of that vessel, with such discomfort that I thought I would suffocate and die with the stench. I remembered then poor Jonas, and I prayed our Lord, Ne fugerem a facie Domini, that I might not hide myself before his face, and that I might not withdraw far from his wishes; but on the contrary, infatuaret omnia consilia quae non essent ad suam gloriam, I prayed him to overthrow all the counsels which should not tend to this glory, and to detain me in the country of those infidels, if he did not approve my retreat and my flight. The second night of my voluntary prison, the minister of the Dutch came to tell me that the Iroquois had indeed made some disturbance, and that the Dutch inhabitants of the country were afraid that they would set fire to their houses or kill their cattle; they have reason to fear them, since they have armed them with good arquebuses. To that I answer: Si propter me orta est tempestas, projicite me in mare: “If the storm has risen on my account, I am ready to appease it by losing my life;” I had never the wish to escape to the prejudice of the least man of their settlement. Finally, it was necessary to leave my cavern; all the mariners were offended at this, saying that the promise of security had been given me in case I could set foot in the ship, and that I was withdrawn at the moment when it would be requisite to bring me thither if I were not there; that I had put myself in peril of life by escaping upon their words; that it must needs be kept, whatever the cost. I begged that I be allowed to go forth, since the captain who had disclosed to me the way of my flight was asking for me. I went to find him in his house, where he kept me concealed; these goings and these comings having occurred by night, I was not yet discovered. I might indeed have alleged some reasons in all these encounters; but it was not for me to speak in my own cause, but rather to follow the orders of others, to which I submitted with good heart. Finally, the captain told me that it was necessary to yield quietly to the storm, and wait until the minds of the savages should be pacified; and that every one was of this HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
opinion. So there I was, a voluntary prisoner in his house, from which I am writing back to you the present letter. And if you ask my thoughts in all these adventures, I will tell you. First, that that ship which had wished to save my life, sailed without me. Secondly, if our Lord do not protect me in a manner well-nigh miraculous, the savages, who go and come here at every moment, will discover me; and if ever they convince themselves that I have not gone away, it will be necessary to return into their hands. Now if they had such a rage against me before my flight, what treatment will they inflict on me, seeing me fallen back into their power? I shall not die a common death; the fire, their rage, and the cruelties which they invent, will tear away my life. God be blessed forever. We are incessantly in the bosom of His divine and always adorable providence. Vestri capilli capitis numerati sunt; nolite timere; nultis passeribus meliores estis vos quorum unus non cadet super terram sine patre vestro; he who has care for the little birds of the air does not cast us into oblivion. It is already twelve days that I have been concealed; it is quite improbable that misfortune will reach me. In the third place, you see the great need that we have of your prayers and of the holy Sacrifices of all our Fathers; procure us this alms everywhere, ut reddat me Dominus idoneum ad se amandum, fortem ad patiendum, constantem ad perseverandum in suo amore, et servitio, to the end that God may render me fit and well disposed to love him; that he may render me strong and courageous to suffer and to endure; and that he may give me a noble constancy to persevere in his love and in his service — this is what I would desire above all, together with a little New Testament from Europe. Pray for these poor nations which burn and devour one another, that at last they may come to the knowledge of their Creator, in order to render to Him the tribute of their love. Memor sum vestri in vinculis meis; I do not forget you; my captivity cannot fetter my memory. I am, heartily and with affection, etc. From Renselaerivich, this 30th of August, 1643. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1644
April: Jesuit Father Joseph Bessani was captured by Mohawks while en route to the Huron missions in the Niagara region. (He would be later ransomed by the Dutch.)
August 26, Monday (Old Style): The Reverend Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. sent out of New Netherland ASHORT ACCOUNT OF THE MOHAWK INDIANS, THEIR COUNTRY, LANGUAGE, STATURE, DRESS, RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT, THUS DESCRIBED AND RECENTLY, AUGUST 26, 1644, SENT OUT OF NEW NETHERLAND, BY JOHANNES MEGAPOLENSIS THE YOUNGER, PREACHER THERE. His account is presented below according to J. Franklin Jameson, ed., NARRATIVES OF NEW NETHERLAND, 1609-1664 (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909): The Country here is in general like that in Germany. The land is good, and fruitful in everything which supplies human needs, except clothes, linen, woollen, stockings, shoes, etc., which are all dear here. The country is very mountainous, partly soil, partly rocks, and with elevations so exceeding high that they appear to almost touch the clouds. Thereon grow the finest fir trees the eye ever saw. There are also in this country oaks, alders, beeches, elms, willows, etc. In the forests, and here and there along the water side, and on the islands, there grows an abundance of chestnuts, plums, hazel nuts, large walnuts of several sorts, and of as good a taste as in the Netherlands, but they have a somewhat harder shell. The ground on the hills is covered with bushes of bilberries or blueberries; the ground in the flat land near the rivers is covered with strawberries, which grow here so plentifully in the fields, that one can lie HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
down and eat them. Grapevines also grow here naturally in great abundance along the roads, paths, and creeks, and wherever you may turn you find them. I have seen whole pieces of land where vine stood by vine and grew very luxuriantly, climbing to the top of the largest and loftiest trees, and although they are not cultivated, some of the grapes are found to be as good and sweet as in Holland. here is also a sort of grapes which grow very large, each grape as big as the end of one’s finger, or an ordinary plum, and because they are somewhat fleshy and have a thick skin we call them Speck Druyven. If people would cultivate the vines they might have as good wine here as they have in Germany or France. I had myself last harvest a boat-load of grapes and pressed them. As long as the wine was new it tasted better than any French or Rhenish Must, and the color of the grape juice here is so high and red that with one wine-glass full you can color a whole pot of white wine. In the forests is great plenty of deer, which in autumn and early winter are as fat as any Holland cow can be. I have had them with fat more than two fingers thick on the ribs, so that they were nothing else than almost clear fat, and could hardly be eaten. There are also many turkies, as large as in Holland, but in some years less than in others. The year before I came here, there were so many turkies and deer that they came to feed by the houses and hog pens, and were taken by the Indians in such numbers that a deer was sold to the Dutch for a loaf of bread, or a knife, or even for a tobacco pipe; but now one commonly has to give for a good deer six or seven guilders. In the forests here there are also many partridges, heath-hens and pigeons that fly together in thousands, and sometimes ten, twenty, thirty and even forty and fifty are killed at one shot. We have here, too, a great number of all kinds of fowl, swans, geese, ducks, widgeons, teal, brant, which sport upon the river in thousands in the spring of the year, and again in the autumn fly away in flocks, so that in the morning and evening any one may stand ready with his gun before his house and shoot them as they fly past. I have also eaten here several times of elks, which were very fat and tasted much like venison; and besides these profitable beasts we have also in this country lions, bears, wolves, foxes, and particularly very many snakes, which are large and as long as eight, ten, and twelve feet. Among others, there is a sort of snake, which we call rattlesnake, from a certain object which it has back upon its tail, two or three fingers’ breadth long, and has ten or twelve joints, and with this it makes a noise like the crickets. Its color is variegated much like our large brindled bulls. These snakes have very sharp teeth in their mouth, and dare to bite at dogs; they make way for neither man nor beast, but fall on and bite them, and their bite is very poisonous, and commonly even deadly too. As to the soil of this country, that on the mountains is a reddish sand or rock, but in the low flat lands, and along the rivers, and even in the jutting sides of the mountains for an hundred or two hundred paces up, there is often clay. I have HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
been on hills here, as high as a church, to examine the soil, and have found it to be clay. In this ground there appears to be a singular strength and capacity for bearing crops, for a farmer here told me that he had raised fine wheat on one and the same piece of land eleven years successively without ever breaking it up or letting it lie fallow. The butter here is clean and yellow as in Holland. Through this land runs an excellent river, about 500 or 600 paces wide. This river comes out of the Mahakas Country, about four leagues north of us. There is flows between two high rocky banks, and falls from a height equal to that of a church, with such a noise that we can sometimes hear it here with us. In the beginning of June twelve of us took ride to see it. When we came there we saw not only the river falling with such a noise that we could hardly hear one another, but the water boiling and dashing with such force in still weather, that it seemed all the time as if it were raining; and the trees on the hills near by (which are as high as Schoorler Duyn) had their leaves all the time wet exactly as if it rained. The water is as clear as crystal, and as fresh as milk. I and another with me saw there, in clear sunshine, when there was not a cloud in the sky, especially when we stood above upon the rocks, directly opposite where the river falls, in the great abyss, the half of a rainbow, or a quarter of a circle, of the same color with the rainbow in the sky. And when we had gone about ten or twelve rods farther downwards from the fall, along the river, we saw a complete rainbow, like a half circle, appearing clearly in the water just as if it had been in the clouds, and this is always so according to the report of all who have ever been there. In this river is a great plenty of all kinds of fish — pike, eels, perch, lampreys, suckers, cat fish, sun fish, shad, bass, etc. In the spring, in May, the perch are so plenty, that one man with a hook and line will catch in one hour as many as ten or twelve can eat. My boys have caught in an hour fifty, each a foot long. They have three hooks on the instrument with which they fish, and draw up frequently two or three perch at once. There is also in the river a great plenty of sturgeon, which we Christians do not like, but the Indians eat them greedily. In this river, too, are very beautiful islands, containing ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy morgens of land. The soil is very good, but the worst of it is, that by the melting of the snow, or heavy rains, the river readily overflows and covers that low land. This river ebbs and flows at ordinary low water as far as this place, although it is thirty-six leagues inland from the sea. As for the temperature in this country, and the seasons of the year, the summers are pretty hot, so that for the most of the time we are obliged to go in just our shirts, and the winters are very cold. The summer continues long, even until All Saints’ Day; but when the winter does begin, just as it commonly does in December, it freezes so hard in one night that the ice will bear a man. Even the rivers, in still weather when there is no strong current running, are frozen over in one night, so that HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
on the second day people walk over it. And this freezing continues commonly three months; for although we are situated here in 42 degrees of latitude, it always freezes so. And although there come warm and pleasant days, the thaw does not continue, but it freezes again until March. Then, commonly, the rivers first begin to open, and seldom in February. We have the greatest cold from the northwest, as in Holland from the northeast. The wind here is very seldom east, but almost always south, southwest, northwest, and north; so also the rain. Our shortest winter days have nine hours sun; in the summer, our longest days are about fifteen hours. We lie so far west of Holland that I judge you are about four hours in advance of us, so that when it is six o’clock in the morning with us it is ten in the forenoon with you, and when it is noon with us, it is four o’clock in the afternoon with you. The inhabitants of this country are of two kinds: first, Christians — at least so called; second, Indians. Of the Christians I shall say nothing; my design is to speak of the Indians only. These among us are again of two kinds: first, the Mahakinbas, or, as they call themselves, Kajingahaga; second, the Mahakans, otherwise called Agotzagena. These two nations have different languages, which have no affinity with each other, like Dutch and Latin. These people formerly carried on a great war against each other, but since the Mahakanders were subdued by the Mahakobaas, peace has subsisted between them, and the conquered are obliged to bring a yearly contribution to the others. We live among both these kinds of Indians; and when they come to us from their country, or we go to them, they do us every act of friendship. The principal nation of all the savages and Indians hereabouts with which we have the most intercourse, is the Mahakuaas, who have laid all the other Indians near us under contribution. This nation has a very difficult language, and it costs me great pains to learn it, so as to be able to speak and preach in it fluently. There is no Christian here who understands the language thoroughly; those who have lived here long can use a kind of jargon just sufficient to carry on trade with it, but they do not understand the fundamentals of the language. I am making a vocabulary of the Mahakuaas’ language, and when I am among them I ask them how things are called; but as they are very stupid, I sometimes cannot make them understand what I want. Moreover when they tell me, one tells me the word in the infinitive mood, another in the indicative; one in the first, another in the second person; one in the present, another in the preterit. So I stand oftentimes and look, but do not know how to put it down. And as they have declensions and conjugations also, and have their augments like the Greeks, I am like one distracted, and frequently cannot tell what to do, and there is no one to set me right. I shall have to speculate in this alone, in order to become in time an Indian grammarian. When I first observed that they pronounced their words so differently, I asked the commissary of the company what it meant. He answered me that he did not know, but imagined they changed their language HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
every two or three years; I argued against this that it could never be that a whole nation should change its language with one consent; — and, although he has been connected with them here these twenty years, he can afford me no assistance. The people and Indians here in this country are like us Dutchmen in body and stature; some of them have well formed features, bodies and limbs; they all have black hair and eyes, but their skin is yellow. In summer they go naked, having only their private parts covered with a patch. The children and young folks to ten, twelve and fourteen years of age go stark naked. In winter, they hang about them simply an undressed deer or bear or panther skin; or they take some beaver and otter skins, wild cat, raccoon, martin, otter, mink, squirrel or such like skins, which are plenty in this country, and sew some of them to others, until it is a square piece, and that is then a garments for them; or they buy of us Dutchmen two and a half ells of duffel, and that they hang simply about them, just as it was torn off, without sewing it, and walk away with it. They look at themselves constantly, and think they are very fine. They make themselves stockings and also shoes of deer skin, or they take leaves of their corn, and plait them together and use them for shoes. The women, as well as the men, go with their heads bare. The women let their hair grow very long, and tie it together a little, and let it hang down their backs. The men have a long lock of hair hanging down, some on one side of the head, and some on both sides. On the top of their heads they have a streak of hair from the forehead to the neck, about the breadth of three fingers, and this they shorten until it is about two or three fingers long, and it stands right on end like a rock’s comb or hog’s bristles; on both sides of this cock’s comb they cut all the hair short, except the aforesaid locks, and they also leave on the bare places here and there small locks, such as are in sweeping-brushes, and then they are in fine array. They likewise paint their faces red, blue, etc., and then they look like the Devil himself. They smear their heads with bear’s- grease, which they all carry with them for this purpose in a small basket; they say they do it to make their hair grow better and to prevent their having lice. When they travel, they take with them some of their maize, a wooden bowl, and a spoon; these they pack up and hang on their backs. Whenever they are hungry, they forthwith make a fire and cook; they can get fire by rubbing pieces of wood against one another, and that very quickly. They generally live without marriage; and if any of them have wives, the marriage continues no longer than seems good to one of the parties, and then they separate, and each takes another partner. I have seen those who had parted, and afterwards lived a long time with others, leave these again, seek their former partners, and again be one pair. And, though they have wives, yet they will not leave off whoring; and if they can sleep with another man’s wife, they think it is a brave thing. The women are exceedingly addicted to whoring; they will lie with a man for the value of one, two, or three schillings, and our Dutchmen HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
run after them very much. The women, when they have been delivered, go about immediately afterwards, and be it ever so cold, they wash themselves and the young child in the river or the snow. They will not lie down (for they say that if they did they would soon die), but keep going about. They are obliged to cut wood, to travel three or four leagues with the child; in short, they walk, they stand, they work, as if they had not lain in, and we cannot see that they suffer any injury by it; and we sometimes try to persuade our wives to lie-in so, and that the way of lying-in in Holland is a mere fiddle-faddle. The men have great authority over their concubines, so that if they do anything which does not please and raises their passion, they take an axe and knock them in the head, and there is an end of it. The women are obliged to prepare the land, to mow, to plant, and do everything; the men do nothing, but hunt, fish, and make war upon their enemies. They are very cruel towards their enemies in time of war; for they first bite off the nails of the fingers of their captives, and cut off some joints, and sometimes even whole fingers; after that, the captives are forced to sing and dance before them stark naked; and finally, they roast their prisoners dead before a slow fire for some days, and then eat them up. The common people eat the arms, buttocks and trunk, but the chiefs eat the head and the heart. Our Mahakas carry on great wars against the Indians of Canada, on the River Saint Lawrence, and take many captives, and sometimes there are French Christians among them. Last year, our Indians got a great booty from the French on the River Saint Lawrence, and took three Frenchmen, one of whom was a Jesuit. They killed one, but the Jesuit (whose left thumb was cut off, and all the nails and parts of his fingers were bitten,) we released, and sent him to France by a yacht which was going to our country. They spare all the children from ten to twelve years old, and all the women whom they take in war, unless the women are very old, and then they kill them too. Though they are so very cruel to their enemies, they are very friendly to us, and we have no dread of them. We go with them into the woods, we meet with each other, sometimes at an hour or two’s walk from any houses, and think no more about it than as if we met with a Christian. They sleep by us, too, in our chambers before our beds. I have had eight at once lying and sleeping upon the floor near my bed, for it is their custom to sleep simply on the bare ground, and to have only a stone or a bit of wood under their heads. In the evening, they go to bed very soon after they have supped; but early in the morning, before day begins to break, they are up again. They are very slovenly and dirty; they wash neither their face nor hands, but let all remain upon their yellow skin, and look like hogs. Their bread is Indian corn beaten to pieces between two stones, of which they make a cake, and bake it in the ashes: their other victuals are venison, turkies, hares, bears, wild cats, their own dogs, etc. The fish they cook just as they get them out of the water without HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
