_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._
|The governor, Courcelle, says Father Le Meircier, “breathed nothing
but war,” and was bent on immediate action. He was for the present
subordinate to Tracy, who, however, forebore to cool his ardor, and
allowed him to proceed. The result was an enterprise bold to rashness.
Courcelle, with about five hundred men, prepared to march in the depth
of a Canadian winter to the Mohawk towns, a distance estimated at three
hundred leagues. Those who knew the country, vainly urged the risks and
difficulties of the attempt. The adventurous governor held fast to his
purpose, and only waited till the St. Lawrence should be well frozen.
Early in January, it was a solid floor; and on the ninth the march
began. Officers and men stopped at Sillery, and knelt in the little
mission chapel before the shrine of Saint Michael, to ask the protection
and aid of the warlike archangel; then they resumed their course, and,
with their snowshoes tied at their backs, walked with difficulty and
toil over the bare and slippery ice. A keen wind swept the river, and
the fierce cold gnawed them to the bone. Ears, noses, fingers, hands,
and knees were frozen; some fell in torpor, and were dragged on by their
comrades to the shivering bivouac. When, after a march of ninety miles,
they reached Three Rivers, a considerable number were disabled, and had
to be left behind; but others joined them from the garrison, and they
set out again. Ascending the Richelieu, and passing the new forts at
Sorel and Chambly, they reached at the end of the month the third fort,
called Ste. Thérèse. On the thirtieth they left it, and continued
their march up the frozen stream. About two hundred of them were
Canadians, and of these seventy were old Indian-fighters from Montreal,
versed in woodcraft, seasoned to the climate, and trained among dangers
and alarms. Courcelle quickly learned their value, and his “Blue
Coats,” as he called them, were always placed in the van. * Here,
wrapped in their coarse blue capotes, with blankets and provisions
strapped at their backs, they strode along on snowshoes, which recent
storms had made indispensable. The regulars followed as they could.
They were not yet the tough and experienced woodsmen that they and their
descendants afterwards became; and their snow
* Doll du Montréal, a.d. 1665, 1666.
shoes embarrassed them, burdened as they were with the heavy loads which
all carried alike, from Courcelle to the lowest private.
Lake Champlain lay glaring in the winter sun, a sheet of spotless snow;
and the wavy ridges of the Adirondack? bordered the dazzling landscape
with the cold gray of their denuded forests. The long procession of
weary men crept slowly on under the lee of the shore; and when night
came they bivouacked by squads among the trees, dug away the snow with
their snowshoes, piled it in a bank around them, built their fire in
the middle, and crouched about it on beds of spruce or hemlock; * while,
as they lay close packed for mutual warmth, the winter sky arched them
like a vault of burnished steel, sparkling with the cold diamond lustre
of its myriads of stars. This arctic serenity of the elements was
varied at times by heavy snow-storms; and, before they reached their
journey’s end, the earth and the ice were buried to the unusual depth
of four feet. From Lake Champlain they passed to Lake George, ** and
the frigid glories of its snow-wrapped mountains; thence crossed to the
Hudson, and groped their way through the woods in search of the Mohawk
towns. They soon went astray; for thirty Algonquins, whom they had taken
as guides, had found
* One of the men, telling the story of their sufferings to
Daniel Gookin, of Massachusetts, indicated this as their
mode of encamping. See Mass. Hist. Coll., first series, I.
161.
