CANADO-AMERICANI, MARTIRI. – They form a group of eight Jesuit martyrs, six Fathers and two coadjutor Brothers, missionaries among the Indigenous peoples of the Huron tribe in Canada, martyred by the Iroquois Indigenous peoples between 1642 and 1649. They were beatified and canonized by Pius XI, respectively on 21 June 1925 and 29 June 1930.
I. S. JEAN de BRÉBEUF, born at Condé-sur-Vire (Normandy) on 25 March 1593; in Canada from 1625, among the Algonquins and then among the Hurons on the shores of the lake of the same name. Returning to Québec, he fell prisoner to English pirates and was transported to England. Once peace had been made between France and England, he was able to return to the mission in 1633, where, with Fr. G. Lallemant, he founded many stations among the Hurons, which promised a splendid flowering. But the new war between the two nations also provoked a fratricidal struggle between the Christian Hurons and the pagan Iroquois, which led to the extermination of the former and the total ruin of the mission. Fr. Brébeuf was cruelly martyred in the village of Saint-Louis on 16 March 1649.
II. S. GABRIEL LALLEMANT, born in Paris on 10 October 1610. In Canada from 1646. After remaining two years in Québec, he had arrived only six months earlier at Fr. Brébeuf’s station when he was captured by the Iroquois together with him and, with him, martyred even more cruelly, expiring on 17 March.
III. S. JSAAC JOGUES, born at Orléans on 10 January 1607. In Canada from 1636. During a journey to Québec (1642), he was captured by the Iroquois together with his entire caravan, composed of Hurons and the coadjutor Brother R. Goupil. He was taken derisively through the various villages and tortured, but managed to escape and made his way to France. Two years later, he was once again in the former field of his work (1644). But the Iroquois, for whom he had pleaded for peace in Québec, turned against him and martyred him in the village of Ossernenon (today Auricsville, in the United States, where a shrine in his honor and that of S. Réné Goupil and S. G. de la Lande stands) on 18 October 1646.
IV. S. ANTOINE DANIEL, born at Dieppe on 27 May 1598; in Canada from 1633, where he devoted himself greatly to the Hurons. Attacked in the village of Ihonatria by a band of Iroquois, he was killed by arrows and blows from an axe, and his body was thrown into the flames of his burning chapel (4 July 1648).
V. S. NOËL CHABANEL, born at Mende (southern France) on 2 February 1616; in Canada among the Algonquins and the Hurons with Fr. C. Garnier; until he was treacherously killed by an apostate Huron on 8 December 1649. The very serious difficulty of learning the Indian dialects and adapting himself to that life among the savages, so repugnant to his nature, led him to make the heroic vow never voluntarily to leave that mission.
VI. S. CHARLES GARNIER, born in Paris on 28 May 1606; in Canada from 1636, where he worked fruitfully among the Tobacco tribe. He was martyred during the fratricidal struggle between the Hurons and the Iroquois, in the village of Saint John, on 7 December 1649.
VII. S. RÉNÉ GOUPIL, born at Angers in 1607. A coadjutor Brother; while accompanying Fr. Jogues on the journey to Québec (1642), he too was captured and tortured by the Iroquois, then killed by one of them in the village of Ossernenon because he was caught tracing the sign of the cross on the forehead of a child (29 September 1642).
VIII. S. JEAN de la LANDE, born at Dieppe. Nothing else is known except that, accompanying Fr. Jogues as an Oblate on his second journey among the Iroquois (1646), he was captured with him and killed by a blow from an axe on 19 October 1646.
Feast: the Canadian group: de Brébeuf, Lallemant,
Daniel, Garnier, Chabanel, 16 March; the United States group: Jogues, Goupil, de la Lande, 18 October.