Sts. John de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues and Companions

Eight Jesuits — six priests and two lay donnés — were killed in New France and Iroquoia between 1642 and 1649: René Goupil, Isaac Jogues, Jean de Lalande, Antoine Daniel, Jean de Brébeuf, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noël Chabanel. Pius XI canonized them together on June 29, 1930. The United States keeps their memorial on October 19; Canada keeps it on September 26, where they are honoured as its patron saints.

Jogues was captured on the St. Lawrence in 1642 and held among the Mohawk for thirteen months, his hands mutilated, before Dutch traders at Fort Orange helped him escape. He returned as an envoy, and on his third journey was killed with a tomahawk at Ossernenon on October 18, 1646. That village site is Auriesville in the Mohawk Valley of New York, where Goupil and Lalande also died and where Kateri Tekakwitha was born ten years later.

Brébeuf had worked among the Wendat since 1626 and left the grammar and dictionary of their language, along with the Huron Carol. He and Lalemant were taken when the Iroquois destroyed the mission village of St. Ignace in March 1649 and were tortured to death there. The Martyrs' Shrine at Midland in Ontario stands beside the reconstructed Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, the mission headquarters the Jesuits burned themselves rather than leave to the attackers. Both shrines hold relics of the martyrs.