Isaac Jogues (10 January 1607 – 18 October 1646) was a French missionary and martyr who traveled and worked among the Haudenosaunee, Wendat (Huron), and other Native populations in North America. He was the first European to name Lake George, calling it Lac du Saint Sacrement (Lake of the Blessed Sacrament). In 1646, Jogues was martyred by the Mohawk at their village of Ossernenon, near the Mohawk River.
Jogues, Jean de Brébeuf and six other martyred missionaries, all Jesuit priests or laypeople associated with them, were canonized by the Catholic Church in 1930; they are known as the Canadian Martyrs, or the North American Martyrs. A shrine was built in their honor at Auriesville, New York, formerly believed to be the location of the Mohawk village. Their feast day is celebrated on 19 October in the General Roman Calendar and 26 September in Canada.
Isaac Jogues was born to Laurent Jogues and Françoise de Sainte-Mesmin on 10 January 1607. He was born in Orléans, France, into a bourgeois family, where he was the fifth of nine children. He was educated at home until the age of ten, at which point he began attending Jesuit schools. In 1624, at the age of seventeen, he entered the Jesuit novitiate at Rouen in Northern France. Here, his master of novices was Louis Lallemant. The Jesuit community had a strong missionary spirit, beginning in 1625 with their first mission to New France, including missionary pioneers, Énemond Massé, and later, Jean de Brébeuf. Lallement had two brothers and a nephew serving as missionaries in the colony of New France. These Jesuit missionaries inspired Jogues, and he aspired to follow in their footsteps.
Jogues professed simple vows in 1626, and went to study philosophy at the royal college of La Flèche. In 1629, he taught humanities to boys in Rouen. In 1633, Jogues was sent to the Collège de Clermont in Paris to pursue his studies in theology. In 1636, he was ordained a priest at Clermont.
In 1636 missionary fathers Brébeuf, Charles Lallemant and Massé returned from New France. They told Jogues of the hardships, treacheries, and tortures which ordinarily awaited missionaries in New France. Their accounts however, increased Jogues's desire to "devote himself to labour there for the conversion and welfare of the natives". Soon after Jogues was ordained, he accepted service in the missions and embarked to New France with several other missionaries, among them Charles Garnier. Jogues was assigned as a missionary to the Wendat (Huron) and Algonquian peoples; both were allies of the French in New France.
Jogues sailed from France on 8 April 1636, and eight weeks later, his ship dropped anchor in the Baie des Chaleurs. Jogues arrived in Quebec City only several weeks later, on 2 July. On arrival, Jogues wrote to his mother: "I do not know it is to enter Heaven, but this I know—that it would be difficult to experience in this world a joy more excessive and more overflowing than I felt in setting foot in the New World, and celebrating my first Mass on the day of Visitation."
Jogues joined Jean de Brébeuf, the superior of the Jesuit mission, at their settlement on Lake Huron, the village of St-Joseph (Ihonatiria), on 11 September. Upon his arrival, Jogues was stricken by fever. Soon after that, a similar epidemic broke out among other Jesuits and the native people. Due to recurring epidemics, the Wendat blamed the "Black Coats", as they called the Jesuits, threatening to kill them all. Father Brébeuf conciliated them, and by the following year, relations had improved as evidenced by one of his reports: "We are gladly heard, and there is scarcely a village that has not invited us to go to it... And at last, it is understood from our whole conduct that we have not come to buy skins or to carry on any traffic, but solely to teach them and to procure them their souls' health."
For six years, Jogues lived in the village of St-Joseph and learned the Wendat's ways and language. The missionaries "accommodated themselves to the customs and food" of the Wendat as much as possible to show them that they intended to share their life. Gradually, the native people began to accept Jogues. This did not last long, however, as there were some native people who had been "among the English and Dutch settlers to the south" who spread reports that the missionaries brought "calamity wherever they went and that they had in consequence been driven out of Europe."
Jogues traveled with Garnier to the Petun, a native band located in modern-day southern Ontario, who were also known as the Tobacco Nation for their main commodity crop. The natives of the village were so uninviting to the missionaries that the fathers thought it would be impossible to do any missionary work among them. The rumors that had encircled them spread to the village and they quickly discovered that their cause was just as hopeless as in St-Joseph. They traveled from village to village, until after a couple of months, they decided that they could not continue their missionary work. Their luck changed however, when in 1639 the new superior of the Jesuit mission, Father Jérôme Lalemant, entrusted the building of Fort Sainte-Marie to Jogues.
In September 1641, Jogues and Charles Raymbault went into the territory of the Saulteurs (Oijbwe). Some two thousand natives welcomed them upon their arrival. Jogues settled down to the duties of a resident missioner at Sainte-Marie for some time.
On 3 August 1642, Jogues, Guillaume Couture, René Goupil, and a group of Christian Wendat were heading back from Quebec City when they were waylaid by a war party of the Mohawk Nation, part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Jogues allegedly hid in reeds and bushes but decided to leave his hiding place to join the prisoners so that he could comfort them and ensure that their faith in Christianity remained strong. Shortly after that, and in retaliation for comforting a tortured Couture, the Mohawk beat Jogues with sticks, tore out his fingernails, then gnawed the ends of his fingers until finger bones were visible. The war party then took their captives on a journey to a Mohawk village. The villagers marched them through a gauntlet, consisting of rows of Mohawk armed with rods and sticks, beating the prisoners walking in single-file. Afterward, they forced the prisoners onto an elevated platform where they were mocked. A captive Algonquin woman then cut off Jogues's thumb. At night, the prisoners were tied spread-eagle in a cabin. Children threw burning coals onto their bodies. Three days later, Jogues and the other prisoners were marched from one village to another, where the Haudenosaunee flogged them in gauntlets and jabbed sticks into their wounds and sores. At the third village, Jogues was hung from a wooden plank and nearly lost consciousness until an Haudenosaunee had pity on him and cut him free. Throughout his captivity, Jogues comforted, baptized, heard confession from, and absolved the other prisoners.
Hearing of their capture, Arent van Curler, commis of Rensselaerswyck, visited the "first castle" and attempted to ransom them. Van Curler was unsuccessful, but was able to elicit a promise not to kill the captives. Instead of being put to death or integrated into a Mohawk family, Jogues remained a captive at large. Perpetually malnourished and inadequately dressed for the harsh winters, he spent his days gathering wood, praying, and proselytizing his captors. Seeking solace in his faith, Jogues prayed so intensely that he had visions: in one, he suddenly appeared in a bookstore covered in crosses and bought a book that reminded him that, to enter into Heaven, it was necessary to experience many tribulations. His captivity dragged on, lasting about a year, during which he experienced severe malnourishment and exposure to the cold. During this period, some noteworthy incidents were when he saved the life of a pregnant woman that had fallen into a deep, fast-flowing creek during the winter and when he baptized the Haudenosaunee man who had freed him from the wooden torture device.