1712.
THE OUTAGAMIES AT DETROIT.
The West and the Fur-trade.--New York and Canada.--Indian
Population.--The Firebrands of the West.--Detroit in 1712.--Dangerous
Visitors.--Suspense.--Timely Succors.--The Outagamies attacked: their
Desperate Position.--Overtures.--Wavering Allies.--Conduct of
Dubuisson.--Escape of the Outagamies.--Pursuit and Attack.--Victory and
Carnage.
We have seen that the Peace of Utrecht was followed by a threefold
conflict for ascendency in America,--the conflict for Acadia, the
conflict for northern New England, and the conflict for the Great West;
which last could not be said to take at once an international character,
being essentially a competition for the fur-trade. Only one of the
English colonies took an active part in it,--the province of New York.
Alone among her sister communities she had a natural thoroughfare to the
West, not comparable, however, with that of Canada, to whose people the
St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, and their tributary waters were a
continual invitation to the vast interior.
Virginia and Pennsylvania were not yet serious rivals in the fur-trade;
and New England, the most active of the British colonies, was barred out
from it by the interposition of New York, which lay across her westward
path, thus forcing her to turn her energies to the sea, where half a
century later her achievements inspired the glowing panegyrics of Burke
before the House of Commons.
New York, then, was for many years the only rival of Canada for the
control of the West. It was a fatal error in the rulers of New France
that they did not, in the seventeenth century, use more strenuous
efforts to possess themselves, by purchase, exchange, or conquest, of
this troublesome and dangerous neighbor. There was a time, under the
reign of Charles II., when negotiation for the purchase of New York
might have been successful; and if this failed, the conquest of the
province, if attempted by forces equal to the importance of the object,
would have been far from hopeless. With New York in French hands, the
fate of the continent would probably have been changed. The British
possessions would have been cut in two. New England, isolated and placed
in constant jeopardy, would have vainly poured her unmanageable herds of
raw militia against the disciplined veterans of Old France intrenched at
the mouth of the Hudson. Canada would have gained complete control of
her old enemies, the Iroquois, who would have been wholly dependent on
her for the arms and ammunition without which they could do nothing.
The Iroquois, as the French had been accustomed to call them, were known
to the English as the Five Nations,--a name which during the eighteenth
century the French also adopted. Soon after the Peace of Utrecht, a
kindred tribe, the Tuscaroras, was joined to the original five members
of the confederacy, which thenceforward was sometimes called the Six
Nations, though the Tuscaroras were never very prominent in its history;
and, to avoid confusion, we will keep the more familiar name of the Five
Nations, which the French used to the last.
For more than two generations this league of tribes had held Canada in
terror, and more than once threatened it with destruction. But now a
change had come over the confederates. Count Frontenac had humbled their
pride. They were crowded between the rival European nations, both of
whom they distrusted. Their traditional hatred of the French would have
given the English of New York a controlling influence over them if the
advantage had been used with energy and tact. But a narrow and
short-sighted conduct threw it away. A governor of New York, moreover,
even were he as keen and far-seeing as Frontenac himself, would often
have been helpless. When the Five Nations were attacked by the French,
he had no troops to defend them, nor could he, like a Canadian governor,
call out the forces of his province by a word, to meet the exigency. The
small revenues of New York were not at his disposal. Without the votes
of the frugal representatives of an impoverished people, his hands were
tied. Hence the Five Nations, often left unaided when they most needed
help, looked upon their Dutch and English neighbors as slothful and
unwarlike.
Yet their friendship was of the greatest importance to the province, in
peace as well as in war, and was indispensable in the conflict that New
York was waging single-handed for the control of the western fur-trade.
The Five Nations, as we have seen,[279] acted as middlemen between the
New York merchants and the tribes of the far interior, and through them
English goods and English influence penetrated all the lake country, and
reached even to the Mississippi.
