There were eight of them. Eight men who came to these shores, full of religious furor. They would make a lasting impact, and they would all lose their lives, assured that they were doing God's work. Most of the people they encountered feared them, and even hated them, at least at first.

They got their orders from a mysterious figure, located in a country far from here, and they came from varied backgrounds. One was a surgeon, and two were teachers. One had wealthy parents, another was the son of simple farmers. But, they were all united in the importance of their mission.

So, who WERE these men, you ask? Forgotten and ignored by many, and revered by few, these men should serve, especially now, to put in sharp relief, the difference between them and us. The antecedents of "them and "us" will become clear soon enough.

Our eight men came from France, and all of them were Jesuits. Jean de Brébeuf, Isaac Jogues, Antoine Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier, and Noel Chabanel were priests, and Jean de la lande and René Goupil were lay-brothers.

They worked among the native Hurons until they met their deaths at the hands of the mortal enemies of the Hurons: the Iroquois and the Mohawks. Yes, friends, you won't learn this in school, but the "Native Americans" were doing a fine job of killing each other, long before the first Europeans arrived. The Iroquois were especially bloodthirsty, and had raised human torture to an art form. Yet, our men entered this savage land.

Goupil was the surgeon, and brought healing to the natives for about four years, while being duly respectful to their own medicine men. In 1642, he was captured by a group of Iroquois and tomahawked to death on September 29 at Osserneon near Albany, New York, for making the sign of the cross on the forehead of some children.

Jogues took the Gospel to the Mohawks, and became the first European to travel as far as Lake Superior--one thousand miles inland. Think about how daunting a task this would have been in the mid 17th century!

Jogues was with Goupil when the latter was killed, but Jogues, instead, was kept as a slave for 13 months, and lost the use of his hands. He escaped just before he was to be slowly roasted to death, and somehow made it back to France.

Less than three years after his captivity, he returned, with Jean de Lalande, to his place of imprisonment (Osserneon, now Auriesville, NY), this time as a missionary to the Iroquis with whom a peace treaty had been signed. A few weeks later, a member of the Mohawk Bear clan, believing him to be a sorcerer, blamed him for the suffering of his people. Jogues and de la Lande were beaten and slashed with knives, and that evening Isaac Jogues was tomahawked. The next day de la Lande was killed in the same way. They were decapitated, and their heads were impaled on the settlement palisade. Their trunks thrown into the Mohawk River, about 40 miles west of Albany, NY.

Daniel founded a school for native boys, and was killed by the Iroquois in 1648. Garnier instructed and lived with the Hurons, and was killed by the Iroquois in 1649. Chabanel was an assistant to Garnier, and was killed in 1649.

John de Brébeuf lived with the Hurons for many years, preaching to them in their own language, even writing a catechism in Huron. He founded schools and baptized over 200 neophytes in one year. When smallpox killed thousands of Indians in 1637, the missionaries were blamed by the tribal medicine men for the disaster. Brébeuf was condemned to death, but spoke so eloquently of the after-life that he was given a reprieve. In 1649, he was captured together with Gabriel Lalemant by Iroquois, near Georgian Bay, and was tortured for hours, mutilated, burned to death, and finally eaten.

Our eight men, now saints, brought Christian charity, healing, education, and the rudiments of civilization to a wild and cruel land. Their men brought misery, death, and destruction to a civilized land, while being treated with the greatest hospitality.

For anyone with eyes to see, the battle lines are clearly drawn, even as Muslims protest our war policy and support Bin Laden.

But, how many eyes DO see, after nearly 100 years of secularism, socialism, and moral degradation? How sure is the average American of his values and culture? At least the Iroqouis knew which side they were on.

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