THE FURY OF THE IROQUOIS
When the poor harassed "Black Robes" and their panic-stricken Indian
charges finally rested under the sheltering walls of Quebec,
Montmagny was no longer Governor. He had, after twelve years'
service, gone back to France, and a new Governor had arrived in his
stead. But the Indians still called the new Governor, and all the
Governors who came afterwards, by the name of "Onontio." They were
told that Montmagny in French signified "Great Mountain," Onontio in
the Huron tongue, and supposed it was a title bestowed by the
pale-faces on all their rulers in Canada.
Despite the unspeakable horrors, bloodshed, and martyrdom related in
the last chapter, nothing of lasting value was accomplished by the
hapless mission to the Hurons except a knowledge of the great Lake
Superior, which an interpreter, named Jean Nicollet, had discovered a
few years before.
Season now followed season, and each saw the French but little better
than prisoners in their three towns on the St. Lawrence. If they
ventured very far out of these fortified posts, it was only to give
the Iroquois a chance to spring upon them and bear {77} back their
scalps in triumph to their lodges in the wilderness. The French
might have made a treaty of alliance with their English neighbours in
New England, who had now set up a number of towns and were
flourishing, although they too were at the mercy of the surrounding
savages. But the French Governor made it a condition of the treaty
that the New Englanders should help Canada to exterminate the
terrible Iroquois. This the English colonists were loath to do; they
had no wish to bring the Iroquois tomahawks down upon their heads
also, as the French had done; and so the plan fell through. After a
time one of the Iroquois tribes, having lost a great many of their
fighting men in the long war, began to think of making recruits. The
idea occurred to them that the unfortunate Hurons and Algonquins, who
had joined their fortunes to the French, would be the very men for
their purpose, if they could only induce them to desert the alliance.
Forthwith they sent courtiers to announce to the Hurons that they no
longer bore them any grudge and were willing to adopt them--to
receive them into the bosom of their lodges. But it soon appeared
that all the Iroquois were not unanimous in their approval of this
plan, and as their treachery was well known, the Hurons and
Algonquins, now settled on the Isle of Orleans near Quebec, naturally
hesitated about accepting the offer. The few foolish ones who
trusted in Iroquois good faith were actually tomahawked by their
so-called friends on the way to the Iroquois lodges. In attempting
to punish a band of Iroquois ambushed near his fort, Du Plessis
Bochat, the Governor of {78} Three Rivers, lost his life; Father
Buteaux was killed on his way to his mission, and another priest,
Father Poucet, was borne away to a Mohawk village, and after being
tortured was sent back to Quebec to offer peace to the French. Peace
was indeed welcome, but the French were naturally still suspicious.
The truth was that the Iroquois were then too busily engaged in
destroying the Eries, a tribe which had burned one of their most
illustrious chiefs, to spare time to massacre the pale-faces. As the
chief, a Seneca, had stood with unquivering nerve at the stake he had
cried out, "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!" for he knew the
Senecas would avenge his death. Much, then, as the Governor, De
Lauzon, wanted peace, neither he nor his Indian allies knew how far
they could trust the Iroquois. It was at last decided that if the
Onondagas, one of the five Iroquois nations, would receive a Jesuit
mission, a body of Hurons should be sent under escort to be adopted
into their tribe. From the Onondagas there came a message to say
they would agree to this, and in June 1656 the expedition set out
from Quebec. It consisted of a large body of Hurons, as well as
Onondagas, fifty French soldiers, led by the brave captain, Dupuy,
and two priests, Dablon and Chaumonot. Scarcely was the party well
under way, when a band of Mohawks fell upon them, and before they
pretended to discover that they were attacking members of their own
confederacy, they had killed and wounded a number of Onondagas.
Profuse excuses and apologies followed, the Mohawks explaining that
they took them, the Onondagas, for Hurons. {79} The expedition was
suffered to proceed. The truth is, the Mohawks were jealous of the
Onondagas in obtaining an alliance with the French and Hurons. To
show their power and their contempt of the pale-faces, they continued
their journey eastward to the Isle of Orleans, and under the very
guns of the fort of Quebec surprised the defenceless Hurons who dwelt
there, and fiercely murdered or captured all they came upon, even the
women and children. In broad daylight they paddled their fleet of
bark canoes in front of Quebec, laughing and yelling defiance to the
French, and making their unhappy captives join in dancing and songs
of triumph. The Governor this time was a weak man, and all he could
do was to wring his hands and regret bitterly that he had ever sent
any mission to the Onondagas. He began to fear for their safety.