These vast western regions, now swarming with laborious millions, were
then scantily peopled by savage hordes, whose increase was stopped by
incessant mutual slaughter. This wild population had various centres or
rallying-points, usually about the French forts, which protected them
from enemies and supplied their wants. Thus the Pottawattamies, Ottawas,
and Hurons were gathered about Detroit, and the Illinois about Fort St.
Louis, on the river Illinois, where Henri de Tonty and his old comrade,
La Forest, with fifteen or twenty Frenchmen, held a nominal monopoly of
the neighboring fur-trade. Another focus of Indian population was near
the Green Bay of Lake Michigan, and on Fox River, which enters it. Here
were grouped the Sacs, Winnebagoes, and Menominies, with the Outagamies,
or Foxes, a formidable tribe, the source of endless trouble to the
French.
The constant aim of the Canadian authorities was to keep these western
savages at peace among themselves, while preventing their establishing
relations of trade with the Five Nations, and carrying their furs to
them in exchange for English goods. The position was delicate, for while
a close understanding between the western tribes and the Five Nations
would be injurious to French interests, a quarrel would be still more
so, since the French would then be forced to side with their western
allies, and so be drawn into hostilities with the Iroquois confederacy,
which of all things they most wished to avoid. Peace and friendship
among the western tribes; peace without friendship between these tribes
and the Five Nations,--thus became maxims of French policy. The Canadian
governor called the western Indians his "children," and a family quarrel
among them would have been unfortunate, since the loving father must
needs have become involved in it, to the detriment of his trading
interests.
Yet to prevent such quarrels was difficult, partly because they had
existed time out of mind, and partly because it was the interest of the
English to promote them. Dutch and English traders, it is true, took
their lives in their hands if they ventured among the western Indians,
who were encouraged by their French father to plunder and kill them, and
who on occasion rarely hesitated to do so. Hence English communication
with the West was largely carried on through the Five Nations. Iroquois
messengers, hired for the purpose, carried wampum belts
"underground"--that is, secretly--to such of the interior tribes as were
disposed to listen with favor to the words of Corlaer, as they called
the governor of New York.
In spite of their shortcomings, the English had one powerful attraction
for all the tribes alike. This was the abundance and excellence of their
goods, which, with the exception of gunpowder, were better as well as
cheaper than those offered by the French. The Indians, it is true, liked
the taste of French brandy more than that of English rum; yet as their
chief object in drinking was to get drunk, and as rum would supply as
much intoxication as brandy at a lower price, it always found favor in
their eyes. In the one case, to get thoroughly drunk often cost a
beaver-skin; in the other, the same satisfaction could generally be had
for a mink-skin.
Thus the French found that some of their western children were disposed
to listen to English seductions, look askance at their father Onontio,
and turn their canoes, not towards Montreal, but towards Albany. Nor was
this the worst; for there were some of Onontio's wild and unruly western
family too ready to lift their hatchets against their brethren and fill
the wilderness with discord. Consequences followed most embarrassing to
the French, and among them an incident prominent in the early annals of
Detroit, that new establishment so obnoxious to the English, because it
barred their way to the northern lakes, so that they were extremely
anxious to rid themselves of it.
In the confused and tumultuous history of the savages of this continent
one now and then sees some tribe or league of tribes possessed for a
time with a spirit of conquest and havoc that made it the terror of its
neighbors. Of this the foremost example is that of the Five Nations of
the Iroquois, who, towards the middle of the seventeenth century, swept
all before them and made vast regions a solitude. They were now
comparatively quiet; but far in the Northwest, another people, inferior
in number, organization, and mental capacity, but not in ferocity or
courage, had begun on a smaller scale, and with less conspicuous
success, to play a similar part. These were the Outagamies, or Foxes,
with their allies, the Kickapoos and the Mascoutins, all living at the
time within the limits of the present States of Wisconsin and
Illinois,--the Outagamies near Fox River, and the others on Rock
River.[280] The Outagamies, in particular, seem to have been seized with
an access of homicidal fury. Their hand was against every man, and for
twenty years and more they were the firebrands of the West, and a
ceaseless peril to French interests in that region. They were, however,
on good terms with the Five Nations, by means of whom, as French writers
say, the Dutch and English of Albany sent them gifts and messages to
incite them to kill French traders and destroy the French fort at
Detroit. This is not unlikely, though the evidence on the point is far
from conclusive.
