>> Hi and welcome back to Maple History.
I'm Christina Austin and Simon is with me again.
>> And again, here I am.
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>> Nice.
>> You won't get everything offered at the free level,
but there is some great bonus content there.
There's stuff already up there.
So, today's episode is not a cheery topic at all.
>> Bit of a bummer?
>> Yeah. Honestly, it's one of the saddest stories in
Canadian history that gets repeated over and over as
European diseases swept through the indigenous nations.
I'm going to begin with a quote which will
set the tone for the episode, I think.
"It's from father Paul Lejeune writing in the Jesuit
relations about the Wendat Confederacy
Grand Council that met in 1638 to discuss
what had befallen their people."
Quote.
"I do not know that I have ever seen anything more
lugubrious than this assembly.
In the beginning, they looked at one another like corpses,
or rather like men who already feel the terrors of death.
They spoke only in size, each one undertaking
the enumeration of the dead and sick of his family.
All that was only to incite them to vomit more bitterly
upon us the venom which they concealed within.
Several years of epidemics had raged by this point in 1638,
but the worst was yet to come."
>> Did they know at that time that it was caused by
the settlers?
>> Probably.
>> Yeah.
I mean, they blame them, that's for sure.
>> Yeah.
>> Oh, we'll get to that.
>> All right.
>> But they wouldn't have known germ theory,
because I mean, nobody did.
>> But still, yeah.
I mean, you can kind of put two and two together.
This wasn't here.
>> And now it's here.
And they had seen, they had had some sicknesses beforehand.
That had killed many of them, but not to this extent.
>> Yeah.
>> So we'll go back to the beginning of when the French
came back.
So after the whole debacle with the English pirates,
the Kirk brothers, the French, and of course the Jesuits,
were back in New France by 1633.
So Jean de Brebouff was back along with the other,
with other priests, such as Father Lujean,
and the head men of the Bear Nation, Aenon.
He wanted to ensure good relations between him and the French
after all that with the English.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> So he invited the Jesuits to come and live in his village.
It's named Ihana Tyria.
Sorry if I say that wrong.
So the Jesuits accepted this invite
and set up their mission there for the next few years,
until they were no longer welcome there, at least.
>> Okay.
>> So it was the next year in 1634
that the first epidemic hit the Wendat people.
Brebouff wrote that it started with a high fever,
then a rash, and in some cases blindness
that lasted several days, and then diarrhea.
Brebouff was not sure what the illness was,
but he speculated that it was a type of measles or a smallpox,
but said that it wasn't like it was in Europe,
so it was kind of a new presentation
of a bunch of familiar ailments that he's seen before.
>> Interesting.
>> Likely not smallpox, because that one hits pretty hard.
>> And you see the pox.
>> Yeah, it's the big, flat, raised rashes.
>> Yeah.
>> But measles, any time you get some sort of virus,
you can get a rash, like do you remember Evelyn?
>> Yeah.
>> So her youngest daughter, she got,
was it after she had strep throat or something or a flu?
>> Maybe, yeah.
>> And then one morning you're like,
"Kris, come see this."
>> Yeah.
>> And yeah, she had this rash.
>> Time for a doctor.
>> Yeah, we took her, and the doctor
sent her to a pediatrician, and the pediatrician's just like,
"Yeah, it's just a virus thing."
>> Yeah, what happens?
>> So that's just one of the weird things that happens.
Anyways, some of the French got a bit sick,
but it was, but not very sick.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> Like it is recovered, it's like, whatever, it's fine.
>> Yeah, we've seen this before.
>> Yeah, we can walk it off, it's fine.
So, brave off wasn't even sure it was the same illness.
Although this was the mildest epidemic they would face,
it was still severe enough to prevent many of the crops
from being harvested that summer,
since people were bedridden for a long time.
>> Wow.
>> And so many of them were sick.
>> Yeah.
>> So this likely added to the death toll over the winter,
as the weakened people were not able
to be as well nourished as they would have been,
with proper food available to them.
So the epidemic did lift, finally, in the spring of 1635,
but it had taken toll on the people.
It also had affected the Inu and the Algonquin,
so it was all over the neutral, just everywhere.
