1609.
LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
It was past the middle of June, and the expected warriors from the
upper country had not come,--a delay which seems to have given Champlain
little concern, for, without waiting longer, he set out with no better
allies than a band of Montagnais. But, as he moved up the St. Lawrence,
he saw, thickly clustered in the bordering forest, the lodges of an
Indian camp, and, landing, found his Huron and Algonquin allies. Few
of them had ever seen a white man, and they surrounded the steel-clad
strangers in speechless wonder. Champlain asked for their chief, and the
staring throng moved with him towards a lodge where sat, not one chief,
but two; for each band had its own. There were feasting, smoking, and
speeches; and, the needful ceremony over, all descended together
to Quebec; for the strangers were bent on seeing those wonders of
architecture, the fame of which had pierced the recesses of their
forests.
On their arrival, they feasted their eyes and glutted their appetites;
yelped consternation at the sharp explosions of the arquebuse and the
roar of the cannon; pitched their camps, and bedecked themselves for
their war-dance. In the still night, their fire glared against the black
and jagged cliff, and the fierce red light fell on tawny limbs convulsed
with frenzied gestures and ferocious stampings on contorted visages,
hideous with paint; on brandished weapons, stone war-clubs, stone
hatchets, and stone-pointed lances; while the drum kept up its hollow
boom, and the air was split with mingled yells.
The war-feast followed, and then all embarked together. Champlain was
in a small shallop, carrying, besides himself, eleven men of Pontgrave's
party, including his son-in-law Marais and the pilot La Routte. They
were armed with the arquebuse,--a matchlock or firelock somewhat like
the modern carbine, and from its shortness not ill suited for use in the
forest. On the twenty-eighth of June they spread their sails and held
their course against the current, while around them the river was alive
with canoes, and hundreds of naked arms plied the paddle with a steady,
measured sweep. They crossed the Lake of St. Peter, threaded the devious
channels among its many islands, and reached at last the mouth of the
Riviere des Iroquois, since called the Richelien, or the St. John.
Here, probably on the site of the town of Sorel, the leisurely warriors
encamped for two days, hunted, fished, and took their ease, regaling
their allies with venison and wildfowl. They quarrelled, too; three
fourths of their number seceded, took to their canoes in dudgeon, and
paddled towards their homes, while the rest pursued their course up the
broad and placid stream.
Walls of verdure stretched on left and right. Now, aloft in the lonely
air rose the cliffs of Belceil, and now, before them, framed in circling
forests, the Basin of Chambly spread its tranquil mirror, glittering in
the sun. The shallop outsailed the canoes. Champlain, leaving his allies
behind, crossed the basin and tried to pursue his course; but, as he
listened in the stillness, the unwelcome noise of rapids reached his
ear, and, by glimpses through the dark foliage of the Islets of St. John
he could see the gleam of snowy foam and the flash of hurrying waters.
Leaving the boat by the shore in charge of four men, he went with
Marais, La Routte, and five others, to explore the wild before him.
They pushed their way through the damps and shadows of the wood, through
thickets and tangled vines, over mossy rocks and mouldering logs. Still
the hoarse surging of the rapids followed them; and when, parting the
screen of foliage, they looked out upon the river, they saw it thick
set with rocks where, plunging over ledges, gurgling under drift-logs,
darting along clefts, and boiling in chasms, the angry waters filled the
solitude with monotonous ravings.
Champlain retraced his steps. He had learned the value of an Indian's
word. His allies had promised him that his boat could pass unobstructed
throughout the whole journey. "It afflicted me," he says, "and troubled
me exceedingly to be obliged to return without having seen so great a
lake, full of fair islands and bordered with the fine countries which
they had described to me."
When he reached the boat, he found the whole savage crew gathered at the
spot. He mildly rebuked their bad faith, but added, that, though they
had deceived him, he, as far as might be, would fulfil his pledge. To
this end, he directed Marais, with the boat and the greater part of the
men, to return to Quebec, while he, with two who offered to follow him,
should proceed in the Indian canoes.
The warriors lifted their canoes from the water, and bore them on their
shoulders half a league through the forest to the smoother stream above.
Here the chiefs made a muster of their forces, counting twenty-four
canoes and sixty warriors. All embarked again, and advanced once more,
by marsh, meadow, forest, and scattered islands,--then full of game,
for it was an uninhabited land, the war-path and battleground of hostile
tribes. The warriors observed a certain system in their advance. Some
were in front as a vanguard; others formed the main body; while an
equal number were in the forests on the flanks and rear, hunting for the
subsistence of the whole; for, though they had a provision of parched
maize pounded into meal, they kept it for use when, from the vicinity of
the enemy, hunting should become impossible.
Late in the day they landed and drew up their canoes, ranging them
closely, side by side. Some stripped sheets of bark, to cover their camp
sheds; others gathered wood, the forest being full of dead, dry trees;
others felled the living trees, for a barricade. They seem to have had
steel axes, obtained by barter from the French; for in less than
two hours they had made a strong defensive work, in the form of a
half-circle, open on the river side, where their canoes lay on the
strand, and large enough to enclose all their huts and sheds. [28]
Some of their number had gone forward as scouts, and, returning,
reported no signs of an enemy. This was the extent of their precaution,
for they placed no guard, but all, in full security, stretched
themselves to sleep,--a vicious custom from which the lazy warrior of
the forest rarely departs.