Fort Ponchartrain, better known as Fort Detroit, was an enclosure of
palisades, flanked by blockhouses at the corners, with an open space
within to serve as a parade-ground, around which stood small wooden
houses thatched with straw or meadow-grass. La Mothe-Cadillac, founder
of the post, had been made governor of the new colony of Louisiana, and
the Sieur Dubuisson now commanded at Detroit. There were about thirty
French traders, _voyageurs_, and _coureurs de bois_ in the place, but at
this time no soldiers.
The village of the Pottawattamies was close to the French fort; that of
the Hurons was not far distant, by the edge of the river. Their houses
were those structures of bark, "very high, very long, and arched like
garden arbors," which were common to all the tribes of Iroquois stock,
and both villages were enclosed by strong double or triple stockades,
such as Cartier had found at Hochelaga, and Champlain in the Onondaga
country. Their neighbors, the Ottawas, who were on the east side of the
river, had imitated, with imperfect success, their way of housing and
fortifying themselves. These tribes raised considerable crops of peas,
beans, and Indian corn; and except when engaged in their endless dances
and games of ball, dressed, like the converts of the mission villages,
in red or blue cloth.[281] The Hurons were reputed the most intelligent
as well as the bravest of all the western tribes, and, being incensed by
various outrages, they bore against the Outagamies a deadly grudge,
which was shared by the other tribes, their neighbors.
All these friendly Indians were still absent on their winter hunt, when,
at the opening of spring, Dubuisson and his Frenchmen were startled by a
portentous visitation. Two bands of Outagamies and Mascoutins, men,
women, and children, counting in all above a thousand, of whom about
three hundred were warriors, appeared on the meadows behind the fort,
approached to within pistol-shot of the palisades, and encamped there.
It is by no means certain that they came with deliberate hostile intent.
Had this been the case, they would not have brought their women and
children. A paper ascribed to the engineer Léry says, moreover, that
their visit was in consequence of an invitation from the late
commandant, La Mothe-Cadillac, whose interest it was to attract to
Detroit as many Indians as possible, in order to trade for their
furs.[282] Dubuisson, however, was satisfied that they meant mischief,
especially when, in spite of all his efforts to prevent them, they
fortified themselves by cutting down young trees and surrounding their
wigwams with a rough fence of palisades. They were rude and insolent,
declared that all that country was theirs, and killed fowls and pigeons
belonging to the French, who, in the absence of their friends, the
Hurons and Ottawas, dared not even remonstrate. Dubuisson himself was
forced to submit to their insults in silence, till a party of them came
one day into the fort bent on killing two of the French, a man and a
girl, against whom they had taken some offence. The commandant then
ordered his men to drive them out; which was done, and henceforward he
was convinced that the Outagamies and Mascoutins were only watching
their opportunity to burn the fort and butcher its inmates. Soon after,
their excitement redoubled. News came that a band of Mascoutins, who had
wintered on the river St. Joseph, had been cut off by the Ottawas and
Pottawattamies, led by an Ottawa chief named Saguina; on which the
behavior of the dangerous visitors became so threatening that Dubuisson
hastily sent a canoe to recall the Hurons and Ottawas from their
hunting-grounds, and a second to invite the friendly Ojibwas and
Mississagas to come to his aid. No doubt there was good cause for alarm;
yet if the dangerous strangers had resolved to strike, they would have
been apt to strike at once, instead of waiting week after week, when
they knew that the friends and allies of the French might arrive at any
time. Dubuisson, however, felt that the situation was extremely
critical, and he was confirmed in his anxiety by a friendly Outagamie,
who, after the news of the massacre on the St. Joseph, told him that his
tribesmen meant to burn the fort.