>> Everyone that they had kind of had contact with, essentially.
>> Yeah, basically they picked it up from Tuarev year.
>> Yeah.
>> Same time that the Wendat picked it up,
from the ships that were coming in.
>> Yeah.
>> It was the trade route.
So, first trigger thinks that it came from the south,
like New England area, and came northward.
>> Okay, yes.
>> So the next wave of epidemic hammered the Wendat
in the spring of 1636, and this time the French got hit too.
>> Okay.
>> All the two priests got taken out, just with the illness,
they did recover, and the ones that got sick,
they were bedridden for two weeks.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah, probably a flu.
>> Yeah, a really bad flu, yeah.
>> Yeah, no medicine.
>> No, so during that time that they were sick,
many Wendat would come to visit partly to help,
and partly because they had never seen a French person
really, really sick before.
>> Oh, okay.
>> They're like, "What's going on there, guys?"
So, Brabiff did what he could to keep the cabin quiet,
and peaceful as is customary when European people get sick,
but this was anathema to Wendat culture during illnesses.
Long houses were very busy places,
with multiple families living in them.
So to keep people from coming and going to a minimum
was near impossible.
>> Oh, no.
>> Yeah, well, they were sick too, but--
>> Yeah, but still, that's really crazy.
If you're not used to disease in the culture of like,
stay away, just to keep it quiet, isolated.
>> Yeah.
>> Huh.
>> I'll talk about it a bit more later.
That you come to help.
>> Yeah.
>> You come and part of their healing rituals
involved music, and singing, and feast things,
and to keep it quiet lacked the spirit of community.
>> Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
I could see how it would be thought of as almost uncaring.
>> You need your people.
So there were all sorts of people coming over
and offering medicines to help,
but the Jesuits did not want to use their medicines
or their healing practices in particular.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> So one of the people that came to help
was this famed healer named Tanara-un Anant.
>> Okay.
>> Sorry.
>> Okay.
>> He was a little person, but he also had pretty bad
scoliosis or some other type of back deformity.
So Brabuf, of course, called him a hunchback.
>> Okay, yeah.
>> I'm not going to do that.
>> Yeah.
>> So this guy, he sounds pretty incredible.
He was pretty famous in all the nations,
including the neutral,
all the way down to the Haudenosaunee.
>> Wow.
>> So he's just a traveling shaman.
He would kind of gift people things to kind of dub them
as one of his guys.
Oh, what's the term?
>> It's like a trainee.
>> Yeah.
>> Minti or something like that.
Yeah, okay.
>> Yeah.
Oh, yeah, you can work under my kind of brand.
So he kind of came with that cache of popularity.
So he was known to have an incredibly powerful oranda,
which is kind of like a charisma, spirit, power.
>> Okay.
>> A powerful warrior as a strong orrenda.
>> Okay.
>> A powerful order leader.
>> A presence.
>> He certainly has a presence.
So I'm going to read you a rather long quote
that was in the book "Crosses in Sky" by Mark Bory,
as it gives you the best picture of who this guy was.
So this is what Tanara Uannant told Breboof about himself.
>> Okay.
>> I am a powerful spirit.
I used to live in the underworld in a home of malevolent spirits
when the fancy seized me to become a man.
This is how it happened.
Having heard one day from this subterranean abode,
the voices and cries of some children who were guarding the crops
and chasing the animals and birds away,
I decided to go out.
I was no sooner on Earth that I encountered a woman.
I craftily entered her womb, and there assumed a little body.
I had with me a female spirit who did the same thing.
As soon as we were the size of an ear of corn,
this woman wished to abort us,
knowing we had not been conceived by human means,
inferring that this okey might bring her some kind of misfortune.
I beat the female spirit to death,
and when the woman caused the miscarriage,
the body of this female fetus was passed into the world,
but I was alive.
The woman placed us both in a beaver skin and hit us in a hollow tree.
We remained there until a hereon walked by.
He heard me crying and ran back to the village to tell people what he'd heard.
My mother came out, found me, and took me back to her home.
She brought me up as the person you see here.
>> Wow, okay.
>> I got a character.
>> Yeah.