Not wholly unfounded were the Governor's alarms. At first all went
smoothly enough with the little band of Frenchmen in the heart of the
Onondaga country. This particular tribe of the Iroquois appeared
delighted at the coming of the French. But quickly signs of danger
began to multiply. The pale-face soldiers grew aware that a plot was
on foot to murder them in the little fort they had built, close to
where the present prosperous city of Syracuse now stands. Dupuy,
being an able and courageous man, resolved by some means or another
to foil the savages and escape back to Canada. This is the stratagem
he hit upon; it was the custom of these Indians to hold mystic
feasts, at which it was a point of honour to eat everything that was
set before them {80} by their hosts. If a man failed to eat the
whole of a dish--even to the fifth helping--it was taken by the host
as a personal insult. Dupuy planned such a feast, and arranged to
stuff them so plentifully that not a single brave would be capable of
rising from the banquet. The plan worked perfectly, the Indians not
observing that the French concealed most of their food instead of
eating it, so that by midnight the gorged and drunken Onondagas were
sunk in a gluttonous sleep. Dupuy had taken good care beforehand to
build secretly within his fort a number of large, light,
flat-bottomed skiffs, and now when dawn came the Frenchmen stole
away, carrying these with them to the Oswego River, reaching Quebec
at last, in spite of ice and rapids, with the loss of only three men,
who were drowned. The Indians pursued, but their birch-bark canoes
were useless on the icy stream, and they had to give up the chase.
The escape from the Onondagas was a very clever and daring deed, and
shows the material the colonists of New France were made of in those
days. A deed still more daring and important was to follow. The
Iroquois threw off the mask and determined to deal the French in
Canada a deadly blow. A mighty force of the Five Nations was
organised, to meet at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence
rivers, and swoop down first upon Montreal and then upon the other
settlements. It so happened that there lived in Ville Marie at this
time a young nobleman, Daulac des Ormeaux, who chose to be known to
the other colonists as Adam Dollard. Having left France in order to
escape the consequences of {81} some rash act, he burned for some
chance to retrieve the honour of his name. The valiant youth now saw
with joy the long-looked-for opportunity arrive at his door, and he
obeyed the summons. From the Governor did Dollard obtain leave to
lead a party of volunteers against the savage foe. Gathering sixteen
gallant fellows about him, all swore a solemn oath to give or take no
quarter, but by sheer force of their arms break the force of the blow
which was about to descend on their beloved town. A mad enterprise
truly did it seem, but for sheer valour nothing finer has been known
since fearless Leonidas and his handful of Greeks held the pass at
Thermopylae. The seventeen heroes, together kneeling, took the
Sacrament at the hands of the pale priest, and set forth for the Long
Sault (or Rapids) of the Ottawa. There in the dense woods they found
a disused old Indian stockade by which the invading host had to pass.
Entrenching themselves as well as they could, they waited. A few
friendly Hurons and Algonquins joined them, wondering at the
hardihood of the pale-face warriors, and shamed into lending them a
helping hand. The storm broke. A horde of 700 screaming savages,
picked men of the Iroquois, flung themselves upon them. Easy work it
seemed to crush out this feeble band. To their astonishment, Dollard
and his men beat them back. Again and again they came on, and again
and again were they repulsed. By this time, appalled at the fearful
odds against them, the friendly Indians had fled from the side of the
besieged, all but one Huron chief, Annahotaha, and four Algonquins.
These stood firm. {82} Every loophole in the stockade darted its
tongue of fire; so faultless was the aim that nearly every time a
musket rang out an Iroquois fell dead. Fortunately Dollard had
brought plenty of ammunition. Some musketoons of large calibre, from
whose throats scraps of lead and iron belched forth, slew and wounded
several of the enemy at a single discharge. Thus three days wore
away and still the terrible struggle came to no end. In the
intervals, by day and night, Dollard and his men offered up prayers
to Heaven on their knees in the melting snow. Their food was now
gone, and, worse still, they had no water. No hope now remained save
to keep the Iroquois a few hours longer at bay; they were certain
only of a martyr's reward. On the part of the besiegers so many men
had they lost that they sickened of the fight, and some amongst them
even counselled going home. But other chiefs shrank from such a
disgrace.
"Shall we," they cried, "confess ourselves beaten by so paltry an
enemy? Our squaws would laugh in our faces! Let us now rather band
ourselves together and storm the fort of the white men, at whatever
cost."