cleansing; also the entrails of deer with all their contents, which they cook a little; and if the intestines are then too tough, they take one end in their mouth, and the other in their hand, and between hand and mouth they separate and eat them. So they do commonly with the flesh, for they carve a little piece and lay it on the fire, as long as one would need to walk from his house to church, and then it is done; and then they bite into it so that the blood runs along their mouths. They can also take a piece of bear’s-fat as large as two fists, and eat it clear without bread or anything else. It is natural to them to have no bears; not one in an hundred has any hair about his mouth. They have also naturally a very high opinion of themselves; they say, Ihy Othkon, (“I am the Devil”) by which they mean that they are superior folks. In order to praise themselves and their people, whenever we tell them they are very expert at catching deer, or doing this and that, they say, Tkoschs ko, aguweechon Kajingahaga kouaane Jountuckcha Othkon; that is, “Really all the Mohawks are very cunning devils.” They make their houses of the bark of trees, very close and warm, and kindle their fire in the middle of them. They also make of the peeling and bark of trees, canoes or small boats, which will carry four, five and six persons. In like manner they hollow out trees, and use them for boats, some of which are very large. I have several times sat and sailed with ten, twelve and fourteen persons in one of these hollowed logs. We have in our colony a wooden canoe obtained from the Indians, which will easily carry two hundred schepels of wheat. Their weapons in war were formerly a bow and arrow, with a stone axe and mallet; but now they get from our people guns, swords, iron axes and mallets. Their money consists of certain little bones, made of shells or cockles, which are found on the sea-beach; a hole is drilled through the middle of the little bones, and these they string upon thread, or they make of them belts as broad as a hand, or broader, and hang them on their necks, or around their bodies. They have also several holes in their ears, and there they likewise hang some. They value these little bones as highly as many Christians do gold, silver and pearls; but they do not like our money, and esteem it no better than iron. I once showed one of their chiefs a rix- dollar; he asked how much it was worth among the Christians; and when I told him, he laughed exceedingly at us, saying we were fools to value a piece of iron so highly; and if he had such money, he would throw it into the river. They place their dead upright in holes, and do not lay them down, and then they throw some trees and wood on the grave, or enclose it with palisades. They have their set times for going to catch fish, bears, panthers, beavers and eels. In the spring, they catch vast quantities of shad and lampreys, which are exceedingly large here; they lay them on the bark of trees in the sun, and dry them thoroughly hard, and then put them in notasten, or bags, which they plait from hemp which grows wild here, and keep the fish till winter. When their corn is ripe, they take it from the HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
ears, open deep pits, and preserve it in these the whole winter. They can also make nets and seines in their fashion; and when they want to fish with seines, ten or twelve men will go together and help each other, all of whom own the seine in common. They are entire strangers to all religion, but they have a Tharonhijouaagon, (whom they also otherwise call Athzoockkuatoriaho,) that is, a Genius, whom they esteem in the place of God; but they do not serve him or make offerings to him. They worship and present offerings to the Devil, whom they call Otskon, or Aireskuoni. If they have any bad luck in war, they catch a bear, which they cut in pieces, and roast, and that they offer up to their Aireskuoni, saying in substance, they following words: “Oh! great and mighty Aireskuoni, we confess that we have offended against thee, inasmuch as we have not killed and eaten our captive enemies; — forgive us this. We promise that we will kill and eat all the captives we shall hereafter take as certainly as we have killed, and now eat this bear.” Also when the weather is very hot, and there comes a cooling breeze, they cry out directly, Asorunusi, asorunusi, Otskon aworouhsi reinnuha; that is, “I thank thee, I thank thee, devil, I thank thee, little uncle!” If they are sick, or have a pain or soreness anywhere in their limbs, and I ask them what ails them they say that the Devil sits in their body, or in the sore places, and bites them there; so that they attribute to the Devil at once the accidents which befall them; they have otherwise no religion. When we pray they laugh at us. Some of them despise it entirely; and some, when we tell them what we do when we pray, stand astonished. When we deliver a sermon, sometimes ten or twelve of them, more or less, will attend, each having a long tobacco pipe, made by himself, in his mouth, and will stand awhile and look, and afterwards ask me what I am doing and what I want, that I stand there alone and make so many words, while none of the rest may speak. I tell them that I am admonishing the Christians, that they must not steal, nor commit lewdness, nor get drunk, nor commit murder, and that they too ought not to do these things; and that I intend in process of time to preach the same to them and come to them in their own country and castles (about three days’ journey from here, further inland), when I am acquainted with their language. Then they say I do well to teach the Christians; but immediately add, Diatennon jawij Assirioni, hagiouisk, that is, “Why do so many Christians do these things?” They call us Assirioni, that is, cloth-makers, or Charistooni, that is, iron-workers, because our people first brought cloth and iron among them. They will not come into a house where there is a menstruous woman, nor eat with her. No woman may touch their snares with which they catch deer, for they say the deer can scent it. The other day an old woman came to our house, and told my people that her forefathers had told her “that Tharonhij-Jagon, that is, God, once went out walking with his brother, and a dispute arose between them, and God killed his brother.” I suppose this fable took its rise from Cain and Abel. They have a droll theory HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
of the Creation, for they think that a pregnant woman fell down from heaven, and that a tortoise, (tortoises are plenty and large here, in this country, two, three and four feet long, some with two heads, very mischievous and addicted to biting) took this pregnant woman on its back, because every place was covered with water; and that the woman sat upon the tortoise, groped with her hands in the water, and scraped together some of the earth, whence it finally happened that the earth was raised above the water. They think that there are more worlds than one, and that we came from another world. The Mohawk Indians are divided into three tribes, which are called Ochkari, Aanaware, Oknaho, that is, the Bear, the Tortoise and the Wolf. Of these, the Tortoise is the greatest and most prominent; and they boast that they are the oldest descendants of the woman before mentioned. These have made a fort of palisades, and they call their castle Asserue. Those of the Bear are the next to these, and their castle is called by them Banagiro. The last are a progeny of these, and their castle is called Thenondiogo. These Indian tribes each carry the beast after which they are named (as the arms in their banner) when they go to war against their enemies, as for a sign of their own bravery. Lately one of their chiefs came to me and presented me with a beaver, an otter, and some cloth he had stolen from the French, which I must accept as a token of good fellowship. When he opened his budget he had in it a dried head of a bear, with grinning teeth. I asked him what that meant? He answered me that he fastened it upon his left shoulder by the side of his head, and that then he was the devil, who cared for nothing, and did not fear any thing. The government among them consists of the oldest, the most intelligent, the most eloquent and most warlike men. These commonly resolve, and then the young and warlike men execute. But if the common people do not approve of the resolution, it is left entirely to the judgment of the mob. The chiefs are generally the poorest among them, for instead of their receiving from the common people as among Christians, they are obliged to give to the mob; especially when any one is deceased; and if they take any prisoners they present them to that family of which one has been killed, and the prisoner is then adopted by the family into the place of the deceased person. There is no punishment here for murder and other villainies, but every one is his own avenger. The friends of the deceased revenge themselves upon the murderer until peace is made by presents to the next of kin. But although they are so cruel, and live without laws or any punishments for evil doers, yet there are not half so many villainies or murders committed amongst them as amongst Christians; so that I oftentimes think with astonishment upon all the murders committed in the Fatherland, notwithstanding their severe laws and heavy penalties. These Indians, though they live without laws, or fear of punishment, do not (at least, they very seldom) kill people, unless it may be in a great passion, or a hand-to-hand fight. Wherefore we go wholly HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
unconcerned along with the Indians and meet each other an hour’s walk off in the woods, without doing any harm to one another. JOHANNES MEGAPOLENSIS.
September: Father Jean de Brébeuf returned to Huronia. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1645
It was probably in this year that Father Paul Ragueneau became superior of the Huron mission. He joined the fugitives on Saint Joseph’s Island and led a small band to Québec.11
11. Father Paul Ragueneau had been born in Paris on March 18, 1608 and had become a novice in the Society of Jesus in 1626. From 1628 to 1632 he had taught at the Collège in Bourges and then he completed his religious training at the College of La Flèche before coming to Québec in 1636. Upon arriving in Québec, he had almost immediately been sent to the Huron mission where he had for eight years been under the direction of Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Jérôme Lallemant. In 1650 he would become vice- rector of the College of Québec and superior of the Canadian mission. In 1656 he would be assigned to the residence at Trois- Rivières. In 1657 he would leave for the Sainte-Marie-de-Ganentaa mission to the Iroquois on Onondaga Lake near what is now Syracuse, New York. In 1662 he would return to France and serve as procurator of the mission. He would die in Paris on September 3, 1680. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1646
A Jesuit, Father Isaac Jogues, who had been captured in 1642 in an ambush, who had been being held by the Iroquois as a slave, was at this point tortured and murdered, and his head was impaled on the palisade of the village. As a comparison situation to what has happened in regard to the memory of the martyred Metacom, we place on record here that there is now a marble statue at the scene of this historic crime against a white man, in Auriesville, New York, a spot which wants to be known as the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs. The memento mori statue at the site depicts Father Jogues, already missing parts of two fingers to the torture of the Iroquois, in the act of carving the name of Jesus into a tree. There is of course no comparable memento mori at Mount Hope, reflecting the dismemberment of Metacom in 1676, neither because this native religious leader would omit to carve the name of Jesus into a tree, nor because he fails to qualify as an authentic martyr — but because he utterly flunks our primary test, which is that of skin color. MARTYRDOM THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS
August 26, Wednesday (Old Style): Père Isaac Jogues had been sent to the Mohawks, so at this point Père Gabriel Druillettes was sent to the Abnaki on the Kennebec River. He would ascend the Chaudière River, arriving by portage at what is now Moosehead Lake, and then continue down the Kennebec River to the English post of Coussinoc, now Augusta, where he would meet the agent, John Winslow. Winslow and the Jesuit were to become life-long friends. From Coussinoc he would continue to the seacoast and then travel along the coast as far as the Penobscot River, where he would be welcomed by the Capuchins who had there established a mission. Retracing his steps, he would then establish his own mission on the Kennebec River about a league above Coussinoc (subsequently this would grow into the famous Norridgework, where Father Rasla would be slain). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1647
Although the Iroquois and French made a peace, the Iroquois remained at war with the Hurons.
Charles Jacques Huault de Montmagny (circa 1599-1654), under whom New France had been advancing only languidly, was replaced by Louis d’Ailleboust de Coulonge (circa 1612-May 1660), who would suggest to the English colonies that all the white people of the New World should enter into a racial alliance to destroy the native Americans. (His proposal would be rejected by the English because it would have set them at odds with their valued allies the Mohawks.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1648
Pierre Boucher was commissary-general of the trading station at Three Rivers in Canada.
The establishments of Jesuit missionaries were burned and missionaries slaughtered.
The colonies of New England proposed to the governor and council of Canada perpetual peace between the colonists, even when the parent states were at war. This proposal was unattended with success. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Winter: In the region of the Great Lakes, the Iroquois overran the Huron Confederacy, driving their remnants into Canada north of the Great Lakes and very much upsetting the tribal balance of power in North America. With their fur trade destroyed and a good possibility the Iroquois would attack their settlements, the French would be scrambling to protect themselves by making a new alliance, with the Algonquin in northern New England. During this period the Reverend John Eliot was spending three years among the Pennacook. Although headman Passaconnaway would attend this Reverend’s sermons on several occasions, he would never be persuaded to accept this gospel. Eliot would have better luck with the headman’s son Wanalancet, however, who, with his entire family, would allow themselves to be baptized during the 1670s. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1649
March 16, Friday, (1648, Old Style): At dawn a force of 1,200 Iroquois warriors had sneaked in and taken control of the Huron village of St. Ignace near Georgian Bay (population 400, near present day Midland, Ontario, Canada). A few hours later they had moved toward the neighboring village of St. Louis. Although Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Gabriel Lallemant could have escaped, they had chosen to remain with their flock. The warriors dragged them through the snow to St. Ignace where they were forced to “run the gauntlet” being stoned and beaten with clubs. It is said that then Father Jean kissed the post to which he was being tied. After various inventive tortures which I am sure you would not want me to describe, he would expire at about 4PM. He had reached 46 years of age. His heart was eaten, although that wasn’t part of the torture — rather, it was in admiration of the fact that he had faced these warriors bravely. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
His scalped head is preserved as a relic at the Hôtel-Dieu near Québec.
“Our founding fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.” — Executive Vice President of the NRA (National Rifle Association) Wayne LaPierre speaking in the Regency Ballroom of the Washington DC Marriott Wardman Park Hotel to the Conservative Political Action Conference at 10:15-10:45AM on February 27, 2009
March 17, Saturday (1648, Old Style): Abolition of the British monarchy.
The Iroquois warriors tortured Father Gabriel Lallemant to death.12
12. Father Gabriel Lallemant had been born in Paris on October 3, 1610 and in 1630 had joined the Jesuits and in 1632 had vowed to devote himself to foreign missions. Despite this vow he spent 14 years in France before coming to Canada. He taught at the Collège in Moulins from 1632 to 1635. He was at Bourges from 1635 to 1639 studying theology and then taught at three different schools before arriving in Québec during September 1646. Little is known about his stay in Québec but during September 1648 he was sent to Wendake as a missionary and assistant to Father Jean de Brébeuf. He had only been at the mission for six months when he was captured along with Father Jean, who had been the first of the two to be tortured. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1650
The remains of Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Gabriel Lallemant were venerated in Québec.
The Jesuits began to publish about the Huron:
Rache, Pierre de (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S'EST PASSÉ EN LA MISSION DES PERES DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS AUX HURONS, PAYS DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, ÉS ANNÉES 1648 & 1649: ENVOYÉE AU R.P. HIEROSME LALEMANT, SUPERIEUR DES MISSIONS DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS, EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE. A Lille: De l'Imprimerie de la Vefue de Pierre de Rache ..., 1650 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
There had probably been fewer than 20,000 Ongwi Honwi, superior people, in the Five Nations of the Iroquois as of 1600. However, their inland location had protected this population to some degree during the initial European epidemics, so that despite the fact that their populations had been roughly cut in half, to about 10,000, they had begun to wield a great deal of influence over the smaller numbers of survivors in other tribes. Through the massive adoption of Iroquian-speaking subjects (at least 7,000 Huron, and similar numbers of Neutrals, Susquehannock, Tionontati, and Erie), the Five Nations would actually increase during the 1650s and would reach their maximum numbers, of about 25,000, in 1660. Since political power was never shared, these adoptees were definitely 2nd-class citizens. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Following Mohawk raids on the Sokoki and Pocumtuck, the French sent a Montagnais chief and a Jesuit to encourage the Pennacook, Sokoki, Pocumtuck, and Mahican to form an alliance against the Mohawk. With the promise of French firearms and aid, this would be accomplished in 1651, but when a French delegation would visit Boston to ask the English to participate, they would decline. The last thing New England wanted was a large group of well-armed Algonquins on its frontier — especially Algonquins allied with the French. The new alliance would be successful for the next five years in keeping the Mohawk at bay because during this period the Mohawk would be engaged in a war with the Susquehannock in Pennsylvania. When this would end in 1655, they would turn their tender attentions toward New England. They would concentrate initially on the Mahican, and by 1658 the Mahican would have left the alliance and would be making their separate peace with the Iroquois — leaving the Pennacook, Pocumtuck, and Sokoki to face the Mohawk Confederation in HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
isolation.