>> So, yeah, he's telling Brea Boof this,
and Brea Boof is like, get back demon.
>> Get back demon, yeah.
>> They absolutely thought he was a demon.
>> Yeah, he just said he was from the level and underworld.
So, they didn't want anything to do with him.
So, he offered the Jesuits herbs and other assistance for their illnesses,
for the price of 10 glass beads.
And he also did what he could to help others around,
but eventually he himself died, but not of illness.
He had a bad fall and broke his leg,
which must have been a doozy of a break.
>> Yeah.
>> And he died of that injury.
So, the Jesuits' rejection of such a powerful and popular healer
would not help their cause later when everyone turned on them
because they believed the epidemics were all their fault.
So, this second epidemic was pretty devastating.
The village of Asosone, which is kind of nearby,
>> Okay.
>> They lost about 20% of their population at this time.
That's a lot of people.
>> People.
>> So, they consider the healer's presence a great threat,
so the Jesuits did, and they began to work pretty hard to save souls
and convert people to Christianity.
So, they had, but they had competition with other healers
who were working hard to save their people.
Reboof and the other Jesuits wrote in their relations about their efforts.
And the condescension just drips off the page.
So, Jerome Lalamont wrote that one of the latest pieces of foolishness
that occurred in this town was on behalf of a sick man of a neighboring town
who either dreamed or was ordered by a doctor of the country,
that a game of dish must be played to restore his health.
So, dish is a gambling game.
>> Okay.
>> It's played with plum pits, painted black on one side and white on the other.
>> Okay.
>> So, exact rules varied, but you can just imagine you toss them in whichever,
>> Yeah, whatever comes out.
>> This number black and this number white.
>> Interesting.
>> So, there was a game, there was a big gambling game
when we were in Australia, and they called it Toop.
>> Okay.
>> And I think it was like, it was just like two quarters.
And you like threw them up in the air.
>> Just like any kind of throwing bones, throwing dice,
throwing, it's like universal.
>> Yeah, this like gambling, they threw them up,
and like sometimes it would be if it was like two heads or two tails,
or you would bet or something like that, or one in one, I think it was a pass.
I don't know.
>> It's amazing how gambling is just like people be gambling.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> So, yeah, the healers, another thing they would do is they would play lacrosse games
to help heal people.
>> Oh, okay.
>> I don't know how.
>> That sounds strenuous.
>> Yeah.
So, the healers would gather people from neighboring villages,
and they would have a mass of lacrosse game and gamble on that too.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> And the Jesuits wrote nothing but disdain about these practices.
So, the Jesuits helped the sick in their own ways.
They offered raisins, prune, sugar, lemon peel, broths, and bleedings.
I'm sure the roots offered by the indigenous healers did help
with some symptoms, but there wasn't much that they could do for illnesses like
flues and other infections, plagging the people.
>> There's not much we can do now.
>> I know.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, you're treating the symptoms.
You're managing a fever.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> You're trying to not get secondary infections and things like that.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
And just stay hydrated enough.
Again, this one didn't just affect the Wendat.
The nipcing had wintered in Wendaki.
That's kind of the nation area.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> And they got rocked by it.
When they left to go back to their territory,
they took with them 70 bodies to bury back home.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah.
So no nation was untouched by this devastating loss.
What we can't really know though is how many people died in the other nations
that were more northern that didn't live in villages.
>> Mm-hmm.
Both from the disease and from the starvation.
>> Yeah.
Well, they would hunt.
>> Well, no, but of losing like just starving due to losing people like you're losing your hunters.
>> Yeah. Yeah, because the only places that we have the records is from the Jesuits
and the French traders and that information brought back to Quebec
in Tuar Riviere and anything on the ships and things like that.
>> Yeah.
>> But what was coming the next year was going to be worse.
>> Really, okay.
>> Yeah.
They were able to have a good trading summer, but when they returned from Tuar Riviere,
they brought back a new illness that it would hit hard and fast.
This time it was scarlet fever.
So many people would die within two days of becoming ill.
The French were unaffected by the illness this time around.
So it's probably because it's like a strep throat thing.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> And I know adults of course get strep throat, but it's typically younger people.