** Carte des grands lacs, Ontario et autres... et des pays
traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle our aller attaquer
les agniés (Mohawks), 1666.
the means of a grand debauch at Fort Ste. Thérèse, drunk themselves
into helplessness, and lingered behind. Thus Courcelle and his men
mistook the path, and, marching by way of Saratoga Lake and Long Lake,
* found themselves, on Saturday the twentieth of February, close to the
little Dutch hamlet of Corlaer or Schenectady. Here the chief man in
authority told them that most of the Mohawks and Oneidas had gone to war
with another tribe. They, however, caught a few stragglers, and had a
smart skirmish with a party of warriors, losing an officer and several
men. Half frozen and half starved, they encamped in the neighboring
woods, where, on Sunday, three envoys appeared from Albany, to demand
why they had invaded the territories of his Royal Highness the Duke
of York. It was now that they learned for the first time that the New
Netherlands had passed into English hands, a change which boded no good
to Canada. The envoys seemed to take their explanations in good part,
made them a present of wine and provisions, and allowed them to buy
further supplies from the Dutch of Schenectady. They even invited them
to enter the village, but Courcelle declined, partly because the place
could not hold them all, and partly because he feared that his men, once
seated in a chimney-corner, could never be induced to leave it.
Their position was cheerless enough; for the vast beds of snow around
them were soaking slowly under a sullen rain, and there was danger
* Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et
Courcelle, etc.
that the lakes might thaw and cut off their retreat. “Ye Mohaukes,”
says the old English report of the affair, “were all gone to their
Castles with resolution to fight it out against the french, who, being
refresht and supplyed with the aforesaid provisions, made a shew of
marching towards the Mohaukes Castles, but with faces about, and great
sylence and dilligence, return’d towards Cannada.” “Surely,”
observes the narrator, “so bould and hardy an attempt hath not hapned
in any age.” * The end hardly answered to the beginning. The retreat,
which began on Sunday night, was rather precipitate. The Mohawks hovered
about their rear, and took a few prisoners; but famine and cold proved
more deadly foes, and sixty men perished before they reached the shelter
of Fort Ste. Thérèse. On the eighth of March, Courcelle came to the
neighboring fort of St. Louis or Chambly. Here he found the Jesuit
Albanel acting as chaplain; and, being in great ill humor, he charged
him with causing the failure of the expedition by detaining the
Algonquin guides. This singular notion took such possession of him,
that, when a few days after he met the Jesuit Frémin at Three Rivers,
he embraced him ironically, saying, at the same time, “My father, I am
the unluckiest gentleman in the world; and you, and the rest of you, are
the cause of it.” ** The pious Tracy, and the prudent
* A Relation of the Governr. of Cannada, his March with 600
Volunteire into if Territoryes of His Roy all Highnesse the
Duke of Yorke in America. See Doc. Hist. N. Y. I. 71.
** Journal des Jésuites, Mars, 1666. .
Talon, tried to disarm his suspicions, and with such success that
he gave up an intention he had entertained of discarding his Jesuit
confessor, and forgot or forgave the imagined wrong.
Unfortunate as this expedition was, it produced a strong effect on the
Iroquois by convincing them that their forest homes were no safe asylum
from French attacks. In May, the Senecas sent an embassy of peace; and
the other nations, including the Mohawks, soon followed. Tracy, on his
part, sent the Jesuit Bêchefer to learn on the spot the real temper of
the savages, and ascertain whether peace could safely be made with them.
The Jesuit was scarcely gone when news came that a party of officers
hunting near the outlet of Lake Champlain had been set upon by the
Mohawks, and that seven of them had been captured or killed. Among the
captured was Leroles, a cousin of Tracy, and among the killed was a
young gentleman named Chasy, his nephew.
On this the Jesuit envoy was recalled; twenty-four Iroquois deputies
were seized and imprisoned; and Sorel, captain in the regiment of
Carignan, was sent with three hundred men to chastise the perfidious
Mohawks. If, as it seems, he was expected to attack their fortified
towns or “castles,” as the English call them, his force was too
small. This time, however, there was no fighting. At two days from his
journey’s end, Sorel met the famous chief called the Flemish Bastard,
bringing back Leroles and his fellow-captives, and charged, as he
alleged, to offer full satisfaction for the murder of Chasy.
Sorel believed him, retraced his course, and with the Bastard in his
train returned to Quebec.