A general assault was made. So high by this time was piled the
bodies of the Iroquois, that their fellows could now leap over the
stockade. Dollard fell, and one after another of the exhausted
defenders was slain, although each fought like a madman, a sword or
hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other. Amongst the heap of
corpses one Frenchman still breathed, and he was dragged out and {83}
tortured. This was the end; thus perished Dollard and his valiant
sixteen, whose names are imperishably written in the annals of
Montreal. Nor did they offer their lives to the Iroquois hatchets in
vain. The Iroquois had been taught a lesson, and to their lodges the
tribe slunk back like whipped curs. "If," said they, "seventeen
Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron can, behind a picket fence,
hold seven hundred of our best warriors at bay, what defence would
their hundreds do behind yonder ramparts of stone?" And so the
colony of New France was saved.
The cowardly native allies of the French in this fight were not to
escape the penalty of their treacherous desertion. The Iroquois
turned upon them, burning some on the spot, and making captives of
others. Five only succeeded in escaping to carry the tale of the
defence, the butchery, and the martyrdom to Ville Marie.
It seemed, however, as if Canada had only been saved in order to
perish from other causes. The colony was impoverished and torn,
besides, with civil and religious dissensions. The Society of Notre
Dame of Montreal, those rich and influential persons in France who
had founded the city, now wearied of their enterprise. It was turned
over to the great Seminary of St. Sulpicius, and a number of
Sulpician fathers were sent out to take charge and to found a
seminary in Montreal. Amongst these was the Abbe de Queylus, who
hoped the King would eventually make him a bishop. But the Jesuits
were too powerful not to prevent any priest but a {84} Jesuit from
receiving such an appointment, and at last succeeded in getting
François de Laval, Bishop of Petræa, appointed to control the Church
in Canada. A striking figure was Laval, playing a great part in the
early history of Canada; but in spite of his virtue, he was
narrow-minded and domineering, perpetually quarrelling with the
various Governors of the colony during the next thirty-five years.
So desperate did the people of New France become at the dangers which
surrounded them, at the quarrels between the Bishop and the Governor,
at the excesses of the fur-traders, who insisted on intoxicating the
Indians and themselves with brandy, that it hardly needed the
terrible earthquake which took place in 1663 to make them lose heart
altogether. The total population then was some two thousand souls,
and the Company of the Hundred Associates had been found powerless to
settle, develop, and defend the country properly. Thinking only of
the profits of the fur trade, it had shamefully neglected its
promises, and when any of its officials made money in Canada, they at
once went home to spend it. All this was pointed out by the Marquis
d'Avaugour when the Governorship at last fell from his hands; and
remembering that others, including Laval, had made the same charge,
Colbert, the new Minister of young King Louis the Fourteenth, decided
to plead the cause of Canada to his master. It was on his advice
that King Louis resolved to take the government directly into his own
hands. By royal edict was revoked the charter of the Hundred
Associates, and three men appointed as a {85} Sovereign Council in
Canada to carry out royal authority. These three officials were the
Governor, the Bishop, and the Intendant, the latter having charge of
the commerce and finances of the colony. To the post of Governor the
Sieur de Courcelle was appointed, and Jean Baptiste Talon became
Intendant. The office of Bishop, of course, continued to be filled
by Laval.
[Illustration: Dollard strikes his Last Blow, 1658]
And now the drooping fortunes of New France began to revive.
Soldiers and settlers began to pour into the country. Besides De
Courcelle, the King sent also his Viceroy for the whole of his
Trans-atlantic domains, the veteran Marquis de Tracy, to report to
him personally upon the state of Canada. When De Tracy set sail a
throng of eager young nobles accompanied him. Their imagination had
been stirred by the tales they had heard of the country by the St.
Lawrence River. They thirsted for adventure and renown. There came
also the famous disbanded regiment, called the Carignan-Callières,
after the names of its commanders, the first regiment of regular
troops ever sent to Canada by the King. It had lately been serving
in the wars of France against the Turks, and had provoked the
admiration of the Turkish Sultan.
On the last day of June 1665 a brilliant scene was witnessed in
Quebec. On that glowing summer's day the gallant Marquis and the
troops landed at the flowery base of towering Cape Diamond. What a
different scene was now presented from that which had taken place but
a few seasons before, when the impudent Iroquois had shaken their
hatchets from {86} their canoes at the trembling and helpless
Governor! The population had doubled as if by magic; thousands were
on the ramparts shouting a welcome to the broad white standard
blazoned with the arms of France, which floated proudly from fleet
and fortress. The river-banks echoed with the hoarse note of cannon.
The bells of the church and seminaries pealed in a frenzy of joy.
