1650-1670.
THE DESTROYERS.
Iroquois Ambition • Its Victims • The Fate of the Neutrals • The Fate of
the Eries • The War with the Andastes • Supremacy of the Iroquois
It was well for the European colonies, above all for those of England,
that the wisdom of the Iroquois was but the wisdom of savages. Their
sagacity is past denying; it showed itself in many ways; but it was not
equal to a comprehension of their own situation and that of their race.
Could they have read their destiny, and curbed their mad ambition, they
might have leagued with themselves four great communities of kindred
lineage, to resist the encroachments of civilization, and oppose a
barrier of fire to the spread of the young colonies of the East. But
their organization and their intelligence were merely the instruments of
a blind frenzy, which impelled them to destroy those whom they might
have made their allies in a common cause.
Of the four kindred communities, two at least, the Hurons and the
Neutrals, were probably superior in numbers to the Iroquois. Either one
of these, with union and leadership, could have held its ground against
them, and the two united could easily have crippled them beyond the
power of doing mischief. But these so-called nations were mere
aggregations of villages and families, with nothing that deserved to be
called a government. They were very liable to panics, because the part
attacked by an enemy could never rely with confidence on prompt succor
from the rest; and when once broken, they could not be rallied, because
they had no centre around which to gather. The Iroquois, on the other
hand, had an organization with which the ideas and habits of several
generations were interwoven, and they had also sagacious leaders for
peace and war. They discussed all questions of policy with the coolest
deliberation, and knew how to turn to profit even imperfections in their
plan of government which seemed to promise only weakness and discord.
Thus, any nation, or any large town, of their confederacy, could make a
separate war or a separate peace with a foreign nation, or any part of
it. Some member of the league, as, for example, the Cayugas, would make
a covenant of friendship with the enemy, and, while the infatuated
victims were thus lulled into a delusive security, the war-parties of
the other nations, often joined by the Cayuga warriors, would overwhelm
them by a sudden onset. But it was not by their craft, nor by their
organization,--which for military purposes was wretchedly feeble,--that
this handful of savages gained a bloody supremacy. They carried all
before them, because they were animated throughout, as one man, by the
same audacious pride and insatiable rage for conquest. Like other
Indians, they waged war on a plan altogether democratic,--that is, each
man fought or not, as he saw fit; and they owed their unity and vigor of
action to the homicidal frenzy that urged them all alike.
The Neutral Nation had taken no part, on either side, in the war of
extermination against the Hurons; and their towns were sanctuaries where
either of the contending parties might take asylum. On the other hand,
they made fierce war on their western neighbors, and, a few years
before, destroyed, with atrocious cruelties, a large fortified town of
the Nation of Fire. [1] Their turn was now come, and their victims found
fit avengers; for no sooner were the Hurons broken up and dispersed,
than the Iroquois, without waiting to take breath, turned their fury on
the Neutrals. At the end of the autumn of 1650, they assaulted and took
one of their chief towns, said to have contained at the time more than
sixteen hundred men, besides women and children; and early in the
following spring, they took another town. The slaughter was prodigious,
and the victors drove back troops of captives for butchery or adoption.
It was the death-blow of the Neutrals. They abandoned their corn-fields
and villages in the wildest terror, and dispersed themselves abroad in
forests, which could not yield sustenance to such a multitude. They
perished by thousands, and from that time forth the nation ceased to
exist. [2]
[1] "Last summer," writes Lalemant in 1643, "two thousand warriors of
the Neutral Nation attacked a town of the Nation of Fire, well fortified
with a palisade, and defended by nine hundred warriors. They took it
after a siege of ten days; killed many on the spot; and made eight
hundred prisoners, men, women, and children. After burning seventy of
the best warriors, they put out the eyes of the old men, and cut away
their lips, and then left them to drag out a miserable existence. Behold
the scourge that is depopulating all this country!"--Relation des
Hurons, 1644, 98.
The Assistaeronnons, Atsistaehonnons, Mascoutins, or Nation of Fire
(more correctly, perhaps, Nation of the Prairie), were a very numerous
Algonquin people of the West, speaking the same language as the Sacs and
Foxes. In the map of Sanson, they are placed in the southern part of
Michigan; and according to the Relation of 1658, they had thirty towns.