>> Yeah.
>> But you get like a lot of teenagers who get strep throat, Evelyn,
our youngest, she got strep throat three times within three months.
>> Yeah.
>> And it's strep A that turns into scarlet fever.
>> Okay.
>> And that's pretty bad.
>> Yeah.
>> It can affect the heart.
>> Anybotics take care of that one.
>> Yeah.
>> That's why we're fine with it.
>> Yeah.
>> We're not fine, but that's why we don't really see scarlet fever anymore.
>> Yeah, if it goes unchecked, it can turn into scarlet fever.
But it is still pretty brutal illness.
>> Mm-hmm.
>> I've had it once.
It's like a swallowing broken glass.
>> Yeah, I've had it a bunch.
That's not fun.
>> No.
>> In a population with absolutely no history of this virus, it's devastating.
So there was one case of the death of one boy that Paula June wrote about in the
relations that is very moving.
So this boy was named Arakiye, who was probably around 11 or so when he was taken ill.
And I'm going to let Lijon's words speak about Arakiye because it is as close to knowing this
child as we can get, and he sounded like a wonderful boy.
So here's the quote.
"I encounter a subject which has often keenly affected us.
And now that I'm ready to write about it, I feel it's a strong hold upon my heart,
and I can hardly keep the tears from falling from my eyes.
On the second day of October, a young child, 11 or 12 years old, died in our village on baptize.
His name was Arakiye. That is to say, closing day.
This name never suited him better than in his last illness, and at the point of death.
Up to that time, he was like a little son which arose before the eyes.
He had some natural advantages which not only surpassed those usual to this barber's people,
but even those ordinary in France.
His body was well formed and his mind was still better.
And if his height and size were beyond his age, the graces of his mind and the strength of his
judgment placed him almost upon equal footing with full grown men.
He was sedate, grave, obliging, and of agreeable conversation.
He was polite and took pride in appearing serious, in the midst of the insolence of his
companions, especially in our presence.
He was wonderfully docile, and as he had a very happy memory, he learned easily all that was
taught him and showed a great liking for all our holy mysteries.
I teared up a lot on that one when I first read it.
So Lejeune wrote a length about Arakiye learning about Christianity and expressing interest in
baptism, but they delayed it, and then it was too late.
Arakiye was the first in his family to fall ill, and the family rejected the Jesuits
efforts to have him baptized before he died, going so far as to chase the priest out with
a hot poker who had at last attempted to convince them.
Lejeune wrote of that incident, so he withdrew, and this poor child died that night.
It was indeed night for him, ah, how this news affected us, and how this death still
pierces our hearts when we think of it.
So Catherine McGillabel wrote of that story in her book, Dispers but Not Destroyed,
to illustrate the long reach that this loss of such an intelligent boy with clear leadership
skills would have for the future of the Wendat people and the struggles they would face
over the next decade and more.
So that's just a perfect example of the devastation of these lovely children.
Yeah, yeah, you lose so many people, like so much potential gone.
So the Jesuits, they were quite aggressive with their attempts to baptize people, especially children.
Most Wendat were rejecting these attempts and refusing to let them baptize their children,
but the Jesuits would sneak baptisms in by pretending to give children some sugar
or raisins or by wiping their brows.
Yeah, not exactly ethical, but they were zealots who truly believed that if they did not do this,
they were allowing these children to spend eternity in hell. So it may have been possible
to convince some more people to be baptized if their approach was not so insulting.
The priests would approach the dying and ask them if they wanted to go to heaven or hell.
Not exactly a soft touch. So the Wendat found this deeply offensive question,
because what they should be asking them is, do you want to get well again?
Brabuff told the Wendat that the only way to overcome the epidemic was to believe in Christianity
and vow to keep the commandments of the faith. I'm like, that's not going to work either, Jean.
Yeah. But it was practices like these that made the Wendat believe that the Jesuits had an
ungenerous spirit. I can believe that they believed. Oh, I absolutely believe that.
Right. Yeah. And also that even if they didn't, it didn't matter anyways,
because this life is horrible. And the only true life is the one with Jesus Christ in heaven.
