Isaac Jogues: Saint Among the Mohawks

"I go, but I shall never come back again." These were Isaac Jogues' words on the eve of embarking for a second missionary attempt in America. Shortly afterward, a skull-splitting Mohawk tomahawk made him a martyr.

Fresh from the elegant life of Renaissance France, Jesuit priest Isaac Jogues landed in the untamed wilderness of America in 1636. He became fervent in his priestly zeal to devote his life to Christianizing and civilizing the Indian nations that inhabited the trackless forests of this unknown world–natives he was prepared to love, sight unseen, for the love of God and to serve with no reward but God's favor. For six years he lived among the Hurons and Mohawks, a thousand miles from the last French outpost, enduring hunger, thirst, disease, and humiliation at their hands.

A vast canvas unrolls in this suspenseful and swift-moving story of heroic sacrifice in the earliest days of New York and Canada. Against a backdrop of bloody wars between great Indian nations — then between those nations and Europeans, — there appears the magnificent figure of the Jesuit Isaac Jogues, intrepid pioneer, adventurer, victim of horrific cruelties, and saint.

This story of violent action and great sacrifice testifies to the faith and heroism of Isaac Jogues and his fellow martyrs.