FRANCE AND ENGLAND in NORTH AMERICA
FOURTH PART
THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA
TWENTY-SIXTH EDITION
BY FRANCIS PARKMAN
BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1874
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GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS, D.D.
My dear Dr. Ellis:
When, in my youth, I proposed to write a series of books on the French
in America, you encouraged the attempt, and your helpful kindness has
followed it from that day to this. Pray accept the dedication of this
volume in token of the grateful regard of
Very faithfully yours,
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
PREFACE.
“The physiognomy of a government,” says De Tocqueville, “can best
be judged in its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually
appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge of the spirit and
the faults of the administration of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its
deformity is there seen as through a microscope.”
The monarchical administration of France, at the height of its power
and at the moment of its supreme triumph, stretched an arm across the
Atlantic and grasped the North American continent. This volume attempts
to show by what methods it strove to make good its hold, why it achieved
a certain kind of success, and why it failed at last. The political
system which has fallen, and the antagonistic system which has
prevailed, seem, at first sight, to offer nothing but contrasts; yet out
of the tomb of Canadian absolutism come voices not without suggestion
even to us. Extremes meet, and Autocracy and Democracy often touch
hands, at least in their vices.
The means of knowing the Canada of the past are ample. The pen was
always busy in this outpost of the old monarchy. The king and the
minister demanded to know every thing; and officials of high and low
degree, soldiers and civilians, friends and foes, poured letters,
despatches, and memorials, on both sides of every question, into the
lap of government. These masses of paper have in the main survived the
perils of revolutions and the incendiary torch of the Commune. Add
to them the voluminous records of the Superior Council of Quebec, and
numerous other documents preserved in the civil and ecclesiastical
depositories of Canada.
The governments of New York and of Canada have caused a large part of
the papers in the French archives, relating to their early history, to
be copied and brought to America, and valuable contributions of material
from the same quarter have been made by the State of Massachusetts and
by private Canadian investigators. Nevertheless, a great deal has still
remained in France, uncopied and unexplored. In the course of several
visits to that country, I have availed myself of these supplementary
papers, as well as of those which had before been copied, sparing
neither time nor pains to explore every part of the field. With the help
of a system of classified notes, I have collated the evidence of the
various writers, and set down without reserve all the results of the
examination, whether favorable or unfavorable. Some of them are of a
character which I regret, since they cannot be agreeable to persons for
whom I have a very cordial regard. The conclusions drawn from the facts
may be matter of opinion, but it will be remembered that the facts
themselves can be overthrown only by overthrowing the evidence on which
they rest, or bringing forward counter evidence of equal or greater
strength; and neither task will be found an easy one. *
I have received most valuable aid in my inquiries from the great
knowledge and experience of M. Pierre Margry, Chief of the Archives of
the Marine and Colonies at Paris. I beg also warmly to acknowledge the
kind offices of Abbé Henri Raymond Casgrain and Grand Vicar Cazeau, of
Quebec, together with those of James LeMoine, Esq., M. Eugène
Taché, Hon. P. J. O. Chauveau, and other eminent Canadians, and Henry
Harrisse, Esq.
The few extracts from original documents, which are printed in the
appendix, may serve as samples of the material out of which the work has
been constructed. In some instances their testimony
* Those who wish to see the subject from a point of view
opposite to mine cannot do better than consult the work of
the Jesuit Charlevoix, with the excellent annotation of Mr.
Shea. (History and General Description of New France, by the
Rev. P. F. X. de Charlevoix, S.J., translated with notes by
John Gilmary Shea. 6 vols. New York: 1866-1872.)
might be multiplied twenty-fold. When the place of deposit of the
documents cited in the margin is not otherwise indicated, they will, in
nearly all cases, be found in the Archives of the Marine and Colonies.
In the present book we examine the political and social machine; in the
next volume of the series we shall see this machine in action.
Boston, July 1, 1874.
DETAILED CONTENTS
I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION.
CHAPT I. 1653-1658.
THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.
The Iroquois War.--Father Poncet.--His Adventures.--Jesuit Boldness.--Le
Moyne’s Mission.--Chaumonot and Dablon.--Iroquois Ferocity.--The
Mohawk Kidnappers.--Critical Position.--The Colony of Onondaga.--Speech
of Chaumonot.--Omens of Destruction.--Device of the Jesuits.--The
Medicine Feast.--The Escape.
CHAPT II. 1642-1661.
THE HOLT WARS OF MONTREAL.
Duversière.--Mance and Bourgeoys.--Miracle.--A Pious
Defaulter.--Jesuit and Sulpitian.--Montreal in 1659.--The Hospital
Nuns.--The Nuns and the Iroquois.--More Miracles--The Murdered
Priests.--Brigeac and Closse.--Soldiers of the Holy Family.
CHAPT III. 1660, 1661.
THE HEROES OF THE LONG SAUT.
Suffering and Terror.--François Hertel.--The Captive Wolf.--The
threatened Invasion.--Daulac des Ormeaux.--The Adventurers at the Long
Saut.--The Attack.--A Desperate Defence.--A Final Assault.--The Fort
taken.
CHAPT IV. 1657-1668.
THE DISPUTED BISHOPRIC.
Domestic Strife.--Jesuit and Sulpitian.--Abbé Queylus.--François de
Laval.--The Zealots of Caen.--Gallican and Ultramontane.--The Rival
Claimants.--Storm at Quebec.--Laval Triumphant.
CHAPT V. 1659, 1660.
LAVAL AND ARGENSON.
François de Laval.--His Position and Character.--Arrival of
Argenson.--The Quarrel.
CHAPT VI. 1658-1663.
LAVAL AND AVAUGOUR.
Reception of Argenson.--His Difficulties.--His Recall.--Dubois
d’Avaugour.--The Brandy Quarrel.--Distress of Laval.--Portents.--The
Earthquake.
CHAPT VII. 1661-1661.
LAVAL AND DUMESNIL.
Péronne Dumesnil.--The Old Council.--Alleged Murder.--The New
Council.--Bourdon and Villeray.--Strong Measures.--Escape of
Dumesnil.--Views of Colbert.
CHAPT VIII. 1657-1665.
LAVAL AND MÉZY.
The Bishop’s Choice.--A Military Zealot.--Hopeful Beginnings.--Signs
of Storm.--The Quarrel.--Distress of Mézy.--He Refuses to Yield.--His
Defeat and Death.
CHAPT IX. 1662-1680.
LAVAL AND THE SEMINARY.
Laval’s Visit to Court.--The Seminary.--Zeal of the Bishop.--His
Eulogists.--Church and State.--Attitude of Laval.
II. THE COLONY AND THE KING.
CHAPT X. 1661-1665.
ROYAL INTERVENTION.
Fontainebleau.--Louis XIV.--Colbert.--The Company of the West.--Evil
Omens.--Action of the King.--Tracy, Courcelle, and Talon.--The Regiment
of Carignan-Salières.--Tracy at Quebec.--Miracles.--A Holy War.
CHAPT XI. 1666, 1667.
THE MOHAWKS CHASTISED.
Courcelle’s March.--His Failure and Return.--Courcelle and the
Jesuits.--Mohawk Treachery.--Tracy’s Expedition.--Burning of
the Mohawk Towns.--French and English.--Dollier de Casson at St.
Anne.--Peace.--The Jesuits and the Iroquois.
CHAPT XII. 1665-1672.
PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.
Talon.--Restriction and Monopoly.--Views of Colbert.--Political
Galvanism.--A Father of the People.
CHAPT XIII. 1661-1673.
MARRIAGE AND POPULATION.
Shipment of Emigrants.--Soldier Settlers.--Importation of
Wives.--Wedlock.--Summary Methods.--The Mothers of Canada.--Bounties on
Marriage.--Celibacy Punished.--Bounties on Children.--Results.
CHAPT XIV. 1665-1672.
THE NEW HOME.