Quebec was full of Iroquois deputies, all bent on peace or pretending
to be so. On the last day of August, there was a grand council in
the garden of the Jesuits. Some days later, Tracy invited the Flemish
Bastard and a Mohawk chief named Agariata to his table, when allusion
was made to the murder of Chasy. On this the Mohawk, stretching out his
arm, exclaimed in a braggart tone, “This is the hand that split
the head of that young man.” The indignation of the company may
be imagined. Tracy told his insolent guest that he should never kill
anybody else; and he was led out and hanged in presence of the Bastard.
* There was no more talk of peace. Tracy prepared to march in person
against the Mohawks with all the force of Canada.
On the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, “for whose glory,” says
the chronicler, “this expedition is undertaken,” Tracy and Courcelle
left Quebec with thirteen hundred men. They crossed Lake Champlain,
and launched their boats again on the waters of St. Sacrament, now Lake
George. It was the first of the warlike pageants that have made that
fair scene historic. October had begun, and the romantic wilds breathed
the buoyant life of the most inspiring of American seasons, when
* This story rests chiefly on the authority of Nicolas
Perrot, Mœurs des Saurages, 113. La Potherie also tells it,
with the addition of the chief’s name. Colden follows him.
The Journal des Jésuites mentions that the chief who led the
murderers of Chasy arrived at Quebec on the sixth of
September. Marie de l’Incarnation mentions the hanging of an
Iroquois at Quebec, late in the autumn, for violating the
peace.
the blue-jay screams from the woods; the wild duck splashes along the
lake; and the echoes of distant mountains prolong the quavering cry of
the loon; when weather-stained rocks are plumed with the fiery crimson
of the sumac, the claret hues of young oaks, the amber and scarlet of
the maple, and the sober purple of the ash; or when gleams of sunlight,
shot aslant through the rents of cool autumnal clouds, chase fitfully
along the glowing sides of painted mountains. Amid this gorgeous
euthanasia of the dying season, the three hundred boats and canoes
trailed in long procession up the lake, threaded the labyrinth of the
Narrows, that sylvan fairyland of tufted islets and quiet waters, and
landed at length where Fort William Henry was afterwards built. *
About a hundred miles of forests, swamps, rivers, and mountains, still
lay between them and the Mohawk towns. There seems to have been an
Indian path; for this was the ordinary route of the Mohawk and Oneida
war-parties: but the path was narrow, broken, full of gullies and
pitfalls, crossed by streams, and in one place interrupted by a lake
which they passed on rafts. A hundred and ten “Blue Coats,” of
Montreal, led the way, under Charles Le Moyne. Repentigny commanded the
levies from Quebec. In all there were six hundred Canadians; six hundred
regulars; and a hundred Indians from the missions, who ranged the woods
in front, flank, and rear, like hounds on the scent. Red or white,
Canadians or regulars, all were full
* Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et Courcelle,
etc.
of zeal. “It seems to them," writes Mother Mary, “that they are
going to lay siege to Paradise, and win it and enter in, because they
are fighting for religion and the faith.” * Their ardor was rudely
tried. Officers as well as men carried loads at their backs, whence
ensued a large blister on the shoulders of the Chevalier de Chaumont,
in no way used to such burdens. Tracy, old, heavy, and infirm, was
inopportunely seized with the gout. A Swiss soldier tried to carry him
on his shoulders across a rapid stream; but midway his strength failed,
and he was barely able to deposit his ponderous load on a rock. A Huron
came to his aid, and bore Tracy safely to the farther bank. Courcelle
was attacked with cramps, and had to be carried for a time like his
commander. Provisions gave out, and men and officers grew faint with
hunger. The Montreal soldiers had for chaplain a sturdy priest, Doilier
de Casson, as large as Tracy and far stronger; for the incredible story
is told of him that, when in good condition, he could hold two men
seated on his extended hands. ** Now, however, he was equal to no such
exploit, being not only deprived of food, but also of sleep, by the
necessity of listening at night to the confessions of his pious flock;
and his shoes, too, had failed him, nothing remaining but the upper
leather, which gave him little comfort among the sharp stones. He bore
up manfully, being by nature brave and
* Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre du 16 Oct., 1666.
** Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, extract
given by J. Vigor in appendix to Histoire du Montréal
(Montreal, 1868).
light-hearted; and, when a servant of the Jesuits fell into the water,
he threw off his cassock and leaped after him. His strength gave
out, and the man was drowned; but a grateful Jesuit led him aside and
requited his efforts with a morsel of bread. * A wood of chestnut-trees
full of nuts at length stayed the hunger of the famished troops.
It was Saint Theresa’s day when they approached the lower Mohawk town.
A storm of wind and rain set in; but, anxious to surprise the enemy,
they pushed on all night amid the moan and roar of the forest; over
slippery logs, tangled roots, and oozy mosses; under dripping boughs and
through saturated bushes. This time there was no want of good guides;
and when in the morning they issued from the forest, they saw, amid its
cornfields, the palisades of the Indian stronghold. They had two small
pieces of cannon brought from the lake by relays of men, but they did
not stop to use them. Their twenty drums beat the charge, and they
advanced to seize the place by _coup-de-main_. Lucidly for them, a panic
had seized the Indians. Not that they were taken by surprise, for they
had discovered the approaching French, and, two days before, had sent
away their women and children in preparation for a desperate fight; but
the din of the drums, which they took for so many devils in the French
service; and the armed men advancing from the rocks and thickets in
files that seemed interminable,--so wrought on the scared imagination of
the warriors that they fled in terror to their next
* Dollier de Casson, Histoire du Montréal, a.d 1665, 1666.
town, a short distance above. Tracy lost no time, but hastened in
pursuit. A few Mohawks were seen on the hills, yelling and firing
too far for effect. Repentigny, at the risk of his scalp, climbed a
neighboring height, and looked down on the little army, which seemed so
numerous as it passed beneath, “that,” writes the superior of the
Ursulines, “he told me that he thought the good angels must have
joined with it; whereat he stood amazed.”
The second town or fort was taken as easily as the first; so, too, were
the third and the fourth. The Indians yelled, and fled without killing
a man; and still the troops pursued, following the broad trail which
led from town to town along the valley of the Mohawk. It was late in the
afternoon when the fourth town was entered, * and Tracy thought that his
work was done; but an Algonquin squaw who had followed her husband to
the war, and who had once been a prisoner among the Mohawks, told him
that there was still another above. The sun was near its setting, and
the men were tired with their pitiless marching; but again the order was
given to advance. The eager squaw showed the way, holding a pistol in
one hand and leading Courcelle with the other; and they soon came in
sight of Andaraqué, the largest and strongest of the Mohawk forts. The
drums beat with fury, and the troops prepared to attack, but there were
none to oppose them. The scouts sent forward, reported
* Marie de l'Incarnation says that there were four towns in
all I follow the Acte de prise de possession, made on the
spot. Five are here mentioned.
that the warriors had fled. The last of the savage strongholds was in
the hands of the French.
“God has done for us,” says Mother Mary, “what he did in ancient
days for his chosen people, striking terror into our enemies, insomuch
that we were victors without a blow. Certain it is that there is miracle
in all this; for, if the Iroquois had stood fast, they would have given
us a great deal of trouble and caused our army great loss, seeing how
they were fortified and armed, and how haughty and bold they are.”
The French were astonished as they looked about them. These Iroquois
forts were very different from those that Jogues had seen here twenty
years before, or from that which in earlier times set Champlain and his
Hurons at defiance. The Mohawks had had counsel and aid from their Dutch
friends, and adapted their savage defences to the rules of European art.