June 10, Monday (Old Style): Father François Le Mercier left Huronia after the laying waste of the country by the Iroquois.13 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Late in the year: Late in the year, Father Jérôme Lallemant (April 27, 1593-January 26, 1673), who had been the superior of the Jesuits in Canada since 1645, returned to France for awhile and was replaced by Father Paul Ragueneau. Upon his return to Canada he would serve under Father Ragueneau, until he again returned to France. He would serve a 2d term as Canadian superior from 1659 to 1665.
13. François Le Mercier had devoted himself to the work of the Huron mission for 15 solid years, except for a brief visit to Québec on mission business during Summer 1639). While in Huronia he had been stationed from 1635 to 1637 at Ihonatiria, from 1637 to 1639 at Ossossané, from 1639 to 1640 at Ste-Marie I, from 1641 to 1642 at Ossossané again, from 1643 to 1649 at Ste-Marie I, and finally at Ste-Marie II on St. Joseph’s Island from June 16, 1649 to this point of his departure. On his return he would engage in the ministry in Québec and at Three Rivers until 1653, and then he would be appointed rector of the college and superior of the whole Canada mission, a post he would occupy until 1656. While yet in office, on May 11, 1656, not willing to expose the lives of others to perils he was not ready to face, he would appoint Father Jerome Lalemant as the vice-superior, so as to be himself free to head a dangerous expedition to the fierce Onondagas. He would write from Montréal on June 6, 1656 to his provincial in France setting forth vividly the difficulties of the undertaking. On June 1, 1657 he would return to Québec and then while beginning to journey back to his mission on June 27th he would be recalled. From 1659 to 1660, though in charge of the parish with Father Dahlon, he needed also to care for the outlying mission at Beaupre. Monseigneur de Petrée, the 1st Bishop of Québec, would formally designate him the assistant parish priest at Beaupre on October 21, 1660. On August 6, 1665, for the 2d time, he would be promoted to the office of rector and superior of the whole Canada Mission, and he would continue to act as such until replaced by Father Dahlon on July 12, 1671. He would then function as the bursar and vice-president of the Jesuit college at Québec. In 1673 he would be recalled from Canada and be sent as visitor to the French missions in South America and in the Antilles. By December 12, 1673 he would be acting in that capacity in Cayenne. After a decade of this service he would die at an advanced age on the island of Martinique on June 12, 1690. He had compiled nine of the annual “Jesuit Relations” reports, those for 1653, 1654, 1655, and 1665 to 1670 inclusive, in addition to two written by him on the Huron mission, covering the years 1637 and 1638. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1652
May 10, Monday (Old Style): Father Jacques Buteux was killed in an ambush by Iroquois warriors while on a journey to the Attikamegues, a Montagnais tribe dwelling on the upper St. Maurice River.14
14. Jacques Buteux had been born at Abbeville in Picardy, France on April 11, 1600, had entered the Society of Jesus during October 1620, had studied at La Fleche between 1622 and 1625, had been an instructor at Caen from 1625 to 1629, had attended a course of theology at La Fleche between 1629 and 1633, and had then become prefect at the College of Clermont. In 1634 upon coming to Canada he had been sent to the new settlement of Three Rivers, where he had ministered to the Montagnais and Algonquins. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1655
After his course of studies as a Jesuit had been completed, and after a stint at teaching in France, the Society of Jesus forwarded Claude Dablon to Québec. He was at once sent with Father Chaumonot to begin a central mission among the Iroquois at Onondaga, Canada. His diary of this journey and of his return to Québec in the year following would appear during his lifetime, in the JESUIT RELATIONS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1661
Père Claude Dablon had been among the Iroquois at Onondaga in Canada since 1655. At this point he accompanied Père Gabriel Druillettes on an expedition overland to Hudson Bay, the purpose of which was to establish missions among the Native Americans in that region and perhaps discover an outlet through Hudson Bay to the China Sea. The expedition would prove unsuccessful.15
15. In 1668 Père Claude Dablon would be on Lake Superior with Claude-Jean Allouez and Jacques Marquette, forming with them what Bancroft would describe as the “illustrious triumvirate,” and he would be the one to inform the world of the rich copper mines of that region, which would become of such great economic value. It would be Dablon who would appoint Marquette to undertake the expedition which would result in the discovery of the upper Mississippi River and it would be he who would give Marquette’s letters and charts to the world. In connection with this discovery it would be he who would call attention to the feasibility of passing from Lake Erie to Florida “by cutting a canal through only half a league of prairie to pass from the end of the Lake of the Illinois (Lake Michigan) to the River of St. Louis” (Illinois River). This canal, projected by Dablon, would be dug during the 1840s as “The Illinois and Michigan Canal.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1668
Mr. de Talon, to encourage colonization, induced the French government to disband within Canada the Carignan regiment, and to ship from France about 300 women of loose character, who were, in less than 15 days, disposed of among the inhabitants, to whom, on marriage, considerable presents were made. Pensions were also granted to all individuals who had ten children lawfully begotten.
Père Claude Dablon was on Lake Superior with Claude-Jean Allouez and Jacques Marquette, forming with them what George Bancroft would describe as the “illustrious triumvirate,” and he would be the one to inform the world of the rich copper mines of that region, which would eventually prove so economically valuable. It would be Dablon who would appoint Marquette to undertake the expedition which would result in the discovery of the Upper Mississippi River; he would also give Marquette’s letters and charts to the world. It would be Père Gabriel Druillettes who would instruct Marquette in the Algonquin language at Three Rivers before he would head west. In connection with this discovery Marquette would call attention to the feasibility of passing from Lake Erie to Florida “by cutting a canal through only half a league of prairie to pass from the end of the Lake of the Illinois (Lake Michigan) to the River of St. Louis (Illinois River).” This canal projected HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
by Dablon would be dug during the 1840s as the “Illinois and Michigan Canal.”
(The above drawing is from the manuscript “Relation particulière de ce qui s’est passé dans le voyage des Pères de la Compagnie de Jésus en la Nouvelle-France dans l’année 1668.”) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1670
Père Claude Dablon, S.J. visited the Straits of Mackinac and wintered on Mackinac Island, beginning the Mission of St. Ignace and thus founding, more or less, what we know as Sault Sainte Marie. Père Gabriel Druillettes was at Sault Sainte Marie and would be one of those who would participate with Allouez and Jacques Marquette in the famous “taking possession” by Saint-Lusson during May 1671. Père Dablon would leave this region when he was designated as the Superior General of all the Canadian Missions. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1673
The Vatican banned further publication about its missionary activities without prior permission. Since securing such permission from the Roman authorities would prove virtually impossible, the JESUIT RELATIONS series of Canada, which had been continuous since 1632 and which would be consulted so heavily by Henry Thoreau, had to be discontinued.
First record: HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1686
Père Claude Dablon was reappointed as Superior General of all the Canadian Missions. He would hold that position until 1693. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1697
Adam Winthrop maintained, in Latin at the Harvard College Commencement in this year, that no Jesuit could be a good citizen. (“An Jesuitae possint esse Boni Subditi? Negat Respondens Adamus Winthrop.”) CATHOLICS ANTI-CATHOLICISM
May 3, Monday (Old Style): Claude Dablon died at Québec. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1852
October 5, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the Reverend William Gilpin’s OBSERVATIONS ON THE WESTERN PARTS OF ENGLAND, RELATING CHIEFLY TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY; TO WHICH ARE ADDED, A FEW REMARKS ON THE PICTURESQUE BEAUTIES OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1798; London: Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, Strant, 1808).
(Some material from this would wind up in THE MAINE WOODS.)
THE MAINE WOODS: Those Maine woods differ essentially from ours. There you are never reminded that the wilderness which you are threading is, after all, some villager’s familiar wood-lot, some widow’s thirds, from which her ancestors have sledded fuel for generations, minutely described in some old deed which is recorded, of which the owner has got a plan too, and old bound- marks may be found every forty rods, if you will search. ’T is true, the map may inform you that you stand on land granted by the State to some academy, or on Bingham’s purchase; but these names do not impose on you, for you see nothing to remind you of the academy or of Bingham. What were the “forests” of England to these? One writer relates of the Isle of Wight, that in Charles the Second’s time “there were woods in the island so complete and extensive, that it is said a squirrel might have travelled in several parts many leagues together on the top of the trees.” If it were not for the rivers, (and he might go round their heads,) a squirrel could here travel thus the whole breadth of the country. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
16 He also checked out the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1633 and 1634.
http://www.canadiana.org
Caroline Rounseville Alger was born at Roxbury.
Oct. 5. Was told at Bunker Hill Monument to-day that Mr. Savage saw the White Mountains several times while working on the monument. It required very clear weather in the northwest and a storm clearing up here.
16. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
November 11, Thursday: Having already perused the volumes for the years 1633 and 1634, Henry Thoreau checked 17 out, from Harvard Library, the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1635 and 1636.
http://www.canadiana.org
He also checked out Volume II of William Kirby’s and William Spence’s AN INTRODUCTION TO ENTOMOLOGY: OR ELEMENTS OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INSECTS: WITH PLATES.
17. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
December 30, Thursday: Having already perused the volumes for the years 1633-1636, Henry Thoreau checked out, 18 from Harvard Library, the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1637 and 1638.
http://www.canadiana.org
18. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Dec. 30. In Audubon’s Animals:— Sigmodon hispidum, Say and Ord. Marsh-Rat of Lawson’s Carolina. Wood-Rat, Bartram’s Travels in Florida. Arvicola hispidus, Godman. Arvicola hortensis of Griffith and of Cuvier. The plate of this resembles my mouse of December 13th. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1853
January 2, Sunday: Henry Thoreau was written to by Horace Greeley in New-York. New York, [J]an. 2, 1853. Friend Thoreau, I have yours of the 29th, and credit you $20[.] Pay me when and in such sums as may be conve- nient. I am sorry you and Curtis cannot agree so as to have your whole Ms. printed. It will be worth nothing elsewhere after having partly appeared in
Page 2 Putnam. I think it is a mistake to conceal the authorship of the several articles, making them all (so to speak) Editorial;[ ] but if that is done, don't you see that the el[i]mina- tion of very flagrant here- sies (like your defiant Pantheism) becomes a neces- sity?-- If you had refused withdrawn ^ your M[S]. on account of the abominable misp[r]ints in the first number, your ground would have been far more tenable.
Page 3 However, do what you will. Yours, Horace Greeley. (unwell) HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
H. D. Thoreau, Esq.
Thoreau for the 5th time deployed in his journal a weather term that had been originated by Luke Howard: “A clear day – a pure sky with cirrhi ...”
January 2nd: 9 Am Down RR to Cliffs. A clear day – a pure sky with cirrhi In this clear air & bright sunlight the ice-covered trees have a new beauty. Especially the birches along under the edge of Warren’s wood on each side of the railroad – bent quite to the ground in every kind of curve. At a distance as you are approaching them end-wise they look like white tents of Indians under the edge of the wood. The birch is thus remarkable perhaps because from the featherey form of the tree whose numerous small branches sustain so great a weight bending it to the ground – and moreover because from the color of the bark the core is less observable. The oaks not only are less pliant in the trunk but have fewer & stiffer twigs & branches. The birches droop over in all directions like ostrich feathers. Most wood paths are impassible now to a carriage almost to a foot traveller from the number of saplings & boughs bent over even to the ground in them. Both sides of the deep cut now shine in the sun as if silver plated – & the fine spray of a myriad brushes on the edge of the bank – sparkle like like silver. The telegraph wire is coated to ten times its size – & looks like a slight fence scalloping along at a distance. Is merged in nature. When we climb the bank at Stows wood lot and come upon the piles of freshly split white pine wood – (for he is ruthlessly laying it waste) the transparent ice like a thick varnish beautifully exhibits the color of the clear tender yellowish wood – pumpkin-pine? – and its grain and we pick our way over a bed of pine boughs & twigs a foot or two deep covering the ground, each twig & needle thickly coated with ice – into one vast gelid mass – which our feet cronch as if as if we were walking through the laboratory of some confectioner to the gods. The invigorating scent of the recently cut pines refreshes us – if that is any atonement for this devastation. The beauty of the oak tops all silvered o’er. Especially now do I notice the hips – barberries & winter berries – for their red. The red or purplish catkins of the alders are interesting as a winter-fruit. & also of the birch. But few birds about, apparently their granaries are locked up in ice – with which the grasses & buds are coated. Even far in the horizon the pine tops are turned to firs or spruce by the weight of the ice bending them down – so that they look like a spruce swamp. No two trees wear the ice alike. The short plumes & needles of the spruce make a very pretty & peculiar figure. I see some oaks in the distance which by their branches being curved or arched downward & massed are turned into perfect elms, which suggests that that is the peculiarity of the elm – Few if any other trees are this wisp-like – the branches gracefully drooping. I mean some slender red & white oaks which have recently been left in a clearing – Just apply a weight to the ends of the boughs which will cause them to droop on all sides – & to each particular twig which will mass them together & you have perfect elms. Seen at the right angle each ice incrusted stubble shines like a prism with some color of the rainbow – intense blue or violet & red. The smooth field clad the other day with a low wiry grass – is now converted into rough- stubble land – where you walk with cronching feet. It is remarkable that the trees ever recover from this burden which bends them to the ground. I should like to weigh a limb of this pitch-pine. The character of the tree is changed. I have now passed the bass and am approaching the cliffs. The forms & variety of the ice are particularly rich here – there are so many low bushes & weeds before me as I ascend toward the sun – especally very small white pines almost merged in the ice-incrusted ground. All objects – even the apple trees, & rails are to the eye polished silver. It is a perfect land of faery. As if the world were a great frosted cake with its ornaments – The boughs gleam like silver candlesticks. Le Jeune describes the same in Canada in 1636 as “nos grands bois ne paroissonent qu’une forest de cristal.” The silvery ice stands out an inch by 3/4 an inch in width on the N side of every twig of these apple trees – with rich irregularities of its own in its edge. When I stoop and examine some fat icy stubbly in my path, I find for all core a ridiculous wiry russet thread scarce visible not a hundredth part its size, which breaks with the ice under my feet, yet where this has a minute stub of a branch only a particle of an inch in length – there is a corresponding clumsy icy protuberance on the surface 1/8 of an inch off. Nature works with such luxuriance & fury that she follows the least hint. And on the twigs of bushes for each bud there is a corresponding icy swelling. The bells are particularly sweet this morning. I hear more methinks than ever before. How much more religion in their sound, than they ever call men together to – men obey their call & go to the stove-warmed church – though God exhibits himself to the walker in a frosted bush today as much as in a burning one to Moses of old. We build a fire on the cliffs. When kicking to pieces a pine stump for the fat knots which alone would burn in this icy day – at the risk of spoiling my boots having looked in vain for a stone I thought how convenient would be and Indian stone axe to batter it with. The bark of white birch though covered with ice burned well. We soon had a rousing fire of fat pine on a shelf of rock from which we HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
overlooked the icy landscape. The sun too was melting the ice on the rocks & the water was bubbling & pulsing downward – in dark bubbles – exactly like pollywogs. What a good word is flame expressing the form & soul of fire – lambent with forked tongue – We lit a fire to see it rather than to feel it, it is so rare a sight these days. To have our eyes ache once more with smoke What a peculiar perhaps indescribeable color has this flame – a reddish or lurid yellow – not so splendid or full of light as of life & heat. These fat roots made much flame and a very black smoke commencing where the flame left off which cast fine flickering shadows on the rocks – There was some bluish white smoke from the rotten part of the wood – Then there was the fine white ashes which farmer’s wives sometimes use for pearlash. Fire is the most tolerable 3d party. I hear the wiry phoebe note of the chicadee as if the spring were coming in. Brown thinks my ruby-wren may be the lesser red pole linnet. Walden begins to freeze in the coves or shallower water on the N side where it was slightly skimmed over several weeks ago
January 7, Friday: Henry Thoreau for the 6th time deployed in his journal a weather term that had been originated by Luke Howard: “This is one of those pleasant winter mornings–when you find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still the air is serene & the sun feels gratefully warm–an hour after sunrise – though so fair a healthy whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of the air concealing the mts – the smokes go up from the village you hear the cocks with immortal vigor & the children shout on their way to school – & the sound made by the RR. men hammering a rail is uncommonly musical. This promises a perfect winter day. In the heavens, except the altitude of the sun, you have as it were the conditions of summer. Perfect serenity & clarity–& sonorousness in the earth– All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body & mind. About 10 minutes before 10 Am I heard a very loud sound & felt a violent jar which made the house rock and the loose articles on my table rattle – which I knew must be either a powdermill blown up or an earth quake– Not knowing but another & more violent might take place I immediately ran down stairs, but I saw from the door a vast expanding column of whitish smoke rising in the west directly over the Powder mills 4 miles distant. It was unfolding its volumes above which made it widest there.... In 3 or 4 minutes it had all risen & spread it self into a lengthening somewhat copper colored cloud parallel with the horizon from N to S–and in about 10 minutes after the explosion it passed over my head being several miles long from north to south & distinctly dark & smoky toward the north not nearly so high as the few cirrhi in the sky.”