Military Frontier.--The Canadian Settler.--Seignior and
Vassal.--Example of Talon.--Plan of Settlement.--Aspect of
Canada.--Quebec.--The River Settlements.--Montreal.--The Pioneers.
CHAPT XV. 1663-1763.
CANADIAN FEUDALISM.
Transplantation of Feudalism.--Precautions.--Faith and Homage.
--The Seignior.--The Censitaire.--Royal Intervention.--The
Gentilhomme.--Canadian Noblesse.
CHAPT XVI. 1663-1763.
THE RULERS OF CANADA.
Nature of the Government.--The Governor.--The Council.--Courts and
Judges.--The Intendant.--His Grievances.--Strong Government.--Sedition
and Blasphemy.--Royal Bounty.--Defects and Abuses.
CHAPT XVII. 1663-1763.
TRADE AND INDUSTRY.
Trade in Fetters.--The Huguenot Merchants.--Royal Patronage.--The
Fisheries.--Cries for Help.--Agriculture.--Manufactures.--Arts of
Ornament.--Finance.--Card Money.--Repudiation.--Imposts.--The
Beaver Trade.--The Fair at Montreal.--Contraband Trade.--A Fatal
System.--Trouble and Change.--The Coureurs de Bois.-The Forest.--Letter
of Carheil.
CHAPT XVIII. 1663-1702.
THE MISSIONS. THE BRANDY QUESTION.
The Jesuits and the Iroquois.--Mission
Villages.--Michillimackinac.--Father Carheil.--Temperance.--Brandy
and the Indians.--Strong Measures.--Disputes.--License and
Prohibition.--Views of the King.--Trade and the Jesuits.
CHAPT XIX. 1663-1763.
PRIESTS AND PEOPLE.
Church and State.--The Bishop and the King.--The King ana the
Cure's.--The New Bishop.--The Canadian Curé.--Ecclesiastical
Rule.--Saint-Vallier and Denonville.--Clerical Rigor.--Jesuit and
Sulpitian.--Courcelle and Châtelain.--The Recollets.--Heresy
and Witchcraft.--Canadian Nuns.--Jeanne Le Ber.--Education.--The
Seminary.--Saint Joachim.--Miracles of Saint Anne.--Canadian Schools.
CHAPT XX. 1640-1763.
MORALS AND MANNERS
Social Influence of the Troops.--A Petty Tyrant.--Brawls.--Violence
and Outlawry.--State of the Population.--Views of
Denonville.--Brandy.--Beggary.--The Past and the Present.--Inns.--State
of Quebec.--Fires.--The Country Parishes.--Slavery.--Views of La
Hontan.--Of Hocquart.--Of Bougainville--Of Kalm.--Of Charlevoix.
CHAPT XXI. 1663-1763.
CANADIAN ABSOLUTISM.
Formation of Canadian Character.--The Rival Colonies.--England
and France.--New England.--Characteristics of Race.--Military
Qualities.--The Church.--The English Conquest.
I. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION.
CHAPTER I. 1653-1658. THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.
_The Iroquois War.--Father Poncet.-->His Adventures.--Jesuit
Boldness.--Le Moyne’s Mission.--Chaumonot and Dablon.--Iroquois
Ferocity.--The Mohawk Kidnappers.--Critical Position.--The Colony of
Onondaga.--Speech op Chaumonot.--Omens of Destruction.--Device of the
Jesuits.--The Medicine Feast.--The Escape._
|In the summer of 1653, all Canada turned to fasting and penance,
processions, vows, and supplications. The saints and the Virgin were
beset with unceasing prayer. The wretched little colony was like some
puny garrison, starving and sick, compassed with inveterate foes,
supplies cut off, and succor hopeless.
At Montreal, the advance guard of the settlements, a sort of Castle
Dangerous, held by about fifty Frenchmen, and said by a pious writer of
the day to exist only by a continuous miracle, some two hundred Iroquois
fell upon twenty-six Frenchmen. The Christians were outmatched, eight to
one; but, says the chronicle, the Queen of Heaven was on their side,
and the Son of Mary refuses nothing to his holy mother. * Through her
intercession, the Iroquois shot so wildly that at their first fire every
bullet missed its mark, and they met with a bloody defeat. The palisaded
settlement of Three Rivers, though in a position less exposed than that
of Montreal, was in no less jeopardy. A noted war-chief of the Mohawk
Iroquois had been captured here the year before, and put to death; and
his tribe swarmed out, like a nest of angry hornets, to revenge him. Not
content with defeating and killing the commandant, Du Plessis Bochart,
they encamped during winter in the neighboring forest, watching for
an opportunity to surprise the place. Hunger drove them off, but they
returned in spring, infesting every field and pathway; till, at length,
some six hundred of their warriors landed in secret and lay hidden in
the depths of the woods, silently biding their time. Having failed,
however, in an artifice designed to lure the French out of their
defences, they showed themselves on all sides, plundering, burning, and
destroying, up to the palisades of the fort. **
Of the three settlements which, with their feeble dependencies, then
comprised the whole of Canada, Quebec was least exposed to Indian
attacks, being partially covered by Montreal and Three Rivers.
Nevertheless, there was no safety this year, even
* Le Mercier, Relation, 1653, 3.
** So bent were they on taking the place, that they brought
their families, in order to make a permanent settlement.--
Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 6 Sept., 1653.
under the cannon of Fort St. Louis. At Cap Rouge, a few miles above, the
Jesuit Poncet saw a poor woman who had a patch of corn beside her cabin,
but could find nobody to harvest it. The father went to seek aid, met
one Mathurin. Franchetot, whom he persuaded to undertake the charitable
task, and was returning with him, when they both fell into an ambuscade
of Iroquois, who seized them and dragged them off. Thirty-two men
embarked in canoes at Quebec to follow the retreating savages and rescue
the prisoners. Pushing rapidly up the St. Lawrence, they approached
Three Rivers, found it beset by the Mohawks, and bravely threw
themselves into it, to the great joy of its defenders and discouragement
of the assailants.
Meanwhile, the intercession of the Virgin wrought new marvels at
Montreal, and a bright ray of hope beamed forth from the darkness and
the storm to cheer the hearts of her votaries. It was on the 26th of
June that sixty of the Onondaga Iroquois appeared in sight of the fort,
shouting from a distance that they came on an errand of peace, and
asking safe-conduct for some of their number. Guns, scalping-knives,
tomahawks, were all laid aside; and, with a confidence truly
astonishing, a deputation of chiefs, naked and defenceless, came into
the midst of those whom they had betrayed so often. The French had a
mind to seize them, and pay them in kind for past treachery; but they
refrained, seeing in this wondrous change of heart the manifest hand
of Heaven. Nevertheless, it can be explained without a miracle. The
Iroquois, or, at least, the western nations of their league, had just
become involved in war with their neighbors the Eries, * and “one war
at a time” was the sage maxim of their policy.
All was smiles and blandishment in the fort at Montreal; presents were
exchanged, and the deputies departed, bearing home golden reports of
the French. An Oneida deputation soon followed; but the enraged Mohawks
still infested Montreal and beleaguered Three Rivers, till one of their
principal chiefs and four of their best warriors were captured by a
party of Christian Hurons. Then, seeing themselves abandoned by the
other nations of the league and left to wage the war alone, they, too,
made overtures of peace.
A grand council was held at Quebec. Speeches were made, and wampum-belts
exchanged. The Iroquois left some of their chief men as pledges of
sincerity, and two young soldiers offered themselves as reciprocal
pledges on the part of the French. The war was over; at least Canada had
found a moment to take breath for the next struggle. The fur trade was
restored again, with promise of plenty; for the beaver, profiting by the
quarrels of their human foes, had of late greatly multiplied. It was a
change from death to life; for Canada lived on the beaver, and, robbed
of this,
* See Jesuits in North America, 438. The Iroquois, it will
be remembered, consisted of five “nations,” or tribes,--the
Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. For an
account of them, see the work just cited, Introduction.
her only sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began. *
“Yesterday,” writes Father Le Mercier, “all was dejection and
gloom; to-day, all is smiles and gayety. On Wednesday, massacre,
burning, and pillage; on Thursday, gifts and visits, as among friends.