Andaraqué was a quadrangle formed of a triple palisade, twenty feet
high, and flanked by four bastions. Large vessels of bark filled with
water were placed on the platform of the palisade for defence against
fire. The dwellings which these fortifications enclosed were in many
cases built of wood, though the form and arrangement of the primitive
bark lodge of the Iroquois seems to have been preserved. Some of the
wooden houses were a hundred and twenty feet long, with fires for
eight or nine families. Here and in subterranean _caches_ was stored
a prodigious quantity of Indian-corn and other provisions; and all the
dwellings were supplied with carpenters’ tools, domestic utensils, and
many other appliances of comfort.
The only living things in Andaraqué, when the French entered, were two
old women, a small boy, and a decrepit old man, who, being frightened by
the noise of the drums, had hidden himself under a canoe. From them the
victors learned that the Mohawks, retreating from the other towns, had
gathered here, resolved to fight to the last; but at sight of the troops
their courage failed, and the chief was first to run, crying out, “Let
us save ourselves, brothers; the whole world is coming against us.”
A cross was planted, and at its side the royal arms. The troops were
drawn up in battle array, when Jean Baptiste du Bois, an officer deputed
by Tracy, advancing sword in hand to the front, proclaimed in a loud
voice that he took possession in the name of the king of all the country
of the Mohawks; and the troops shouted three times, _Vive le Roi_. *
That night a mighty bonfire illumined the Mohawk forests; and the scared
savages from their hiding-places among the rocks saw their palisades,
their dwellings, their stores of food, and all their possessions, turned
to cinders and ashes. The two old squaws captured in the town, threw
themselves in despair into the flames of their blazing homes. When
morning came, there was nothing left of Andaraqué but smouldering
embers, rolling their pale smoke against the painted background of the
* Acte de priss de possession, 17 Oct., 1666.
October woods. _Te Deum_ was sung and mass said; and then the victors
began their backward march, burning, as they went, all the remaining
forts, with all their hoarded stores of corn, except such as they needed
for themselves. If they had failed to destroy their enemies in battle,
they hoped that winter and famine would do the work of shot and steel.
While there was distress among the Mohawks, there was trouble among
their English neighbors, who claimed as their own the country which
Tracy had invaded. The English authorities were the more disquieted,
because they feared that the lately conquered Dutch might join hands
with the French against them. When Nicolls, governor of New York, heard
of Tracy’s advance, he wrote to the governors of the New England
colonies, begging them to join him against the French invaders, and
urging that, if Tracy’s force were destroyed or captured, the conquest
of Canada would be an easy task. There was war at the time between the
two crowns; and the British court had already entertained this project
of conquest, and sent orders to its colonies to that effect. But the New
England governors, ill prepared for war, and fearing that their Indian
neighbors, who were enemies of the Mohawks, might take part with the
French, hesitated to act, and the affair ended in a correspondence,
civil if not sincere, between Nicolls and Tracy. * The treaty of Breda,
in the following year, secured peace for a time between the rival
colonies.
* See the correspondence in N. Y. Col. Docs. III. 118-156.
Compare Hutchinson Collection, 407, and Mass. Hist. Coll.
XVIII. 102.
The return of Tracy was less fortunate than his advance. The rivers,
swollen by autumn rains, were difficult to pass; and in crossing
Lake Champlain two canoes were overset in a storm, and eight men were
drowned. From St. Anne, a new fort built early in the summer on Isle La
Motte, near the northern end of the lake, he sent news of his success to
Quebec, where there was great rejoicing and a solemn thanksgiving. Signs
and prodigies had not been wanting to attest the interest of the upper
and nether powers in the crusade against the myrmidons of hell. At one
of the forts on the Richelieu, “the soldiers,” says Mother Mary,
“were near dying of fright. They saw a great fiery cavern in the
sky, and from this cavern came plaintive voices mixed with frightful
howlings. Perhaps it was the demons, enraged because we had depopulated
a country where they had been masters so long, and had said mass and
sung the praises of God in a place where there had never before been any
thing but foulness and abomination.”
