National Shrine of the North American Martyrs

The National Shrine of the North American Martyrs, also dedicated as the Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs, is a Roman Catholic shrine in Auriesville, New York dedicated to the three Jesuit missionaries who were martyred at the Mohawk Indian village of Ossernenon in 1642 and 1646.

In the 1642, a small band of Jesuit missionaries set out from Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, a settlement in Ontario, Canada, to work among the Huron tribe of upstate New York and the territories in Canada. They were captured en route by a party of Mohawks, a tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, and enemy of the Huron.Rene Goupil, a surgeon and later Jesuit lay brother, and Father Isaac Jogues were brought to the Mohawk settlement of Ossernenon. Caught teaching a child the sign of the cross, Goupil was felled with a blow from a hatchet and died. He was the first of the order in the Canadian missions to suffer martyrdom. Jogues remained a captive for thirteen months before Dutch traders and minister Johannes Megapolensis from Fort Orange (Albany) paid a ransom and gained his freedom from the Mohawk; they arranged for his transportation by boat to New Amsterdam, from where he returned to France.

Jogues returned to New France in the spring of 1644. He gave the name of "Lake of the Blessed Sacrament" to the body of water called by the Indians Horicon, now known as Lake George. In 1646 Jogues, accompanied by John LaLande, a lay missionary, was sent to negotiate peace with the Iroquois. In late September he began his third and last journey to the Mohawk. In the interim sickness had broken out in the tribe and a blight had fallen on the crops. This double calamity was ascribed to Jogues, whom the Indians always regarded as a sorcerer. The news of this change of sentiment spread rapidly, and though fully aware of the danger, Jogues continued on his way to Ossernenon. All his companions except Lalande fled. The Mohawk captured him near Lake George, beat him and led him to the village. On 18 October 1646 when entering a cabin, Jogues was struck with a tomahawk and killed. LaLande was killed the next day, while trying to recover Jogues' body. Together with Goupil, they are the only canonized Roman Catholic martyrs of the United States. (The Russian Orthodox Church canonized two martyrs—St. Peter the Aleut and St. Juvenal of Alaska—in 1970).

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