If the Iroquois have their hidden designs, so, too, has God.
“On the day of the Visitation of the Holy Virgin, the chief,
Aontarisati, ** so regretted by the Iroquois, was taken prisoner by our
Indians, instructed by our fathers, and baptized; and, on the same day,
being put to death, he ascended to heaven. I doubt not that he thanked
the Virgin for his misfortune and the blessing that followed, and that
he prayed to God for his countrymen.
“The people of Montreal made a solemn vow to celebrate publicly the
_fête_ of this mother of all blessings; whereupon the Iroquois came to
ask for peace.
“It was on the day of the Assumption of this Queen of angels and of
men that the Hurons took at Montreal that other famous Iroquois chief,
whose capture caused the Mohawks to seek our alliance.
“On the day when the Church honors the Nativity of the Holy Virgin,
the Iroquois granted Father
* According to Le Mercier, beaver to the value of from
200,000 to 300,000 livres was yearly brought down to the
colony before the destruction of the Hurons (1649-50). Three
years later, not one beaver skin was brought to Montreal
during a twelvemonth, and Three Rivers and Quebec had barely
enough to pay for keeping the fortifications in repair.
** The chief whose death had so enraged the Mohawks.
Poncet his life; and he, or rather the Holy Virgin and the holy angels,
labored so well in the work of peace, that on St. Michael’s Day it was
resolved in a council of the elders that the father should be conducted
to Quebec, and a lasting treaty made with the French.” *
Happy as was this consummation, Father Poncet’s path to it had been a
thorny one. He has left us his own rueful story, written in obedience
to the command of his superior. He and his companion in misery had been
hurried through the forests, from Cap Rouge on the St. Lawrence to the
Indian towns on the Mohawk. He tells us how he slept among dank weeds,
dropping with the cold dew; how frightful colics assailed him as he
waded waist-deep through a mountain stream; how one of his feet was
blistered and one of his legs benumbed; how an Indian snatched away his
reliquary and lost the precious contents. “I had,” he says, “a
picture of Saint Ignatius with our Lord bearing the cross, and another
of Our Lady of Pity surrounded by the five wounds of her Son. They were
my joy and my consolation; but I hid them in a bush, lest the Indians
should laugh at them.” He kept, however, a little image of the crown
of thorns, in which he found great comfort, as well as in communion with
his patron saints, Saint Raphael, Saint Martha, and Saint Joseph. On one
occasion he asked these celestial friends for something to soothe his
thirst, and for a bowl of broth to revive his strength. Scarcely had he
framed the petition when an Indian gave
* Relation, 1653, 18.
him some wild plums; and in the evening, as he lay fainting on the
ground, another brought him the coveted broth. Weary and forlorn, he
reached at last the lower Mohawk town, where, after being stripped,
and, with his companion, forced to run the gauntlet, he was placed on a
scaffold of bark, surrounded by a crowd of grinning and mocking savages.
As it began to rain, they took him into one of their lodges, and amused
themselves by making him dance, sing, and perform various fantastic
tricks for their amusement. He seems to have done his best to please
them; “but,” adds the chronicler, “I will say in passing, that as
he did not succeed to their liking in these buffooneries (_singeries_),
they would have put him to death, if a young Huron prisoner had not
offered himself to sing, dance, and make wry faces in place of the
father, who had never learned the trade.”
Having sufficiently amused themselves, they left him for a time in
peace; when an old one-eyed Indian approached, took his hands, examined
them, selected the left forefinger, and calling a child four or five
years old, gave him a knife, and told him to cut it off, which the imp
proceeded to do, his victim meanwhile singing the _Vexilla Regis_.
After this preliminary, they would have burned him, like Franchetot, his
unfortunate companion, had not a squaw happily adopted him in place, as
he says, of a deceased brother. He was installed at once in the lodge of
his new relatives, where, bereft of every rag of Christian clothing,
and attired in leggins, moccasins, and a greasy shirt, the astonished
father saw himself transformed into an Iroquois. But his deliverance was
at hand. A special agreement providing for it had formed a part of
the treaty concluded at Quebec; and he now learned that he was to
be restored to his countrymen. After a march of almost intolerable
hardship, he saw himself once more among Christians; Heaven, as he
modestly thinks, having found him unworthy of martyrdom.
“At last,” he writes, “we reached Montreal on the 21st of October,
the nine weeks of my captivity being accomplished, in honor of Saint
Michael and all the holy angels. On the 6th of November the Iroquois who
conducted me made their presents to confirm the peace; and thus, on a
Sunday evening, eighty-and-one days after my capture,--that is to say,
nine times nine days,--this great business of the peace was happily
concluded, the holy angels showing by this number nine, which is
specially dedicated to them, the part they bore in this holy work.”
* This incessant supernaturalism is the key to the early history of New
France.
Peace was made; but would peace endure? There was little chance of
it, and this for several reasons. First, the native fickleness of
the Iroquois, who, astute and politic to a surprising degree, were in
certain respects, like all savages, mere grown-up children. Next, their
total want of control over their fierce and capricious young warriors,
any one of whom could break the peace with
* Poncet in Relation, 1653,17. On Poncet’s captivity see
also Moral Pratique des Jésuites, vol. xxxiv. (4to) chap.
xii.
impunity whenever he saw fit; and, above all, the strong probability
that the Iroquois had made peace in order, under cover of it, to butcher
or kidnap the unhappy remnant of the Hurons who were living, under
French protection, on the island of Orleans, immediately below Quebec. I
have already told the story of the destruction of this people and of the
Jesuit missions established among them. * The conquerors were eager to
complete their bloody triumph by seizing upon the refugees of Orleans,
killing the elders, and strengthening their own tribes by the adoption
of the women, children, and youths. The Mohawks and the Onondagas were
competitors for the prize. Each coveted the Huron colony, and each was
jealous lest his rival should pounce upon it first.
When the Mohawks brought home Poncet, they covertly gave wampum-belts to
the Huron chiefs, and invited them to remove to their villages. It was
the wolf’s invitation to the lamb. The Hurons, aghast with terror,
went secretly to the Jesuits, and told them that demons had whispered
in their ears an invitation to destruction. So helpless were both
the Hurons and their French supporters, that they saw no recourse but
dissimulation. The Hurons promised to go, and only sought excuses to
gain time.
The Onondagas had a deeper plan. Their towns were already full of Huron
captives, former converts of the Jesuits, cherishing their memory and
constantly repeating their praises. Hence their
* Jesuits in North America.
tyrants conceived the idea that by planting at Onondaga a colony of
Frenchmen under the direction of these beloved fathers, the Hurons of
Orleans, disarmed of suspicion, might readily be led to join them.
Other motives, as we shall see, tended to the same end, and the Onondaga
deputies begged, or rather demanded, that a colony of Frenchmen should
be sent among them.
Here was a dilemma. Was not this, like the Mohawk invitation to the
Hurons, an invitation to butchery? On the other hand, to refuse would
probably kindle the war afresh. The Jesuits had long nursed a project
bold to temerity. Their great Huron mission was ruined; but might not
another be built up among the authors of this ruin, and the Iroquois
themselves, tamed by the power of the Faith, be annexed to the kingdoms
of Heaven and of France? Thus would peace be restored to Canada, a
barrier of fire opposed to the Dutch and English heretics, and the power
of the Jesuits vastly increased. Yet the time was hardly ripe for such
an attempt. Before thrusting a head into the tiger’s jaws, it would
be well to try the effect of thrusting in a hand. They resolved to
compromise with the danger, and before risking a colony at Onondaga
to send thither an envoy who could soothe the Indians, confirm them in
pacific designs, and pave the way for more decisive steps. The choice
fell on Father Simon Le Moyne.
The errand was mainly a political one; and this sagacious and able
priest, versed in Indian languages and customs, was well suited to do
it.