The church was outside the palisade, as were also several houses, one of
which was stored with wheat. This the Outagamies tried to seize. The
French fired on them, drove them back, and brought most of the wheat
into the fort; then they demolished the church and several of the
houses, which would have given cover to the assailants and enabled them
to set fire to the palisade, close to which the buildings stood. The
French worked at their task in the excitement of desperation, for they
thought that all was lost.
The irritation of their savage neighbors so increased that an outbreak
seemed imminent, when, on the thirteenth of May, the Sieur de Vincennes
arrived, with seven or eight Frenchmen, from the Miami country. The
reinforcement was so small that instead of proving a help it might have
provoked a crisis. Vincennes brought no news of the Indian allies, who
were now Dubuisson's only hope. "I did not know on what saint to call,"
he writes, almost in despair, when suddenly a Huron Indian came panting
into the fort with the joyful news that both his people and the Ottawas
were close at hand. Nor was this all. The Huron messenger announced that
Makisabie, war-chief of the Pottawattamies, was then at the Huron fort,
and that six hundred warriors of various tribes, deadly enemies of the
Outagamies and Mascoutins, would soon arrive and destroy them all.
Here was an unlooked-for deliverance. Yet the danger was not over; for
there was fear lest the Outagamies and their allies, hearing of the
approaching succor, might make a desperate onslaught, burn the French
fort, and kill its inmates before their friends could reach them. An
interval of suspense followed, relieved at last by a French sentinel,
who called to Dubuisson that a crowd of Indians was in sight. The
commandant mounted to the top of a blockhouse, and, looking across the
meadows behind the fort, saw a throng of savages coming out of the
woods,--Pottawattamies, Sacs, Menominies, Illinois, Missouris, and other
tribes yet more remote, each band distinguished by a kind of ensign.
These were the six hundred warriors promised by the Huron messenger, and
with them, as it proved, came the Ottawa war-chief Saguina. Having heard
during the winter that the Outagamies and Mascoutins would go to Detroit
in the spring, these various tribes had combined to attack the common
enemy; and they now marched with great ostentation and some show of
order, not to the French fort, but to the fortified village of the
Hurons, who with their neighbors, the Ottawas, had arrived just before
them.
The Hurons were reputed leaders among the western tribes, and they hated
the Outagamies, not only by reason of bitter wrongs, but also through
jealousy of the growing importance which these fierce upstarts had won
by their sanguinary prowess. The Huron chiefs came to meet the motley
crew of warriors, and urged them to instant action. "You must not stop
to encamp," said the Huron spokesman; "we must all go this moment to the
fort of our fathers, the French, and fight for them." Then, turning to
the Ottawa war-chief: "Do you see that smoke, Saguina, rising from the
camp of our enemies? They are burning three women of your village, and
your wife is one of them." The Outagamies had, in fact, three Ottawa
squaws in their clutches; but the burning was an invention of the crafty
Huron. It answered its purpose, and wrought the hearers to fury. They
ran with yells and whoops towards the French fort, the Hurons and
Ottawas leading the way. A burst of answering yells rose from the camp
of the enemy, and about forty of their warriors ran out in bravado,
stripped naked and brandishing their weapons; but they soon fell back
within their defences before the approaching multitude.
Just before the arrival of the six hundred allies, Dubuisson, whose
orders were to keep the peace, if he could, among the western tribes,
had sent Vincennes to the Huron village with a proposal that they should
spare the lives of the Outagamies and Mascoutins, and rest content with
driving them away; to which the Hurons returned a fierce and haughty
refusal. There was danger that, if vexed or thwarted, the rabble of
excited savages now gathered before the fort might turn from friends
into enemies, and in some burst of wild caprice lift parricidal
tomahawks against their French fathers. Dubuisson saw no choice but to
humor them, put himself at their head, aid them in their vengeance, and
even set them on. Therefore, when they called out for admittance, he
did not venture to refuse it, but threw open the gate.
