The eight men canonized as 'The North American Martyrs' (or 'The Canadian Martyrs' in Canada) were Jesuits and lay assistants of the New France mission who entered the Iroquois–Huron conflict zone between 1642 and 1649. Six were Jesuit priests and two were lay donnés — auxiliary brothers who took private vows of service. All eight were killed in two clusters: one at the Mohawk village of Ossernenon (now Auriesville, New York) and the other in Huronia (modern Midland, Ontario).
The first to fall was René Goupil, a Jesuit lay donné and surgeon. Captured with Isaac Jogues in August 1642, he was tomahawked at Ossernenon on September 29, 1642, for making the Sign of the Cross over the head of a Mohawk child. His body was thrown into a ravine; Jogues, also a captive, recovered some of the bones years later. Goupil is the first canonized martyr of what is now the United States.
Isaac Jogues himself was kept as a slave at Ossernenon for thirteen months, escaped to the Dutch, returned to France, and chose to return to the Mohawks on a peace mission in 1646. He and his lay companion John de Lalande were both tomahawked at Ossernenon — Jogues on October 18, 1646, Lalande the next day.
The remaining five fell in Huronia three years later as the Iroquois Confederacy systematically destroyed the Huron nation. Anthony Daniel was shot and burned in his chapel at the village of Teanaostaiaé on July 4, 1648, baptizing his flock as the village burned around him. Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were captured at the mission of Saint-Louis on March 16, 1649. Brébeuf, the giant of the Huron mission who had translated the catechism and the first carol in the Huron language, was tortured for three hours with red-hot tomahawk heads, scalped alive, and a 'baptism' of boiling water poured over him by his captors in mockery; he uttered no cry. Lalemant, his frail nephew-in-religion, was tortured for seventeen hours and finally killed the next morning. Charles Garnier was shot in his chapel at the Tobacco-Nation village of Saint-Jean on December 7, 1649, and tomahawked while crawling to anoint a wounded convert. Noel Chabanel, the only one who had begged for the mission and who spent his life unable to learn the Huron language, was killed by a single Huron apostate during the retreat on December 8, 1649.
The eight were beatified by Pius XI in 1925 and canonized on June 29, 1930. They are honored together as the protomartyrs of North America. The Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs at Auriesville and the Martyrs' Shrine at Midland, Ontario, mark the two principal sites.