1684.
La Barre and the Iroquois.
Dongan • New York and its Indian Neighbors • The Rival Governors •
Dongan and the Iroquois • Mission to Onondaga • An Iroquois Politician •
Warnings of Lamberville • Iroquois Boldness • La Barre takes the Field •
His Motives • The March • Pestilence • Council at La Famine • The
Iroquois defiant • Humiliation of La Barre • The Indian Allies • Their
Rage and Disappointment • Recall of La Barre.
The Dutch colony of New Netherland had now become the English colony of
New York. Its proprietor, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. of
England, had appointed Colonel Thomas Dongan its governor. He was a
Catholic Irish gentleman of high rank, nephew of the famous Earl of
Tyrconnel, and presumptive heir to the earldom of Limerick. He had
served in France, was familiar with its language, and partial to its
king and its nobility; but he nevertheless gave himself with vigor to
the duties of his new trust.
The Dutch and English colonists aimed at a share in the western fur
trade, hitherto a monopoly of Canada; and it is said that Dutch traders
had already ventured among the tribes of the Great Lakes, boldly
poaching on the French preserves. Dongan did his utmost to promote their
interests, so far at least as was consistent with his instructions from
the Duke of York, enjoining him to give the French governor no just
cause of offence. [1]
[1] Sir John Werden to Dongan, 4 Dec., 1684; N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 353.
Werden was the duke's secretary.
Dongan has been charged with instigating the Iroquois to attack the
French. The Jesuit Lamberville, writing from Onondaga, says, on the
contrary, that he hears that the "governor of New England (New York),
when the Mohawk chiefs asked him to continue the sale of powder to them,
replied that it should be continued so long as they would not make war
on Christians." Lamberville à La Barre, 10 Fév., 1684.
The French ambassador at London complained that Dongan excited the
Iroquois to war, and Dongan denied the charge. N. Y. Col. Docs., III.
506, 509.
For several years past, the Iroquois had made forays against the borders
of Maryland and Virginia, plundering and killing the settlers; and a
declared rupture between those colonies and the savage confederates had
more than once been imminent. The English believed that these
hostilities were instigated by the Jesuits in the Iroquois villages.
There is no proof whatever of the accusation; but it is certain that it
was the interest of Canada to provoke a war which might, sooner or
later, involve New York. In consequence of a renewal of such attacks,
Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, came to Albany in the
summer of 1684, to hold a council with the Iroquois.
The Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas were the offending tribes. They all
promised friendship for the future. A hole was dug in the court-yard of
the council house, each of the three threw a hatchet into it, and Lord
Howard and the representative of Maryland added two others; then the
hole was filled, the song of peace was sung, and the high contracting
parties stood pledged to mutual accord. [2] The Mohawks were also at the
council, and the Senecas soon after arrived; so that all the confederacy
was present by its deputies. Not long before, La Barre, then in the heat
of his martial preparations, had sent a messenger to Dongan with a
letter, informing him that, as the Senecas and Cayugas had plundered
French canoes and assaulted a French fort, he was compelled to attack
them, and begging that the Dutch and English colonists should be
forbidden to supply them with arms. [3] This letter produced two
results, neither of them agreeable to the writer: first, the Iroquois
were fully warned of the designs of the French; and, secondly, Dongan
gained the opportunity he wanted of asserting the claim of his king to
sovereignty over the confederacy, and possession of the whole country
south of the Great Lakes. He added that, if the Iroquois had done wrong,
he would require them, as British subjects, to make reparation; and he
urged La Barre, for the sake of peace between the two colonies, to
refrain from his intended invasion of British territory. [4]
[2] Report of Conferences at Albany, in Colden, History of the Five
Nations, 50 (ed. 1727, Shea's reprint).
[3] La Barre à Dongan, 15 Juin, 1684.
[4] Dongan à La Barre, 24 Juin, 1684.
Dongan next laid before the assembled sachems the complaints made
against them in the letter of La Barre. They replied by accusing the
French of carrying arms to their enemies, the Illinois and the Miamis.
"Onontio," said their orator, "calls us his children, and then helps our
enemies to knock us in the head." They were somewhat disturbed at the
prospect of La Barre's threatened attack; and Dongan seized the occasion
to draw from them an acknowledgment of subjection to the Duke of York,
promising in return that they should be protected from the French. They
did not hesitate. "We put ourselves," said the Iroquois speaker, "under
the great sachem Charles, who lives over the Great Lake, and under the
protection of the great Duke of York, brother of your great sachem." But
he added a moment after, "Let your friend (King Charles) who lives over
the Great Lake know that we are a free people, though united to the
English." [5] They consented that the arms of the Duke of York should be
planted in their villages, being told that this would prevent the French
from destroying them. Dongan now insisted that they should make no
treaty with Onontio without his consent; and he promised that, if their
country should be invaded, he would send four hundred horsemen and as
many foot soldiers to their aid.
