1650-1866.
THE LAST OF THE HURONS.
Fate of the Vanquished • The Refugees of St. Jean Baptiste and St.
Michel • The Tobacco Nation and its Wanderings • The Modern Wyandots •
The Biter Bit • The Hurons at Quebec • Notre-Dame de Lorette.
Iroquois bullets and tomahawks had killed the Hurons by hundreds, but
famine and disease had killed incomparably more. The miseries of the
starving crowd on Isle St. Joseph had been shared in an equal degree by
smaller bands, who had wintered in remote and secret retreats of the
wilderness. Of those who survived that season of death, many were so
weakened that they could not endure the hardships of a wandering life,
which was new to them. The Hurons lived by agriculture: their fields and
crops were destroyed, and they were so hunted from place to place that
they could rarely till the soil. Game was very scarce; and, without
agriculture, the country could support only a scanty and scattered
population like that which maintained a struggling existence in the
wilderness of the lower St. Lawrence. The mortality among the exiles was
prodigious.
It is a matter of some interest to trace the fortunes of the shattered
fragments of a nation once prosperous, and, in its own eyes and those of
its neighbors, powerful and great. None were left alive within their
ancient domain. Some had sought refuge among the Neutrals and the Eries,
and shared the disasters which soon overwhelmed those tribes; others
succeeded in reaching the Andastes; while the inhabitants of two towns,
St. Michel and St. Jean Baptiste, had recourse to an expedient which
seems equally strange and desperate, but which was in accordance with
Indian practices. They contrived to open a communication with the Seneca
Nation of the Iroquois, and promised to change their nationality and
turn Senecas as the price of their lives. The victors accepted the
proposal; and the inhabitants of these two towns, joined by a few other
Hurons, migrated in a body to the Seneca country. They were not
distributed among different villages, but were allowed to form a town by
themselves, where they were afterwards joined by some prisoners of the
Neutral Nation. They identified themselves with the Iroquois in all but
religion,--holding so fast to their faith, that, eighteen years after, a
Jesuit missionary found that many of them were still good Catholics. [1]
[1] Compare Relation, 1651, 4; 1660, 14, 28; and 1670, 69. The Huron
town among the Senecas was called Gandougaraé. Father Fremin was here in
1668, and gives an account of his visit in the Relation of 1670.
The division of the Hurons called the Tobacco Nation, favored by their
isolated position among mountains, had held their ground longer than the
rest; but at length they, too, were compelled to fly, together with such
other Hurons as had taken refuge with them. They made their way
northward, and settled on the Island of Michilimackinac, where they were
joined by the Ottawas, who, with other Algonquins, had been driven by
fear of the Iroquois from the western shores of Lake Huron and the banks
of the River Ottawa. At Michilimackinac the Hurons and their allies were
again attacked by the Iroquois, and, after remaining several years, they
made another remove, and took possession of the islands at the mouth of
the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. Even here their old enemy did not leave
them in peace; whereupon they fortified themselves on the main-land, and
afterwards migrated southward and westward. This brought them in contact
with the Illinois, an Algonquin people, at that time very numerous, but
who, like many other tribes at this epoch, were doomed to a rapid
diminution from wars with other savage nations. Continuing their
migration westward, the Hurons and Ottawas reached the Mississippi,
where they fell in with the Sioux. They soon quarrelled with those
fierce children of the prairie, who drove them from their country. They
retreated to the south-western extremity of Lake Superior, and settled
on Point Saint Esprit, or Shagwamigon Point, near the Islands of the
Twelve Apostles. As the Sioux continued to harass them, they left this
place about the year 1671, and returned to Michilimackinac, where they
settled, not on the island, but on the neighboring Point St. Ignace, at
the northern extremity of the great peninsula of Michigan. The greater
part of them afterwards removed thence to Detroit and Sandusky, where
they lived under the name of Wyandots until within the present century,
maintaining a marked influence over the surrounding Algonquins. They
bore an active part, on the side of the French, in the war which ended
in the reduction of Canada; and they were the most formidable enemies of
the English in the Indian war under Pontiac. [2] The government of the
United States at length removed them to reserves on the western
frontier, where a remnant of them may still be found. Thus it appears
that the Wyandots, whose name is so conspicuous in the history of our
border wars, are descendants of the ancient Hurons, and chiefly of that
portion of them called the Tobacco Nation. [3]
[2] See "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac."
[3] The migrations of this band of the Hurons may be traced by detached
passages and incidental remarks in the Relations of 1654, 1660, 1667,
1670, 1671, and 1672. Nicolas Perrot, in his chapter, Deffaitte et
Füitte des Hurons chassés de leur Pays, and in the chapter following,
gives a long and rather confused account of their movements and
adventures. See also La Poterie, Histoire de l'Amérique Septentrionale,
II. 51-56. According to the Relation of 1670, the Hurons, when living at
Shagwamigon Point, numbered about fifteen hundred souls.