They had not forgotten, however, to consult their oracle. The
medicine-man pitched his magic lodge in the woods, formed of a small
stack of poles, planted in a circle and brought together at the tops
like stacked muskets. Over these he placed the filthy deer-skins which
served him for a robe, and, creeping in at a narrow opening, hid himself
from view. Crouched in a ball upon the earth, he invoked the spirits in
mumbling inarticulate tones; while his naked auditory, squatted on the
ground like apes, listened in wonder and awe. Suddenly, the lodge moved,
rocking with violence to and fro,--by the power of the spirits, as the
Indians thought, while Champlain could plainly see the tawny fist of the
medicine-man shaking the poles. They begged him to keep a watchful eye
on the peak of the lodge, whence fire and smoke would presently issue;
but with the best efforts of his vision, he discovered none. Meanwhile
the medicine-man was seized with such convulsions, that, when his
divination was over, his naked body streamed with perspiration. In loud,
clear tones, and in an unknown tongue, he invoked the spirit, who was
understood to be present in the form of a stone, and whose feeble and
squeaking accents were heard at intervals, like the wail of a young
puppy.
In this manner they consulted the spirit--as Champlain thinks, the
Devil--at all their camps. His replies, for the most part, seem to have
given them great content; yet they took other measures, of which the
military advantages were less questionable. The principal chief gathered
bundles of sticks, and, without wasting his breath, stuck them in the
earth in a certain order, calling each by the name of some warrior, a
few taller than the rest representing the subordinate chiefs. Thus was
indicated the position which each was to hold in the expected battle.
All gathered round and attentively studied the sticks, ranged like a
child's wooden soldiers, or the pieces on a chessboard; then, with no
further instruction, they formed their ranks, broke them, and reformed
them again and again with excellent alacrity and skill.
Again the canoes advanced, the river widening as they went. Great
islands appeared, leagues in extent,--Isle a la Motte, Long Island,
Grande Isle; channels where ships might float and broad reaches of water
stretched between them, and Champlain entered the lake which preserves
his name to posterity. Cumberland Head was passed, and from the opening
of the great channel between Grande Isle and the main he could look
forth on the wilderness sea. Edged with woods, the tranquil flood spread
southward beyond the sight. Far on the left rose the forest ridges of
the Green Mountains, and on the right the Adirondacks,--haunts in these
later years of amateur sportsmen from counting-rooms or college halls.
Then the Iroquois made them their hunting-ground; and beyond, in the
valleys of the Mohawk, the Onondaga, and the Genesce, stretched the long
line of their five cantons and palisaded towns.
At night they encamped again. The scene is a familiar one to many
a tourist; and perhaps, standing at sunset on the peaceful strand,
Champlain saw what a roving student of this generation has seen on those
same shores, at that same hour,--the glow of the vanished sun behind the
western mountains, darkly piled in mist and shadow along the sky; near
at hand, the dead pine, mighty in decay, stretching its ragged arms
athwart the burning heaven, the crow perched on its top like an image
carved in jet; and aloft, the nighthawk, circling in his flight, and,
with a strange whirring sound, diving through the air each moment for
the insects he makes his prey.
The progress of the party was becoming dangerous. They changed their
mode of advance and moved only in the night. All day they lay close in
the depth of the forest, sleeping, lounging, smoking tobacco of their
own raising, and beguiling the hours, no doubt, with the shallow banter
and obscene jesting with which knots of Indians are wont to amuse their
leisure. At twilight they embarked again, paddling their cautious
way till the eastern sky began to redden. Their goal was the rocky
promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was long afterward built. Thence, they
would pass the outlet of Lake George, and launch their canoes again on
that Como of the wilderness, whose waters, limpid as a fountain-head,
stretched far southward between their flanking mountains. Landing at the
future site of Fort William Henry, they would carry their canoes through
the forest to the river Hudson, and, descending it, attack perhaps some
outlying town of the Mohawks. In the next century this chain of lakes
and rivers became the grand highway of savage and civilized war, linked
to memories of momentous conflicts.
The allies were spared so long a progress. On the morning of the
twenty-ninth of July, after paddling all night, they hid as usual in
the forest on the western shore, apparently between Crown Point and
Ticonderoga. The warriors stretched themselves to their slumbers,
and Champlain, after walking till nine or ten o'clock through
the surrounding woods, returned to take his repose on a pile of
spruce-boughs. Sleeping, he dreamed a dream, wherein he beheld the
Iroquois drowning in the lake; and, trying to rescue them, he was told
by his Algonquin friends that they were good for nothing, and had
better be left to their fate. For some time past he had been beset every
morning by his superstitious allies, eager to learn about his dreams;
and, to this moment, his unbroken slumbers had failed to furnish the
desired prognostics. The announcement of this auspicious vision filled
the crowd with joy, and at nightfall they embarked, flushed with
anticipated victories.
