where he might find a suitable landing-place; and at once, setting all sails, hurried with his vessels to the designated spot. Towards night he made for the land, and his men were soon at work, with all possible haste, to take in provisions of wood and water. But ere they had fairly commenced, fires were built on every eminence of that vicinity, and intermittent flames and smoke signals that frightened us in Oregon a few years ago-called together that very night the braves of Icaria, who suddenly swarmed forth from behind the hills and fell upon the intruders with such effect that many of Zichmni's men fell wounded or slain. The sea-rovers withdrew in a hurry and steered for deep water. For several days they hung and swung about the island, but the natives followed them in great numbers over hill and vale, with ever-increasing demonstrations of the most unfriendly nature. Zichmni hung out the white shield again, but all his efforts to come to another conference proved futile. The Americans were doggedly resolved, as Zeno puts it, to keep at a distance the foreign robbers. Not to perish of hunger, the viking finally spread his canvas and set out for more favorable quarters, where we shall follow him later on.1 It may not be useless to remark that from the fact of the Icarians' interpreter being an Icelander on this occasion, we may conclude that, at the end of the fourteenth century, not only Faroese fishermen, as it is related here, and northern pirates visited the American coasts, but Icelanders, also, were at the time still sailing to, and likely entertaining business relations with, the remnants of the Scandinavian colonies on our continent. 1 See Document LIV., p. The reader will have observed, however, that, while in this last episode the people of our northeastern coasts still gave evident signs of civilization in recognizing Zichmni's signal of peace, in keeping interpreters, in acceding to a conference with their enemies, and in offering a friendly reception to one of them; they had already accepted several of the natural dispositions and of the customs of our Indian aborigines; in particular, their primitive system of distant signals in time of war, and a sufficient portion of their language to have become incapable of conversing with persons of their own ancestral stock. Thus had the descendants of the old Vinland colonists gradually lost their national identity as time had rolled on, although they had preserved yet a few marks and vestiges of original superiority in body, culture, and religion over the other Indian tribes of North America. II.-18 CHAPTER XIII. VESTIGES OF CHRISTIANITY IN NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. REMARKABLE differences between the natives to the South of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the other North American Indians have been especially noticed by the French discoverers and first missionaries of Canada. The distinguishing features consisted especially in the customs of these coast tribes, in housing and dressing, and in some of their religious practices that gave clear evidence of former civilization and Christianity. Father Chrestien Leclercq was greatly astonished and puzzled when he came among the natives along Holy Cross River, in the year 1677. "The ancient worship of these savages," he "and says, their religious use of the cross would somehow make us believe that these people have in former ages received the knowledge of the gospel and of Christianity, which they must have lost through the negligence and licentiousness of their forefathers."1 The missionary had no idea of the sojourn of Christian Scandinavians in these countries. But we may readily presume that the Christian religion was established again in this portion of our continent by the converted colonists of Greenland; 2 and it should be no wonder if one of the clerics sent along from Norway with Leif the Fortunate accompanied him on his 1 Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspésie, p. 40. 2 Fidel Fita, in Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, t. xxi. p. 237. The first evangelization having been made by the Irish Papas. 2 excursion to Vinland. There is, however, no explicit mention made of any bishop or priest as having preached the gospel in the American province of Greenland before the year 1053 or 1059, when, according to a supplement to the "Landnámabók," followed by Torfæus1 and most modern authors, one of Iceland's missionary bishops, Jón or John, of whom we have spoken before, set out for Vinland in order to convert its people, and finally closed his mission there by suffering torture and death. Yet, as we noticed already, it is more likely that this apostolic man, after laboring four years in Iceland, instead of coming farther west to Vinland the Good, returned to Europe and obtained a martyr's crown in the country of the Wendes, or Vindland, as the "Hungrvaka" saga relates. If the visit of this Bishop John to our continent is very doubtful, it is, on the contrary, all the better and historically established that, in the year 1121, the last regionary bishop of Greenland, Eric Gnupson, left his episcopal see of Steines, or of Gardar, to sail to the American province of Vinland. A number of ancient documents and all subsequent authors agree on this point.* The character of the person is sufficient evidence that he went on a religious errand,-to convert, says Maltebrun," his countrymen who were still pagans, or, as Belknap just as erroneously asserts, who had degenerated into savages. As the first Christians of Oregon were French-Canadian trappers, and the arch 1 Vinland. Ant., cap. xvi. p. 71. Mallet, t. i. p. 254; Gravier, p. 166; Moosmüller, S. 49; Gaffarel, Histoire, t. i. p. 333; Herbermann; ch. xvi. p. 62; Bastian, Bd. ii. S. 443. 3 Supra, pp. 129, 130. • See Document LIII.; supra, p. 6 202, seq.; Arngrim Jonae, Groen- Amer. Biography, vol. i. p. 51. bishop of Quebec sent forth to these members of his flock his vicar-general, F. N. Blanchet, who became the first primate of the ecclesiastical province of our far Northwest, so were the old Scandinavian settlements and trading-posts on our continent considered to be an integral portion of the diocese of Greenland; and, as Gravier remarks,' we may admit that these colonies had attained a sufficient importance to justify Eric, the Greenland bishop, in visiting this distant part of his diocese himself and consecrating to it the remainder of his life. The text of the sagas allows us to assume that Eric Gnupson arrived in Vinland, but relates no details of his sojourn or labors. We only know that he never returned; and, either by resigning his former charge to commence a new bishopric, or by remaining on our continent until his death, he left the extensive territory of Greenland without a bishop, "biskupslaust,' until Arnold, the first resident prelate of Gardar, was, in the year 1124, consecrated to replace him. Eric was probably accompanied on his distant apostolic expedition by one or more priests, who were to assist him in his zealous labor; and, if we take into consideration the customs of the Catholic Church, we may well presume that the Scandinavian traders and colonists on our coasts were at no time deprived of religious comfort. The voyage to Newfoundland of the Icelandic priests Adalbrand and Thorvald in the year 1285 is noteworthy in this respect, for they went both to find protection in a distant Christian country and to make themselves useful through their holy ministrations. 1 P. 167. Cf. Amer. Cath. Quar. Rev., vol. xiii. p. 232; Gravier, p. 167; Moosmüller, S. 161. We do not see on what grounds it can be asserted that he died in A.D. 1122. (Congrès Scientifique des Catholiques, 1894; sec. Sciences, etc., p. 180, seq.) 4 Supra, p. 248. |