HERO OF NEW FRANCE
| In 1642, Cousture left Trois-Rivières for an expedition in the Huronie, with fathers Isaac Jogues and René Goupil and 19 Huron Indians. In the vicinity of lake Saint-Pierre, the small convoy was attacked by a group of about 80 Iroquois warriors. As the battle raged, Cousture managed to shoot one of the chiefs with his pistol, but the battle was nevertheless lost. Cousture managed to escape but, upon realising his friends had been captured, decided to return on the scene of the attack where he was captured himself.
Thirsty for revenge, the Iroquois captured the French and Hurons travellers and tortured them. Father Jogues tells us of these events in his notes. Here is an approximate translation in English.
«Cousture, who had killed one of their chiefs in the combat, was exposed to their whole fury. They undressed him and beat him up with wooden sticks. They ripped out his fingernails with their teeth and stabbed a sword through his hand. One of the savages cut off half of his right middle finger. The pain was all the more unbearable since he did not use a knife, but a piece of shell. Since he could not cut the slippery nerve, the savage twisted it and pulled with such violence, that a nerve the lenght of the arm came out. The arm became prodigiously swollen».
The two Jésuites went through similar horrible torture and Goupil was finally assassinated with an axe because he had made the sign of a cross on the forehead of an Iroquois child. Jogues will also be killed later, like many other Jésuites such as Father Jean de Brébeuf. These brave men are now known as «les Saints Martyrs Canadiens» (the holy Canadien martyrs).
| In 1646, Cousture asked to be relieved of his vows, probably so he could marry and Iroquois woman (although no documents can prove this). He continued to negociate the peace he dreamed of with the different Indian nations. He was about to succeed when, on October 18th 1646, fathers Jogues and Lalande who had been sent as emissaries to the Iroquois were ruthlessly massacred. Negociations were abruptly stopped. The Algonquins and Hurons were pleased of this turn of event because they desired the monopoly of the commerce with the French.