Sainte Marie among the Iroquois: Two Years on Onondaga Lake

In the summer of sixteen fifty-six, a flotilla of canoes arrived at the shores of Onondaga Lake, near present-day Syracuse. The passengers included Jesuit priests, French artisans, and lay brothers who had paddled all the way from Quebec in response to an extraordinary invitation: the Onondaga Nation, one of the five original members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, had asked the French to come.

The Onondaga invitation was rooted in politics as much as theology. A fragile peace had recently been negotiated between the French and the Confederacy, and the Onondaga wanted a permanent French presence as a guarantee of that peace and as a counterweight to the growing power of their Haudenosaunee rivals, the Mohawk, who had a closer relationship with the Dutch and later the English. The Jesuits were also attracted by the prospect of a mission at the heart of the most powerful indigenous confederacy on the continent.

They built a palisaded settlement on the lakeshore and named it Sainte Marie among the Iroquois, a deliberate echo of the famous Jesuit mission among the Huron that had been destroyed seven years earlier. For two years, priests said mass, learned Onondaga, and attempted to build relationships with the community around them.

But circumstances shifted. The Mohawk grew hostile to the French presence. A new governor in Quebec showed little interest in supporting the mission. In the spring of sixteen fifty-eight, the French gathered their belongings and slipped away.

The mission lasted exactly two years. A replica of its palisaded encampment stands today on the lakeshore as an interpretive museum and living history site, operated near the original location.