At 9:50AM three workmen were apparently in the kernel mill of the Acton gunpowder works, near Concord, turning a roller with a chisel, and the building blew up. Three seconds later there was a secondary explosion in one of the mixing houses, apparently unoccupied at the time. “Are there not two powers?”19 TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS
19. Randall Conrad’s “‘I Heard a Very Loud Sound’ Thoreau Processes the Spectacle of Sudden, Violent Death.” (ATQ, June 2005, Volume 19 Issue 2, pages 81-94) would examine Thoreau’s 1853 analysis of a powder-mill explosion: “Thoreau was in fact a professional when it came to the powder-milling industry, now that he had become manager of the graphite-grinding that was the lifeline of the family business. Apart from the need for safety precautions, milling gunpowder is akin to milling graphite. Professionalism notwithstanding, Thoreau’s journal for January 7 presents internal clues that invite a more complex interpretation of its narrative voice. Consider first the immediate context of this passage — the whole journal entry for this date. Thoreau’s account of the disaster occurs, like the explosion itself, as a disruption of broader and more peaceful reflections on nature and the seasons’ cycle which comprise the overall entry for the day. The disruption dispels a morning mood of oneness and rightness induced by the promise of a perfect winter day. Visiting Nawshawtuct Hill very early that morning, Thoreau had been cheered by the serene air and sky, and by the sounds of everyday activities in the village below. Taking a closer look at vocabulary, we read that pieces of timber are strewn over the hills and meadows, as if sown. The simile as if sown continues, faintly, Thoreau’s preceding imagery of birch seeds scattered on the ground: even upon this field of death, a theme of regeneration in spite of winter persists. (And the snow is for the most part melted around.) ...” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Jan 7th 53: To Nawshawtuct– This is one of those pleasant winter mornings–when you find the river firmly frozen in the night, but still the air is serene & the sun feels gratefully warm–an hour after sunrise–though so fair a healthy whitish vapor fills the lower stratum of the air concealing the mts–the smokes go up from the village you hear the cocks with immortal vigor & the children shout on their way to school– & the sound made by the RR. men hammering a rail is uncommonly musical. This promises a perfect winter day. In the heavens, except the altitude of the sun, you have as it were the conditions of summer. Perfect serenity & clarity–& sonorousness in the earth– All nature is but braced by the cold. It gives tension to both body & mind. Still the snow is strewn with the seeds of the birch–the small winged seeds or samarae & the larger scales or bracts shaped like a bird in flight a hawk or dove–the least touch or jar shakes them off–& it is difficult to bring the female catkins home in your pocket. They cover the snow like coarse bran. On breaking the male catkins I am surprised to see the yellow anthers so distinct promising spring. I did not suspect that there was so true a promise or prophesy of spring. These are frozen in december or earlier–the anthers of spring–filled with their fertilizing dust. About 10 minutes before 10 Am I heard a very loud sound & felt a violent jar which made the house rock and the loose articles on my table rattle–which I knew must be either a powdermill blown up or an earth quake– Not knowing but another & more violent might take place I immediately ran down stairs, but I saw from the door a vast expanding column of whitish smoke rising in the west directly over the Powder mills 4 miles distant. It was unfolding its volumes above which made it widest there. In 3 or 4 minutes it had all risen & spread it self into a lengthening somewhat copper colored cloud parallel with the horizon from N to S–and in about 10 minutes after the explosion it passed over my head being several miles long from north to south & distinctly dark & smoky toward the north not nearly so high as the few cirrhi in the sky. I jumped into a man’s wagon & road toward the mills. In a few minutes more I saw behind me far in the east a faint salmon colored cloud carrying the news of the explosion to the sea–& perchance over head of the absent proprietor. Arrived probably before half past 10. There were perhaps 30 or 40 wagons there. The Kernel mill had blown up first & killed 3 men who were in it said to be turning a roller with a chisel–in 3 seconds after one of the mixing houses exploded. The Kernel house was swept away & fragments mostly but a foot or 2 in length were strewn over the hills & meadows as if sown for 30 rods–& the slight snow then on the ground was for the most part melted around. The mixing house about 10 rods W was not so completely dispersed for most of the machinery remained a total reck– The press house about 12 rods east had 2/3 its boards off. & a mixing house next westward from that which blew up had lost some boards on the E side. The boards fell out– (ie of those buildings which did not blow up) the air within apparently rushing out to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the explosions–& so the powder being bared to the fiery particles in the air another building explodes. The powder on the floor of the bared Press house was 6 inches deep in some places–and the crowd were thoughtlessly going into it. A few windows were broken 30 or 40 rods off. Timber 6 inches square & 18 feet long was thrown over a hill 80 feet high at least–a dozen rods–30 rods was about the limit of fragments– The Drying house in which was a fire was perhaps 25 rods dist. & escaped. Every timber & piece of wood which was blown up was as black as if it had been dyed except where it had broken on falling other breakages were completely concealed by the color– I mistook what had been iron hoops in the woods–for leather straps. Some of the clothes of the men were in the tops of the trees where undobtedly their bodies had been & lefte them. The bodies were naked & black– Some limbs & bowels here & and there & a head at a distance from its trunk. The feet were bare–the hair singed to a crisp. I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there. Put the diff. buildings 30 rods apart and then but one will blow up–at a time. Brown thinks my read headed bird of the winter the lesser red-pole. He has that Fall snow bird he thinks the young of the Purple Finch. What is my Pine knot of the sea Knot or Ash colored Sandpiper–? or Pharope? Brown’s Pine knot looks too large & clumsy. He shows me the Spirit Duck of the Indians–of which Peabody says the Indians call it by a word meaning spirit “because of the wonderful quickness with which it disappears at the twang of a bow.” I perceive? the increased length of the day on returning from my afternoon walk. Can it be? The sun sets only about 5 minutes later & the day is about 10 minutes longer. Le Jeune thus describes the trees covered with ice in Canada in the winter of ’35-&6 — He appears to be at Quebec. “There was a great wind from the NE accompanied by a rain which lasted a very long time, and by a cold great enough to freeze these waters as soon as they touched anything, so that as this rain fell on the trees from the summit to the foot, there was formed (il s’y fit) a crystal of ice which enchased both trunk (tige) & branches, so that for a very long time all our great woods appeared only a forest of crystal; for in truth the ice which clothed them universally par tout every where was thicker than a testoon (epaisse de plus d’un teston); in a word all the bushes & all that was above the snow was environed on all sides and enchased in ice: the HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Savages have told me that it does not happen often so. “(de meme).” HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
“I HEARD A VERY LOUD SOUND”:
THOREAU PROCESSES THE SPECTACLE
OF SUDDEN, VIOLENT DEATH.
Publication: ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly) Publication Date: 01-JUN-05 Author: Conrad, Randall COPYRIGHT 2005 University of Rhode Island This essay originates in a presentation given at the 2002 convention of the American Literature Association, just nine months after the fall of the World Trade Center Towers. Thoreau Society panelists had been asked to consider how (or whether) the Transcendentalists’ philosophy can help twenty-first- century citizens cope with a disaster of the magnitude of September 11, 2001. Seeking some equivalent in Thoreau’s experience, I decided to examine the following journal passage for 7 January 1853, in which the thirty-five-year-old philosopher writes of viewing burnt, scattered human remains, the fresh result of a powdermill explosion.
About 10 minutes before 10 Am I heard a very loud sound & felt a violent jar which made the house rock and the loose articles on my table rattle — which I knew must be either a powdermill blown up or an earth quake — Not knowing but another & more violent might take place I immediately ran down stairs, but I saw from the door a vast expanding column of whitish smoke rising in the west directly over the Powder mills 4 miles distant. It was unfolding its volumes above which made it widest there. In 3 or 4 minutes it had all risen & spread it self into a lengthening somewhat copper colored cloud parallel with the horizon from N to S — and in about 10 minutes after the explosion it passed over my head being several miles long from north to south & distinctly dark & smoky toward the north not nearly so high as the few cirrhi in the sky. I jumped into a man’s wagon & road [sic] toward the mills. In a few minutes more I saw behind me far in the east a faint salmon colored cloud carrying the news of the explosion to the sea — & perchance over [the] head of the absent proprietor. Arrived probably before half past 10. There were perhaps 30 or 40 wagons there. The Kernel mill had blown up first & killed 3 men who were in it said to be turning a roller with a chisel — in 3 seconds after one of the mixing houses exploded. The Kernel house was swept away & fragments mostly but a foot or 2 in length were strewn over the hills & meadows as if sown for 30 rods — & the slight snow then on the ground was for the most part melted around. The mixing house about 10 rods W was not so completely dispersed for most of the machinery remained a total [w]reck — The press house about 12 rods east had 2/3 [of] its boards off. & a mixing house next westward from that which blew up had lost some boards on the E side. The boards fell out — (ie of those buildings which did not blow up) the air within apparently rushing out to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the explosions — & so the powder being bared to the fiery particles in the air another building explodes, The powder on the floor of the bared Press house was 6 inches deep in some places — and the crowd were thoughtlessly going into it. A few windows were broken 30 or 40 rods off. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Timber 6 inches square & 18 feet long was thrown over a hill 80 feet high at least — a dozen rods — 30 rods was about the limit of fragments — The Drying house in which was a fire was perhaps 25 rods dist. & escaped. Every timber & piece of wood which was blown up was as black as if it had been dyed except where it had broken on falling other breakages were completely concealed by the color — I mistook what had been iron hoops in the woods — for leather straps. Some of the clothes of the men were in the tops of the trees where undo[u]btedly their bodies had been & lefte them. The bodies were naked & black — Some limbs & bowels here & and there & a head at a distance from its trunk. The feet were bare — the hair singed to a crisp. I smelt the powder half a mile before I got there. Put the diff. buildings 30 rods apart and then but one will blow up — at a time.20 Thoreau depicts the scene unsentimentally and apparently mean- mindedly. In a detached style highlighted with flashes of irony, he marshals observed details, some horrid, in order to deduce the sequential phases of the conflagration — and then, wasting no breath lamenting the tragedy, suggests a better design for future factories. To any reader with an animus against the hermit of Walden, these six hundred words can only confirm the stereotypical curmudgeon and misanthrope (Bridgeman xii). Any champion of Thoreau, on the other hand, will assume that the acid social satirist who wrote Walden’s “Economy” chapter had to be aware of the irony in a gunpowder worker’s death by explosion — the ultimate wage of “driving for Squire Make-a- Stir.” Thus Laura Dassow Walls, in a rich discussion of chance and necessity in Thoreau’s philosophy, stretches toward social consciousness by interpreting Thoreau’s punch line (“Put the different buildings ...“) as a criticism of the reification introduced into society by “the factory system” (250). Actually Thoreau’s narrative does not primarily express either misanthropy or progressive social criticism. In this essay I examine its themes and imagery in relation to several related journal entries during 1853 as well as related lectures, essays, and correspondence by Thoreau around this time. I establish that the horrifying vision continued to haunt Thoreau’s imagination for months, perturbing his dreams and waking meditations, and unsettling his vital sense of oneness with nature — a state which brought him to the brink of despair. Consciously or not, Thoreau set himself the project of “working through” (as we now say) this emotionally painful experience: he would mediate the 20. J5:428-29 (bracketed interpolations are mine). The Assabet Manufacturing Company, situated along two miles of the Assabet River forming part of the Acton and Concord town line, produced gunpowder through various changes of name and ownership until 1940. See Jane G. Austin for a highly readable tour of this company’s mills, virtually unchanged seventeen years after Thoreau’s experience (apart from introducing steam-heat instead of fire). The “absent proprietor” was Nathan Pratt, who founded the company in 1835 and owned it until 1864. The reason Thoreau can narrow the possibilities immediately upon first hearing the noise is that explosions at the Assabet mill happened at least every several years. “Explosions that shattered a few window panes as far away as Acton Centre while not common were by no means unheard of. Anyone who had lived in the vicinity for twenty five years had almost certainly experienced two or three” (Phalen 140). Some acquaintance with the industrial process itself may be helpful here. Kernelling, also called corning, graining and granulating, consists of feeding the processed powder into sets of rollers to achieve a given fineness of grain. If the three mill-hands were “turning a roller with a chisel,” the scrape of iron against iron ignited the fatal spark. Powdermill structures were built on solid foundations and frames, but their boarding and roof were intentionally light so that an explosion would blow them off easily. This, it was hoped, would minimize damage to the framework and machinery (Austin 535). As Thoreau deduces, four buildings exploded in this order: kernel house, one mixing house, press house, and another mixing house. In the manufacturing process, of course, the order is otherwise. The mixing houses were used first, followed by the press house, kernel mill, glazing house (not observed by Thoreau), and drying house (Conant 5-6). One rod being equal to 5.5 yards or somewhat greater than five meters, the debris was flung nearly one-tenth of a mile distant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
intolerable horror through his writing, finally employing the rich resources of his art to resolve the alarming philosophic contradictions he had discovered. Until recently, few scholars took notice of this journal entry, even though its traumatizing content fairly leaps off the page. Among the pioneer modern writers, only Richard Lebeaux (1984) discusses this episode as one of the stressors which, evincing the inevitable finality of death, seriously shook Thoreau’s comforting vision of a unified, cyclical Nature during the winter of 1853. Two twenty-first-century interpreters, Michael West and Michael Sperber, apply aesthetic and psychoanalytic criteria, respectively. West, analyzing the richly symbolic “sand foliage” passage in Walden’s “Spring” chapter, describes Thoreau’s image of the divine Artist’s laboratory as a “charnel house” in which body parts are “indiscriminately strewn about” and infers a strong influence of the 1853 powdermill explosion (464-65). West offers absorbing discussions of Walden’s sand- bank passage in terms of Thoreau’s glossology (185-89; cf. 196- 200), his “homespun fecal cosmology,” and ultimately his anticipation of death (450, 465). Sperber, writing from a psychiatrist’s standpoint, presents Thoreau’s experience of the fatal explosion as one of several triggers which, that year, coincided to catalyze the recurring depression he had experienced every January since his brother’s sudden, traumatizing death in January 1842 (17).21 Sperber argues persuasively that Thoreau’s narrative voice in this journal entry is expressive of the “psychic numbing” that is a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, one facet of Thoreau’s lifelong, complex depression. The present essay considers the image-making in several interrelated pieces of Thoreau’s writing not merely as biographical data — evidence of mental depression — but as cohesive fragments of an ongoing, self-healing therapeutic process which Thoreau undertook between January and November 1853. During these months, Thoreau realized that his very sanity was at risk, exerted his creative powers to recover stability, and in the end re-imagined himself as a seer in the presence of the divine. Let us begin by accounting for the dispassionate tone Thoreau affects in his narrative, which alienates so many readers. A simple explanation, of course, is that Thoreau is merely expressing a certain professionalism. Only months before, the Boston surveyor and cartographer H.F. Walling had credited Thoreau with the title “Civ. Engr” (civil engineer) for the latter’s contribution of his pond survey to a new, authoritative map of Concord Village (Stowell 11). Why should Thoreau not presume to propose, from an engineer’s standpoint, a more efficient design idea for the powdermill campus? Thoreau was in fact a professional when it came to the powder- milling industry, now that he had become manager of the 21. I showed an early version of this paper to Dr. Sperber in 2003 while assisting with research for his book. Reciprocally, this version is indebted to his key concept of Thoreau’s “self-therapeutic successes” in discussing Thoreau’s “processing” of emotional experience. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
graphite-grinding that was the lifeline of the family business. Apart from the need for safety precautions, milling gunpowder is akin to milling graphite. For example, Thoreau’s contemporary Addison G. Fay, initially a minister, easily made the transition from operating a graphite mill to part ownership of the very gunpowder mill under discussion here, only to perish when the mill exploded in 1873 (Conant 7). Among Thoreau’s engineering innovations in his own field, he designed and built with his father a seven-foot-tall mill-extension in 1838 that allowed finer grades of pencil-lead. He increased the efficiency of a lead mill in Acton by replacing iron grinding balls with a stone in 1859 (Harding 56-57, 397, 409). (Did he have the accident of 1853 in mind?) Professionalism notwithstanding, Thoreau’s journal for 7 January presents internal clues that invite a more complex interpretation of its narrative voice. Consider first the immediate context of this passage — the whole journal entry for this date. Thoreau’s account of the disaster occurs, like the explosion itself, as a disruption of broader and more peaceful reflections on nature and the seasons’ cycle which comprise the overall entry for the day. The disruption dispels a morning mood of oneness and rightness induced by the promise of “a perfect winter day.” Visiting Nawshawtuct Hill very early that morning, Thoreau had been cheered by the “serene” air and sky, and by the sounds of everyday activities in the village below. Examining birch seeds in the snow, he had just written: “I am surprised to see the yellow anthers so distinct, promising spring. I did not suspect that there was so sure a promise or prophecy of spring. These are frozen in December or earlier, — the anthers of spring, tilled with their fertilizing dust” (J5: 428). At exactly this point, Thoreau’s warmly affecting vision of the season’s immanent regeneration yields to the explosion narrative. At the end of it, Thoreau concludes the day’s entry by returning to nature observation: he believes he detects the lengthening of daylight, another promise of the spring that will recur (J5: 429). Taking a closer look at vocabulary, we read that pieces of timber are “strewn over the hills and meadows ... as if sown.” The simile “as if sown” continues, faintly, Thoreau’s preceding imagery of birch seeds scattered on the ground: even upon this field of death, a theme of regeneration in spite of winter persists. (And the snow is “for the most part melted around.”) Coincidentally or not, the double meaning of some plant-derived vocabulary adds to the effect. The fatal blast was ignited in the “kernel” house; Thoreau finds “limbs” and a “trunk” among the body parts. It is therefore conceivable that Thoreau in composing this passage was by no means being callous but in fact was already stirred by emotion, indeed conflicting emotions. Thoreau’s biographers agree that he was in a generally grim mood during this winter of 1853. Sensitive to the approach of midlife, Thoreau saw mortality everywhere, a state strongly reinforced by the spectacle at the mills. According to Lebeaux HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
in Thoreau’s Seasons, the cyclical vision of life that usually sustained Thoreau yielded, for a time, to “the dreaded prospects of life’s finite linearity and uncontrollability and of personal annihilation” (174). If Thoreau was having a mid-thirties crisis of this tenor, it is not hard to identify circumstances that would aggravate it. First of all, as noted, the January anniversary of John Thoreau, Jr.’s, horrific death in his brother’s arms surely stimulated feelings of guilt, as Lebeaux suggests, along with a pronounced longing for forgiveness and redemption. Second, Thoreau’s sustaining friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, shaky in recent years, was nearing its nadir. Thoreau would complain to his journal on 25 May 1853: “Talked or tried to talk with R.W.E. Lost my time — nay almost my identity — he assuming a false op- position where there was no difference of opinion — talked to the wind — told me what I knew & I lost my time trying to imagine myself somebody else to oppose him” (J6: 149, Thoreau’s italics and hyphen.). Third, compounding the grief and sense of loss, January also brought the anniversary of little Waldo Emerson’s demise. Sympathy over the child’s sudden death from scarlet fever in 1842 had once brought Thoreau as close to his friend and mentor as they were now distant. The five-year-old’s passing had prompted Thoreau to console Emerson with his most eloquent statement of the reason for contemplating death with indifference.