The savage crew poured in till the fort was full. The chiefs gathered
for council on the parade, and the warriors crowded around, a living
wall of dusky forms, befeathered heads, savage faces, lank snaky locks,
and deep-set eyes that glittered with a devilish light. Their orator
spoke briefly, but to the purpose. He declared that all present were
ready to die for their French father, who had stood their friend against
the bloody and perfidious Outagamies. Then he begged for food, tobacco,
gunpowder, and bullets. Dubuisson replied with equal conciseness,
thanked them for their willingness to die for him, said that he would do
his best to supply their wants, and promised an immediate distribution
of powder and bullets; to which the whole assembly answered with yells
of joy.
Then the council dissolved, and the elder warriors stalked about the
fort, haranguing their followers, exhorting them to fight like men and
obey the orders of their father. The powder and bullets were served out,
after which the whole body, white men and red, yelled the war-whoop
together,--"a horrible cry, that made the earth tremble," writes
Dubuisson.[283] An answering howl, furious and defiant, rose close at
hand from the palisaded camp of the enemy, the firing began on both
sides, and bullets and arrows filled the air.
The French and their allies outnumbered their enemies fourfold, while
the Outagamie and Mascoutin warriors were encumbered with more than
seven hundred women and children. Their frail defences might have been
carried by assault; but the loss to the assailants must needs have been
great against so brave and desperate a foe, and such a mode of attack is
repugnant to the Indian genius. Instead, therefore, of storming the
palisaded camp, the allies beleaguered it with vindictive patience, and
wore out its defenders by a fire that ceased neither day nor night. The
French raised two tall scaffolds, from which they overlooked the
palisade, and sent their shot into the midst of those within, who were
forced, for shelter, to dig holes in the ground four or five feet deep,
and ensconce themselves there. The situation was almost hopeless, but
their courage did not fail. They raised twelve red English blankets on
poles as battle-flags, to show that they would fight to the death, and
hung others over their palisades, calling out that they wished to see
the whole earth red, like them, with blood; that they had no fathers but
the English, and that the other tribes had better do as they did, and
turn their backs to Onontio.
The great war-chief of the Pottawattamies now mounted to the top of one
of the French scaffolds, and harangued the enemy to this effect: "Do you
think, you wretches, that you can frighten us by hanging out those red
blankets? If the earth is red with blood, it will be your own. You talk
about the English. Their bad advice will be your ruin. They are enemies
of religion, and that is why the Master of Life punishes both them and
you. They are cowards, and can only defend themselves by poisoning
people with their firewater, which kills a man the instant he drinks it.
We shall soon see what you will get for listening to them."
This Homeric dialogue between the chief combatants was stopped by
Dubuisson, who saw that it distracted the attention of the warriors, and
so enabled the besieged to run to the adjacent river for water. The
firing was resumed more fiercely than ever. Before night twelve of the
Indian allies were killed in the French fort, though the enemy suffered
a much greater loss. One house had been left standing outside the French
palisades, and the Outagamies raised a scaffold behind its bullet-proof
gable, under cover of which they fired with great effect. The French at
length brought two swivels to bear upon the gable, pierced it, knocked
down the scaffold, killed some of the marksmen, and scattered the rest
in consternation.
Famine and thirst were worse for the besieged than the bullets and
arrows of the allies. Parched, starved, and fainting, they could no
longer find heart for bravado, and they called out one evening from
behind their defences to ask Dubuisson if they might come to speak with
him. He called together the allied chiefs, and all agreed that here was
an opportunity to get out of the hands of the Outagamies the three
Ottawa women whom they held prisoners. The commandant, therefore, told
them that if they had anything to say to their father before dying, they
might come and say it in safety.