It was ten o'clock in the evening, when, near a projecting point of
land, which was probably Ticonderoga, they descried dark objects in
motion on the lake before them. These were a flotilla of Iroquois
canoes, heavier and slower than theirs, for they were made of oak bark.
Each party saw the other, and the mingled war-cries pealed over the
darkened water. The Iroquois, who were near the shore, having no stomach
for an aquatic battle, landed, and, making night hideous with their
clamors, began to barricade themselves. Champlain could see them in the
woods, laboring like beavers, hacking down trees with iron axes taken
from the Canadian tribes in war, and with stone hatchets of their own
making. The allies remained on the lake, a bowshot from the hostile
barricade, their canoes made fast together by poles lashed across. All
night they danced with as much vigor as the frailty of their vessels
would permit, their throats making amends for the enforced restraint
of their limbs. It was agreed on both sides that the fight should be
deferred till daybreak; but meanwhile a commerce of abuse, sarcasm,
menace, and boasting gave unceasing exercise to the lungs and fancy of
the combatants, "much," says Champlain, "like the besiegers and besieged
in a beleaguered town."
As day approached, he and his two followers put on the light armor of
the time. Champlain wore the doublet and long hose then in vogue. Over
the doublet he buckled on a breastplate, and probably a back-piece,
while his thighs were protected by cuisses of steel, and his head by a
plumed casque. Across his shoulder hung the strap of his bandoleer,
or ammunition-box; at his side was his sword, and in his hand his
arquebuse. Such was the equipment of this ancient Indian-fighter,
whose exploits date eleven years before the landing of the Puritans at
Plymouth, and sixty-six years before King Philip's War.
Each of the three Frenchmen was in a separate canoe, and, as it grew
light, they kept themselves hidden, either by lying at the bottom,
or covering themselves with an Indian robe. The canoes approached the
shore, and all landed without opposition at some distance from
the Iroquois, whom they presently could see filing out of their
barricade,-tall, strong men, some two hundred in number, the boldest
and fiercest warriors of North America. They advanced through the forest
with a steadiness which excited the admiration of Champlain. Among them
could be seen three chiefs, made conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some
bore shields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of
armor made of tough twigs interlaced with a vegetable fibre supposed by
Champlain to be cotton. [29]
The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for their champion,
and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. He did so, and,
advancing before his red companions in arms, stood revealed to the gaze
of the Iroquois, who, beholding the warlike apparition in their path,
stared in mute amazement. "I looked at them," says Champlain, "and they
looked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us,
I levelled my arquebuse, which I had loaded with four balls, and aimed
straight at one of the three chiefs. The shot brought down two, and
wounded another. On this, our Indians set up such a yelling that one
could not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while the arrows flew
thick on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished and frightened
to see two of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their arrow-proof
armor. As I was reloading, one of my companions fired a shot from the
woods, which so increased their astonishment that, seeing their chiefs
dead, they abandoned the field and fled into the depth of the forest."
The allies dashed after them. Some of the Iroquois were killed, and
more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many
weapons flung down in the panic flight. The victory was complete.
At night, the victors led out one of the prisoners, told him that he was
to die by fire, and ordered him to sing his death-song if he dared. Then
they began the torture, and presently scalped their victim alive, [20]
when Champlain, sickening at the sight, begged leave to shoot him. They
refused, and he turned away in anger and disgust; on which they called
him back and told him to do as he pleased. He turned again, and a shot
from his arquebuse put the wretch out of misery.
The scene filled him with horror; but a few months later, on the Place
de la Greve at Paris, he might have witnessed tortures equally revolting
and equally vindictive, inflicted on the regicide Ravaillac by the
sentence of grave and learned judges.
The allies made a prompt retreat from the scene of their triumph. Three
or four days brought them to the mouth of the Richelien. Here they
separated; the Hurons and Algonquins made for the Ottawa, their homeward
route, each with a share of prisoners for future torments. At parting,
they invited Champlain to visit their towns and aid them again in
their wars, an invitation which this paladin of the woods failed not to
accept.
The companions now remaining to him were the Montagnais. In their camp
on the Richelien, one of them dreamed that a war party of Iroquois was
close upon them; on which, in a torrent of rain, they left their huts,
paddled in dismay to the islands above the Lake of St. Peter, and hid
themselves all night in the rushes. In the morning they took heart,
emerged from their hiding-places, descended to Quebec, and went thence
to Tadoussac, whither Champlain accompanied them. Here the squaws, stark
naked, swam out to the canoes to receive the heads of the dead Iroquois,
and, hanging them from their necks, danced in triumph along the
shore, One of the heads and a pair of arms were then bestowed on
Champlain,--touching memorials of gratitude, which, however, he was by
no means to keep for himself, but to present to the King.
Thus did New France rush into collision with the redoubted warriors of
the Five Nations. Here was the beginning, and in some measure doubtless
the cause, of a long suite of murderous conflicts, bearing havoc and
flame to generations yet unborn. Champlain had invaded the tiger's den;
and now, in smothered fury, the patient savage would lie biding his day
of blood.