How plain that death is only the phenomenon of the individual or class. Nature does not recognize it, she finds her own again under new forms without loss. Yet death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident — It is as common as life. (To R. W. Emerson, 11 March 1842. Correspondence 63) Thoreau of course does not mean to seem indifferent to the dead child individually. As Emerson well knew, Thoreau had “come to love the boy” while living in the Emerson household in 1841 (Harding 129). It is simply that Thoreau cannot summon the customary sympathy-card sentiments, the conventional language of what Emerson would call “habitual” grief.22 Thoreau will not employ, nor would Emerson accept, a conventional rhetoric of mourning prescribed by the prevailing culture. Eleven years later, he is all the less likely to do so in recording the deaths of total strangers at the explosion site. Thus we gain additional insight into Thoreau’s narrative of 7 January: its very terseness may signal a deliberate refusal to mourn which is prompted by integrity rather than cynicism. For comparison, the historical record furnishes a fortuitous and rich example of such a conventional rhetoric, lavished upon an identical event at the same powder mill at a time when several dangerous processes “usually carried on in separate buildings” had been grouped under one roof. On 16 November 1836 — the first year of the company’s operation — three men were blown to pieces 22. In contrast to “trivial or ‘habitual’ grief,” Jennifer Gurley (“Goodness and Grief ...”) considers whether genuine grief, for Emerson, is to be verbalized at all. How Emerson coped with Waldo’s loss emotionally and philosophically — absent the traditional consolations of Christianity — is summarized by David Lyttle (66-72). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
when more than half a ton of powder exploded. A fourth worker lingered for hours before succumbing to acute burns and fractures. Like Thoreau, the unnamed writer for the weekly Concord Freeman witnesses a panorama of horror and writes it up with comparable realism: “his mangled limbs, his tattered flesh, and parts of his body, were found in a neighboring field, twenty or thirty rods distant, and on a hill at least fifty feet higher than the mill.” Quite differently from Thoreau, the reporter goes on to solicit pity. “There the miserable fragments of humanity were scattered, and the pieces hanging like rags on the bushes and trees about showed how effectual was the work of destruction.” The writer laments the deaths as untimely (the mill-hands were in their 20s and 30s) and strikes chords of quasi-tragic irony:
It was heart rending to behold these poor relics of man, so torn, so mangled, so burned, and blackened, and so suddenly changed from the beauty and vigor of confident manhood to the shattered form of loathe-some death.... the swift death of these four men, only showed how sooner than was expected the powder had effected its intended purpose of destruction. (“Powder Mill Explosion”) In an era when the local newspaper in America increasingly served to codify middle-class values and to model appropriate sentimental responses to events, the bare prose of Thoreau’s journal entry raises the standard of non-conformism. Fourth and finally, we must consider one more depressive factor in 1853, possibly the most serious of all, involving Thoreau’s life as an author. At this time, Thoreau was one year into his last and deepest revision of the manuscript that would be the masterwork of his lifetime, Walden. Undoubtedly, this periodic creative exertion obliged Thoreau on the one hand to relive the disturbing doubts and uncertainties of his quest in the woods, while on the other hand feeling pressed to present his experiences positively for posterity. If Thoreau was pouring his creative energy into composing a sustained affirmation of nature’s life-cycles for publication, it is not surprising that his emotional reserves were depleted when it came to managing everyday mood changes. No wonder his unifying concept of life “wavered” upon viewing hair-raising evidence of life’s “linearity and uncontrollability,” feeling the finality of death, and conceiving mortality as divine punishment. How natural then that Thoreau, drawing upon his creative abilities as a writer, would use his journal to process his intolerable feelings. In a number of instances, we will find Thoreau recalling the mill-yard scene, re-experiencing the deeply unsettling emotions it has roused, and finally weaving multiple memories and associated fantasies into a unifying vision. We may now consider this related material in the journal of 1853. Thoreau harks back to his experience of 7 January in three separate entries that he composed two days, two weeks, and five months after that date. In these passages there is no trace of the cold, factual narrating voice he initially assumed. Instead, Thoreau is demonstrably haunted by what he made himself HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
see. Perhaps surprisingly, Thoreau’s response as he begins to process the experience is to moralize — to preach and scold almost as severely as if Calvinism were still alive and flourishing in Concord. Thoreau’s reactions to intimations of mortality are colored by a stark dualism. As Lebeaux notes in Thoreau’s Seasons (177), Thoreau admits only extreme alternatives, and these in the most judgmental terms — innocence or sin — redemption or damnation — nature (“infinite and pure”) or man (“the source of all evil”). On 9 January, after two days of internalizing the experience, Thoreau writes: “Day before yesterday I looked at the mangled & blackened bodies of men which had been blown up by powder, and felt that the lives of men were not innocent, and that there was an avenging power in nature ...” (J5: 437). Then on 21 January Thoreau records a nightmare in which he feels defiled after unearthing and touching rotten corpses. He interprets the “moral” of the dream: “Death is with me and life far away” (J5: 448). It should be noted that Thoreau gets away with significant sleight of hand in the entry for 9 January. He attributes the destructive power of the gunpowder to nature, which he depicts as the divine agency of judgment and retribution, an “avenging” dispenser of a death deserved. Can this mean that Thoreau believes these three specific millworkers were “not innocent” — that they deserved their fate? Not literally. In the world of transcendental analogy, actual realities, mere details, and variable circumstances take a back seat to the (presumed) universal symbolism of an experience. These three men, who in reality were blown to pieces because they neglected procedure and mishandled equipment, have become symbolic stand-ins for the sinful human race. “Nature” stands in for a punishing God, while the blackened, smoking mill yard makes a picture-perfect Hell. In fact, it is Thoreau’s rhetorical strategy of treating the explosion no differently from a force of nature that enables him to sermonize with such idealizing abstraction. His transcendentalist perspective gives him the privilege of glossing over workaday details that might undermine the universal truth of his meditation on mortality. After all, by most reckonings, a fatal industrial accident is to be reported differently from an accidental death caused, for example, by a lightning strike or a shipwreck. The key towards unlocking the nature of what is haunting Thoreau lies in the third of his subsequent journal entries, written amid the bloom of late spring. On 1 June, Thoreau reports seeing pieces of the mill buildings “[s]till black with powder” reappearing along the bank of the Concord. He exclaims: “How slowly the ruins are being dispersed!” — expressing perhaps a note of wonder at the persistence of his own morbid recollections (J6: 169). (Ironically, the Assabet mill would explode again in June, without fatalities and without comment from Thoreau [Conant 7].) Thoreau proceeds to imagine these pieces of wood pursuing their journey downriver and across the HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Atlantic, “[s]till capable of telling how & where they were launched to those who can read their signs.” He draws a parallel with the cloud-as-sign that he saw in January: “The news of the explosion of the Powder Mills — was not only carried seaward by the cloud which its smoke made — but more effectually — though more slowly by the fragments which were floated thither by the river —” (J6: 169).23 At this point in the journal, quite unexpectedly, the idea of the Atlantic Ocean unlocks an entirely different level of memory and image, as Thoreau vividly evokes the sight of a drowned man: “To see a man lying all bare lank & tender on the rocks like a skinned frog — or lizzard — we did not suspect that he was made of such cold tender clammy substance before” (J6: 169). Whence this drowned man? Until now, Thoreau had been remembering explosion victims. Following the association with the Atlantic takes us to the answer. Three years earlier, Thoreau had obliged himself to face the mangled, swollen bodies of shipwreck victims on two occasions — at Cohasset, Cape Cod, in 1849 and also during his fruitless mission to retrieve the effects of Margaret Fuller, who had drowned in a wreck on the shore of Fire Island, New York, in 1850. In his journal at that time, Thoreau uses the image of parallel streams to depict the two worlds that we simultaneously inhabit, that of reality and that of the spirit — the latter alone having substance and value:
This stream of events which we consent to call actual & that other mightier stream which alone carries us with it — what makes the difference — On the one our bodies float, and we have sympathy with it through them; on the other, our spirits. We are ever dying to one world and being born into another — and possibly no man knows whether he is at any time dead ... or not. (after 29 July 1850 [J3: 95]) In Thoreau’s metaphysics, we are all, at any given instant, so many corpses in the wash of tides. Death is our birth into another world (or, as Thoreau more often conceived it, our continuity in nature). “Who knows but you are dead already?” he repeats (J3: 96). In a public version of these reflections — “The Shipwreck,” composed and delivered as a public lecture as early as 1850 — Thoreau helps his audience visualize this birth into another world by playing upon the conventional idea of an afterlife in a parallel dimension.
