Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine, New York, United States

In 1642, Father Isaac Jogues and René Goupil were captured by Mohawks while running supplies along the Mohawk River.  They were taken to Ossernenon where they were tortured and enslaved.

Rene Goupil was killed on September 29, 1642 because he had blessed a boy with the sign of the cross.  He died praying the rosary and his body was buried by Father Jogues in a ravine which is located on the present property of the Shrine of North American Martyrs.

Father Jogues managed to escape to France with the help of Dutch settlers, but he later returned to Ossernenon with John Lalande as peace ambassadors.  John Lalande was just a teenager at the time.

Father Jogues was killed by the Mohawks on October 18, 1646 when a box of his belongings was blamed for crop pestilence.  John Lalande was killed the next day when he tried to collect the corpse of Father Jogues.

Ten years later, a female child named Tekawitha was born in Ossernenon.  As a child, she contracted smallpox and was left badly scarred and with poor eyesight.  Her parents and brother died in the smallpox epidemic. At the age of 20, Tekawitha was baptized and took the name Kateri, a Mohawk pronunciation of the name Catherine, after Saint Catherine of Siena.  Kateri Tekawitha died when she was 24 years old.  Witnesses reported that, after her death, her smallpox scars disappeared.

In 1884, Father Joseph Loyzance, pastor of Saint Joseph’s Church in Troy, New York purchased a piece of land at the former site of Ossernenon and established the Shrine of North American Martyrs in Auriesville.  Additional land, including the ravine where Father Jogues buried the body of René Goupil, was purchased in 1895.

Auriesville is on the south bank of the Mohawk River, about forty miles west of Albany, New York. It is about nine miles east of what archeologists believe to be the site of Osserneonon, the Mohawk village where the three Jesuit missionaries were martyred. It was destroyed in the 17th century and the site was abandoned.

In the nineteenth century, research on the part of Catholic historian John Gilmary Shea and Gen. J. S. Clarke of Auburn, who had studied Indian sites both in New York and Huron territory, led to their believing they had identified the former site of Ossersnenon, where Father Jogues and his companions died. Rev. Joseph Loyzance, a parish priest of St. Joseph’s, Troy, New York, had a lifelong interest in the lives of the early missionaries and supported honoring them at this site, which developed as Auriesville.

In 1884, Father Loyzance purchased ten acres of land on the hill where the village had been located, and erected a small shrine under the title of Our Lady of Martyrs. Father Loyzance subsequently led a pilgrimage of 4,000 people from Albany and Troy to the shrine. Other parishes later adopted the practice of visiting Auriesville during the summer.

In 1930, a coliseum was built at the shrine, overlooking the Mohawk Valley, as one of the first circular churches built in the United States. The Coliseum’s design allows for the seating of approximately 6000 worshipers for Holy Mass. Today the grounds of the Shrine cover some 600 acres (2.4 km).

The adage, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” has a literal meaning here.

During the 17th century, the Mohawks lived on the site of the Shrine in longhouses which were tunnel-like structures made of trees and bark. Extended families, identified by matriarchal lineage, lived together in the longhouses. They fished from the rivers, hunted deer, beaver, turkey and bear, and cultivated corn, squash, and beans.

The Mohawks were one of five tribes (later six tribes) that made up the Iroquois Confederacy that stretch from the Mohawk Valley in the east to the Seneca villages in the west, near present day Buffalo. This fierce alliance was formed to maintain peace among them, to defend against invading Europeans, and to war upon enemy tribes, particularly those in Canada.

European immigration to the Americas introduced a contentious fur trade. Huron and Algonquin tribes in Canada forged alliances with the French Catholics, and the Iroquois with the Dutch and British Protestants in New York. The natives quickly became dependent upon European goods such as firearms, metal pots, iron axes, and the scourge of alcohol. Competition over furs, which were needed to obtain these coveted goods, exacerbated the ongoing contentions among these tribes. They became enmeshed in the political disputes of European countries while attempting to defend their own territories against foreign encroachment.

Competition among tribes was most fierce between the Huron and Iroquois. Although the goal of the Jesuits was to save souls, they became an integral part the geo-political-religious turbulence of the time.