“On the second day of the month of July, the festival of the
Visitation of the Most Holy Virgin, ever favorable to our enterprises,
Father Simon Le Moyne set out from Quebec for the country of the
Onondaga Iroquois.” In these words does Father Le Mercier chronicle
the departure of his brother Jesuit. Scarcely was he gone when a band
of Mohawks, under a redoubtable half-breed known as the Flemish Bastard,
arrived at Quebec; and, when they heard that the envoy was to go to the
Onondagas without visiting their tribe, they took the imagined slight
in high dudgeon, displaying such jealousy and ire that a letter was sent
after Le Moyne, directing him to proceed to the Mohawk towns before his
return. But he was already beyond reach, and the angry Mohawks were left
to digest their wrath.
At Montreal, Le Moyne took a canoe, a young Frenchman, and two or three
Indians, and began the tumultuous journey of the Upper St. Lawrence.
Nature, or habit, had taught him to love the wilderness life. He and
his companions had struggled all day against the surges of La Chine,
and were bivouacked at evening by the Lake of St. Louis, when a cloud
of mosquitoes fell upon them, followed by a shower of warm rain. The
father, stretched under a tree, seems clearly to have enjoyed himself.
“It is a pleasure,” he writes, “the sweetest and most innocent
imaginable, to have no other shelter than trees planted by Nature since
the creation of the world.” Sometimes, during their journey, this
primitive tent proved insufficient, and they would build a bark hut
or find a partial shelter under their inverted canoe. Now they glided
smoothly over the sunny bosom of the calm and smiling river, and
now strained every nerve to fight their slow way against the rapids,
dragging their canoe upward in the shallow water by the shore, as one
leads an unwilling horse by the bridle, or shouldering it and bearing
it through the forest to the smoother current above. Game abounded; and
they saw great herds of elk quietly defiling between the water and
the woods, with little heed of men, who in that perilous region found
employment enough in hunting one another.
At the entrance of Lake Ontario they met a party of Iroquois fishermen,
who proved friendly, and guided them on their way. Ascending the
Onondaga, they neared their destination; and now all misgivings as to
their reception at the Iroquois capital were dispelled. The inhabitants
came to meet them, bringing roasting ears of the young maize and bread
made of its pulp, than which they knew no luxury more exquisite. Their
faces beamed welcome. Le Moyne was astonished. “I never," he says,
“saw the like among Indians before.” They were flattered by his
visit, and, for the moment, were glad to see him. They hoped for great
advantages from the residence of Frenchmen among them; and, having the
Erie war on their hands, they wished for peace with Canada. “One would
call me brother,” writes Le Moyne; “another, uncle; another, cousin.
I never had so many relations.”
He was overjoyed to find that many of the Huron converts, who had long
been captives at Onondaga, had not forgotten the teachings of their
Jesuit instructors. Such influence as they had with their conquerors
was sure to be exerted in behalf of the French. Deputies of the Senecas,
Cayugas, and Oneidas at length arrived, and, on the 10th of August,
the criers passed through the town, summoning all to hear the words of
Onontio. The naked dignitaries, sitting, squatting, or lying at full
length, thronged the smoky hall of council The father knelt and prayed
in a loud voice, invoking the aid of Heaven, cursing the demons who are
spirits of discord, and calling on the tutelar angels of the country to
open the ears of his listeners. Then he opened his packet of presents
and began his speech. “I was full two hours," he says, “in making
it, speaking in the tone of a chief, and walking to and fro, after their
fashion, like an actor on a theatre.” Not only did he imitate the
prolonged accents of the Iroquois orators, but he adopted and improved
their figures of speech, and addressed them in turn by their respective
tribes, bands, and families, calling their men of note by name, as if he
had been born among them. They were delighted; and their ejaculations
of approval--_hoh-hoh-hoh_--came thick and fast at every pause of his
harangue. Especially were they pleased with the eighth, ninth, tenth,
and eleventh presents, whereby the reverend speaker gave to the four
upper nations of the league four hatchets to strike their new enemies,
the Eries; while by another present he metaphorically daubed their
faces with the war-paint. However it may have suited the character of
a Christian priest to hound on these savage hordes to a war of
extermination which they had themselves provoked, it is certain that, as
a politician, Le Moyne did wisely; since in the war with the Eries lay
the best hope of peace for the French.
The reply of the Indian orator was friendly to overflowing. He prayed
his French brethren to choose a spot on the lake of Onondaga, where they
might dwell in the country of the Iroquois, as they dwelt already in
their hearts. Le Moyne promised, and made two presents to confirm the
pledge. Then, his mission fulfilled, he set out on his return, attended
by a troop of Indians. As he approached the lake, his escort showed him
a large spring of water, possessed, as they told him, by a bad spirit.
Le Moyne tasted it, then boiled a little of it, and produced a quantity
of excellent salt. He had discovered the famous salt-springs of
Onondaga. Fishing and hunting, the party pursued their way till, at noon
of the 7th of September, Le Moyne reached Montreal. *
When he reached Quebec, his tidings cheered for a while the anxious
hearts of its tenants; but an unwonted incident soon told them how
hollow was the ground beneath their feet. Le Moyne, accompanied by two
Onondagas and several Hurons and Algonquins, was returning to Montreal,
when he and his companions were set upon by a war-party
* Journal du Père Le Moine, Relation, 1654, chaps, vi. vii.
of Mohawks. The Hurons and Algonquins were killed. One of the Onondagas
shared their fate, and the other, with Le Moyne himself, was seized and
bound fast. The captive Onondaga, however, was so loud in his threats
and denunciations, that the Mohawks released both him and the Jesuit. *
Here was a foreshadowing of civil war, Mohawk against Onondaga, Iroquois
against Iroquois. The quarrel was patched up, but fresh provocations
were imminent.
The Mohawks took no part in the Erie war, and hence their hands were
free to fight the French and the tribes allied with them. Reckless of
their promises, they began a series of butcheries, fell upon the French
at Isle aux Oies, killed a lay brother of the Jesuits at Sillery, and
attacked Montreal. Here, being roughly handled, they came for a time
to their senses, and offered terms, promising to spare the French,
but declaring that they would still wage war against the Hurons and
Algonquins. These were allies whom the French were pledged to protect;
but so helpless was the colony, that the insolent and humiliating
proffer was accepted, and another peace ensued, as hollow as the last.
The indefatigable Le Moyne was sent to the Mohawk towns to confirm it,
“so far,” says the chronicle, “as it is possible to confirm a
peace made by infidels backed by heretics.” ** The Mohawks received
him with great rejoicing; yet his
* Compare Relation, 1654, 33, and Lettre de Marie de
l’Incarnation, 18 Octobre, 1654.
** Copie de Deux Lettres envoyées de la Nouvelle France au
Père Procureur des Missions de la Compagnie de Jésus.
life was not safe for a moment. A warrior, feigning madness, raved
through the town with uplifted hatchet, howling for his blood; but the
saints watched over him and balked the machinations of hell. He came off
alive and returned to Montreal, spent with famine and fatigue.
Meanwhile a deputation of eighteen Onondaga chiefs arrived at Quebec.
There was a grand council. The Onondagas demanded a colony of Frenchmen
to dwell among them. Lauson, the governor, dared neither to consent nor
to refuse. A middle course was chosen, and two Jesuits, Chaumonot
and Dablon, were sent, like Le Moyne, partly to gain time, partly to
reconnoitre, and partly to confirm the Onondagas in such good intentions
as they might entertain. Chaumonot was a veteran of the Huron mission,
who, miraculously as he himself supposed, had acquired a great fluency
in the Huron tongue, which is closely allied to that of the Iroquois.
Dablon, a newcomer, spoke, as yet, no Indian.
Their voyage up the St. Lawrence was enlivened by an extraordinary
bear-hunt, and by the antics of one of their Indian attendants, who,
having dreamed that he had swallowed a frog, roused the whole camp by
the gymnastics with which he tried to rid himself of the intruder.