[5] Speech of the Onondagas and Cayugas, in Colden, Five Nations, 63
(1727).
As for the acknowledgment of subjection to the king and the Duke of
York, the Iroquois neither understood its full meaning nor meant to
abide by it. What they did clearly understand was that, while they
recognized Onontio, the governor of Canada, as their father, they
recognized Corlaer, the governor of New York, only as their brother. [6]
Dongan, it seems, could not, or dared not, change this mark of equality.
He did his best, however, to make good his claims, and sent Arnold
Viele, a Dutch interpreter, as his envoy to Onondaga. Viele set out for
the Iroquois capital, and thither we will follow him.
[6] Except the small tribe of the Oneidas, who addressed Corlaer as
Father. Corlaer was the official Iroquois name of the governor of New
York; Onas (the Feather, or Pen), that of the governor of Pennsylvania;
and Assarigoa (the Big Knife, or Sword), that of the governor of
Virginia. Corlaer, or Cuyler, was the name of a Dutchman whom the
Iroquois held in great respect.
He mounted his horse, and in the heats of August rode westward along the
valley of the Mohawk. On a hill a bow-shot from the river, he saw the
first Mohawk town, Kaghnawaga, encircled by a strong palisade. Next he
stopped for a time at Gandagaro, on a meadow near the bank; and next, at
Canajora, on a plain two miles away. Tionondogué, the last and strongest
of these fortified villages, stood like the first on a hill that
overlooked the river, and all the rich meadows around were covered with
Indian corn. The largest of the four contained but thirty houses, and
all together could furnish scarcely more than three hundred warriors.
[7]
[7] Journal of Wentworth Greenhalgh, 1677, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III.
250.
When the last Mohawk town was passed, a ride of four or five days still
lay before the envoy. He held his way along the old Indian trail, now
traced through the grass of sunny meadows, and now tunnelled through the
dense green of shady forests, till it led him to the town of the
Oneidas, containing about a hundred bark houses, with twice as many
fighting men, the entire force of the tribe. Here, as in the four Mohawk
villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and, still
advancing, came at length to a vast open space where the rugged fields,
patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a broad, low hill,
crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga. There were from one to
two hundred of these large bark dwellings, most of them holding several
families. The capital of the confederacy was not fortified at this time,
and its only defence was the valor of some four hundred warriors. [8]
[8] Journal of Greenhalgh. The site of Onondaga, like that of all the
Iroquois towns, was changed from time to time, as the soil of the
neighborhood became impoverished, and the supply of wood exhausted.
Greenhalgh, in 1677, estimated the warriors at three hundred and fifty;
but the number had increased of late by the adoption of prisoners.
In this focus of trained and organized savagery, where ferocity was
cultivated as a virtue, and every emotion of pity stifled as unworthy of
a man; where ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held with the
tenacity of a people who joined the extreme of wildness with the extreme
of conservatism,--here burned the council fire of the five confederate
tribes; and here, in time of need, were gathered their bravest and their
wisest to debate high questions of policy and war.
The object of Viele was to confirm the Iroquois in their very
questionable attitude of subjection to the British crown, and persuade
them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through the
intervention of Dongan, or at least with his consent. The envoy found
two Frenchmen in the town, whose presence boded ill to his errand. The
first was the veteran colonist of Montreal, Charles le Moyne, sent by La
Barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference. They had known him, in
peace or war, for a quarter of a century; and they greatly respected
him. The other was the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville, who had long lived
among them, and knew them better than they knew themselves. Here, too,
was another personage who cannot pass unnoticed. He was a famous
Onondaga orator named Otréouati, and called also Big Mouth, whether by
reason of the dimensions of that feature or the greatness of the wisdom
that issued from it. His contemporary, Baron La Hontan, thinking perhaps
that his French name of La Grande Gueule was wanting in dignity,
Latinized it into Grangula; and the Scotchman, Colden, afterwards
improved it into Garangula, under which high-sounding appellation Big
Mouth has descended to posterity. He was an astute old savage, well
trained in the arts of Iroquois rhetoric, and gifted with the power of
strong and caustic sarcasm, which has marked more than one of the chief
orators of the confederacy. He shared with most of his countrymen the
conviction that the earth had nothing so great as the league of the
Iroquois; but, if he could be proud and patriotic, so too he could be
selfish and mean. He valued gifts, attentions, and a good meal, and
would pay for them abundantly in promises, which he kept or not, as his
own interests or those of his people might require. He could use bold
and loud words in public, and then secretly make his peace with those he
had denounced. He was so given to rough jokes that the intendant,
Meules, calls him a buffoon; but his buffoonery seems to have been often
a cover to his craft. He had taken a prominent part in the council of
the preceding summer at Montreal; and, doubtless, as he stood in full
dress before the governor and the officers, his head plumed, his face
painted, his figure draped in a colored blanket, and his feet decked
with embroidered moccasins, he was a picturesque and striking object. He
was less so as he squatted almost naked by his lodge fire, with a piece
of board laid across his lap, chopping rank tobacco with a
scalping-knife to fill his pipe, and entertaining the grinning circle
with grotesque stories and obscene jests. Though not one of the
hereditary chiefs, his influence was great. "He has the strongest head
and the loudest voice among the Iroquois," wrote Lamberville to La
Barre. "He calls himself your best friend.... He is a venal creature,
whom you do well to keep in pay. I assured him I would send him the
jerkin you promised." [9] Well as the Jesuit knew the Iroquois, he was
deceived if he thought that Big Mouth was securely won.
