Less than two hundred years before, the poetry of Indian life among
the peaceful shades of this virgin wilderness was turned into a tale
too ghastly for human imagination, too terrible for human endurance.
At that time the Huron settlements on the borders of Lakes Simcoe and
Couchiching, and between Nottawasaga and Matchedash bays, numbered
from twenty to thirty thousand souls. The picturesque country, thickly
dotted with Indian towns, was for many years the scene of Champlain's
zealous efforts to erect in these western wilds the standard of the
Cross. While he won, among the Hurons, converts to his faith and a
colony to his country, they found in him a leader in a fateful attack
upon their ancient and most obdurate enemies, the Iroquois. The result
of the expedition was failure and discomfiture, but years afterwards,
when Champlain was dead, and the "great-souled and giant-statured Jean
de Brebeuf" became known as the apostle of the tribe, this foray
brought most disastrous consequences upon the unsuspecting Hurons.
Not far from the present site of Barrie was the frontier town of St.
Joseph, where the Jesuit Fathers, in view of the perils surrounding
them, had concentrated their forces in a central stronghold, with a
further inland defence at Ste.
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