Page 192 - Transcriptions d'actes notariés - Tome 20 - 1682-1686

fifteen years of separaiion from priest and Sacraments had wronght in
their halE-pagan souls. Here also he instructed the pagans of eome ten
different nations who flocked in from many directions to see the new
Black Robe. He sufferml much from hunger, loneliness, and the horrors
of pagan life around him. But he hed the great consolation of knowing
that a hundred or niore children whom he had haptized before death:
hed gone straight to Heaven. And little hy linle hi3 flock was growiug.
But the miseionary's eyes were ea~i longiiigly on the great ftelds
that lev ri~e for the harvest al1 eround him. He wes al1 alone et LB
..
. -
~ointe'de '~aint.~e~rit yet, end could not leave his neophytes for
as
long. He did pay a visit to the si ou^ in the west, but he knew iinthing
of their lenguage, and work emong them would have to be deferred to
e later dale. He spent a month, probably during the sunimer of 1666,
among the Saulteurs or Ojibways in the Sault Ste. Merie region. A
mission was begun among them in 1668 by Father James Marquette.
Then one day Allouez heard of some poar ahandonml Christian9 among
the Nipissings, and he resolved to visit them during the suminer of 1661.

Eut who were theae Nipissings? Wheuce had they eonie? And
who had evangdized ~hem? We are deeply jnterestd, for they were
rIie first Christian0 io inhabit the terrjtorv of what is now Fort William

The fint mention of the Nipissinge in Canadian history occurs
when Chemplain wae told of them by other Algonkian tribes on the occa-
sion of his trip up the ûttawa IO Allutriette Islend in 1613. They were
seid to inhabit a region around B lake in the west, and were called Nebi-
cerini.("' They were a rather noniadie people wlio roamed around hunt-
ing and fishing in the great forest area north, west, and south of the
lake which bears their neme. Jean Nicolet, the explorer, went to live
smong them in 1620, and he waa adopted as e member of ~he tribe. He
set clown in his journal copious iioles about their eustom~l and way of
life. '12) When Quebec was captured by the English in 1629 Nicolet sought
refuge among the Nipimings, and remuinml with them till Canada was
restored to the Freneh Crown iii 1632. Ail our information about the
Nipissings is derived from Nicolet and the Jesuita who began mission
work among them in 1640.
We are told that the Nipissinps lived in scattered viilages composed
of bark huts of the inost primitive type of construction. These were
hastily erected, and as hastily abandoned whcn the tribe decided to move
to a new location. There was hardly any ~ocial organization among
them. Onee in a while the older men would assemble in council, but

(11) "Quat~fme Voyage du Sr. de Champlain", pub. in Tlie Wwks of Samuel dt
Cliamplain (Champlain Society ed.), II, p. 2B4 and parnim.
(12) The cliief contents o[ N~CO~PL'U were incorporated into ihe Jesuit
Reiation of 164043.