Yeah. And you have to be a Christian. Yeah. Taking baptism and affirming the Christian life
in order to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That was truly believe that. And if you did not,
you're in hell. Yep. I mean, people still believe that. Yeah. But anyways,
yeah, they thought they went out or just thought these guys were just completely ungenerous,
you know, the closed doors, not allowing visitors, not accepting their healing practices. And then,
of course, the open disdain they had for Wendat spirituality and healing rituals,
it just created such an atmosphere of distress. Then the fear and anger would come with that,
with the epidemics, wave after wave of them. So it wasn't just the Jesuits who were getting blamed
for some of the epidemics. The nipissing blamed the Kitchis Burini because they did not help the
Kitchis Burini wage war on the Haudenosaunee when they asked for help a year or so before.
So the nipissing believed that the Kitchis Burini were using witchcraft as kind of a payback for
this betrayal. Okay. So there are others in the Wendat villages that were killed for witchcraft.
Just like a lot of times, like you'd kind of go after your enemies, like it's your fault. Yeah.
Like, like witch hunts. Yeah, I was about to say, yeah, like witch hunts. Something's going wrong.
What is it? We don't understand it. It must be supernatural. And I mean germs are nearly supernatural.
They're invisible. Yeah. So the concept of witchcraft causing illnesses was normal in Wendat society.
Honestly, it was normal in European society too. Yeah, 100%. You know, they were used to witches,
of course, but the Jesuits were just complete weirdos to them. They just thought,
like, who are you guys? What are, why are you here? They just couldn't even fathom that idea of,
like, why are these guys here? They could understand the traders, guys like Brule. Yeah.
And like, yeah, okay, absolutely. Come on in. Even though, of course, there are differences,
but they could, they learn from each other and, you know, but the celibate priests were just
something they could not wrap their heads around. The Wendat couldn't understand why they were there
if they didn't trade. They weren't interested in sexual relationships. They refused to give gifts
to help satisfy people's desires, which would heal them. And it just made no sense why they
wanted to live with them. So their only conclusion was they're there to harm them. So they just
believed that the Jesuits were sorcerers with powerful spirits sent to destroy the Wendat people.
So there are all sorts of rumors that were going around, including that Champlain had said
that if he dies, he's basically taking the Wendat nations with him. Oh, wow. He died in 1635.
Okay. So that rumor came from the Algonquin people, probably the
Kitch's Beringy from the Teswets people. Do you remember him? Oh, yes.
The real shit, a stirrer? Yes. He likes drama. Yeah.
So he was trying to destabilize the relationship with the Wendat that they had with the French.
So Aynon, who was the headman of the village, the Jesuits were staying at Aihon Terreia,
was still paranoid that the ghost of Echemberle was causing all of this for his people because Aynon
had either killed him or had him killed back in 1633. So he's like looking over a shoulder for the
past four years for this ghost, ghost of Etienne Brule, or Steve Burns, I should say.
So all this fear swirling around made it dangerous for the Jesuits to stay in Aihon Terreia,
especially with a new headman, Terrantante. I'm sorry if I screwed that up. Anyways,
he said that if any of his family dies, then he would kill the first French many seas.
So I love all these characters coming through. They're like, I'm like, damn, he's probably badass.
So the Jesuits decided it was prudent to move to the next village.
They moved to Asausanay. Not that I helped much. The Wendat people were encouraging their
children to harass the Jesuits and laugh at them and wreck their stuff.
They struggled to make any headway with their conversion attempts.
Wreck their stuff. Just like pulling it apart. Yeah. Like, oh, man.
So the move didn't really help. It didn't really help with what was coming next.
In 1639, Smallpox hit. It started in New England and came up the trade routes with the
Kichis Perini, who had been down visiting with the Abenaki. So Abenaki are kind of on the
east coast, kind of a little south of the Magma. Yeah. The Kichis Perini began dying in such large
numbers that they couldn't bury the bodies and dogs were eating them. Wow. It hit Wendat country
when the traders returned and brought it to the new village of St. Marie.
Jerome Lalamal wrote in the relations a real dickish comment about how the infection got there.
Our heroines having thoughtlessly mingled with some Algonquins, who they met along the way.
