Isaac Jogues, born in Orléans, France, had entered the Society of Jesus in 1624.

He had been sent in 1636 to New France as a missionary to the Huron and Algonquin allies of the French.

while on his way by canoe to the country of the Hurons in 1642,  Jogues had been captured by a war party of Mohawk Iroquois, in the company of Guillaume Couture, René Goupil, and several Huron Christians.

They had been taken back to the Mohawk village and subjected to gruesome torture, during which several of Jogues' fingers were cut off by this captors.

Jogues had survived this torment and gone on to live as a slave among the Mohawks for some time, even attempting to teach his captors the rudiments of Christianity.

He was finally able to escape thanks to the pity of some Dutch merchants who smuggled him back to Manhattan, from where he had managed to sail back to France, where he was greeted with surprise and joy.

As a "living martyr," Jogues had been given a special permission by Pope Urban VIII to say Holy Mass with his mutilated hands, as the Eucharist could not be touched with any fingers but the thumb and forefinger.

Jogues's ill-treatment by the Mohawks had not dimmed his missionary zeal: within a few months, he was on his way back to Canada to continue his work.

A tentative peace had been forged in 1645 between the Iroquois and the Hurons, Algonquins, and French.

Jogues had been sent back to the Mohawk country in the spring of 1646, along with Jean de Lalande, to act as ambassador among them.

Some among the Mohawks regard Jogues as a sorcerer, however, and he is a convenient scapegoat when the double-calamity of sickness and crop failure hits the tribe.

Jogues and LaLande are clubbed to death and beheaded by their Mohawk hosts near Auriesville, New York on October 18, 1646.

His martyrdom will earn him eventual canonization in 1930.