On approaching Onondaga, they were met by a chief who sang a song
of welcome, a part of which he seasoned with touches of humor,
apostrophizing the fish in the river Onondaga, naming each sort, great
or small, and calling on them in turn to come into the nets of the
Frenchmen and sacrifice life cheerfully for their behoof. Hereupon there
was much laughter among the Indian auditors. An unwonted cleanliness
reigned in the town; the streets had been cleared of refuse, and the
arched roofs of the long houses of bark were covered with red-skinned
children staring at the entry of the “black robes.” Crowds followed
behind, and all was jubilation. The dignitaries of the tribe met them on
the way, and greeted them with a speech of welcome. A feast of bear’s
meat awaited them; but, unhappily, it was Friday, and the fathers were
forced to abstain.
“On Monday, the 15th of November, at nine in the morning, after having
secretly sent to Paradise a dying infant by the waters of baptism, all
the elders and the people having assembled, we opened the council by
public prayer.” Thus writes Father Dablon. His colleague, Chaumonot,
a Frenchman bred in Italy, now rose, with a long belt of wampum in his
hand, and proceeded to make so effective a display of his rhetorical
gifts that the Indians were lost in admiration, and their orators put
to the blush by his improvements on their own metaphors. “If he had
spoken all day,” said the de lighted auditors, “we should not have
had enough of it.” “The Dutch,” added others, “have neither
brains nor tongues; they never tell us about Paradise and Hell; on the
contrary, they lead us into bad ways.”
On the next day the chiefs returned their answer. The council opened
with a song or chant, which was divided into six parts, and which,
according to Dablon, was exceedingly well sung. The burden of the fifth
part was as follows:--
“Farewell war; farewell tomahawk; we have been fools till now;
henceforth we will be brothers; yes, we will be brothers.”
Then came four presents, the third of which enraptured the fathers.
It was a belt of seven thousand beads of wampum. “But this,” says
Dablon, “was as nothing to the words that accompanied it.” “It is
the gift of the faith,” said the orator; “it is to tell you that
we are believers; it is to beg you not to tire of instructing us; have
patience, seeing that we are so dull in learning prayer; push it into
our heads and our hearts.” Then he led Chaumonot into the midst of the
assembly, clasped him in his arms, tied the belt about his waist, and
protested, with a suspicious redundancy of words, that as he clasped the
father, so would he clasp the faith.
What had wrought this sudden change of heart? The eagerness of the
Onondagas that the French should settle among them, had, no doubt, a
large share in it. For the rest, the two Jesuits saw abundant signs of
the fierce, uncertain nature of those with whom they were dealing. Erie
prisoners were brought in and tortured before their eyes, one of them
being a young stoic of about ten years, who endured his fate without
a single outcry. Huron women and children, taken in war and adopted by
their captors, were killed on the slightest provocation, and sometimes
from mere caprice.
For several days the whole town was in an uproar with the crazy follies
of the “dream feast,” * and one of the Fathers nearly lost his life
in this Indian Bedlam.
One point was clear; the French must make a settlement at Onondaga,
and that speedily, or, despite their professions of brotherhood, the
Onondagas would make war. Their attitude became menacing; from urgency
they passed to threats; and the two priests felt that the critical
posture of affairs must at once be reported at Quebec. But here a
difficulty arose. It was the beaver-hunting season; and, eager as were
the Indians for a French colony, not one of them would offer to conduct
the Jesuits to Quebec in order to fetch one. It was not until nine
masses had been said to Saint John the Baptist, that a number of Indians
consented to forego their hunting, and escort Father Dablon home. **
Chaumonot remained at Onondaga, to watch his dangerous hosts and soothe
their rising jealousies.
It was the 2d of March when Dablon began his journey. His constitution
must have been of iron, or he would have succumbed to the appalling
hardships of the way. It was neither winter nor spring. The lakes and
streams were not yet open, but the half-thawed ice gave way beneath the
foot. One of the Indians fell through and was drowned. Swamp and forest
were clogged with sodden snow,
* See Jesuits in North America, 67.
** De Quen, Relation, 1656, 35. Chaumonot, in his
Autobiography, ascribes the miracle to the intercession of
the deceased Brébeuf.
and ceaseless rains drenched them as they toiled on, knee-deep in slush.
Happily, the St. Lawrence was open. They found an old wooden canoe by
the shore, embarked, and reached Montreal after a journey of four weeks.
Dablon descended to Quebec. There was long and anxious counsel in the
chambers of Fort St. Louis. The Jesuits had information that, if the
demands of the Onondagas were rejected, they would join the Mohawks to
destroy Canada. But why were they so eager for a colony of Frenchmen?
Did they want them as hostages, that they might attack the Hurons and
Algonquins without risk of French interference; or would they massacre
them, and then, like tigers mad with the taste of blood, turn upon the
helpless settlements of the St. Lawrence? An abyss yawned on either
hand. Lauson, the governor, was in an agony of indecision, but at length
declared for the lesser and remoter peril, and gave his voice for the
colony. The Jesuits were of the same mind, though it was they, and not
he, who must bear the brunt of danger. “The blood of the martyrs is
the seed of the Church,” said one of them, “and, if we die by the
fires of the Iroquois, we shall have won eternal life by snatching souls
from the fires of Hell.”
Preparation was begun at once. The expense fell on the Jesuits, and the
outfit is said to have cost them seven thousand livres,--a heavy sum
for Canada at that day. A pious gentleman, Zachary Du Puys, major of
the fort of Quebec, joined the expedition with ten soldiers; and between
thirty and forty other Frenchmen also enrolled themselves, impelled by
devotion or destitution. Four Jesuits, Le Mercier, the superior, with
Dablon, Menard, and Frémin, besides two lay brothers of the order,
formed, as it were, the pivot of the enterprise. The governor made
them the grant of a hundred square leagues of land in the heart of the
Iroquois country,--a preposterous act, which, had the Iroquois known it,
would have rekindled the war; but Lauson had a mania for landgrants,
and was himself the proprietor of vast domains which he could have
occupied only at the cost of his scalp.
Embarked in two large boats and followed by twelve canoes filled with
Hurons, Onondagas, and a few Senecas lately arrived, they set out on
the 17th of May “to attack the demons,” as Le Mercier writes, “in
their very stronghold.” With shouts, tears, and benedictions, priests,
soldiers, and inhabitants waved farewell from the strand. They passed
the bare steeps of Cape Diamond and the mission-house nestled beneath
the heights of Sillery, and vanished from the anxious eyes that watched
the last gleam of their receding oars. *
Meanwhile three hundred Mohawk warriors had taken the warpath, bent
on killing or kidnapping the Hurons of Orleans. When they heard of the
departure of the colonists for Onondaga, their rage was unbounded; for
not only were they full of jealousy towards their Onondaga confederates,
but they had hitherto derived great profit from the
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettres, 1656. Le Mercier,
Relation, 1657 chap. iv. Chaulmer, Nouveau Monde, II. 265,
322, 319.
control which their local position gave them over the traffic between
this tribe and the Dutch of the Hudson, upon whom the Onondagas, in
common with all the upper Iroquois, had been dependent for their guns,
hatchets, scalping-knives, beads, blankets, and brandy. These supplies
would now be furnished by the French, and the Mohawk speculators saw
their occupation gone. Nevertheless, they had just made peace with the
French, and, for the moment, were not quite in the mood to break it. To
wreak their spite, they took a middle course, crouched in ambush among
the bushes at Point St. Croix, ten or twelve leagues above Quebec,
allowed the boats bearing the French to pass unmolested, and fired a
volley at the canoes in the rear, filled with Onondagas, Senecas, and
Hurons. Then they fell upon them with a yell, and, after wounding a lay
brother of the Jesuits who was among them, flogged and bound such of
the Indians as they could seize. The astonished Onondagas protested and
threatened; whereupon the Mohawks feigned great surprise, declared that
they had mistaken them for Hurons, called them brothers, and suffered
the whole party to escape without further injury. *
The three hundred maurauders now paddled their large canoes of elm-bark
stealthily down the current, passed Quebec undiscovered in the dark
night of the 19th of May, landed in early morning on the island of
Orleans, and ambushed
* Compare Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre 14 Aout, 1656, Le
Jeune. Relation, 1657, 9.
themselves to surprise the Hurons as they came to labor in their
cornfields. They were tolerably successful, killed six, and captured
more than eighty, the rest taking refuge in their fort, where the
Mohawks dared not attack them.