When Ragueneau and his party left Isle St. Joseph for Quebec, the
greater number of the Hurons chose to remain. They took possession of
the stone fort which the French had abandoned, and where, with
reasonable vigilance, they could maintain themselves against attack. In
the succeeding autumn a small Iroquois war-party had the audacity to
cross over to the island, and build a fort of felled trees in the woods.
The Hurons attacked them; but the invaders made so fierce a defence,
that they kept their assailants at bay, and at length retreated with
little or no loss. Soon after, a much larger band of Onondaga Iroquois,
approaching undiscovered, built a fort on the main-land, opposite the
island, but concealed from sight in the forest. Here they waited to
waylay any party of Hurons who might venture ashore. A Huron war chief,
named Étienne Annaotaha, whose life is described as a succession of
conflicts and adventures, and who is said to have been always in luck,
landed with a few companions, and fell into an ambuscade of the
Iroquois. He prepared to defend himself, when they called out to him,
that they came not as enemies, but as friends, and that they brought
wampum-belts and presents to persuade the Hurons to forget the past, go
back with them to their country, become their adopted countrymen, and
live with them as one nation. Étienne suspected treachery, but concealed
his distrust, and advanced towards the Iroquois with an air of the
utmost confidence. They received him with open arms, and pressed him to
accept their invitation; but he replied, that there were older and wiser
men among the Hurons, whose counsels all the people followed, and that
they ought to lay the proposal before them. He proceeded to advise them
to keep him as a hostage, and send over his companions, with some of
their chiefs, to open the negotiation. His apparent frankness completely
deceived them; and they insisted that he himself should go to the Huron
village, while his companions remained as hostages. He set out
accordingly with three of the principal Iroquois.
When he reached the village, he gave the whoop of one who brings good
tidings, and proclaimed with a loud voice that the hearts of their
enemies had changed, that the Iroquois would become their countrymen and
brothers, and that they should exchange their miseries for a life of
peace and plenty in a fertile and prosperous land. The whole Huron
population, full of joyful excitement, crowded about him and the three
envoys, who were conducted to the principal lodge, and feasted on the
best that the village could supply. Étienne seized the opportunity to
take aside four or five of the principal chiefs, and secretly tell them
his suspicions that the Iroquois were plotting to compass their
destruction under cover of overtures of peace; and he proposed that they
should meet treachery with treachery. He then explained his plan, which
was highly approved by his auditors, who begged him to charge himself
with the execution of it. Étienne now caused criers to proclaim through
the village that every one should get ready to emigrate in a few days to
the country of their new friends. The squaws began their preparations at
once, and all was bustle and alacrity; for the Hurons themselves were no
less deceived than were the Iroquois envoys.
During one or two succeeding days, many messages and visits passed
between the Hurons and the Iroquois, whose confidence was such, that
thirty-seven of their best warriors at length came over in a body to the
Huron village. Étienne's time had come. He and the chiefs who were in
the secret gave the word to the Huron warriors, who, at a signal, raised
the war-whoop, rushed upon their visitors, and cut them to pieces. One
of them, who lingered for a time, owned before he died that Étienne's
suspicions were just, and that they had designed nothing less than the
massacre or capture of all the Hurons. Three of the Iroquois,
immediately before the slaughter began, had received from Étienne a
warning of their danger in time to make their escape. The year before,
he had been captured, with Brébeuf and Lalemant, at the town of St.
Louis, and had owed his life to these three warriors, to whom he now
paid back the debt of gratitude. They carried tidings of what had
befallen to their countrymen on the main-land, who, aghast at the
catastrophe, fled homeward in a panic. [4]
[4] Ragueneau, Relation des Hurons, 1651, 5, 6. Le Mercier, in the
Relation of 1654, preserves the speech of a Huron chief, in which he
speaks of this affair, and adds some particulars not mentioned by
Ragueneau. He gives thirty-four as the number killed.
Here was a sweet morsel of vengeance. The miseries of the Hurons were
lighted up with a brief gleam of joy; but it behooved them to make a
timely retreat from their island before the Iroquois came to exact a
bloody retribution. Towards spring, while the lake was still frozen,
many of them escaped on the ice, while another party afterwards followed
in canoes. A few, who had neither strength to walk nor canoes to
transport them, perforce remained behind, and were soon massacred by the
Iroquois. The fugitives directed their course to the Grand Manitoulin
Island, where they remained for a short time, and then, to the number of
about four hundred, descended the Ottawa, and rejoined their countrymen
who had gone to Quebec the year before.