Why care for these dead bodies? They really have no friends but the worms or fishes. Their owners were coming to the New World, as Columbus and the Pilgrims did, they were within a mile of its shores; but, before they could reach it, they emigrated to a newer world than ever Columbus dreamed of, yet one of whose existence we believe that there is far more universal and convincing 23. At the core of the drowned-man image is Thoreau’s memory of his brother’s horrid death. Forever unable to accept John’s loss, Henry invested enormous emotional energy in seeing his dead brother as proof of the eternal reciprocity between death and life. In the concluding pages of Young Man Thoreau, Richard Lebeaux sensitively detects wide-ranging aspects of “private grief and guilt” underpinning the opening chapters of Cape Cod (199-204). “Can anyone doubt that the ‘funeral’ and ‘corpse’ that Thoreau had in mind were John’s?” (201). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
evidence — though it has not yet been discovered by science ... I saw their empty hulks that came to land; but they themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some shore yet further west, toward which we are all tending, and which we shall reach at last, it may be through storm and darkness, as they did. (“Cape Cod” 635) “The Shipwreck” was polished for publication as the introductory section of “Cape Cod” by 1852, when Thoreau offered it to G. W. Curtis for Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. By that time, Thoreau must have all but memorized his text, considering that he delivered his Cape Cod lecture before several audiences in 1850-51. (Putnam’s ran “Cape Cod’ — the opening four chapters of the posthumous book we now know — serially and unsigned in June, July, and August 1855.) So fully does Thoreau in “The Shipwreck” conceive death as integral to life that the idea of an untimely, unfair, or undeserved death is meaningless. A psychological analyst of Thoreau’s statement — noting in particular the abstract and universal voice adopted here by the writer — might well suspect that this highly rational denial of death is constructed as a defense against an intolerably painful affect, including sheer physical revulsion. John Thoreau, Jr., we recall, died in the arms of his adoring younger brother, who could only watch as the ghastly death-sneer (risus sardonicus) of lockjaw froze his brother’s facial muscles into a mocking mask in the final moments of respiratory muscular paralysis and suffocation (Sperber 9-10). (Almost from the instant it took place, this death-scene became romanticized by friends and family as an exchange of beatific smiles, although Thoreau would later use the words “ugly pain” in a memorial poem.) As Lebeaux has well established in Young Man Thoreau, the unbearable pain of experiencing this extraordinarily wrenching loss “froze” the normal grieving process in Thoreau, initiating instead a chronic depressive cycling (167-68, 172). Only substitute the 1853 explosion instead of death by drowning — and extend “the law of Nature” to include industrial fatalities — and Thoreau’s comment in “The Shipwreck” could be read as a justification of his seemingly emotionless description of the fatalities at the Acton mill:
On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene as I might have expected. If I had found one body cast upon the beach in some lonely place, it would have affected me more. I sympathized rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss and mangle these poor human bodies was the order of the day. If this was the law of Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity? ... Take all the grave-yards together, they are always the majority. It is the individual and private that demands our sympathy. A man can attend but one funeral in the course of his life, can behold but one corpse. (635, my emphases) Thoreau’s grief-work on the first of June required him to dig down to the earlier recollection of the “bare, lank and tender” body on the beach. (He sensed soon after visiting the explosion site that this work of exhumation, though repugnant, would be necessary to bring resolution. His nightmare of 21 January, mentioned above, expresses this idea [J5: 448].) Writing his June entry, Thoreau succeeds in substituting a memory of a HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
death-encounter that is “tender” (he uses the word repeatedly) for one that is limb-wrenching and bloody — a vision of birth/ death cradled by the eternal rhythm of the salt-water tides instead of sudden, hideous dismemberment amid apocalyptic fire. He has recovered that “one body ... in some lonely place” that he wished to see on Cape Cod, and has allowed it to “affect” him. The figure of the drowned man embodies the eternal interchange of death and life. No sooner has Thoreau substituted the drowned man for the burnt men than he is free to begin reclaiming the redeeming vision that sustains him. That one affecting corpse holds the key to life.24 The process traced above guided Thoreau out of his dualistic dead end. It recaptured his vanished closeness with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Most important for literature, it helped to shape one of the most inspired symbolic visions in Walden. Late in the stressful year of 1853, as J. Lyndon Shanley’s work documents, Thoreau proceeded with final revisions to Walden, amplifying many passages and relocating some to better artistic advantage. One of these was the description of the thawing sand bank along the “deep cut” that had been dug southwest of the pond for the new railroad. As published, these enthusiastic lines in the climactic “Spring” chapter form one of the book’s cardinal passages, the symbolic revelation of the earth as nature’s infinite matrix of life. In Thoreau’s initial draft of 1846-47, the shapes assumed by the rivulets of sand as they flow down the embankment are limited to those of “vegetation, of vines and stout pulpy leaves” (Shanley 204). The expanded revision, which Thoreau worked up in October or November of 1853, adds a multitude of details and colors, bringing the tumbling cascade to life and deepening its symbolic meaning — while restating in a positive mode the theme of scattered organs and limbs. As revised, the shifting forms recall not only vegetal and coral shapes but also animal parts —“leopard’s paws or birds’ feet” — and finally “brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds” (Walden 305). Thoreau sees in the thawing sand and clay “the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish” (305). This is the same palette he uses to color his initial journal entry of 7 January describing the sky and earth at the explosion site. Michael West finds it ironic that Thoreau’s vision of life should be grounded in a mineral mixture “destined to sandy sterility” (465). However, this deficit is outweighed by the resonant personal — even heroic — meaning that clay held for 24. Fragments embedded in a hillside by the force of the January 1853 explosion (and others) remained visible six years afterward, as Thoreau noted during some Assabet River excursions. In a supreme use of irony, he now declares the victims’ body parts expunged from this exhibit:
As you draw near the powder-mills, you see the hill behind bestrewn with the fragments of mills which have been blown up in past years, — the fragments of the millers having been removed, — and the canal is cluttered with the larger ruins. The very river makes haste past the dry-house, as it were for fear of accidents. (21 July 1859; Journal XII: 248) This is, to my knowledge, the last reference to the blast in Thoreau’s journal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau. By introducing the use of clay to create an improved pencil-lead after 1838, Thoreau brought an enormous boon to American artists, engineers, and writers — and he knew it. (Thoreau’s intuitive research has been nicely reconstructed by Henry Petroski [110-12].) Quite conceivably, then, the idea of “the Artist’ — God or Nature — working in a matrix of sand and clay contains some admixture of Thoreau the writer-inventor, bringer of benefit to scholars, poets, and scribes for all time. By his art Thoreau manages to redeem and purify the horrifying image of the millhands’ torn corpses (“some limbs & bowels here & there”). Evoking the “laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me,” he transfigures the lifeless organs of dead men into the material of birth, renewal, and creation. Of course, the gruesome festoons in the Assabet millyard were not the sole inspiration for Thoreau’s elaboration of the sand- bank passage. Well before the 1853 explosion, Thoreau was in the habit of visualizing all creatures’ vital organs in the sand bank’s spring-like, if “somewhat foecal and stercoral,” outpouring. By playing upon the classic connotation of “bowels” (seat of the affections — sympathy or “heart”), he endows his complex image with poetic ambiguity in the journal. “There is no end to the fine bowels here exhibited — heaps of liver — lights & bowels. Have you no bowels? Nature has some bowels, and there again she is mother of humanity” (31 Dec. 1851 [J4: 231]. Cf. Walden 305). Much as the archetypal leaf, Goethe’s famous Urpflanze, became Thoreau’s template for every life form, so the dynamic “motion in the earth” that pushes it to the surface is Thoreau’s Urstuhl, an archetypal flux that partakes of both unclean excretion and raw creativity. In the journal passage cited above, Thoreau incorporated this grand peristalsis into his symbol for poesis. As this essay has sought to establish, selections from Thoreau’s journalizing during 1853 present a continuing introspective process that is deliberate, yet is guided in part by unconscious association toward a goal of resolution of conflict and liberation from depression. This decidedly modern mode of journal-keeping offers a particularly rich illustration of the self-therapeutic practice that Sperber identifies as “writing it out,” and which he sees as “a crucial part of the treatment program that Thoreau unconsciously devised to deal with his severe stress, mood and personality disorders” (119). With myth-making force, Thoreau the seer celebrates in Walden the return of spring that he glimpsed even in the scorched millyard. Perhaps echoing the Psalmist as much as Genesis, Thoreau now asks, “What is man but a mass of thawing clay?” (307). He proclaims the oneness of plant and animal life-forms, a unity visible in the common clay from which they are pouring in profusion. Far from “soiling” his fingers in the putrid bodies of dead men as he did in his nightmare, the seer stands in the presence of the divine creative force, in the place where nature perpetually “finds her own again under new forms without HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
loss.” Works Cited Austin, Jane G. “Highly Explosive.” Atlantic Monthly Nov. 1870: 527-42. Bridgeman, Richard. Dark Thoreau. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1982. Conant, Brewster. “Powder Mills: a Speech ... February 20, 1994.” Acton Historical Society. Gurley, Jennifer. “Goodness and Grief, or Emerson’s Pain.” American Literature Association Annual Conference, 31 May 2002. Thoreau Project. 20 Apr. 2005. Harding, Walter. The Days of Henry Thoreau. 1965. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. Lebeaux, Richard. Thoreau’s Seasons. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1984. Lebeaux, Richard. Young Man Thoreau. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1977. Lyttle, David. “Emerson and Natural Evil.” Concord Saunterer 9 (2001): 57-84. Petroski, Henry. The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. New York: Knopf, 1992. Phalen, Harold R. History of the Town of Acton. Cambridge, MA: Middlesex, 1954. “Powder Mill Explosion. Communicated.” Concord Freeman 19 Nov. 1836. Shanley, J. Lyndon. The Making of Walden, With the Text of the First Version. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1957. Sperber, Michael. Henry David Thoreau: Cycles and Psyche. Higganum, CT: Higganum Hill, 2004. Stowell, Robert F. A Thoreau Gazetteer. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970. [Thoreau, Henry David.] “Cape Cod.” Putnam’s Monthly Magazine June 1855: 632ff. Thoreau, Henry David. Cape Cod. Ed. J.J. Moldenhauer. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988. Thoreau, Henry David. Correspondence. Ed. W. Harding and C. Bode. New York: New York UP, 1958. Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. Ed. J.L. Shanley. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971. Thoreau, Henry David. [J2] Journal, Vol. 2 (1842-48). Ed. R. Sattelmeyer. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. Thoreau, Henry David. [J3] Journal, Vol. 3 (1848-51). Ed. R. Sattelmeyer, M. Patterson, and W. Rossi. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. Thoreau, Henry David. [J4] Journal, Vol. 4 (1851). Ed. L. Neufeldt and N. Simmons. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. Thoreau, Henry David. [J5] Journal, Vol. 5 (1852-53). Ed. P.F. O’Connell. Princeton UP, 1997. Thoreau, Henry David. [J6] Journal, Vol. 6 (1853). Ed. W. Rossi and H.K. Thomas. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992. Thoreau, Henry David. [Journal XII] Journal of Henry David Thoreau, Vol. XII (Mar.-Nov. 1859). Ed. B. Torrey and F. Allen. 1906. New York: Dover, 1962. Walls, Laura Dassow. Seeing New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-century Science. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1995. West, Michael. Transcendental Wordplay: America’s Romantic Punsters and the Search for the Language of Nature. Athens: Ohio UP, 2000. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
February 9, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Captain John Smith’s THE GENERALL HISTORIE OF VIRGINIA, NEW-ENGLAND & THE SUMMER ISLES, TOGETHER WITH THE TRUE TRAVELS, ADVENTURES AND OBSERVATIONS, AND A SEA GRAMMAR (London: Michael Sparkes, 1624). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau also checked out three volumes of Johann-Theodor de Bry’s DESCRIPTIONES AMERICAE, otherwise known as the COLLECTIONES PEREGRINATIONUM IN INDIAM ORIENTALEM ET INDIAM OCCIDENTALEM, XXV PARTIBUS COMPREHENSAE, A THEODORO, JOAN: THEODORO DE BRY, ET A MATHEO MERIAM PULICATAE (Francofurti ad moenum: typis Ioanis Wecheli, sumtibus vero Theodoro de Bry, 1590-1634).
DESCRIPTIONES AMERICAE
Thoreau also checked out the JESUIT RELATION for 1640. He had already considered the volumes for the years 1633-1638 — Harvard Library would not obtain, from Québec, a copy of that volume until late in the following year.25
25. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
http://www.canadiana.org
Thoreau copied from George Heriot’s THE HISTORY OF CANADA FROM ITS FIRST DISCOVERY; COMPREHENDING AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COLONY OF LOUISIANA. BY GEORGE HERIOT, ESQ. DEPUTY POSTMASTER-GENERAL OF BRITISH AMERICA (Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster Row) into his Indian Notebook #8 and into his Canadian Notebook.
February 9: At Cambridge to-day. Dr Harris thinks the Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum — and he thinks a kind of nettle — & an asclepias. &c. He doubts if the dog was indigenous among them — Finds nothing to convince him in the history DOG of N. England.26 Thinks that the potato which is said to have been carried from Virginia by Raleigh was the HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
ground-nut (which is described, I perceived, in Debry (Heriot?) among the fruits of Virginia), the potato not being indigenous in North America, and the ground-nut having been called wild potato in New England, the north part of Virginia, and not being found in England. Yet he allows that Raleigh cultivated the potato in Ireland. Saw the grizzly bear near the Haymarket to-day, said (?) to weigh nineteen hundred, — apparently too much. He looked four feet and a few inches in height, by as much in length, not including his great head, and his tail, which was invisible. He looked gentle, and continually sucked his claws and cleaned between them with his tongue. Small eyes and funny little ears; perfectly bearish, with a strong wild-beast scent; fed on Indian meal and water. Hind paws a foot long. Lying down, with his feet up against the bars; often sitting up in the corner on his hind quarters. Two sables also, that would not be waked up by day, with their faces in each other’s fur. An American chinchilla, and a silver lioness said to be from California.
November 28, Monday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the Reverend William Gilpin’s OBSERVATIONS ON THE COASTS OF HAMPSHIRE, SUSSEX, AND KENT, RELATIVE CHIEFLY TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY: MADE IN THE SUMMER OF THE YEAR 1774 (London, Printed by A. Strahan for T. Cadell and W. 27 Davies). He also checked out the Reverend’s THREE ESSAYS: ON PICTURESQUE BEAUTY; ON PICTURESQUE TRAVEL; AND ON SKETCHING LANDSCAPE: WITH A POEM ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING. TOTHESE ARE NOW ADDED, TWO ESSAYS GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPLES AND MODE IN WHICH THE AUTHOR EXECUTED HIS OWN DRAWINGS (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies), in its 3d edition issued in 1808.
THREE ESSAYS, 3D EDITION Having already perused the volumes for the years 1633-1638 and 1640, Thoreau checked out the JESUIT 28 RELATION volumes for the years 1640-1641 and 1642.
http://www.canadiana.org
26. Agassiz asked him what authority there was for it. 27. He would copy from this into his Fact Book, and use some of the material in CAPE COD. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
At the Boston Society of Natural History, Thoreau checked out the 3d volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES. THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854
Monday Nov. 28 Saw boys skating in Cambridge-Port the first ice to bear– Settled with J. Munroe & Co — and on a new Act placed 12 of my books with him on sale. I have paid him directly out of pocket since the book was published 290 dollars and taken his receipt for it — This does not include postage on proofsheets &c &c — I have received from other quarters about 15 dollars. This has been the pecuniary value of the book– Saw at the Nat Hist– Rooms the skeleton of a moose — with horns– The length of the spinal processes (?) over the shoulder was very great– The hind legs were longer than the front — & the horns rose about 2 feet above the shoulders & spread between 4 & 5 I judged– Dr Harris described to me his finding a species of Cicindela at the White mts this fall — (the same he had found there one specimen of som time ago–) supposed to be very rare — found at st Peter’s River & at Lake Superior — but he proves it to be common near the Wht. mts.
28. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
CAPE COD: To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which I should not PEOPLE OF before have accepted. There were distinct patches of the color of a CAPE COD purple grape with the bloom rubbed off. But first and last the sea is of all colors. Well writes Gilpin concerning “the brilliant hues which are continually playing on the surface of a quiet ocean,” and this was not too turbulent at a distance from the shore. “Beautiful,” says he, “no doubt in a high degree are those glimmering tints which often invest the tops of mountains; but they are mere coruscations compared with these marine colors, which are continually varying and shifting into each other in all the vivid splendor of the rainbow, through the space often of several leagues.” Commonly, in calm weather, for half a mile from the shore, where the bottom tinges it, the sea is green, or greenish, as are some ponds; then blue for many miles, often with purple tinges, bounded in the distance by a light almost silvery stripe; beyond which there is generally a dark-blue rim, like a mountain ridge in the horizon, as if, like that, it owed its color to the intervening atmosphere. On another day it will be marked with long streaks, alternately smooth and rippled, light- colored and dark, even like our inland meadows in a freshet, and showing which way the wind sets. Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on the wine-colored ocean,—
Here and there was a darker spot on its surface, the shadow of a cloud, though the sky was so clear that no cloud would have been noticed otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen on the land, where a much smaller surface is visible at once. So, distant clouds and showers may be seen on all sides by a sailor in the course of a day, which do not necessarily portend rain where he is. In July we saw similar dark-blue patches where schools of Menhaden rippled the surface, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadows of clouds. Sometimes the sea was spotted with them far and wide, such is its inexhaustible fertility. Close at hand you see their back fin, which is very long and sharp, projecting two or three inches above water. From time to time also we saw the white bellies of the Bass playing along the shore. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1854
January 1, Sunday: Lincoln University was chartered in Oxford, Pennsylvania, initially as the Ashmun Institute. This would be one of America’s earliest “Negro colleges.”
At 9PM the steamer S.S. Golden Gate, “probably the most magnificent sea steamer afloat,” built in 1851 for the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, sailed under Captain J.B.G. Isham from Panama for San Diego, California carrying 750 passengers such as the 3-person Kip family. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Henry Thoreau was being written to by Waldo Emerson.
Concord 1 Jany 1854 Dear Henry, I meant to have seen you, but for delays that grew out of the snowbanks, to ask your aid in these following particulars. On the 8 February, Harvard Professor Horsford is to lecture at the Lyceum; on the 15th THEODORE PARKER Feb.y, Theodore Parker. They are both to come to my house for the night. Now I wish to entreat your courtesy & counsel to receive these lonely pilgrims, when they arrive, to guide them to our house, & help the alarmed wife to entertain them, & see that they do not lose the way to the Lyceum, nor the hour. For, it seems pretty certain that I shall not be at home until perhaps the next week following these two. If you shall be in town, & can help these gentlemen so far, You will serve the whole community as well as Yours faithfully, R.W. Emerson
Thoreau was reading Father Paul Le Jeune on American and Canadian natives.