[9] Letters of Lamberville in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. For specimens of Big
Mouth's skill in drawing, see ibid., IX. 386.
Lamberville's constant effort was to prevent a rupture. He wrote with
every opportunity to the governor, painting the calamities that war
would bring, and warning him that it was vain to hope that the league
could be divided, and its three eastern tribes kept neutral, while the
Senecas were attacked. He assured him, on the contrary, that they would
all unite to fall upon Canada, ravaging, burning, and butchering along
the whole range of defenceless settlements. "You cannot believe,
Monsieur, with what joy the Senecas learned that you might possibly
resolve on war. When they heard of the preparations at Fort Frontenac,
they said that the French had a great mind to be stripped, roasted, and
eaten; and that they will see if their flesh, which they suppose to have
a salt taste, by reason of the salt which we use with our food, be as
good as that of their other enemies." [10] Lamberville also informs the
governor that the Senecas have made ready for any emergency, buried
their last year's corn, prepared a hiding place in the depth of the
forest for their old men, women, and children, and stripped their towns
of every thing that they value; and that their fifteen hundred warriors
will not shut themselves up in forts, but fight under cover, among trees
and in the tall grass, with little risk to themselves and extreme danger
to the invader. "There is no profit," he says, "in fighting with this
sort of banditti, whom you cannot catch, but who will catch many of your
people. The Onondagas wish to bring about an agreement. Must the father
and the children, they ask, cut each other's throats?"
[10] Lamberville to La Barre, 11 July, 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
253.
The Onondagas, moved by the influence of the Jesuit and the gifts of La
Barre, did in fact wish to act as mediators between their Seneca
confederates and the French; and to this end they invited the Seneca
elders to a council. The meeting took place before the arrival of Viele,
and lasted two days. The Senecas were at first refractory, and hot for
war, but at length consented that the Onondagas might make peace for
them, if they could; a conclusion which was largely due to the eloquence
of Big Mouth.
The first act of Viele was a blunder. He told the Onondagas that the
English governor was master of their country; and that, as they were
subjects of the king of England, they must hold no council with the
French without permission. The pride of Big Mouth was touched. "You
say," he exclaimed to the envoy, "that we are subjects of the king of
England and the Duke of York; but we say that we are brothers. We must
take care of ourselves. The coat of arms which you have fastened to that
post cannot defend us against Onontio. We tell you that we shall bind a
covenant chain to our arm and to his. We shall take the Senecas by one
hand and Onontio by the other, and their hatchet and his sword shall be
thrown into deep water." [11]
[11] Colden, Five Nations, 80 (1727).
Thus well and manfully did Big Mouth assert the independence of his
tribe, and proclaim it the arbiter of peace. He told the warriors,
moreover, to close their ears to the words of the Dutchman, who spoke as
if he were drunk; [12] and it was resolved at last that he, Big Mouth,
with an embassy of chiefs and elders, should go with Le Moyne to meet
the French governor.
[12] Lamberville to La Barre, 28 Aug., 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
257.
While these things were passing at Onondaga, La Barre had finished his
preparations, and was now in full campaign. Before setting out, he had
written to the minister that he was about to advance on the enemy, with
seven hundred Canadians, a hundred and thirty regulars, and two hundred
mission Indians; that more Indians were to join him on the way; that Du
Lhut and La Durantaye were to meet him at Niagara with a body of
coureurs de bois and Indians from the interior; and that, "when we are
all united, we will perish or destroy the enemy." [13] On the same day,
he wrote to the king: "My purpose is to exterminate the Senecas; for
otherwise your Majesty need take no farther account of this country,
since there is no hope of peace with them, except when they are driven
to it by force. I pray you do not abandon me; and be assured that I
shall do my duty at the head of your faithful colonists." [14]
[13] La Barre au Ministre, 9 July, 1684.