Tracy, a giant six feet and a half high, and his officers stepped
ashore, all gorgeously attired in crimson and white and gold. In the
vanguard of the procession which climbed that day the heights of
Quebec were twenty-four guards in the King's livery, followed by four
pages and six valets. On arrival at the square, Laval, in his
resplendent pontificals, received them, and noted with pleasure that
the old marquis, although suffering from fever caught in the tropics,
knelt on the bare pavement. A new order of things everywhere was
begun. With the 2000 settlers came young women for wives, as well as
horses, oxen, and sheep in abundance. It became Tracy's duty to look
to the colony's protection in order that it might increase and
multiply, and the only way to accomplish this was by curbing the
power of the Iroquois. No time was lost in taking measures to this
end. The forts at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were
strengthened, three new forts, St. Theresa, Sorel, and Chambly, were
built on the Richelieu River. Reports of the arrival of the troops,
and of all their preparations, naturally spread far and wide amongst
the Indians, and very soon four of the Five Nations thought it
prudent to sue for peace. The fierce {87} Mohawks alone remained
defiant; they were not to be cowed by all this martial pomp, and at
last Courcelle, the Governor, with Tracy, the Viceroy's, permission,
resolved to chastise them as soundly as they deserved. He would take
them when they least expected it: surprise them in their lodges in
the depths of winter, when his soldiers could travel over the frozen
rivers as though on a paved highway. Many who had had experience of
winter journeyings in Canada sought to dissuade him from the attempt,
but the new Governor was anxious to distinguish himself, and win the
approval of the Viceroy and his King. Early in January he and his
500 men began to march. Before they had reached Three Rivers many
had their ears, noses, and fingers frozen, while some of the
newly-arrived troops were so disabled by the cold, that they had to
be left behind. But the old Indian fighters and native Canadians, of
whom there were nearly a hundred, pressed forward bravely in the van,
in spite of the heavy loads which all were obliged to carry. For six
weeks they travelled to reach the Iroquois lodges, but they lost
their way, and came at last to the Dutch settlement of Schenectady.
Here they learnt that the Mohawks had gone far afield on a war-like
expedition, and that the country they were now in belonged to the
Duke of York, afterwards James II. New Netherlands having thus
passed into English hands, Courcelle and his troops were asked to
quit the territory at once. There was nothing, therefore, to do but
to steal away to Canada, whence they had come. It was not an easy
feat, for a body of Mohawks hung at {88} their heels tomahawking
stragglers. The cold was intense, and, to make matters worse, the
provisions gave out. Sixty men perished on the march. Nevertheless,
unlucky as Courcelle had been, his expedition had served to convince
the Mohawks that they and their families were no longer safe in their
lodges. There was no telling what these Frenchmen would do next, so
they sent a deputation to offer peace. The Viceroy, in his turn,
sent a priest as his ambassador to visit their deputation, but he had
scarcely left when tidings came that a party of seven French officers
out hunting near Lake Champlain had been set upon and killed by the
Mohawks. A cousin of Tracy's had been captured, and a nephew had
been slain.
"Now, by the Virgin!" cried the sick old soldier, bringing down his
giant palm on the table, "they have gone far enough. Recall the holy
father. We must teach these savages a lesson." But the cup of his
anger was not yet full. A couple of boastful Mohawk deputies arrived
in Quebec and came to his house. When the indignant Tracy happened
to mention the murder of his nephew, one of them actually had the
effrontery to laugh and exclaim, as he stretched out his arm, "Yes,
this is the hand that split the head of that young man!"
The Viceroy, veteran soldier as he was, and used to deeds of
violence, shuddered with horror.
"Very well," he said, "never shall it slay any one else. Take that
base wretch out," he added to one of the guard, "and hang him in the
presence of his fellows!"
{89}
It was September. Tracy himself and Courcelle, commanding 1300 men,
put the heights of Quebec behind them. Traversing mountains, swamps,
rivers, lakes, and forests, they held steadily on their way to the
country of the Mohawks. When the gout seized the commander they bore
him on a litter, a mighty load. All day long were the drums beating
and the trumpets blowing; when provisions had grown low, luckily they
came upon a huge grove yielding chestnuts, on which they largely fed.
The Mohawks heard of this martial procession and were terrified.