They were a stationary, and in some measure an agricultural people. They
fled before their enemies to the neighborhood of Fox River in Wisconsin,
where they long remained. Frequent mention of them will be found in the
later Relations, and in contemporary documents. They are now extinct as
a tribe.
[2] Ragueneau, Relation, 1651, 4. In the unpublished journal kept by the
Superior of the Jesuits at Quebec, it is said, under date of April,
1651, that news had just come from Montreal, that, in the preceding
autumn, fifteen hundred Iroquois had taken a Neutral town; that the
Neutrals had afterwards attacked them, and killed two hundred of their
warriors; and that twelve hundred Iroquois had again invaded the Neutral
country to take their revenge. Lafitau, Mœurs des Sauvages, II. 176,
gives, on the authority of Father Julien Garnier, a singular and
improbable account of the origin of the war.
An old chief, named Kenjockety, who claimed descent from an adopted
prisoner of the Neutral Nation, was recently living among the Senecas of
Western New York.
During two or three succeeding years, the Iroquois contented themselves
with harassing the French and Algonquins; but in 1653 they made treaties
of peace, each of the five nations for itself, and the colonists and
their red allies had an interval of rest. In the following May, an
Onondaga orator, on a peace visit to Montreal, said, in a speech to the
Governor, "Our young men will no more fight the French; but they are too
warlike to stay at home, and this summer we shall invade the country of
the Eries. The earth trembles and quakes in that quarter; but here all
remains calm." [3] Early in the autumn, Father Le Moyne, who had taken
advantage of the peace to go on a mission to the Onondagas, returned
with the tidings that the Iroquois were all on fire with this new
enterprise, and were about to march against the Eries with eighteen
hundred warriors. [4]
[3] Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 9.
[4] Ibid., 10. Le Moyne, in his interesting journal of his mission,
repeatedly alludes to their preparations.
The occasion of this new war is said to have been as follows. The Eries,
who it will be remembered dwelt on the south of the lake named after
them, had made a treaty of peace with the Senecas, and in the preceding
year had sent a deputation of thirty of their principal men to confirm
it. While they were in the great Seneca town, it happened that one of
that nation was killed in a casual quarrel with an Erie; whereupon his
countrymen rose in a fury, and murdered the thirty deputies. Then ensued
a brisk war of reprisals, in which not only the Senecas, but the other
Iroquois nations, took part. The Eries captured a famous Onondaga chief,
and were about to burn him, when he succeeded in convincing them of the
wisdom of a course of conciliation; and they resolved to give him to the
sister of one of the murdered deputies, to take the place of her lost
brother. The sister, by Indian law, had it in her choice to receive him
with a fraternal embrace or to burn him; but, though she was absent at
the time, no one doubted that she would choose the gentler alternative.
Accordingly, he was clothed in gay attire, and all the town fell to
feasting in honor of his adoption. In the midst of the festivity, the
sister returned. To the amazement of the Erie chiefs, she rejected with
indignation their proffer of a new brother, declared that she would be
revenged for her loss, and insisted that the prisoner should forthwith
be burned. The chiefs remonstrated in vain, representing the danger in
which such a procedure would involve the nation: the female fury was
inexorable; and the unfortunate prisoner, stripped of his festal robes,
was bound to the stake, and put to death. [5] He warned his tormentors
with his last breath, that they were burning not only him, but the whole
Erie nation; since his countrymen would take a fiery vengeance for his
fate. His words proved true; for no sooner was his story spread abroad
among the Iroquois, than the confederacy resounded with war-songs from
end to end, and the warriors took the field under their two great
war-chiefs. Notwithstanding Le Moyne's report, their number, according
to the Iroquois account, did not exceed twelve hundred. [6]
[5] De Quen, Relation, 1656, 30.
