As a young child in Catholic school, the nuns spent much time on these martyrs probably because America has so few real saints to boast about!  If you read the story carefully and think about their sufferings you realize that these men suffered tortures that are really unimaginable!  Let us pray to them for courage and strength to carry on...

 
Sts. John de Brebeuf, Isaac Jogues, and Companions - Pray for us
Feast day: September 26.

Jesuit missionary, born at Conde-sur-Vire in Normandy, 25 March,
1593; died in Canada, near Georgian Bay, 16 March, 1649. His desire
was to become a lay brother, but he finally entered the Society of
Jesus as a scholastic, 8 November, 1617. According to Ragueneau it
was 5 October. Though of unusual physical strength, his health gave
way completely when he was twenty-eight, which interfered with his
studies and permitted only what was strictly necessary, so that he
never acquired any extensive theological knowledge. On 19 June, 1625,
he arrived in Quebec, with the Recollect, Joseph de la Roche d'
Aillon, and in spite of the threat which the Calvinist captain of the
ship made to carry him back to France, he remained in the colony. He
overcame the dislike of the colonists for Jesuits and secured a site
for a residence on the St. Charles, the exact location of a former
landing of Jacques Cartier. He immediately took up his abode in the
Indian wigwams, and has left us an account of his five months'
experience there in the dead of winter. In the spring he set out with
the Indians on a journey to Lake Huron in a canoe, during the course
of which his life was in constant danger. With him was Father de
Noue, and they established their first mission near Georgian Bay, at
Ihonatiria, but after a short time his companion was recalled, and he
was left alone.

Brebeuf met with no success. He was summoned to Quebec because of the
danger of extinction to which the entire colony was then exposed, and
arrived there after an absence of two years, 17 July, 1628. On 19
July, 1629, Champlain surrendered to the English, and the
missionaries returned to France. Four years afterwards the colony was
restored to France, and on 23 March, 1633, Brebeuf again set out for
Canada. While in France he had pronounced his solemn vows as
spiritual coadjutor. As soon as he arrived, viz., May, 1633, he
attempted to return to Lake Huron. The Indians refused to take him,
but during the following year he succeeded in reaching his old
mission along with Father Daniel. It meant a journey of thirty days
and constant danger of death. The next sixteen years of uninterrupted
labours among these savages were a continual series of privations and
sufferings which he used to say were only roses in comparison with
what the end was to be. The details may be found in the "Jesuit
Relations".

In 1640 he set out with Father Chaumonot to evangelize the Neutres, a
tribe that lived north of Lake Erie, but after a winter of incredible
hardship the missionaries returned unsuccessful. In 1642 he was sent
down to Quebec, where he was given the care of the Indians in the
Reservation at Sillery. About the time the war was at its height
between the Hurons and the Iroquois, Jogues and Bressani had been
captured in an effort to reach the Huron country, and Brebeuf was
appointed to make a third attempt. He succeeded. With him on this
journey were Chabanel and Garreau, both of whom were afterwards
murdered. They reached St. Mary's on the Wye, which was the central
station of the Huron Mission. By 1647 the Iroquois had made peace
with the French, but kept up their war with the Hurons, and in 1648
fresh disasters befell the work of the missionaries -- their
establishments were burned and the missionaries slaughtered. On 16
March, 1649, the enemy attacked St. Louis and seized Brebeuf and
Lallemant, who could have escaped but rejected the offer made to themand remained with their flock. The two priests were dragged to St.
Ignace, which the Iroquois had already captured.

On entering the village, they were met with a shower of stones,
cruelly beaten with clubs, and then tied to posts to be burned to
death. Brebeuf is said to have kissed the stake to which he was
bound. The fire was lighted under them, and their bodies slashed with
knives. Brebeuf had scalding water poured on his head in mockery of
baptism, a collar of red-hot tomahawk-heads placed around his neck, a
red-hot iron thrust down his throat, and when he expired his heart was
cut out and eaten. Through all the torture he never uttered a groan.
The Iroquois withdrew when they had finished their work. The remains
of the victims were gathered up subsequently, and the head of Brebeuf
is still kept as a relic at the Hôtel-Dieu, Quebec.
His memory is cherished in Canada more than that of all the other
early missionaries. Although their names appear with his in letters
of gold on the grand staircase of the public buildings, there is a
vacant niche on the façade, with his name under it, awaiting his
statue. His heroic virtues, manifested in such a remarkable degree at
every stage of his missionary career, his almost incomprehensible
endurance of privations and suffering, and the conviction that the
reason of his death was not his association with the Hurons, but
hatred of Christianity, has set on foot a movement for his
canonization as a saint and martyr. An ecclesiastical court sat in
1904 for an entire year to examine his life and virtues and the cause
of his death, and the result of the inquiry was forwarded to Rome. [He
was canonized in 1930.
Taken from "Catholic Encyclopedia"