At noon, the French on the rock of Quebec saw forty canoes approaching
from the island of Orleans, and defiling, with insolent parade, in front
of the town, all crowded with the Mohawks and their prisoners, among
whom were a great number of Huron girls. Their captors, as they passed,
forced them to sing and dance. The Hurons were the allies, or rather the
wards of the French, who were in every way pledged to protect them. Yet
the cannon of Fort St. Louis were silent, and the crowd stood gaping in
bewilderment and fright. Had an attack been made, nothing but a complete
success and the capture of many prisoners to serve as hostages could
have prevented the enraged Mohawks from taking their revenge on the
Onondaga colonists. The emergency demanded a prompt and clear-sighted
soldier. The governor, Lauson, was a gray-haired civilian, who, however
enterprising as a speculator in wild lands, was in no way matched to the
desperate crisis of the hour. Some of the Mohawks landed above and below
the town, and plundered the houses from which the scared inhabitants had
fled. Not a soldier stirred and not a gun was fired. The French, bullied
by a horde of naked savages, became an object of contempt to their own
allies.
The Mohawks carried their prisoners home, burned six of them, and
adopted or rather enslaved the rest. *
Meanwhile the Onondaga colonists pursued their perilous way. At Montreal
they exchanged their heavy boats for canoes, and resumed their journey
with a flotilla of twenty of these sylvan vessels. A few days after, the
Indians of the party had the satisfaction of pillaging a small band of
Mohawk hunters, in vicarious reprisal for their own wrongs. On the 26th
of June, as they neared Lake Ontario, they heard a loud and lamentable
voice from the edge of the forest; whereupon, having beaten their drum
to show that they were Frenchmen, they beheld a spectral figure, lean
and covered with scars, which proved to be a pious Huron, one Joachim
Ondakout, captured by the Mohawks in their descent on the island of
Orleans, five or six weeks before. They had carried him to their village
and begun to torture him; after which they tied him fast and lay down
to sleep, thinking to resume their pleasure on the morrow. His cuts and
burns being only on the surface, he had the good fortune to free himself
from his bonds, and, naked as he was, to escape to the woods. He
held his course northwestward, through regions even now a wilderness,
gathered wild strawberries to sustain life, and, in fifteen days,
reached the St. Lawrence, nearly dead with exhaustion. The Frenchmen
gave him food and a canoe, and the living skeleton paddled with a light
heart for Quebec.
The colonists themselves soon began to suffer
* See Perrot Mœurs des Sauvages, 106.
from hunger. Their fishing failed on Lake Ontario and they were forced
to content themselves with cranberries of the last year, gathered in
the meadows. Of their Indians, all but five deserted them. The Father
Superior fell ill, and when they reached the mouth of the Oswego many of
the starving Frenchmen had completely lost heart. Weary and faint, they
dragged their canoes up the rapids, when suddenly they were cheered
by the sight of a stranger canoe swiftly descending the current. The
Onondagas, aware of their approach, had sent it to meet them, laden with
Indian corn and fresh salmon. Two more canoes followed, freighted like
the first; and now all was abundance till they reached their journey’s
end, the Lake of Onondaga. It lay before them in the July sun, a
glittering mirror, framed in forest verdure.
They knew that Çhaumonot with a crowd of Indians was awaiting them at
a spot on the margin of the water, which he and Dablon had chosen as
the site of their settlement. Landing on the strand, they fired, to give
notice of their approach, five small cannon which they had brought in
their canoes. Waves, woods, and hills resounded with the thunder of
their miniature artillery. Then reembarking, they advanced in order,
four canoes abreast, towards the destined spot. In front floated their
banner of white silk, embroidered in large letters with the name of
Jesus. Here were Du Puys and his soldiers, with the picturesque uniforms
and quaint weapons of their time; Le Mercier and his Jesuits in robes
of black; hunters and bush-rangers; Indians painted and feathered for
a festal day. As they neared the place where a spring bubbling from the
hillside is still known as the “Jesuits’ Well,” they saw the edge
of the forest dark with the muster of savages whose yells of welcome
answered the salvo of their guns. Happily for them, a flood of summer
rain saved them from the harangues of the Onondaga orators, and forced
white men and red alike to seek such shelter as they could find. Their
hosts, with hospitable intent, would fain have sung and danced all
night; but the Frenchmen pleaded fatigue, and the courteous savages,
squatting around their tents, chanted in monotonous tones to lull them
to sleep. In the morning they woke refreshed, sang _Te Deum_, reared an
altar, and, with a solemn mass, took possession of the country in the
name of Jesus. *
Three things, which they saw or heard of in their new home, excited
their astonishment. The first was the vast flight of wild pigeons which
in spring darkened the air around the Lake of Onondaga; the second was
the salt springs of Salina; the third was the rattlesnakes, which Le
Mercier describes with excellent precision, adding that, as he learns
from the Indians, their tails are good for toothache and their flesh for
fever. These reptiles, for reasons best known to themselves, haunted
the neighborhood of the salt-springs, but did not intrude their presence
into the abode of the French.
On the 17th of July, Le Mercier and Chamnonot,
* Le Mercier, Relation, 1657, 14.
escorted by a file of soldiers, set out for Onondaga, scarcely five
leagues distant. They followed the Indian trail, under the leafy arches
of the woods, by hill and hollow, still swamp and gurgling brook, till
through the opening foliage they saw the Iroquois capital, compassed
with cornfields and girt with its rugged palisade. As the Jesuits, like
black spectres, issued from the shadows of the forest, followed by the
plumed soldiers with shouldered arquebuses, the red-skinned population
swarmed out like bees, and they defiled to the town through gazing and
admiring throngs. All conspired to welcome them. Feast followed feast
throughout the afternoon, till, what with harangues and songs, bear’s
meat, beaver-tails, and venison, beans, corn, and grease, they were
wellnigh killed with kindness. “If, after this, they murder us,”
writes Le Mercier, “it will be from fickleness, not premeditated
treachery.” But the Jesuits, it seems, had not sounded the depths of
Iroquois dissimulation. *
There was one exception to the real or pretended joy. Some Mohawks were
in the town, and their orator was insolent and sarcastic; but the ready
tongue of Chaumonot turned the laugh against him and put him to shame.
Here burned the council fire of the Iroquois, and at this very time the
deputies of the five tribes were assembling. The session opened on the
24th.
* The Jesuits were afterwards told by Hurons, captive among
the Mohawks and the Onondagas, that, from the first, it was
intended to massacre the French as soon as their presence
had attracted the remnant of the Hurons of Orleans into the
power of the Onondagas. Lettre du P Ragueneau au R. P.
Provincial, 31 Août, 1658.
In the great council house, on the earthen floor and the broad platforms
beneath the smoke-begrimed concave of the bark roof, stood, sat, or
squatted, the wisdom and valor of the confederacy; Mohawks, Oneidas,
Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; sachems, counsellors, orators, warriors
fresh from Erie victories; tall, stalwart figures, limbed like Grecian
statues.
The pressing business of the council over, it was Chaumonot’s turn to
speak. But, first, all the Frenchmen, kneeling in a row, with clasped
hands sang the _Veni Creator_, amid the silent admiration of the
auditors. Then Chaumonot rose, with an immense wampum-belt in his hand.
“It is not trade that brings us here. Do you think that your beaver
skins can pay us for all our toils and dangers? Keep them, if you like;
or, if any fall into our hands, we shall use them only for your service.
