Auriesville, New York

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The National Shrine of the North American Martyrs at Auriesville, New York; the Mohawk River is in the foreground.

Auriesville is a hamlet on the south bank of the Mohawk River, in the northeast part of the Town of Glen, New York, about forty miles west of Albany.

Auries was the name of the last Mohawk who lived there, and from this the present designation was formed. It was known among the American Indians as Ossernenon, also Gandawaga and Caughnawaga, the latter being given to the settlement on the St. Lawrence opposite Lachine which was established for the Iroquois converts to Christianity who wanted to withdraw from 'moral corruption' by their pagan kinsmen.

1 History
2 Commemoration
3 Source
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

Auriesville is the presumed site of the Mohawk village, located in Montgomery County, New York, U.S.A., in which Saint Isaac Jogues, and his companions, Saint René Goupil and Saint Jean de Lalande, were martyred by the Iroquois.

Jogues and Goupil were brought to the village on the Mohawk in 1642 as prisoners, and in 1646 Jogues again, with Lalande. In 1644 Bressani was tortured there, and later on, Joseph Poncet.

In 1655-57 Le Moyne came as ambassador to make peace; and the year after the punitive expedition of the Marquis de Tracy a permanent mission was established (1667). There Father Boniface, James de Lamberville, Jacques Frémin, Bruyas, Jean Pierron and others laboured until 1684, when the mission was destroyed. Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk Indian woman who has been beatified in the Roman Catholic Church, was born there and baptized in nearby Fonda, New York. While the missionaries were in control of Ossernenon and the adjacent Indian towns, Blessed Kateri and the other Mohawk converts were remarkable for their exact Christian life, and in many instances for their exalted piety.

The exact location of this village, which is so intimately associated with the establishment of Christianity in New York, was for a time a subject of considerable dispute. The researches of John Gilmary Shea, whose knowledge of the history of the early mission was so profound, at first favored the view that the old village was on the other side of the Mohawk at what is now Tribes Hill. More thorough investigations, however, aided by the conclusions of Gen. J. S. Clarke of Auburn, whose knowledge of Indian sites both in New York and Huronia is indisputable, have shown finally that the present Auriesville is the exact place in which Father Jogues and his companions suffered death. The basic evidence is the fact that, up to the time of their destruction by de Tracy, the villages were certainly on the south side of the Mohawk and west of the Schoharie—as is clear from contemporary maps, and from Jogues's, Bressani's, and Poncet's letters. Joliet, one of the most accurate cartographers of the time, puts the village of Ossernenon at the Schoharie and Mohawk. To further particularize it, Jogues said the village was on the top of the hill, a quarter of a league from the river. The ravine in which Goupil's body was found is also specified by Jogues, and he speaks of a watercourse and a rivulet uniting there — a feature still remaining. The distances from Andagaron and Tionontoguen given by Father Jogues also fix the exact locality.

[edit] Commemoration

Satisfied that the precise spot had been determined, ten acres of land on the hill were purchased in 1884 by the Rev. Joseph Loyzance, S.J., who was at that time parish priest of St. Joseph's, Troy, New York, who had all his life an ardent student of the lives of early missionaries. Father Loyzance erected a small shrine on the hill under the title of Our Lady of Martyrs, and he was the first to lead a number of pilgrims to the place, on 15 August of that year, which was the anniversary of the first arrival of Father Isaac Jogues as an Iroquois captive. Four thousand people went from Albany and Troy on that day. Other parishes subsequently adopted the practice of visiting Auriesville during the summer. Frequently there are as many as four or five thousand people present. Many of the pilgrims would come fasting, would pray and receive Holy Communion there. The sacred ground was extended beyond the original limits (keeping the surroundings free from undesirable development), and following the canonization of St. Isaac Jogues in 1930 the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs was established there. A large coliseum-sanctuary was built on the grounds, capable of seating 6000 worshipers.