North American Martyrs

Who was North American Martyrs?

The Canadian Martyrs, also known as the North American Martyrs or the Martyrs of New France, were eight Jesuit missionaries from Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, who were tortured and martyred on various dates in the mid-17th century in Canada, in what are now southern Ontario and upstate New York, during the warfare between the Iroquois and the Huron.

The Martyrs are St. Jean de Brébeuf, St. Noël Chabanel, St. Antoine Daniel, St. Charles Garnier, St. René Goupil, St. Isaac Jogues, St. Jean de Lalande, and St. Gabriel Lalemant.

By the late 1640s the Jesuits appeared to have been making more progress in their mission to the Huron, and they claimed to have made many converts at this time. Nevertheless, within Huron communities, the priests were not universally trusted. Many Hurons considered them to be malevolent shamans who brought death and disease wherever they travelled. Their arrival had coincided with epidemics after 1634 of smallpox and other infectious diseases, to which aboriginal peoples had no immunity.. The Iroquois considered the Jesuits legitimate targets, as the missionaries were nominally allies of the Huron. They had often helped organize resistance to Iroquois invasions.