Up here, who were infected. When a French man named Robert LeCock, which is a great name,
was stricken with smallpox when traveling with some Huron, they just left him by the side of the
river. They thought for sure he was a dead man because he's just, they're just, you're covered
in sores. Oh, yeah. Just like your eyes and body. Like it's just like,
but he was found by another Huron that he had previously helped and he was brought back to St.
Marie and survived. But the Huron that had left him had started a rumor and said that he had told
them that the Jesuits were to blame and that they had a supernatural serpent to use in witchcraft
to spread this disease that they had at their tabernacle in their chapel. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
When LeCock was at St. Marie, he denied ever saying this, of course, but the damage was done.
It's nearly impossible to pull back such a salacious rumor during a time of horror,
like a smallpox epidemic. So the Jesuits, they never abandoned the people and they did try to
help however they could, but they also did not stop with their main purpose, which was salvation.
The Jesuits baptized about 1000 people during this epidemic in the different villages. Most of the
people would have been deathbed baptisms. Yeah. There were 360 children under the age of seven
that died this time around. Okay. The raw emotional agony in the Wendat nations would have been
unbearable and felt by everyone at the same time. So the Wendat were already reeling with these
losses from all the years back in 1638 when they held their grand council and they were trying to
come up with a way to manage their society in the wake of all these deaths. And after 1639,
it would be even more difficult. The elders were amongst those lost, of course, and they were the
main keepers of spiritual life as well as being some of the most skilled artisans. The loss of
the children will also impact the future of the culture because they were the ones being taught
the ways by these elders. And now they are also lost, having fewer young men to fight in the coming
beaver wars and invasion by the Haudenosaunee at the end of the 1640s is something that will play a role
in what will happen to the Wendat. These losses left the Wendat far more dependent on the French
for trade goods and inhibited their defenses against cultural and religious entanglement,
particularly by the Jesuits. And the Jesuits couldn't help themselves by being religious pricks by
saying that the deaths of the Wendat people, especially the religious leaders, is proof that
the hand of God is moving them towards Christianity. The losses beginning in 1634,
and culminating the horrible smallpox epidemic in 1639, left in the area of 9 to 10,000 people dead.
That is roughly half the pre 1634 population dead within 60 years. Six. The same happened to
the Haudenosaunee too. They may have had had later contact, but once these diseases took hold in
an area combined with the increased trade with the Dutch and English, the Haudenosaunee were just
as impacted as their Wendat brethren. What was the Black Death? Wasn't it a third?
Yeah. Wow. So this is significantly worse. Yeah, well a third or half, depending on where you were.
Okay, true. But yeah, so it's this. So the Haudenosaunee lost about as many as the Wendat,
and they had previously been at near population parity with them before that, before they were
about, I don't know, like 23,000 a piece of Five Nations Confederacy and Wendat Confederacy.
Over the next decade, the Wendat would struggle to find a path forward as their society was
reshaped by these catastrophic losses as the French Empire got a foothold. The formerly
powerful and independent Wendat Confederacy was slowly being subsumed into the burgeoning
colonial power of France and Canada. So it's incredibly devastating. And next, we'll be talking
about the Beaver Wars. And I'm going to be talking about almost like a little bit of a religious
civil war within the Wendat that was kind of concurrent with the war with the Haudenosaunee.
And then what happens then, and we're going to get into Brebo, if we'll do a little bio of him,
because he's interesting. Oh, very. So, and then that'll kind of finish up that.
And then I do want to get into some more social history. Okay. And finally, talk about the ladies.
Oh, yes. Because my sources are slim up to this point on the girls. All right.
But finally, I've got a stack of books about the indigenous women and their work with the
voyagers, then also the early French-Canadian settlers, the women, they came over and then
eventually the feet of raw. Yeah. And then we're going to get into
Madeleine de Vercher. Okay. Some people might remember that name. So we're getting into the
good stuff. All right. All right. Lots of sources and not just the dudes. Yeah. The dudes, the dudes
who are writing all the history. Yeah. All right. Thanks, everyone. And try to remember
sign up for those, uh, Patreon and sub stack, if you can.