These united parties, joined from time to time by a few other fugitives,
formed a settlement on land belonging to the Jesuits, near the
south-western extremity of the Isle of Orleans, immediately below
Quebec. Here the Jesuits built a fort, like that on Isle St. Joseph,
with a chapel, and a small house for the missionaries, while the bark
dwellings of the Hurons were clustered around the protecting ramparts.
[5] Tools and seeds were given them, and they were encouraged to
cultivate the soil. Gradually they rallied from their dejection, and the
mission settlement was beginning to wear an appearance of thrift, when,
in 1656, the Iroquois made a descent upon them, and carried off a large
number of captives, under the very cannon of Quebec; the French not
daring to fire upon the invaders, lest they should take revenge upon the
Jesuits who were at that time in their country. This calamity was, four
years after, followed by another, when the best of the Huron warriors,
including their leader, the crafty and valiant Étienne Annaotaha, were
slain, fighting side by side with the French, in the desperate conflict
of the Long Sault. [6]
[5] The site of the fort was the estate now known as "La Terre du Fort,"
near the landing of the steam ferry. In 1856, Mr. N. H. Bowen, a
resident near the spot, in making some excavations, found a solid stone
wall five feet thick, which, there can be little doubt, was that of the
work in question. This wall was originally crowned with palisades. See
Bowen, Historical Sketch of the Isle of Orleans, 25.
[6] Relation, 1660 (anonymous), 14.
The attenuated colony, replenished by some straggling bands of the same
nation, and still numbering several hundred persons, was removed to
Quebec after the inroad in 1656, and lodged in a square inclosure of
palisades close to the fort. [7] Here they remained about ten years,
when, the danger of the times having diminished, they were again removed
to a place called Notre-Dame de Foy, now St. Foi, three or four miles
west of Quebec. Six years after, when the soil was impoverished and the
wood in the neighborhood exhausted, they again changed their abode, and,
under the auspices of the Jesuits, who owned the land, settled at Old
Lorette, nine miles from Quebec.
[7] In a plan of Quebec of 1660, the "Fort des Hurons" is laid down on a
spot adjoining the north side of the present Place d'Armes.
Chaumonot was at this time their missionary. It may be remembered that
he had professed special devotion to Our Lady of Loretto, who, in his
boyhood, had cured him, as he believed, of a distressing malady. [8] He
had always cherished the idea of building a chapel in honor of her in
Canada, after the model of the Holy House of Loretto,--which, as all the
world knows, is the house wherein Saint Joseph dwelt with his virgin
spouse, and which angels bore through the air from the Holy Land to
Italy, where it remains an object of pilgrimage to this day. Chaumonot
opened his plan to his brother Jesuits, who were delighted with it, and
the chapel was begun at once, not without the intervention of miracle to
aid in raising the necessary funds. It was built of brick, like its
original, of which it was an exact facsimile; and it stood in the centre
of a quadrangle, the four sides of which were formed by the bark
dwellings of the Hurons, ranged with perfect order in straight lines.
Hither came many pilgrims from Quebec and more distant settlements, and
here Our Lady granted to her suppliants, says Chaumonot, many miraculous
favors, insomuch that "it would require an entire book to describe them
all." [9]
[8] See ante, (p. 102).
[9] "Les grâces qu'on y obtient par l'entremise de la Mère de Dieu vont
jusqu'au miracle. Comme il faudroit composer un livre entier pour
décrire toutes ces faveurs extraordinaires, je n'en rapporterai que
deux, ayant été témoin oculaire de l'une et propre sujet de
l'autre."--Vie, 95.
The removal from Notre-Dame de Foy took place at the end of 1673, and
the chapel was finished in the following year. Compare Vie de Chaumonot
with Dablon, Relation, 1672-73, p. 21; and Ibid., Relation 1673-79, p.
259.
But the Hurons were not destined to remain permanently even here; for,
before the end of the century, they removed to a place four miles
distant, now called New Lorette, or Indian Lorette. It was a wild spot,
covered with the primitive forest, and seamed by a deep and tortuous
ravine, where the St. Charles foams, white as a snow-drift, over the
black ledges, and where the sunlight struggles through matted boughs of
the pine and fir, to bask for brief moments on the mossy rocks or flash
on the hurrying waters. On a plateau beside the torrent, another chapel
was built to Our Lady, and another Huron town sprang up; and here, to
this day, the tourist finds the remnant of a lost people, harmless
weavers of baskets and sewers of moccasins, the Huron blood fast
bleaching out of them, as, with every generation, they mingle and fade
away in the French population around. [10]
[10] An interesting account of a visit to Indian Lorette in 1721 will be
found in the Journal Historique of Charlevoix. Kalm, in his Travels in
North America, describes its condition in 1749. See also Le Beau,
Aventures, I. 103; who, however, can hardly be regarded as an authority.