We seek not the things that perish. It is for the Faith that we have
left our homes to live in your hovels of bark, and eat food which the
beasts of our country would scarcely touch. We are the messengers whom
God has sent to tell you that his Son became a man for the love of you;
that this man, the Son of God, is the prince and master of men; that he
has prepared in heaven eternal joys for those who obey him, and kindled
the fires of hell for those who will not receive his word. If you reject
it, whoever you are,--Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, or Oneida,--know
that Jesus Christ, who inspires my heart and my voice, will plunge
you one day into hell. Avert this ruin; be not the authors of your own
destruction; accept the truth; listen to the voice of the Omnipotent.”
Such, in brief, was the pith of the father’s exhortation. As he spoke
Indian like a native, and as his voice and gestures answered to his
words, we may believe what Le Mercier tells us, that his hearers
listened with mingled wonder, admiration, and terror. The work was well
begun. The Jesuits struck while the iron was hot, built a small chapel
for the mass, installed themselves in the town, and preached and
catechised from morning till night.
The Frenchmen at the lake were not idle. The chosen site of their
settlement was the crown of a hill commanding a broad view of waters and
forests. The axemen fell to their work, and a ghastly wound soon gaped
in the green bosom of the woodland. Here, among the stumps and prostrate
trees of the unsightly clearing, the blacksmith built his forge, saw and
hammer plied their trade; palisades were shaped and beams squared, in
spite of heat, mosquitoes, and fever. At one time twenty men were ill,
and lay gasping under a wretched shed of bark; but they all recovered,
and the work went on till at length a capacious house, large enough to
hold the whole colony, rose above the ruin of the forest. A palisade was
set around it, and the Mission of Saint Mary of Gannentaa * was begun.
France and the Faith were intrenched on the Lake of Onondaga. How long
would they remain
* Gannentaa or Ganuntaah is still the Iroquois name for
Lake Onondaga. According to Morgan, it means “Material for
Council Fire.”
there? The future alone could tell. The mission, it must not be
forgotten, had a double scope, half ecclesiastical, half political. The
Jesuits had essayed a fearful task,--to convert the Iroquois to God and
to the king, thwart the Dutch heretics of the Hudson, save souls from
hell, avert ruin from Canada, and thus raise their order to a place of
honor and influence both hard earned and well earned. The mission at
Lake Onondaga was but a base of operations. Long before they were lodged
and fortified here, Chaumonot and Ménard set out for the Cayugas,
whence the former proceeded to the Senecas, the most numerous, and
powerful of the five confederate nations; and in the following spring
another mission was begun among the Oneidas. Their reception was
not unfriendly; but such was the reticence and dissimulation of these
inscrutable savages, that it was impossible to foretell results. The
women proved, as might be expected, far more impressible than the men;
and in them the fathers placed great hope; since in this, the most
savage people of the continent, women held a degree of political
influence never perhaps equalled in any civilized nation. *
* Women, among the Iroquois, had a council of their own,
which, according to Lafitau, who knew this people well, had
the initiative in discussion, subjects presented by them
being settled in the council of chiefs and elders. In this
latter council the women had an orator, often of their own
sex, to represent them. The matrons had a leading voice in
determining the succession of chiefs. There were also female
chiefs, one of whom, with her attendants, came to Quebec
with an embassy in 1655 (Marie de l’Incarnation). In the
torture of prisoners, great deference was paid to the
judgment of the women, who, says Champlain, were thought
more skilful and subtle than the men.
The learned Lafitau, whose book appeared in 1724, dwells at
length on the resemblance of the Iroquois to the ancient
Lycians, among whom, according to Grecian writers, women
were in the ascendant. “Gynecocracy, or the rule of women,”
continues Lafitau, “which was the foundation of the Lycian
government, was probably common in early times to nearly all
the barbarous people of Greece” Mœurs des Sauvages, I. 460.
But while infants were baptized and squaws converted, the crosses of the
mission were many and great. The devil bestirred himself with more than
his ordinary activity; “for,” as one of the fathers writes, “when
in sundry nations of the earth men are rising up in strife against us
(the Jesuits), then how much more the demons, on whom we continually
wage war!” It was these infernal sprites, as the priests believed, who
engendered suspicions and calumnies in the dark and superstitious minds
of the Iroquois, and prompted them in dreams to destroy the apostles of
the faith. Whether the foe was of earth or hell, the Jesuits were like
those who tread the lava-crust that palpitates with the throes of
the coming eruption, while the molten death beneath their feet glares
white-hot through a thousand crevices. Yet, with a sublime enthusiasm
and a glorious constancy, they toiled and they hoped, though the skies
around were black with portent.
In the year in which the colony at Onondaga was begun, the Mohawks
murdered the Jesuit Garreau, on his way up the Ottawa. In the following
spring, a hundred Mohawk warriors came to Quebec, to carry more of the
Hurons into slavery, though the remnant of that unhappy people, since
the catastrophe of the last year, had sought safety in a palisaded camp
within the limits of the French town, and immediately under the ramparts
of Fort St. Louis. Here, one might think, they would have been safe;
but Charny, son and successor of Lauson, seems to have been even more
imbecile than his father, and listened meekly to the threats of the
insolent strangers who told him that unless he abandoned the Hurons to
their mercy, both they and the French should feel the weight of Mohawk
tomahawks. They demanded further, that the French should give them boats
to carry their prisoners; but, as there were none at hand, this last
humiliation was spared. The Mohawks were forced to make canoes, in which
they carried off as many as possible of their victims.
When the Onondagas learned this last exploit of their rivals, their
jealousy knew no bounds, and a troop of them descended to Quebec to
claim their share in the human plunder. Deserted by the French, the
despairing Hurons abandoned themselves to their fate, and about fifty of
those whom the Mohawks had left obeyed the behest of their tyrants
and embarked for Onondaga. They reached Montreal in July, and thence
proceeded towards their destination in company with the Onondaga
warriors. The Jesuit Ragueneau, bound also for Onondaga, joined them.
Five leagues above Montreal, the warriors left him behind; but he
found an old canoe on the bank, in which, after abandoning most of his
baggage, he contrived to follow with two or three Frenchmen who were
with him. There was a rumor that a hundred Mohawk warriors were lying in
wait among the Thousand Islands, to plunder the Onondagas of their Huron
prisoners. It proved a false report. A speedier catastrophe awaited
these unfortunates.
Towards evening on the 3d of August, after the party had landed to
encamp, an Onondaga chief made advances to a Christian Huron girl, as
he had already done at every encampment since leaving Montreal. Being
repulsed for the fourth time, he split her head with his tomahawk.
It was the beginning of a massacre. The Onondagas rose upon their
prisoners, killed seven men, all Christians, before the eyes of the
horrified Jesuit, and plundered the rest of all they had. When Ragueneau
protested, they told him with insolent mockery that they were acting by
direction of the governor and the superior of the Jesuits, The priest
himself was secretly warned that he was to be killed during the night;
and he was surprised in the morning to find himself alive. * On reaching
Onondaga, some of the Christian captives were burned, including several
women and their infant children. **
The confederacy was a hornet’s nest, buzzing with preparation, and
fast pouring out its wrathful swarms. The indomitable Le Moyne had gone
again to the Mohawks, whence he wrote that two hundred of them had taken
the war-path against the Algonquins of Canada; and, a little later, that
all were gone but women, children, and old men. A great
* Lettre de Ragueneau au R. P. Provincial, 9 Août, 1657
(Rel., 1657).
** Ibid., 21 Août, 1658 (Rel., 1658).
war-party of twelve hundred Iroquois from all the five cantons was to
advance into Canada in the direction of the Ottawa. The settlements on
the St. Lawrence were infested with prowling warriors, who killed the
Indian allies of the French, and plundered the French themselves, whom
they treated with an insufferable insolence; for they felt themselves
masters of the situation, and knew that the Onondaga colony was in their
power. Near Montreal they killed three Frenchmen. “They approach like
foxes,” writes a Jesuit, “attack like lions, and disappear like
birds.” Charny, fortunately, had resigned the government in despair,
in order to turn priest, and the brave soldier Aillebout had taken
his place. He caused twelve of the Iroquois to be seized and held as
hostages. This seemed to increase their fury. An embassy came to Quebec
and demanded the release of the hostages, but were met with a sharp
reproof and a flat refusal.