[6] This was their statement to Chaumonot and Dablon, at Onondaga, in
November of this year. They added, that the number of the Eries was
between three and four thousand, (Journal des PP. Chaumonot et Dablon,
in Relation, 1656, 18.) In the narrative of De Quen (Ibid., 30, 31),
based, of course, on Iroquois reports, the Iroquois force is also set
down at twelve hundred, but that of the Eries is reduced to between two
and three thousand warriors. Even this may safely be taken as an
exaggeration.
Though the Eries had no fire-arms, they used poisoned arrows with great
effect, discharging them, it is said, with surprising rapidity.
They embarked in canoes on the lake. At their approach the Eries fell
back, withdrawing into the forests towards the west, till they were
gathered into one body, when, fortifying themselves with palisades and
felled trees, they awaited the approach of the invaders. By the lowest
estimate, the Eries numbered two thousand warriors, besides women and
children. But this is the report of the Iroquois, who were naturally
disposed to exaggerate the force of their enemies.
They approached the Erie fort, and two of their chiefs, dressed like
Frenchmen, advanced and called on those within to surrender. One of them
had lately been baptized by Le Moyne; and he shouted to the Eries, that,
if they did not yield in time, they were all dead men, for the Master of
Life was on the side of the Iroquois. The Eries answered with yells of
derision. "Who is this master of your lives?" they cried; "our hatchets
and our right arms are the masters of ours." The Iroquois rushed to the
assault, but were met with a shower of poisoned arrows, which killed and
wounded many of them, and drove the rest back. They waited awhile, and
then attacked again with unabated mettle. This time, they carried their
bark canoes over their heads like huge shields, to protect them from the
storm of arrows; then planting them upright, and mounting them by the
cross-bars like ladders, scaled the barricade with such impetuous fury
that the Eries were thrown into a panic. Those escaped who could; but
the butchery was frightful, and from that day the Eries as a nation were
no more. The victors paid dear for their conquest. Their losses were so
heavy that they were forced to remain for two months in the Erie
country, to bury their dead and nurse their wounded. [7]
[7] De Quen, Relation, 1656, 31. The Iroquois, it seems, afterwards made
other expeditions, to finish their work. At least, they told Chaumonot
and Dablon, in the autumn of this year, that they meant to do so in the
following spring.
It seems, that, before attacking the great fort of the Eries, the
Iroquois had made a promise to worship the new God of the French, if He
would give them the victory. This promise, and the success which
followed, proved of great advantage to the mission.
Various traditions are extant among the modern remnant of the Iroquois
concerning the war with the Eries. They agree in little beyond the fact
of the existence and destruction of that people. Indeed, Indian
traditions are very rarely of any value as historical evidence. One of
these stories, told me some years ago by a very intelligent Iroquois of
the Cayuga Nation, is a striking illustration of Iroquois ferocity. It
represents, that, the night after the great battle, the forest was
lighted up with more than a thousand fires, at each of which an Erie was
burning alive. It differs from the historical accounts in making the
Eries the aggressors.
One enemy of their own race remained,--the Andastes. This nation appears
to have been inferior in numbers to either the Hurons, the Neutrals, or
the Eries; but they cost their assailants more trouble than all these
united. The Mohawks seem at first to have borne the brunt of the Andaste
war; and, between the years 1650 and 1660, they were so roughly handled
by these stubborn adversaries, that they were reduced from the height of
audacious insolence to the depths of dejection. [8] The remaining four
nations of the Iroquois league now took up the quarrel, and fared
scarcely better than the Mohawks. In the spring of 1662, eight hundred
of their warriors set out for the Andaste country, to strike a decisive
blow; but when they reached the great town of their enemies, they saw
that they had received both aid and counsel from the neighboring Swedish
colonists. The town was fortified by a double palisade, flanked by two
bastions, on which, it is said, several small pieces of cannon were
mounted. Clearly, it was not to be carried by assault, as the invaders
had promised themselves. Their only hope was in treachery; and,
accordingly, twenty-five of their warriors gained entrance, on pretence
of settling the terms of a peace. Here, again, ensued a grievous
disappointment; for the Andastes seized them all, built high scaffolds
visible from without, and tortured them to death in sight of their
countrymen, who thereupon decamped in miserable discomfiture. [9]
[8] Relation, 1660, 6 (anonymous).
