The Baptismal Register of Fort Duquesne - From June, 1754, to Dec;, 1756 #246690

The accounts of the labors, sacrifices and martyrdoms of the early missionaries of this country must ever form one of the most interesting pages of our history. Not religion only, but the sciences - geography, geology, medicine, philology, ethnology - must recognize them among her most faithful, though not, perhaps, her most speculative advocates. History especially finds them her truest witnesses. Penetrating ever more and more deeply into the virgin wilds, their mission brought them into contact with the aborigines in a manner which led them to study these children of the forest in a light the most favorable for learning the past of their history or mythology, the present of their manners and customs, religious, political, military and social, and their ideas of a future existence when their career in this land of exile was terminated. Nothing could exceed the zeal and intrepidity of these early missionaries; and though prejudiced, and in some cases ignorant historians, have without reason labored to impute motives to them unworthy of their high calling, the whole tenor of their lives stands, and will ever stand, as the best refutation of the groundless calumny. Contrasting them with the "Apostle of the Indians," Mr. Bancroft, who will hardly be suspected of partiality for the sons of Ignatius of Loyola, or Francis of Assissium, was forced by the weight of truth to pay them tills tribute: "The religious zeal of the French bore the cross to the banks of the St. Mary and the confines of Lake Superior, and looked wistfully towards the homes of the Sioux in the valley of the Mississippi, five years before the Now England Eliot had addressed the tribe of Indians that dwelt within six miles of Boston harbor."<br><br>The following pages will form another slight tribute to the zeal and fidelity of these illustrious pioneers of Christian truth and civilization.