January 1. Le Jeune, describing the death of a young Frenchwoman who had devoted her life to the savages of Canada, uses the expression: “Finally this beautiful soul detached itself from its body the 15th of March,” etc. The drifts mark the standstill or equilibrium between the currents of air or particular winds. In our greatest snow-storms, the wind being northerly, the greatest drifts are on the south sides of the houses and fences and accordingly on the left-hand side of the street going down it. The north tract: of the railroad was not open till a day or more later than the south. I notice that in the angle made by our house and shed, a southwest exposure, the snow-drift does not lie close about the pump, but is a foot off, forming a circular bowl, showing that there was an eddy about it. It shows where the wind has been, the form of the wind. The snow is like a mould, showing the form of the eddying currents of air which have been impressed on it, while the drift and all the rest is that which fell between the currents or where they counterbalanced each other. These boundary lines are mountain barriers. The white-in-tails, or grass finches [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus], linger pretty late, flitting in flocks before, but they come so near winter only as the white in their tails indicates. They let it come near enough to whiten their tails, perchance, and they are off. The snow buntings and the tree sparrows are the true spirits of the snow-storm; they are the animated beings that ride upon it and have their life in it. The snow is the great betrayer. It not only shows the tracks of mice, otters, etc., etc., which else we should rarely if ever see, but the tree sparrows are more plainly seen against its white ground, and they in turn are attracted by the dark weeds which it reveals. It also drives the crows and other birds out of the woods to the villages for food. We might expect to find in the snow the footprint of a life superior to our own, of which no zoology takes cognizance. Is there no trace of a nobler life than that of an otter or an escaped convict to be looked for in the snow? Shall we suppose that that is the only life that has been abroad in the night? It is only the savage that can see the track of no higher life than an otter. Why do the vast snow plains give us pleasure, the twilight of the bent and half-buried woods? Is not all there consonant with virtue, justice, purity, courage, magnanimity? Are we not cheered by the sight? And does not all this amount to the track of a higher life than the otter's, a life which has not gone by and left a footprint merely,29 but is there with its beauty, its music, its perfume, its HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
sweetness, to exhilarate and recreate us? Where there is a perfect government of the world according to the highest laws, is there no trace of intelligence there, whether in the snow or the earth, or in ourselves? No other trail but, such as a dog can smell? Is there none which an angel can detect and follow? None to guide a man on his pilgrimage, which water will not conceal? Is there no odor of sanctity to be perceived? Is its trail too old? Have mortals lost the scent? The great game for mighty hunters as soon as the first snow, falls is Purity, for, earlier than any rabbit or fox, it is abroad, and its trail may be detected by curs of lowest degree. Did this great snow come to reveal the track merely of some timorous hare, or of the Great Hare, whose track no hunter has seen? Is there no trace nor suggestion of Purity to be detected? If one could detect the meaning of the snow, would he not be on the trail of some higher life that has been abroad in the night? Are there not hunters who seek for something higher than foxes, with judgment more discriminating than the senses of foxhounds, who rally to a nobler music than that of the hunting-horn? As there is contention among the fishermen who shall be the first to reach the pond as soon as the ice will bear, in spite of the cold, as the hunters are forward to take the field as soon as the first snow has fallen, so the observer, or lie who would make the most of his life for discipline, must be abroad early and late, in spite of cold and wet, in pursuit of nobler game, whose traces are then most distinct. A life which, pursued, does not earth itself, does not burrow downward but upward, which takes not to the trees but to the heavens as its home, which the hunter pursues with winged thoughts and aspirations, — these the dogs that tree it, — rallying his pack with the bugle notes of undying faith, and returns with some worthier trophy than a fox's tail, a life which we seek, not to destroy it, but to save our own. Is the great snow of use to the hunter only, and not to the saint, or him who is earnestly building up a life? Do the Indian and hunter only need snow-shoes, while the saint sits indoors in embroidered slippers? The Indians might have imagined a large snow bunting to be the genius of the storm. This morning it is snowing again fast, and about six inches has already fallen by 10 A.M., of a moist and heavy snow. It is about six inches in all this day. This would [be] two feet and a half in all, if it has not settled, — but it has. I would fain be a fisherman, hunter, farmer, preacher, etc., but fish, hunt, farm, preach other things than usual. When, in 1641, the five hundred Iroquois in force brought to Three Rivers two French prisoners (whom they had taken), seeking peace with the French,- I believe this preceded any war with them, -at the assembling for this purpose, they went through the form of tying their prisoners, that they might pass for such; then, after a speech, they broke their bonds and cast them into the river that it might carry them so far that they might never be remembered. The speaker “then made many presents, according to the custom of the country where the word for presents is speech (où le mot de présens se nomme parole), to signify that the present speaks more strongly than the mouth.” (Le Jeune.) Our orators might learn much from the Indians. They are remarkable for their precision; nothing is left at loose ends. They address more senses than one, so as to preclude misunderstanding. A present accompanies each proposition. In delivering one present, the speaker said, “This is the house which we shall have at Three Rivers when we come here to treat with you,” etc. This is in Paul Le Jeune’s Relation for ’40 and ’41, page 156.
January 6, Friday: In the afternoon Henry Thoreau led William Tappan, a young Transcendentalist friend of Waldo Emerson and Ellery Channing to whom Thoreau had been introduced while living on Staten Island, down the railroad tracks to see Heywood Brook, Fair Haven Bay, and Fair Haven Cliffs.
January 6. Walked Tappan in P.M. down railroad to Heywood Brook, Fair Haven, and Cliffs. At every post along the brook-side, and under almost every white pine, the snow strewn with the scales and seeds of white pine cones left by the squirrels. They have sat on every post and dropped them for a great distance, also acorn- shells. The surface of the snow was sometimes strewn with the small alder scales, i.e. of catkins; also, here. and there, the large glaucous lichens (cetrarias?). Showed Tappan a small shadbush, which interested him and reminded him of a greyhound, rising so slender and graceful with its narrow buds above the snow. To return to the squirrels, I saw where they had laid up a pitch pine cone in the fork of a rider in several places. Many marks of partridges, and disturbed them on evergreens. A winter (?) gnat out on the hark of a pine. On Fair Haven we slumped nearly a foot to the old ice. The partridges were budding on the Fair Haven orchard, and flew for refuge to the wood, twenty minutes or more after sundown. There was a low, narrow, clear segment of sky in the west 29. But all that we see is the impress of its spirit. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
at sunset, or just after (all the rest overcast), of the coppery yellow, perhaps, of some of Gilpin’s pictures, all spotted coarsely with clouds like a leopard’s skin. I took up snow in the tracks at dark, but could find no fleas in it then, though they were exceedingly abundant before. Do they go into the snow at night? Frequently see a spider apparently stiff and dead on snow. In Vimont’s Jesuit Relation for 1642, he describes the customs of the Iroquois. As in the case of the Hurons, everything is done by presents. The murderer and robber are restrained by the very defect of justice, and because the community (his relations or tribe) whips itself for his fault. They must appease the injured with costly presents. They make that he shall involve his friends in ruin along with himself, and if he would injure any one, shall injure them too. By making it impossible for him to do an injury without doing a greater injury than he wishes, they restrain him. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
December 7, Thursday: Louis Pasteur was appointed as Dean of the new Faculty of Sciences in Lille. The advice he offered in his inaugural address has been variously translated into the English as “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind” and “Chance favors the prepared mind” and “Fortune favors the prepared mind” and “In the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind” and as “Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind” and as “Prepare your mind so when your one big break come along, you will be ready to seize it” and as “Prepare yourself for opportunity.” I prefer a bumper-sticker- style: “Prepare for it.”
PREPARE FOR IT
“Dans les champs de l’observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés.” — Louis Pasteur, at the University of Lisle on December 7, 1854 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1 Henry Thoreau walked through Olneyville in Johnston, Rhode Island, 2 /2 or 3 miles west of Providence. On the way back from Providence to Concord he stopped at Harvard Library and checked out:
— John Dunn Hunter’s MEMOIRS OF A CAPTIVITY AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH AMERICA, 30 FROM CHILDHOOD TO THE AGE OF NINETEEN (Philadelphia, 1823)
MEMOIRS OF A CAPTIVITY http://www.merrycoz.org/adults.htm
30. Thoreau would register his notes on this reading in his Indian Notebook #8 and in his Fact Book. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
— Cadwallader Colden’s THE HISTORY OF THE FIVE INDIAN NATIONS OF CANADA, WHICH ARE DEPENDENT ON THE PROVINCE OF NEW-YORK IN AMERICA... (London: Printed for T. Osborne, 1747)
CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN CADWALLADER COLDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
— the 4th volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES
THE INDIAN TRIBES, IV, 1854 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
31 — JESUIT RELATIONS FOR 1639 http://www.canadiana.org
WALDEN: The Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being PEOPLE OF burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their WALDEN tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those, who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.
THE JESUITS
31. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 He had already perused the volumes for 1633-1638 and 1640-1642. Harvard Library had just obtained this 1639 volume from Québec. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1857
January 26, Monday: Having already perused the volumes for the years 1633-1643, Henry Thoreau checked out, from 32 Harvard Library, the JESUIT RELATION volumes numbered 11 through 26.
http://www.canadiana.org
He also checked out the four volumes of Robert Beverley, Jr.’s HISTORY OF THE PRESENT STATE OF VIRGINIA (London, 1705; a new edition had been printed in Richmond, Virginia in 1855), which means that he was lugging perhaps 20 volumes back to Concord (the JESUIT RELATION volumes are not that large; although he needed to go from the library just off the Yard all the way to Porter Square, almost ¾ mile, walking this was elective as there were horse-drawn omnibuses).
32. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 Rache, Pierre de (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S'EST PASSÉ EN LA MISSION DES PERES DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS AUX HURONS, PAYS DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE, ÉS ANNÉES 1648 & 1649: ENVOYÉE AU R.P. HIEROSME LALEMANT, SUPERIEUR DES MISSIONS DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS, EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE. A Lille: De l'Imprimerie de la Vefue de Pierre de Rache ..., 1650 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
He would copy from this work by Beverley into his Fact Book and into his Indian Notebook #8. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
33 Two references to Beverley, one of them a footnote, would appear in CAPE COD.
READ THE 1855 REPRINT HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
January 26. Another cold morning. None looked early, but about eight it was -14°. A. M.— At Cambridge and Boston. Saw Boston Harbor frozen over (for some time). Reminded me of, I think, Parry’s Winter Harbor, with vessels frozen in. Saw thousands on the ice, a stream of men reaching down to Fort Independence, where they were cutting a channel toward the city. Ice said to reach fourteen miles. Snow untracked on many decks. [Ice did not finally go out till about Feb. 15th.] At 10 P. M., + 14°.
http://www.geocities.com/donsutherland1/1857blizzard.html
33. The Jamestown weed (or thorn-apple). “This, being an early plant, was gathered very young for a boiled salad, by some of the soldiers sent thither [i.e. to Virginia] to quell the rebellion of Bacon; and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and making mows at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions, and sneer in their faces, with a countenance more antic than any in a Dutch droll. In this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves, –though it was observed that all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days returned to themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.”– Beverley’s History of Virginia, p. 121. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
CAPE COD: Our way to the high sand-bank, which I have described PEOPLE OF as extending all along the coast, led, as usual, through patches CAPE COD of Bayberry bushes, which straggled into the sand. This, next to the Shrub-oak, was perhaps the most common shrub thereabouts. I was much attracted by its odoriferous leaves and small gray berries which are clustered about the short twigs, just below the last year’s growth. I know of but two bushes in Concord, and they, being staminate plants, do not bear fruit. The berries gave it a venerable appearance, and they smelled quite spicy, like small confectionery. Robert Beverley, in his “History of Virginia,” published in 1705, states that “at the mouth of their rivers, and all along upon the sea and bay, and near many of their creeks and swamps, grows the myrtle, bearing a berry, of which they make a hard brittle wax, of a curious green color, which by refining becomes almost transparent. Of this they make candles, which are never greasy to the touch nor melt with lying in the hottest weather; neither does the snuff of these ever offend the smell, like that of a tallow candle; but, instead of being disagreeable, if an accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them out on purpose to have the incense of the expiring snuff. The melting of these berries is said to have been first found out by a surgeon in New England, who performed wonderful things with a salve made of them.” From the abundance of berries still hanging on the bushes, we judged that the inhabitants did not generally collect them for tallow, though we had seen a piece in the house we had just left. I have since made some tallow myself. Holding a basket beneath the bare twigs in April, I rubbed them together between my hands and thus gathered about a quart in twenty minutes, to which were added enough to make three pints, and I might have gathered them much faster with a suitable rake and a large shallow basket. They have little prominences like those of an orange all encased in tallow, which also fills the interstices down to the stone. The oily part rose to the top, making it look like a savory black broth, which smelled much like balm or other herb tea. You let it cool, then skim off the tallow from the surface, melt this again and strain it. I got about a quarter of a pound weight from my three pints, and more yet remained within the berries. A small portion cooled in the form of small flattish hemispheres, like crystallizations, the size of a kernel of corn (nuggets I called them as I picked them out from amid the berries). Loudon says, that “cultivated trees are said to yield more wax than those that are found wild.” (See Duplessy, Végétaux Résineux, Vol. II. p. 60.) If you get any pitch on your hands in the pine-woods you have only to rub some of these berries between your hands to start it off. But the ocean was the grand fact there, which made us forget both bayberries and men. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
March 18, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau corrected his opinion about the whar- whar-whar-whar- whar- whar call of the day before, determining it to have been a nuthatch rather than a woodpecker.
March 18: 9 A.M. —Up Assabet A still and warm, but overcast morning, threatening rain. I now again hear the song sparrow’s tinkle along the river side, probably to be heard for a day or two, and a robin, which also has been heard a day or two. The ground is almost completely bare, and but little ice forms at night along the riverside. I meet Goodwin paddling up the still, dark river on his first voyage to Fair Haven for the season, looking for muskrats and from time to time picking driftwood –logs and boards, etc– out of the water and laying it up to dry one the bank, to eke out his woodpile with. He says that the frost is not out so thast he can lay wall, and so he thought he (’d) go and see what there was at Fair Haven. Says that when you hear a woodpecker’s rat-tat-tat- tat-tat on a dead tree it is a sign of rain. While Emerson sits writing in (his) study this still, overcast, moist day Goodwin is paddling up the still dark river. Emerson burns twenty-five cords of wood and fourteen (?) tons of coal; Goodwin perhaps a cord and a half, much of which he picks out of the river. He says he’s rather have a boat leak some for fishing. I hear the report of his gun from time to time for an hour, heralding the death of a muskrat and reverberating far down the river. Goodwin had just seen Melvin disappearing up the North River, and I turn up thither after him. The ice belt still clings to the bank on each side, a foot or more above the water, and is now fringed with icicles of various lengths, only an inch or two apart, where it is melting by day and dripping into the river. Being distinctly reflected, you think you see two, ten feet apart, the water-line not being seen, I land and walk half-way up the hill. A red squirrel runs nimbly before me along the wall, his tail in the air at a right angle with his body; leaps into a walnut and winds up his clock. The reindeer lichens on the pitch pine plain are moist and flaccid. I hear the faint notes of the apparent nuthatches coursing up the pitch pines, a pair of them, one answering the other, as it were like a vibrating watch spring. Then at a distance, that whar-whar-whar- whar-whar-whar, which after all I suspect may be the note of the nuthatch and not a woodpecker. And now from far southward coming on through the air, the chattering of the blackbirds,— probably red-wings for I hear an imperfect conqueree. Also I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a- chit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it. On the pitchpine plain, nearly the whole of a small turtle’s egg, by the side of an excavated nest. Save with my boat the dead top of (apparently) a pine, divested of its bark and bleached. Before the bark fell off it was curiously etched by worms in variously curved lines and halfcircles, often with regular short recurving branches thus:
Père Buteux, going on commission to the Attikamègues in 7651, describes a fall away up there, where a river falls into a sort of trough or cradle a hundred paces long. “In this cradle the river boils (bouillonne) in such a fashion, that if you cast a stick (baston) into it, it remains some time, without appearing, then all at once it elevates itself (il s’élève en haut) to the height of two pikes, at forty or fifty paces from the place where you cast it in.” It is to be observed in the old deed of the Hunt farm, written in 1701, though the whole, consisting of something more than one hundred and fifty acres, is minutely described in thirteen different pieces, no part is described as woodland or woodlot, only one piece as (ital) “partly unimproved.” This shows how little acount was made of wood. Mr Nathan Brooks reminds me that not till recently, i.e. not till within forty years, have wood-lots begun to be taxed for anything like their full value. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1858
January 13, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau lectured at Lynn, visiting Nahant and Danvers. At Lynn he lectured in the parlor of John and Mercy Buffum Alley,34 disowned Hicksite Quakers who were the parents of the Mary Buffum Mansfield who had heard Thoreau speak during silent worship at Eagleswood on October 26, 1856 (am I sure this was not November 1??), and had written down what he said.35
34. [What relation was this Mercy Buffum Alley to the James N. Buffum, successful carpenter of Lynn MA, who had been Frederick Douglass’s traveling companion in steerage aboard the Cambria to Ireland in 1845?] 35. It appears that Charles Chauncy Shackford and John B. Alley were responsible for Thoreau’s being invited to lecture in Lynn at the end of 1857. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
On his way Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the COLLECTIONS OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY volume for 1857, in which is to be found, on pages 9-136, Henry C. Murphy’s translation “Voyages from Holland to America, A.D., 1632 to 1644” of David Pietersz. de Vries’s KORTE HISTORIAEL ENDE JOURNAELS AENTEYCKENINGE VAN VERSCHEYDEN VOYAGIENS IN DE VIER DEELEN DES WERELDTS — RONDE, ALS EUROPA, AFRICA, ASIA, ENDE AMERIKA GEDAEN, DOOR D. DAVID PIETERSZ. DE VRIES, ARTILLERIJ-MEESTER VANDE ED: M: HEEREN GECOMMITTEERDE RADEN VAN STATEN VAN WEST-VRIESLANDT ENDE ’T NOORDER- QUARTIER WAERIN VERHAELT WERD WAT BATAILJES BY TE WATER GEDAEN HERFT: YDER LANDTSCHAP ZIJN GEDIERTE, GEVOGELT, WAT SOORTE VAN VISSEN ENDE WAT WILDE MENSCHEN NAKR ’T LEVEN GECONTERFAEYT, HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
ENDE VAN DE BOSSCHEN ENDE RAVIEREN MET HAER VRUCHTEN (1655).