In the morning all the red blankets had disappeared, and a white flag
was waving over the hostile camp. The great Outagamie chief, Pemoussa,
presently came out, carrying a smaller white flag and followed by two
Indian slaves. Dubuisson sent his interpreter to protect him from insult
and conduct him to the parade, where all the allied chiefs presently met
to hear him.
"My father," he began, "I am a dead man. The sky is bright for you, and
dark as night for me." Then he held out a belt of wampum, and continued:
"By this belt I ask you, my father, to take pity on your children, and
grant us two days in which our old men may counsel together to find
means of appeasing your wrath." Then, offering another belt to the
assembled chiefs, "This belt is to pray you to remember that you are of
our kin. If you spill our blood, do not forget that it is also your own.
Try to soften the heart of our father, whom we have offended so often.
These two slaves are to replace some of the blood you have lost. Grant
us the two days we ask, for I cannot say more till our old men have held
counsel."
To which Dubuisson answered in the name of all: "If your hearts were
really changed, and you honestly accepted Onontio as your father, you
would have brought back the three women who are prisoners in your
hands. As you have not done so, I think that your hearts are still bad.
First bring them to me, if you expect me to hear you. I have no more to
say."
"I am but a child," replied the envoy. "I will go back to my village,
and tell our old men what you have said."
The council then broke up, and several Frenchmen conducted the chief
back to his followers.
Three other chiefs soon after appeared, bearing a flag and bringing the
Ottawa squaws, one of whom was the wife of the war-chief, Saguina. Again
the elders met in council on the parade, and the orator of the
deputation spoke thus: "My father, here are the three pieces of flesh
that you ask of us. We would not eat them, lest you should be angry. Do
with them what you please, for you are the master. Now we ask that you
will send away the nations that are with you, so that we may seek food
for our women and children, who die of hunger every day. If you are as
good a father as your other children say you are, you will not refuse us
this favor."
But Dubuisson, having gained his point and recovered the squaws, spoke
to them sternly, and referred them to his Indian allies for their
answer. Whereupon the head chief of the Illinois, being called upon by
the rest to speak in their behalf, addressed the envoys to this effect:
"Listen to me, you who have troubled all the earth. We see plainly that
you mean only to deceive our father. If we should leave him, as you
wish, you would fall upon him and kill him. You are dogs who have always
bitten him. You thought that we did not know all the messages you have
had from the English, telling you to cut our father's throat, and then
bring them into this our country. We will not leave him alone with you.
We shall see who will be the master. Go back to your fort. We are going
to fire at you again."
The envoys went back with a French escort to prevent their being
murdered on the way, and then the firing began again. The Outagamies and
Mascoutins gathered strength from desperation, and sent flights of
fire-arrows into the fort to burn the straw-thatched houses. The flames
caught in many places; but with the help of the Indians they were
extinguished, though several Frenchmen were wounded, and there was great
fright for a time. But the thatch was soon stripped off and the roofs
covered with deer and bear skins, while mops fastened to long poles, and
two large wooden canoes filled with water, were made ready for future
need.
A few days after, a greater peril threatened the French. If the wild
Indian has the passions of a devil, he has also the instability of a
child; and this is especially true when a number of incoherent tribes or
bands are joined in a common enterprise. Dubuisson's Indians became
discouraged, partly at the stubborn resistance of the enemy, and partly
at the scarcity of food. Some of them declared openly that they could
never conquer those people; that they knew them well, and that they were
braver than anybody else. In short, the French saw themselves on the
point of being abandoned by their allies to a fate the most ghastly and
appalling; and they urged upon the commandant the necessity of escaping
to Michilimackinac before it was too late. Dubuisson appears to have met
the crisis with equal resolution and address. He braced the shaken
nerves of his white followers by appeals to their sense of shame,
threats of the governor's wrath, and assurances that all would yet be
well; then set himself to the more difficult task of holding the Indian
allies to their work. He says that he scarcely ate or slept for four
days and nights, during which time he was busied without ceasing in
private and separate interviews with all the young war-chiefs,
persuading them, flattering them, and stripping himself of all he had to
make them presents. When at last he had gained them over, he called the
tribes to a general council.