They had no wish now to face the French, whose numbers rumour
magnified, and whose drums they took for devils. At the last moment
they retreated from their towns, one after another. Tracy pursued
them, capturing each place as he arrived at it. At the fourth town
he thought he had captured them all, but a squaw told him there was
still another, and stronger than any they had yet seen. To this town
he sent an officer, who prepared for an assault, but, to the surprise
of the French, they found within only an old man, a couple of aged
squaws, and a little child. These told the French that the Mohawks
had just evacuated, crying, "Let us save ourselves, brothers! The
whole world is coming against us!" All loaded with corn and
provisions as it was, to the town the French that night applied the
torch. A mighty bonfire lit up the forest. In despair at losing all
their possessions, the two squaws flung themselves headlong into the
flames. All the other places were destroyed, and then, chanting the
Te Deum and reciting mass, the victors set out on {90} the return
march. They had burned the food of the Mohawks, who they knew must
now feel the dread pangs of hunger. Terrible was the blow, and the
Mohawks suffered much that winter. Their pride was humbled. By
these means was a treaty of peace between the French and all the
Iroquois declared, and for twenty years Canada enjoyed the sweets of
peace.
Old Marquis de Tracy had done his work well, and could now go back to
France with his resplendent bodyguard, his four pages, and his six
valets, and leave Courcelle and Talon to rule Canada alone.
After this, when they went amongst the Iroquois, cross and breviary
in hand, Jesuit missionaries met with no danger or refusal. They
made many converts. Not content with their labours amongst the
tribes close at hand, they pierced the distant forests north of Lake
Superior, established permanent missions at Michilimackinac and Sault
Ste. Marie, which joins the Lakes Huron and Michigan. On the banks
of the St. Lawrence a new era began. For when the Carignan-Callières
regiment was disbanded, the soldiers turned their swords into
ploughshares, and the wise and prudent Intendant, Talon, had the
satisfaction of seeing farms arise in the wilderness and yield
abundant harvests. Talon's hand was seen everywhere; he spared no
pains to make Canada prosperous and self-supporting. He set about
establishing the fisheries in the St. Lawrence river and gulf, and
encouraged the seal-hunts, by which much oil was obtained and
exported to France. He ordered the people to grow hemp, and taught
the women to spin wool. He also devoted much attention to the {91}
timber trade, and to him is owing the first tannery seen in Canada.
By the year 1688 as many as 1100 vessels had in a single season
anchored in the Quebec roadstead, laden with every kind of
merchandise. According to a letter written by one of the chief nuns,
"M. Talon studied with the affection of a father how to succour the
poor and cause the colony to grow; entered into the minutest
particulars; visited the houses of the inhabitants and caused them to
visit him; learned what crop each was raising; taught those who had
wheat to sell it at a profit; helped those who had none, and
encouraged everybody."
But in nothing were Talon's efforts so extraordinary to us as in his
providing wives for the colonists of New France. In his first few
years of office 1200 girls were shipped out from France. These
French maidens were chosen from the country rather than from the
city, strong and accustomed to work. But there was also a
consignment of "select young ladies" as wives for the officers. When
they arrived in Quebec or Montreal, the girls, tall and short, blonde
or brunette, plump and lean, were gathered in a large building, and
the young Canadian came and chose a wife to his liking. A priest was
in readiness, and they were married on the spot, in batches of thirty
at a time. Next day, we are told, the Governor caused the couple to
be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two
barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money. Besides this
bounty, twenty livres were given to each youth who married before he
was twenty years old, and to each girl who married before {92}
sixteen. All bachelors were heavily taxed. To be unmarried was
regarded by the Intendant and the King as a crime. In short, as has
been said, the new settler was found by the King, sent over by the
King, and supplied by the King with a wife, a farm, and even a house.
Now amongst free-born Britons all this royal interference would have
been resented. Britons like to manage their own private affairs.
They would call Louis the Fourteenth's system "paternalism," and in
truth the system was a failure, because it discouraged the principle
of independence. No spirit of self-reliance was stimulated amongst
the people. They looked to the Government for everything, not to
themselves. The result was that many of the strongest and most
self-reliant amongst the young men preferred to live a life of
freedom and adventure in the wilderness, hunting, fishing, and
trading, rather than suffer the constraints imposed upon them by the
well-meaning Talon. Thus came about the creation of a famous class
called the _coureurs de bois_, or bushrangers, who at last spread
themselves all over Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, owning
no laws but their own, living like Indians, taking unto themselves
Indian wives, and rearing half-breed children. Talon and all the
Governors, Intendants, and Bishops were very angry with these men,
who thus set the wishes of the good King at defiance, and made many
laws against them. But in vain! The bushrangers, valorous,
picturesque, and their companions, the _voyageurs_, continued to
flourish almost until our own day.
{93}