COLLECTIONS NYHS In this same volume, on pages 163-229, is to be found John Gilmary Shea’s translation “The Jogues Papers” of an account by Père Isaac Jogues, and on pages 309-322, Shea’s translation “Narrative of a Voyage made for the Abnaquiois Missions...” of an account by Père Gabriel Druillettes. (Thoreau would copy from these two translations into his Indian Notebook #11.) COLLECTIONS NYHS HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Having already perused the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1633-1643, and the volumes numbered 11 through 26, he checked out the volumes for 1662-1663 and for 1663-1664.36
http://www.canadiana.org
January 13, Wednesday: Go to Lynn to lecture, via Cambridge. 4:30 P.M.–At Jonathan Buffum’s, Lynn. Lecture in John B. Alley’s parlor. Mr. J. Buffum describes to me ancient wolf-traps, made probably by the early settlers in Lynn, perhaps after an Indian model; one some two miles from the shore near Saugus, another more northerly; holes say seven feet deep, about as long, and some three feet wide, stoned up very smoothly, and perhaps converging a little, so that the wolf could not get out. Tradition says that a wolf and a squaw were one morning found in the same hole, staring at each other. JONATHAN BUFFUM
April 25, Sunday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Benjamin Marston WatsonBENJAMIN MARSTON WATSON . Concord Ap. 25th 1858. Dear Sir, Your unexpected gift of pear trees reached
36. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
me yesterday in good con- dition, and I spent the afternoon in giving them a good setting-out; but I fear that this cold weather may hurt them. However, I am inclined to think that they are insured since you have looked on them. It makes ones mouth water to read their names only. From what I hear of the extent of your bounty, if a reasonable part of the trees succeed this transplanting
Page 2 will make a new era for Concord to date from. Mine must be a lucky star, for day before yesterday I re- ceived a box of [M]ay-flowers from Brattleboro, and yesterday morning your pear trees, and at evening a humming-bird’s nest from Worcester. This looks like fairy housekeep- ing. —I discovered two new plants in Concord last winter—the Labrador Tea (Ledum latifolium) and Yew (Taxus baccata). By the way, in January I communicated with Dr. Durkee, whose report on glow-worms I sent you, and it appeared, as I suspected, that he (and, by his account, Agassiz, Gould, Jackson,
Page 3 and others, to whom he showed them) did not consider HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
them a distinct species, but a variety of the common, or Lampyris noctiluca— some of which you got in Lincoln. Durkee, at least, had never seen the last. I told him that I had no doubt about their being a distinct species. His, however, were luminous throughout every part of the body, as those which you sent me were not while I had them. Is nature as full of vigor to your eyes as ever, or do you detect some falling off at last? Is the mystery of the hog’s bristles cleared up,—and with it that of our life? It is the [Two lines missing]
Page 4 question to the exclusion of every other interest.
I am sorry to hear of the burning of your woods; but, thank heaven[,] your great ponds and your sea cannot be burnt. I love to think of your warm sandy wood roads, and your breezy island out in the sun. What a prospect you can get every morning from the hill top east of your house! I think that even the heathen that I am, could say, or sing, or dance morning prayers there of some kind. Please remember me to Mrs Watson, & to the rest of your family—who are helping the sun shine yonder— [Two lines missing, apparently the clos- HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
ing and signature]
Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, or Franklin Benjamin Sanborn checked out for him, volumes 28, 29, and 30 of a series RELATIONS DE LA NOU — the JESUIT RELATION volumes for 1666-1667, 1667-1668, and 1668-1669.37
http://www.canadiana.org
37. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. P AUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
December 7, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Enrico “Iron Hand” de Tonti’s RELATION 38 DE LA LOUISIANA OU MISSISSIPPI PAR LE CHEVALIER DE TONTI (1734).
38. Henry, Chevalier de Tonti was born in Gaeta, Italy in about 1650, a son of Lorenzo Tonti. He entered the French army as a cadet and served in addition in the French navy. In 1678 he accompanied René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) to Canada. In 1680, during an exploration of the Mississippi he was left in command of Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois River near Peoria, Illinois. After making an unsuccessful attempt to found a settlement in Arkansas, in 1685 he took part in an expedition of the Western Indians against the Senecas. He twice went down the Mississippi to its mouth while in search of La Salle, and then needed to go down the river a third time to meet M. D’Iberville. During September 1704 he died at Fort Saint Loûis (now Mobile, Alabama). There is a report by him in Margry’s RELATIONS ET MEMOIRES, and an English translation of this report, “An Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Discoveries in North America. Presented to the French King, and Published by the Chevalier Tonti, Governour of Fort St. Louis, in the Province of the Illinois ...,” would be printed in London by J. Tonson, S. Buckley, and R. Knaplock in 1698 and reprinted in New-York in 1814. Refer to Benjamin Franklin French’s HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA (Volume I, 1846). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau also checked out Volume IV of the five volumes of Benjamin Franklin French’s HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA, EMBRACING MANY RARE AND VALUABLE DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE NATURAL, CIVIL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THAT STATE. COMPILED WITH HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, AND AN INTRODUCTION... (New York: Wiley & Putnam). Part I of this, Historical Documents from 1678-1691, contains La Salle’s memoir of the discovery of the Mississippi, Joutel’s journal, and Hennepin’s account of the Mississippi. Part II contains Marquette and Joliet’s voyage to discover the Mississippi, De Soto’s expedition, and Coxe’s “Carolana.” Part III contains La Harpe’s journal of the establishment of the French in Louisiana, Charlevoix’s journal, etc. Part IV, the volume from which Thoreau was extracting into his Indian Notebook #11, printed in 1852, contains narratives of the voyages, missions, and travels among the Indians, by Marquette, Joliet, Dablon, Allouez, Le Clercq, La Salle, Hennepin, Membre, and Douay, with biographical and bibliographical notices of these missionaries and their works, by John Gilmary Shea, and contains the 1673 Thevenot chart of the “R. Mitchisipi ou grand Riviere” indicating the native tribes along its tributaries, “Carte de la decouverte faite l’an 1673. dans l’Amerique Septentrionale.” THE MITCHISIPI RIVER
Part V contains Dumont’s memoir of transactions with the Indians of Louisiana, from 1712 to 1740, and Champégny’s memoirs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau also checked out Jean-Frédéric Bernard’s RECUEIL DE VOYAGES AU NORD, CONTENANT DIVERS MÉMOIRES TRÈS UTILES AU COMMERCE & À LA NAVIGATION, 1715-1738 (A Amsterdam, Chez J.F. Bernard), and would make extracts in his Indian Notebook #11. According to the edition statement contained in the 4th volume, this is the 4th edition of the work and Volume 2 had been printed in 1715, Volumes 1 and 3 in 1716, Volume 6 in 1723, Volume 5 in 1724, Volume 7 in 1725, and Volume 8 in 1727 (of the final two of the 10 volumes, Volumes 9 and 10, this 1732 printing says nothing, of course because they had not yet been put through the press).
Unfortunately, Google Books has scanned so far of these ten volumes only Volume 4 — so that is all I am able to provide for you here: JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC BERNARD HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau also checked out Father Louis Hennepin’s VOYAGES | CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX | DE MESSIEURS | HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, | OU L’ON VOIT UNE DESCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE | NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUSE DES | CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, | LEURS MŒURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION &C. | LE TOUTE ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES. | [Emblem.] | AAMSTERDAM, AUX DEPENS DE LA COMPAGNIE. MDCXI (this was an exact reprint of the edition of 1704, with merely a slight change to the title page).
Sieur de la Borde is a mysterious figure, for all we know for sure is that he worked, perhaps as a lay brother, for a short period with Jesuit missionaries, especially with Father Simon at the mission on St. Vincent Island in the Antilles.
I am guessing that he was part of the Langlade family that had come over from Castle Sarrasin in Bassee, Guyenne, France (at first known as the family Mouet de Moras) that had settled at Trois-Rivières, Québec in HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1668, and I am guessing that his full name was Louis Mouet De Moras, Sieur de la Borde and that he was the 4th of the sons of Pierre Mouet, Landlord of Moras, who was an ensign in the Carignan-Salières regiment, with Marie Toupin, Madame de Moras (born on August 19, 1651 at Québec, died on March 13, 1722/1723 at Trois- Rivières),
that he had been baptized on October 9, 1676 and would die on March 27, 1699 (but this is guesswork based on family genealogies, and does not at all jibe with an original date of his publication of 1674 at Paris; none of this makes sense if his book was published before he was born, and everything of this makes somewhat more sense if his book actually was published in 1694, when he was perhaps 18 years of age and had perhaps already in his teens as a lay brother assisted Father Simon at his mission in St. Vincent Island, and simply went through the press with a numerical typo on its title page). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Thoreau would extract something about heavy surf from this source, for use in Chapter 8 “The Highland Light” of CAPE COD.]
CURIEUX ET NOUVEAU HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
CAPE COD: Our host said that you would be surprised if you were PEOPLE OF on the beach when the wind blew a hurricane directly on to it, to see that none of the drift-wood came ashore, but all was carried CAPE COD directly northward and parallel with the shore as fast as a man can walk, by the inshore current, which sets strongly in that direction at flood tide. The strongest swimmers also are carried along with it, and never gain an inch toward the beach. Even a large rock has been moved half a mile northward along the beach. He assured us that the sea was never still on the back side of the Cape, but ran commonly as high as your head, so that a great part of the time you could not launch a boat there, and even in the calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up the beach, though then you could get off on a plank. Champlain and Poitrincourt could not land here in 1606, on account of the swell (la houlle), yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In the Sieur de la Borde’s “Relation des Caraibes,” my edition of which DE LA BORDE was published at Amsterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says:–
“Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [i.e. a god], makes the great lames à la mer, and overturns canoes. Lames à la mer are the long vagues which are not broken (entrecoupees), and such as one sees come to land all in one piece, from one end of a beach to another, so that, however little wind there may be, a shallop or a canoe could hardly land (aborder terre) without turning over, or being filled with water.” But on the Bay side the water even at its edge is often as smooth and still as in a pond. Commonly there are no boats used along this beach. There was a boat belonging to the Highland Light which the next keeper after he had been there a year had not launched, though he said that there was good fishing just off the shore. Generally the Life Boats cannot be used when needed. When the waves run very high it is impossible to get a boat off, however skilfully you steer it, for it will often be completely covered by the curving edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, and so filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turned directly over backwards and all the contents spilled out. A spar thirty feet long is served in the same way. I heard of a party who went off fishing back of Wellfleet some years ago, in two boats, in calm weather, who, when they had laden their boats with fish, and approached the land again, found such a swell breaking on it, though there was no wind, that they were afraid to enter it. At first they thought to pull for Provincetown, but night was coming on, and that was many miles distant. Their case seemed a desperate one. As often as they approached the shore and saw the terrible breakers that intervened, they were deterred. In short, they were thoroughly frightened. Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those in one boat chose a favorable opportunity, and succeeded, by skill and good luck, in reaching the land, but they were unwilling to take the responsibility of telling the others when to come in, and as the other helmsman was inexperienced, their boat was swamped at once, yet all managed to save themselves. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
The full title of the book to which Thoreau refers in CAPE COD, “the Sieur de la Borde’s ‘Relation des Caraibes,’ my edition of which was published at Amsterdam in 1711,” is VOYAGES | CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX | DE MESSIEURS | HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, | OU L’ON VOIT UNE DESCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE | NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUSE DES | CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, | LEURS MŒURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION &C. | LE TOUTE ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES. | [Emblem.] | A AMSTERDAM, AUX DEPENS DE LA COMPAGNIE. MDCXI (this is an exceedingly rare volume, but was a mere reprint of the more available edition of 1704, with slight change in the title page). The original date of his publication RELATION CURIEUSE DES CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE had been 1674, when it had appeared at Paris under the title RELATION DE L’ORIGINE, MOEURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION, GUERRES & VOYAGES DES CARAIBES, SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE. FAITE PAR LE SIEUR DE LA BORDE EMPLOYE A LA CONVERSION DES CARAIBES, ESTANT AVEC LE R.P. SIMON JESUITE; ET TIREE DU CABINET DE MONSIEUR BLOUDEL ... DIVIDED INTO 12 COMPARTMENTS, EXHIBITING THE UTENSILS, DWELLINGS, AND MANUFACTURES OF THE CARIBS.
While he was in Cambridge, Thoreau also checked out Père Claude Dablon’s RELATION OF THE VOYAGES OF FATHER JAMES MARQUETTE, 1673-75 (1677).
“There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away” — Emily Dickinson
After leaving the Harvard Library with his load of books of the history of French Catholic39 exploration to study, such as JESUIT RELATIONS for 1670-1672, from which he would copy into his Indian Notebook #11, Thoreau visited the Boston Society of Natural History to do some ornithology.
39. It never ceases to amaze me how Thoreau, with his Huguenot family history of persecution by French Catholics, and despite the rampant anti-Catholicism that marred the USer attitudes of those times, was able so benignly to consider the positive accomplishments of French Catholics! Clearly he carried with him no grudge at all in regard to what had been in its day the largest mass religious expulsion and genocide (prior, of course, to the Holocaust). HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
December 7. To Boston. At Natural History Rooms. The egg of Turdus solitarius is light-bluish with pale-brown spots. This is apparently mine which I call hermit thrush, though mine is [sic] redder and distincter brown spots. The egg of Turdus brunneus (called hermit thrush) is a clear blue. The rail’s egg (of Concord, which I have seen) is not the Virginia rail’s, which is smaller and nearly pure white, nor the clapper rail’s, which is larger. Is it the sora rail’s (of which there is no egg in this collection)? My egg found in R.W.E.’s garden is not the white-throated sparrow’s egg. Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i.e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow. He says Cooper’s hawk is just like the sharp-shinned, only a little larger commonly. He could not tell them apart. Neither he nor Brewer40 can identify eggs always. Could match some gulls’ eggs out of another basket full of a different species as well as out of the same basket.
On this day his letter arrived in New Bedford, so in the evening Friend Daniel Ricketson was waiting for the train from Boston at the Tarkiln Hill depot at the head of the river, and picked up Thoreau with his load of books, and Thomas Cholmondeley, and took them to his Shanty — where they talked of the English poets Thomas Gray, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth, etc. until they retired at 10 PM.
On this day Thoreau was being written to by Ticknor & Fields in Boston. Boston Decr 7/58 Henry D. Thoreau Esq Concord Mass. Dear Sir Referring to our file of letters for 1857 we find a note from you of which the enclosed is a copy. As our letter –to which it is a reply– was missent, we doubt not but our answer to yours of a few months since has been subjected to the same, or a similar irregularity. Respectfully Yours &c. Ticknor & Fields pr Clark
40. Thomas Mayo Brewer had written in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History for the years 1851-1854, on page 324 of volume 4, that Thoreau copied into his Commonplace Book #2. Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway would create the 3-volume A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. LAND BIRDS (Boston: Little, Brown, 1874-1884). Brewer’s specialty in bird study was nesting and eggs. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1904
An ecclesiastical court of the Roman Catholic church spent a year examining the life and conduct of Father Jean de Brébeuf, and the cause of his death, forwarding the results of their inquiry to the Vatican in Rome. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
1930
June 29, Sunday: Father Jean de Brébeuf and his companions were canonized by Pope Pius XI. This saint’s feast-day is October 19th and he is a patron saint of Canada.
CATHOLICISM
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Walden HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: May 12, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
THE PEOPLE OF WALDEN: JEAN DE BREBEUF PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with