Tracy had at first meant to abandon Fort St. Anne; but he changed his
mind after returning to Quebec. Meanwhile the season had grown so late
that there was no time to send proper supplies to the garrison. Winter
closed, and the place was not only ill provisioned, but was left without
a priest. Tracy wrote to the superior of the Sulpitians at Montreal
to send one without delay; but the request was more easily made than
fulfilled, for he forgot to order an escort, and the way was long and
dangerous. The stout-hearted Dollier de Casson was told, however,
to hold himself ready to go at the first opportunity. His recent
campaigning had left him in no condition for braving fresh hardships,
for he was nearly disabled by a swelling on one of his knees. By way of
cure he resolved to try a severe bleeding, and the Sangrado of Montreal
did his work so thoroughly that his patient fainted under his hands.
As he returned to consciousness, he became aware that two soldiers had
entered the room. They told him that they were going in the morning to
Chambly, which was on the way to St. Anne; and they invited him to go
with them. “Wait till the day after to-morrow,” replied the priest,
“and I will try.” The delay was obtained; and, on the day fixed, the
party set out by the forest path to Chambly, a distance of about four
leagues. When they reached it, Dollier de Casson was nearly spent,
but he concealed his plight from the commanding officer, and begged an
escort to St. Anne, some twenty leagues farther. As the officer would
not give him one, he threatened to go alone, on which ten men and an
ensign were at last ordered to conduct him. Thus attended, he resumed
his journey after a day’s rest. One of the soldiers fell through the
ice, and none of his comrades dared help him. Dollier de Casson, making
the sign of the cross, went to his aid, and, more successful than on the
former occasion, caught him and pulled him out. The snow was deep; and
the priest, having arrived in the preceding summer, had never before
worn snowshoes, while a sack of clothing, and his portable chapel which
he carried at his back, joined to the pain of his knee and the effects
of his late bleeding, made the march a purgatory.
He was sorely needed at Fort St. Anne. There was pestilence in the
garrison. Two men had just died without absolution, while more were at
the point of death, and praying for a priest. Thus it happened that when
the sentinel descried far off, on the ice of Lake Champlain, a squad of
soldiers approaching, and among them a black cassock, every officer
and man not sick, or on duty, came out with one accord to meet the
new-comer. They overwhelmed him with welcome and with thanks. One took
his sack, another his portable chapel, and they led him in triumph to
the fort. First he made a short prayer, then went his rounds among the
sick, and then came to refresh himself with the officers. Here was La
Motte de la Lucière, the commandant; La Durantaye, a name destined
to be famous in Canadian annals; and a number of young subalterns.
The scene was no strange one to Dollier de Casson, for he had been
an officer of cavalry in his time, and fought under Turenne; * a good
soldier, without doubt, at the mess table or in the field, and none the
worse a priest that he had once followed the wars. He was of a lively
humor, given to jests and mirth; as pleasant a father as ever said
_Benedicite_. The soldier and
* Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson,
extracts from copy in possession of the late Jacques Viger.
the gentleman still lived under the cassock of the priest. He was
greatly respected and beloved; and his influence as a peace-maker, which
he often had occasion to exercise, is said to have been remarkable. When
the time demanded it, he could use arguments more cogent than those of
moral suasion. Once, in a camp of Algonquins, when, as he was kneeling
in prayer, an insolent savage came to interrupt him, the father, without
rising, knocked the intruder flat by a blow of his fist, and the other
Indians, far from being displeased, were filled with admiration at the
exploit. *
His cheery temper now stood him in good stead; for there was dreary work
before him, and he was not the man to flinch from it. The garrison of
St. Anne had nothing to live on but salt pork and half-spoiled flour.
