2

Artists' conception of Fort Sainte-Marie I
circa 1963
Midland, Ontario, Canada


Credits:
Museum of Ontario Archaeology

3

By 1634 the Jesuits had re-established Missions in Huronia, with Jean de Brebeuf as Superior. Subsequently Jesuit Superiors Father Jerome Lalemant and Father Paul Ragueneau selected as their central base the site and Mission of Sainte-Marie I (located just outside of present-day Midland, Ontario), where from 1639 to 1649 not only the Jesuits but also European donnes (lay brothers) and workmen lived alongside the Huron. The Iroquoian confederacy of present-day New York State began a campaign of war against the Huron and their allies, which reached a peak in 1648-1649.

After witnessing or hearing of the destruction of several Huron villages and their own Mission sites in Huronia, the Jesuits in June 1649 ordered the evacuation of Sainte-Marie I and they themselves set fire to it lest it fall into the hands of the attacking Iroquois. Some of the surviving Jesuits and Huron then relocated to the site of Sainte-Marie II on Christian Island for a short interval, then fled Huronia entirely. Before this occurred, however, eight Jesuits who had served in various locations throughout eastern North America had suffered terrible deaths in the cause of their faith. Since the mid-nineteenth century researchers have spent considerable effort in attempts to positively correlate certain archaeological sites with the Huron villages and Jesuit Missions such as Sainte-Marie I and II, St. Ignace I and II, St.Jean, Cahiague and Ossossane that were named in archival sources such as the Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. The Jurys' work in Huronia, starting in 1946, was no exception to this.