"What, children!" thus he addressed them, "when you are on the very
point of destroying these wicked people, do you think of shamefully
running away? How could you ever hold up your heads again? All the other
nations would say: 'Are these the brave warriors who deserted the French
and ran like cowards?'" And he reminded them that their enemies were
already half dead with famine, and that they could easily make an end of
them, thereby gaining great honor among the nations, besides the thanks
and favors of Onontio, the father of all.
At this the young war-chiefs whom he had gained over interrupted him and
cried out, "My father, somebody has been lying to you. We are not
cowards. We love you too much to abandon you, and we will stand by you
till the last of your enemies is dead." The elder men caught the
contagion, and cried, "Come on, let us show our father that those who
have spoken ill of us are liars." Then they all raised the war-whoop,
sang the war-song, danced the war-dance, and began to fire again.
Among the enemy were some Sakis, or Sacs, fighting for the Outagamies,
while others of their tribe were among the allies of the French. Seeing
the desperate turn of affairs, they escaped from time to time and came
over to the winning side, bringing reports of the state of the
beleaguered camp. They declared that sixty or eighty women and children
were already dead from hunger and thirst, besides those killed by
bullets and arrows; that the fire of the besiegers was so hot that the
bodies could not be buried, and that the camp of the Outagamies and
Mascoutins was a den of infection.
The end was near. The besieged savages called from their palisades to
ask if they might send another deputation, and were told that they were
free to do so. The chief, Pemoussa, soon appeared at the gate of the
fort, naked, painted from head to foot with green earth, wearing belts
of wampum about his waist, and others hanging from his shoulders,
besides a kind of crown of wampum beads on his head. With him came seven
women, meant as a peace-offering, all painted and adorned with wampum.
Three other principal chiefs followed, each with a gourd rattle in his
hand, to the cadence of which the whole party sang and shouted at the
full stretch of their lungs an invocation to the spirits for help and
pity. They were conducted to the parade, where the French and the allied
chiefs were already assembled, and Pemoussa thus addressed them:--
"My father, and all the nations here present, I come to ask for life. It
is no longer ours, but yours. I bring you these seven women, who are my
flesh, and whom I put at your feet, to be your slaves. But do not think
that I am afraid to die; it is the life of our women and children that I
ask of you." He then offered six wampum belts, in token that his
followers owned themselves beaten, and begged for mercy. "Tell us, I
pray you,"--these were his last words,--"something that will lighten the
hearts of my people when I go back to them."
Dubuisson left the answer to his allies. The appeal of the suppliant
fell on hearts of stone. The whole concourse sat in fierce and sullen
silence, and the envoys read their doom in the gloomy brows that
surrounded them. Eight or ten of the allied savages presently came to
Dubuisson, and one of them said in a low voice: "My father, we come to
ask your leave to knock these four great chiefs in the head. It is they
who prevent our enemies from surrendering without conditions. When they
are dead, the rest will be at our mercy."
Dubuisson told them that they must be drunk to propose such a thing.
"Remember," he said, "that both you and I have given our word for their
safety. If I consented to what you ask, your father at Montreal would
never forgive me. Besides, you can see plainly that they and their
people cannot escape you."
The would-be murderers consented to bide their time, and the wretched
envoys went back with their tidings of despair.
"I confess," wrote Dubuisson to the governor, a few days later, "that I
was touched with compassion; but as war and pity do not agree well
together, and especially as I understood that they were hired by the
English to destroy us, I abandoned them to their fate."