At the mission on Lake Onondaga the crisis was drawing near. The
unbridled young warriors, whose capricious lawlessness often set at
naught the monitions of their crafty elders, killed wantonly at various
times thirteen Christian Hurons, captives at Onondaga. Ominous reports
reached the ears of the colonists. They heard of a secret council at
which their death was decreed. Again, they heard that they were to be
surprised and captured, that the Iroquois in force were then to descend
upon Canada, lay waste the outlying settlements, and torture them, the
colonists, in sight of their countrymen, by which they hoped to extort
what terms they pleased. At length, a dying Onondaga, recently converted
and baptized, confirmed the rumors, and revealed the whole plot.
It was to take effect before the spring opened; but the hostages in
the hands of Aillebout embarrassed the conspirators and caused delay.
Messengers were sent in haste to call in the priests from the detached
missions, and all the colonists, fifty-three in number, were soon
gathered at their fortified house on the lake. Their situation was
frightful. Fate hung over them by a hair, and escape seemed hopeless. Of
Du Puys’s ten soldiers, nine wished to desert, but the attempt would
have been fatal. A throng of Onondaga warriors were day and night on the
watch, bivouacked around the house. Some of them had built their huts of
bark before the gate, and here, with calm, impassive faces, they lounged
and smoked their pipes; or, wrapped in their blankets, strolled about
the yards and outhouses, attentive to all that passed. Their behavior
was very friendly. The Jesuits, themselves adepts in dissimulation,
were amazed at the depth of their duplicity; for the conviction had been
forced upon them that some of the chiefs had nursed their treachery from
the first. In this extremity Du Puys and the Jesuits showed an admirable
coolness, and among them devised a plan of escape, critical and full of
doubt, but not devoid of hope.
First, they must provide means of transportation; next, they must
contrive to use them undis covered. They had eight canoes, all of which
combined would not hold half their company. Over the mission-house was a
large loft or garret, and here the carpenters were secretly set at work
to construct two large and light flat-boats, each capable of carrying
fifteen men. The task was soon finished. The most difficult part of
their plan remained.
There was a beastly superstition prevalent among the Hurons, the
Iroquois, and other tribes. It consisted of a “medicine” or mystic
feast, in which it was essential that the guests should devour every
thing set before them, however inordinate in quantity, unless absolved
from duty by the person in whose behalf the solemnity was ordained;
he, on his part, taking no share in the banquet. So grave was the
obligation, and so strenuously did the guests fulfil it, that even their
ostrich digestion was sometimes ruined past redemption by the excess
of this benevolent gluttony. These _festins à manger tout_ had been
frequently denounced as diabolical by the Jesuits, during their mission
among the Hurons; but now, with a pliancy of conscience as excusable in
this case as in any other, they resolved to set aside their scruples,
although, judged from their point of view, they were exceedingly well
founded.
Among the French was a young man who had been adopted by an Iroquois
chief, and who spoke the language fluently. He now told his Indian
father that it had been revealed to him in a dream that he would soon
die unless the spirits were appeased by one of these magic feasts.
Dreams were the oracles of the Iroquois, and woe to those who slighted
them. A day was named for the sacred festivity. The fathers killed their
hogs to meet, the occasion, and, that nothing might be wanting,
they ransacked their stores for all that might give piquancy to the
entertainment. It took place in the evening of the 20th of March,
apparently in a large enclosure outside the palisade surrounding the
mission-house. Here, while blazing fires or glaring pine-knots shed
their glow on the wild assemblage, Frenchmen and Iroquois joined in
the dance, or vied with each other in games of agility and skill. The
politic fathers offered prizes to the winners, and the Indians entered
with zest into the sport, the better, perhaps, to hide their treachery
and hoodwink their intended victims; for they little suspected that a
subtlety, deeper this time than their own, was at work to countermine
them. Here, too, were the French musicians; and drum, trumpet, and
cymbal lent their clangor to the din of shouts and laughter. Thus the
evening wore on, till at length the serious labors of the feast began.
The kettles were brought in, and their steaming contents ladled into
the wooden bowls which each provident guest had brought with him. Seated
gravely in a ring, they fell to their work. It was a point of high
conscience not to flinch from duty on these solemn occasions; and though
they might burn the young man to-morrow, they would gorge themselves
like vultures in his behoof to-day.
Meantime, while the musicians strained their lungs and their arms to
drown all other sounds, a band of anxious Frenchmen, in the darkness
of the cloudy night, with cautious tread and bated breath, carried the
boats from the rear of the mission-house down to the border of the lake.
It was near eleven o’clock. The miserable guests were choking with
repletion. They prayed the young Frenchman to dispense them from further
surfeit. “Will you suffer me to die?” he asked, in piteous tones.
They bent to their task again, but Nature soon reached her utmost
limit; and they sat helpless as a conventicle of gorged turkey-buzzards,
without the power possessed by those unseemly birds to rid themselves
of the burden. “That will do,” said the young man; “you have eaten
enough; my life is saved. Now you can sleep till we come in the morning
to waken you for prayers.” * And one of his companions played soft
airs on a violin to lull them to repose. Soon all were asleep, or in
a lethargy akin to sleep. The few remaining Frenchmen now silently
withdrew and cautiously descended to the shore, where their comrades,
already embarked, lay on their oars anxiously awaiting them. Snow was
falling fast as they pushed out upon the murky waters. The ice of the
winter had broken up, but recent frosts had glazed the surface with a
thin crust. The two boats led the way, and the canoes followed in their
wake, while men in the bows of the foremost boat broke the ice with
clubs as they advanced. They reached
* Lettre de Marie de l'Incarnation a son fils, 4 Octobre,
1658.
the outlet and rowed swiftly down the dark current of the Oswego.
When day broke, Lake Onondaga was far behind, and around them was the
leafless, lifeless forest.
When the Indians woke in the morning, dull and stupefied from their
nightmare slumbers, they were astonished at the silence that reigned
in the mission-house. They looked through the palisade. Nothing was
stirring but a bevy of hens clucking and scratching in the snow, and
one or two dogs imprisoned in the house and barking to be set free The
Indians waited for some time, then climbed the palisade, burst in the
doors, and found the house empty. Their amazement was unbounded. How,
without canoes, could the French have escaped by water? and how else
could they escape? The snow which had fallen during the night completely
hid their footsteps. A superstitious awe seized the Iroquois. They
thought that the “black-robes” and their flock had flown off through
the air.
Meanwhile the fugitives pushed their flight with the energy of terror,
passed in safety the rapids of the Oswego, crossed Lake Ontario, and
descended the St. Lawrence with the loss of three men drowned in the
rapids. On the 3d of April they reached Montreal, and on the 23d arrived
at Quebec. They had saved their lives; but the mission of Onondaga was a
miserable failure. *
* On the Onondaga mission, the authorities are Marie de
l'incarnation,
Lettres Historiques, and Relations des Jésuites, 1657 and
1658, where the story is told at length, accompanied with
several interesting letters and journals. Chaumonok in his
Autobiographie, speaks only of the
Seneca mission, and refers to the Relations for the rest.
Dollier de Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal, mentions
the arrival of the fugitives at that place, the sight of
which, he adds complacently, cured them of their fright. The
Journal des Supérieurs des Jésuites chronicles with its
usual brevity the ruin of the mission and the return of the
party to Quebec.
The Jesuits, in their account, say nothing of the
superstitious character of the feast. It is Marie de
l’Incarnation who lets out the secret. The Jesuit
Charlevoix, much to his credit, repeats the story without
reserve.
The Sulpitian ’Allet, in a memoir printed in the Morale
Pratique des Jésuites, says that the French placed effigies
of soldiers, made of straw, in the fort, to deceive the
Indians. He adds that the Jesuits found very little sympathy
at Quebec.