The Mohawks also suffered great reverses about this time at the hands of
their Algonquin neighbors, the Mohicans.
[9] Lalemant, Relation, 1663, 10.
The Senecas, by far the most numerous of the five Iroquois nations, now
found themselves attacked in turn,--and this, too, at a time when they
were full of despondency at the ravages of the small-pox. The French
reaped a profit from their misfortunes; for the disheartened savages
made them overtures of peace, and begged that they would settle in their
country, teach them to fortify their towns, supply them with arms and
ammunition, and bring "black-robes" to show them the road to Heaven.
[10]
[10] Lalemant, Relation, 1664, 33.
The Andaste war became a war of inroads and skirmishes, under which the
weaker party gradually wasted away, though it sometimes won laurels at
the expense of its adversary. Thus, in 1672, a party of twenty Senecas
and forty Cayugas went against the Andastes. They were at a considerable
distance the one from the other, the Cayugas being in advance, when the
Senecas were set upon by about sixty young Andastes, of the class known
as "Burnt-Knives," or "Soft-Metals," because as yet they had taken no
scalps. Indeed, they are described as mere boys, fifteen or sixteen
years old. They killed one of the Senecas, captured another, and put the
rest to flight; after which, flushed with their victory, they attacked
the Cayugas with the utmost fury, and routed them completely, killing
eight of them, and wounding twice that number, who, as is reported by
the Jesuit then in the Cayuga towns, came home half dead with gashes of
knives and hatchets. [11] "May God preserve the Andastes," exclaims the
Father, "and prosper their arms, that the Iroquois may be humbled, and
we and our missions left in peace!" "None but they," he elsewhere adds,
"can curb the pride of the Iroquois." The only strength of the Andastes,
however, was in their courage: for at this time they were reduced to
three hundred fighting men; and about the year 1675 they were finally
overborne by the Senecas. [12] Yet they were not wholly destroyed; for a
remnant of this valiant people continued to subsist, under the name of
Conestogas, for nearly a century, until, in 1763, they were butchered,
as already mentioned, by the white ruffians known as the "Paxton Boys."
[13]
[11] Dablon, Relation, 1672, 24.
[12] État Présent des Missions, in Relations Inédites, II. 44. Relation,
1676, 2. This is one of the Relations printed by Mr. Lenox.
[13] "History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," Chap. XXIV. Compare Shea,
in Historical Magazine, II. 297.
The bloody triumphs of the Iroquois were complete. They had "made a
solitude, and called it peace." All the surrounding nations of their own
lineage were conquered and broken up, while neighboring Algonquin tribes
were suffered to exist only on condition of paying a yearly tribute of
wampum. The confederacy remained a wedge thrust between the growing
colonies of France and England.
But what was the state of the conquerors? Their triumphs had cost them
dear. As early as the year 1660, a writer, evidently well-informed,
reports that their entire force had been reduced to twenty-two hundred
warriors, while of these not more than twelve hundred were of the true
Iroquois stock. The rest was a medley of adopted prisoners,--Hurons,
Neutrals, Eries, and Indians of various Algonquin tribes. [14] Still
their aggressive spirit was unsubdued. These incorrigible warriors
pushed their murderous raids to Hudson's Bay, Lake Superior, the
Mississippi, and the Tennessee; they were the tyrants of all the
intervening wilderness; and they remained, for more than half a century,
a terror and a scourge to the afflicted colonists of New France.
[14] Relation, 1660, 6, 7 (anonymous). Le Jeune says, "Their victories
have so depopulated their towns, that there are more foreigners in them
than natives. At Onondaga there are Indians of seven different nations
permanently established; and, among the Senecas, of no less than
eleven." (Relation, 1657, 34.) These were either adopted prisoners, or
Indians who had voluntarily joined the Iroquois to save themselves from
their hostility. They took no part in councils, but were expected to
join war-parties, though they were usually excused from fighting against
their former countrymen. The condition of female prisoners was little
better than that of slaves, and those to whom they were assigned often
killed them on the slightest pique.