Their hogshead of vinegar had sprung a leak, and the contents had all
oozed out. They had rejoiced in the supposed possession of a reasonable
stock of brandy; but they soon discovered that the sailors, on the
voyage from France, had emptied the casks and filled them again with
saltwater. The scurvy broke out with fury. In a short time, forty out
of the sixty men became victims of the loathsome malady. Day or night,
Doilier de Casson and Forestier, the equally devoted young surgeon, had
no rest. The surgeon’s strength failed, and the priest was himself
slightly attacked with the disease. Eleven men
* Grandet, Notice manuscrite sur Dollier de Casson, cited
by Faillon, Colonie Française, III. 395, 396
died; and others languished for want of help, for their comrades shrank
from entering the infected dens where they lay. In their extremity
some of them devised an ingenious expedient. Though they had nothing to
bequeath, they made wills in which they left imaginary sums of money
to those who had befriended them, and thenceforth they found no lack of
nursing.
In the intervals of his labors, Dollier de Casson would run to and fro
for warmth and exercise on a certain track of beaten snow, between two
of the bastions, reciting his breviary as he went, so that those who saw
him might have thought him out of his wits. One day La Motte called out
to him as he was thus engaged, “Eh, Monsieur le curé, if the Iroquois
should come, you must defend that bastion. My men are all deserting me,
and going over to you and the doctor.” To which the father replied,
“Get me some litters with wheels, and I will bring them out to man my
bastion. They are brave enough now; no fear of their running away.”
With banter like this, they sought to beguile their miseries; and thus
the winter wore on at Fort St. Anne. *
Early in spring they saw a troop of Iroquois approaching, and prepared
as well as they could to make fight; but the strangers proved to be
* The above curious incidents are told by Dollier de
Casson, in his Histoire du Montréal, preserved in manuscript
in the Mazarin Library at Paris. He gives no hint that the
person in question was himself, but speaks of him as un
ecclésiastique. His identity is, however, made certain by
internal evidence, by a passage in the Notice of Grandet,
and by other contemporary allusions.
ambassadors of peace. The destruction of the Mohawk towns had produced
a deep effect, not on that nation alone, but also on the other four
members of the league. They were disposed to confirm the promises of
peace which they had already made; and Tracy had spurred their good
intentions by sending them a message that, unless they quickly presented
themselves at Quebec, he would hang all the chiefs whom he had kept
prisoners after discovering their treachery in the preceding summer. The
threat had its effect: deputies of the Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and
Senecas presently arrived in a temper of befitting humility. The Mohawks
were at first afraid to come: but in April they sent the Flemish Bastard
with overtures of peace; and in July, a large deputation of their chiefs
appeared at Quebec. They and the rest left some of their families
as hostages, and promised that, if any of their people should kill a
Frenchman, they would give them up to be hanged. *
They begged, too, for blacksmiths, surgeons, and Jesuits to live among
them. The presence of the Jesuits in their towns was in many ways
an advantage to them; while to the colony it was of the greatest
importance. Not only was conversion to the church justly regarded as the
best means of attaching the Indians to the French, and alienating them
from the English; but the Jesuits living in the midst of them could
influence even those whom they could not convert, soothe rising
jealousies,
* Lettre du Père Jean Pierron, de la Compagnie de Jésus,
escripte de la Motte (Fort Ste. Anne) sur le lac Champlain,
le 12me d’aoust. 1667
counteract English intrigues, and keep the rulers of the colony informed
of all that was passing in the Iroquois towns. Thus, half Christian
missionaries, half political agents, the Jesuits prepared to resume the
hazardous mission of the Iroquois. Frémin and Pierron were ordered to
the Mohawks, Bruyas to the Oneidas, and three others were named for the
remaining three nations of the league. The troops had made the peace;
the Jesuits were the rivets to hold it fast; and peace endured without
absolute rupture for nearly twenty years. Of all the French expeditions
against the Iroquois, that of Tracy was the most productive of good.