Book Review: "Joseph the Huron" by Antoinette Bosco

Years ago, I read the first 30 or so volumes of the Jesuit Relations—that vast treasure house of historical and ecclesiastical data on the eastern woodlands peoples and the early colonization of Canada, New England and New York. This was part of a very rewarding project called Iroquois Wars, Volume 1: Extracts from the Jesuit Relations and Primary Sources from 1535 to 1650. While pouring over the multitude of reports and letters written by intrepid and saintly men with names like Brebeuf, Jogues, and Lallemant, one also runs across numerous intriguing native people with names like Taratwane, Atironta, and Ondaaiondiont. But perhaps the one that stands out most vividly is Chiwatenhwa. 

This man of the Huron nation, called Joseph Chiwatenhwa after his baptism, lived that most remarkable of lives. Even before the Jesuits arrived, his existence had been markedly different from most of his people. He was an independent thinker, who did not participate thoughtlessly in some of the more ignoble aspects of Huron life. Whereas the French missionaries were often horrified at the grotesque behaviors of some whom they termed "savages" (meaning, literally, "people of the woods"), they soon came to admire Chiwatenhwa as a different sort of man. Writing of events that occurred in the Huron country in AD 1638, Father Fraçois le Mercier offers the following summary of Chiwatenhwa's character even before the time of his baptism: 

This brave Neophyte is thirty-five years old, or thereabout, and has almost nothing of the Savage, except his birth. Now, although he is not one of the most prosperous men of this village, he belongs, nevertheless, to one of the most notable families, being the nephew of the captain of this Nation. He is a man of superior mind, not only as compared with his countrymen, but even, in our judgment, he would pass as such in France. As for his memory, we have often wondered at it, for he forgets nothing of what we teach him, and it is a satisfaction to hear him discourse upon our Holy Mysteries. 

He has been married since his youth, and has never had more than one wife,—contrary to the ordinary practice of the Savages, who are accustomed at that age to change wives at almost every season of the year. He does not gamble, not even knowing how to handle the straws, which are the cards of the country. He does not use tobacco, which is, as it were, the wine and the intoxication of the country. If he annually makes a small garden near his cabin, it is only for pastime, he says, or to give to his friends, or to buy some little conveniences for his family. He has never made use of a charm to be successful. [See Jesuit Relations, Volume 15.]

Following his baptism, Chiwatenwha and his family would be ostracized by his fellow Hurons, many of whom viewed the Jesuit Blackrobes as men of ill omen who would bring destruction upon the nation.

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This is the setting for a remarkable book for younger readers entitled: Joseph the Huron by Antoinette Bosco. I recently discovered this short work, put back into publication by Bethlehem Books in 2017, and my interest in those heady years of extreme zeal and extreme danger in the forests of 17th century North America came flooding back. Originally written in 1961, the book remains faithful to the true history as I recalled it, softening the more awful parts, but only a little. Indeed, the author included a scene that had remained in my memory from reading the Relations twenty years ago thanks to the sheer dreadfulness of it. The incident followed the capture of an Iroquois warrior who was put to a day-long torturous death by the Hurons that was the equivalent of a town-wide festival in those evil days. As the man was literally being burnt alive, bit-by-bit, the Jesuit fathers, unable to restrain the fury of the pre-Christian Hurons, were able to console the victim with the solace of Christ's suffering and the promise of eternal life. Before being literally torn apart, scalped and decapitated, the Iroquois accepted baptism, and the Jesuit father who witnessed this atrocity, remarked afterwards, "that this brave spirit is now enjoying in Heaven the freedom of the children of God, since even his enemies loudly exclaimed that there was something more than human within him."

But incidents like this form only the briefest of interludes within Joseph the Huron. Most of the book concerns the man's journey of faith, from a virtuous pagan to a wondering if impatient neophyte, and finally into a thoughtful Christian who, at times, seemed to eclipse the piety of even the saintly future martyrs who were his mentors and friends. The faith of Joseph Chiwatenwha is not that of the comfortable Christians of our own time. It is a faith constantly challenged by the omnipresent reality of struggle, hunger, disease, and death. Living during a time when Huron culture and behavior was often governed by the precise fulfillment of dreams—often quite ludicrous in nature—Joseph struggled with his own dreams, sometimes wondering whether they were tricks of the demon or visions from God. It may be remembered from a previous post that "abandoning their belief in dreams" was one of the commandments that St. Jean de Brebeuf enjoined upon the Hurons who would become Christians.

The characters of his immediate family also loom large in Joseph the Huron. In particular, the author explores Joseph's relationship with his beloved wife, Marie Aonetta, who would suffer much for her Christian faith. Similarly, the book shows the often contentious relationship between Chiwatenwha and his elder brother, Teondechoren, one of those among the Hurons who was deeply skeptical of anything have to do with Christianity. But the most vividly drawn character aside from Chiwatenwha himself is the man known as Echon—St. Jean de Brebeuf. Echon is accurately presented as Chiwatenwha's friend, teacher, spiritual father, and collaborator. 

As a novel, Joseph the Huron is a fast-paced and beautiful vignette of one man's life during a time of great strife and struggle, particularly well-suited for readers ages 12 and up. Unlike most books written for young readers, the main protagonist is not a young person but a fully grown man grappling with spiritual revelations and cultural differences. As a fully grown man myself, I enjoyed it thoroughly. By pulling the details of this saintly man's life out of the history books, the author has done the world a great favor.