The firing began once more, and the allied hordes howled round the camp
of their victims like troops of ravenous wolves. But a surprise awaited
them. Indians rarely set guards at night, and they felt sure now of
their prey. It was the nineteenth day of the siege.[284] The night
closed dark and rainy, and when morning came, the enemy were gone. All
among them that had strength to move had glided away through the gloom
with the silence of shadows, passed the camps of their sleeping enemies,
and reached a point of land projecting into the river opposite the end
of Isle au Cochon, and a few miles above the French fort. Here, knowing
that they would be pursued, they barricaded themselves with trunks and
branches of trees. When the astonished allies discovered their escape,
they hastily followed their trail, accompanied by some of the French,
led by Vincennes. In their eagerness they ran upon the barricade before
seeing it, and were met by a fire that killed and wounded twenty of
them. There was no alternative but to forego their revenge and abandon
the field, or begin another siege. Encouraged by Dubuisson, they built
their wigwams on the new scene of operations; and, being supplied by the
French with axes, mattocks, and two swivels, they made a wall of logs
opposite the barricade, from which they galled the defenders with a
close and deadly fire. The Mississagas and Ojibwas, who had lately
arrived, fished and hunted for the allies, while the French furnished
them with powder, ball, tobacco, Indian corn, and kettles. The enemy
fought desperately for four days, and then, in utter exhaustion,
surrendered at discretion.[285]
The women and children were divided among the victorious hordes, and
adopted or enslaved. To the men no quarter was given. "Our Indians
amused themselves," writes Dubuisson, "with shooting four or five of
them every day." Here, however, another surprise awaited the conquerors
and abridged their recreation, for about a hundred of these intrepid
warriors contrived to make their escape, and among them was the great
war-chief Pemoussa.
The Outagamies were crippled, but not disabled, for but a part of the
tribe was involved in this bloody affair. The rest were wrought to fury
by the fate of their kinsmen, and for many years they remained thorns in
the sides of the French.
There is a disposition to assume that events like that just recounted
were a consequence of the contact of white men with red; but the
primitive Indian was quite able to enact such tragedies without the help
of Europeans. Before French or English influence had been felt in the
interior of the continent, a great part of North America was the
frequent witness of scenes still more lurid in coloring, and on a larger
scale of horror. In the first half of the seventeenth century the whole
country, from Lake Superior to the Tennessee, and from the Alleghanies
to the Mississippi, was ravaged by wars of extermination, in which
tribes, large and powerful by Indian standards, perished, dwindled into
feeble remnants, or were absorbed by other tribes and vanished from
sight. French pioneers were sometimes involved in the carnage, but
neither they nor other Europeans were answerable for it.[286]
FOOTNOTES:
[279] See Chapter I.
[280] _Memoir on the Indians between Lake Erie and the Mississippi_, in
_N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 885.
[281] _Memoir on the Indians between Lake Erie and the Mississippi._
[282] This paper is printed, not very accurately, in the _Collection de
Documents relatifs à la Nouvelle France_, i. 623 (Québec, 1883).
[283] "Cri horrible, dont la terre trembla."--_Dubuisson à Vaudreuil, 15
Juin, 1712._ This is the official report of the affair.
[284] According to the paper ascribed to Léry it was only the eighth.
[285] The paper ascribed to Léry says that they surrendered on a promise
from Vincennes that their lives should be spared, but that the promise
availed nothing.
[286] _Dubuisson à Vaudreuil, 15 Juin, 1712._ This is Dubuisson's report
to the governor, which soon after the event he sent to Montreal by the
hands of Vincennes. He says that the great fatigue through which he has
just passed prevents him from giving every detail, and he refers
Vaudreuil to the bearer for further information. The report is, however,
long and circumstantial.
_État de ce que M. Dubuisson a dépensé pour le service du Roy pour
s'attirer les Nations et les mettre dans ses intérêts afin de résister
aux Outagamis et aux Mascoutins qui étaient payés des Anglais pour
détruire le poste du Fort de Ponchartrain du Détroit, 14 Octobre, 1712._
Dubuisson reckons his outlay at 2,901 livres.
These documents, with the narrative ascribed to the engineer Léry, are
the contemporary authorities on which the foregoing account is based.