Affairs were now in a bad state; the Iroquois were uncurbed and unsettled through the weak administration of de Lauson, and thus prepared for the bitter war again to be proclaimed at the end of 1657.
But at present, in the summer of 1657, there was nothing but anticipation of the arrival of the governor and the four Sulpicians who were to be the parish clergy, with a permanent abode and a settled ecclesiastical status.
The Jesuits who had so long served the mission were to be free to go to the up-country Indians--their long connection with the settlement was to be severed.
(From 1642 to August 12, 1657, when the Sulpicians succeeded them.)
The first mayor of Montreal, Commander Jacques Viger, has collected in a little manuscript book preserved in the Archives of St. Marie's College at Montreal the list of Jesuits serving Montreal from 1642-1657 as follows:
Joseph Poncet, 1642-4; Joseph Imbert Duperon, 1642-3; Ambroise Daoust, 1643; Gabriel Druillettes, 1643-5; Isaac Jogues, 1645; Jacques Buteaux, 1645; Paul Le Jeune, 1645-6; Adrien Daran, 1646; Georges d'Eudemare, 1647-8; Jean de Quen, 1648-50; Pierre Bailloquet, 1648; Charles Albanel, 1650; André Richard, 1650; Siméon Le Moyne, 1650; Claude Pijart, 1650 to August 12, 1657.
Fifteen Jesuits resident in fifteen years. This does not account for names of other distinguished missionaries visiting, whose names appear on the registers as having officiated at Ville Marie baptisms, marriages, deaths and other documents during this early period. Mr. E. Z. Massicotte in his "Les Colons de Montreal de 1642-1667," gives some of these as follows:
1649--Jérome Lalemant, June 1st to 11th, May 19th to 24th.
1655--Claude Dablon passed through Montreal in October, also on the 30th of March, 1666. He would also have signed 3-5-'62 a document concerning Hudson Bay.
1656--Joseph Marie Chaumont, October, the bearer of a message for the Iroquois in 1661, was at Montreal in 1662, resided at Montreal in 1663.
1656--Léonard Gareau, wounded in a combat on August 30th, buried September 2d.
Of the Montreal Jesuits, there are some who merit special mention here.
Joseph Antoine Poncet de la Rivière, of aristocratic birth, was born in Paris and entered the Society of Jesus in his nineteenth year as a novice. His studies finished, he came to New France in 1639. He shortly went to the Huron mission. We next find him, 1642-4, the first priest in charge of the mission chapel at the fort of Montreal. After this he ministered at Quebec. On his return from a visit to the Iroquois, he went down the St. Lawrence and was the first white man to glide through the Thousand Islands. He was giving the alarm to the colonists at Cape Rouge in the summer of 1653, when he was himself seized by the savages. He bore a remembrance of the ill treatment of his captivity in the form of a lost finger, which a little child had been ordered to cut off. He was afterwards released to the Dutch at Fort Orange and returned to Quebec on November 5th, "just nine times nine days after my capture," he says. We next know him as the storm centre of ecclesiastical differences between Montreal and Quebec. As a result of this Poncet was sent back to Europe. He was installed as French penitentiary at Loretto, and later was sent to Martinique, where he died on June 18, 1675.