[14] La Barre au Roy, même date.
A few days after writing these curiously incoherent epistles, La Barre
received a letter from his colleague, Meules, who had no belief that he
meant to fight, and was determined to compel him to do so, if possible.
"There is a report," wrote the intendant, "that you mean to make peace.
It is doing great harm. Our Indian allies will despise us. I trust the
story is untrue, and that you will listen to no overtures. The expense
has been enormous. The whole population is roused." [15] Not satisfied
with this, Meules sent the general a second letter, meant, like the
first, as a tonic and a stimulant. "If we come to terms with the
Iroquois, without first making them feel the strength of our arms, we
may expect that, in future, they will do every thing they can to
humiliate us, because we drew the sword against them, and showed them
our teeth. I do not think that any course is now left for us but to
carry the war to their very doors, and do our utmost to reduce them to
such a point that they shall never again be heard of as a nation, but
only as our subjects and slaves. If, after having gone so far, we do not
fight them, we shall lose all our trade, and bring this country to the
brink of ruin. The Iroquois, and especially the Senecas, pass for great
cowards. The Reverend Father Jesuit, who is at Prairie de la Madeleine,
told me as much yesterday; and, though he has never been among them, he
assured me that he has heard everybody say so. But, even if they were
brave, we ought to be very glad of it; since then we could hope that
they would wait our attack, and give us a chance to beat them. If we do
not destroy them, they will destroy us. I think you see but too well
that your honor and the safety of the country are involved in the
results of this war." [16]
[15] Meules à La Barre, 15 July, 1684.
[16] Meules à La Barre, 14 Août, 1684. This and the preceding letter
stand, by a copyist's error, in the name of La Barre. They are certainly
written by Meules.
While Meules thus wrote to the governor, he wrote also to the minister,
Seignelay, and expressed his views with great distinctness. "I feel
bound in conscience to tell you that nothing was ever heard of so
extraordinary as what we see done in this country every day. One would
think that there was a divided empire here between the king and the
governor; and, if things should go on long in this way, the governor
would have a far greater share than his Majesty. The persons whom
Monsieur la Barre has sent this year to trade at Fort Frontenac have
already shared with him from ten to twelve thousand crowns." He then
recounts numerous abuses and malversations on the part of the governor.
"In a word, Monseigneur, this war has been decided upon in the cabinet
of Monsieur the general, along with six of the chief merchants of the
country. If it had not served their plans, he would have found means to
settle every thing; but the merchants made him understand that they were
in danger of being plundered, and that, having an immense amount of
merchandise in the woods in nearly two hundred canoes fitted out last
year, it was better to make use of the people of the country to carry on
war against the Senecas. This being done, he hopes to make extraordinary
profits without any risk, because one of two things will happen: either
we shall gain some considerable advantage over the savages, as there is
reason to hope, if Monsieur the general will but attack them in their
villages; or else we shall make a peace which will keep every thing safe
for a time. These are assuredly the sole motives of this war, which has
for principle and end nothing but mere interest. He says himself that
there is good fishing in troubled waters. [17]
[17] The famous voyageur, Nicolas Perrot, agrees with the intendant.
"Ils (La Barre et ses associés) s'imaginèrent que sitost que le François
viendroit à paroistre, l'Irroquois luy demanderoit miséricorde, quil
seroit facile d'establir des magasins, construire des barques dans le
lac Ontario, et que c'estoit un moyen de trouver des richesses." Mémoire
sur les Mœurs, Coustumes, et Relligion des Sauvages, chap. xxi.
The Sulpitian, Abbé Belmont, says that the avarice of the merchants was
the cause of the war; that they and La Barre wished to prevent the
Iroquois from interrupting trade; and that La Barre aimed at an
indemnity for the sixteen hundred livres in merchandise which the
Senecas had taken from his canoes early in the year. Belmont adds that
he wanted to bring them to terms without fighting.
"With all our preparations for war, and all the expense in which
Monsieur the general is involving his Majesty, I will take the liberty
to tell you, Monseigneur, though I am no prophet, that I discover no
disposition on the part of Monsieur the general to make war against the
aforesaid savages. In my belief, he will content himself with going in a
canoe as far as Fort Frontenac, and then send for the Senecas to treat
of peace with them, and deceive the people, the intendant, and, if I may
be allowed with all possible respect to say so, his Majesty himself.
"P. S.--I will finish this letter, Monseigneur, by telling you that he
set out yesterday, July 10th, with a detachment of two hundred men. All
Quebec was filled with grief to see him embark on an expedition of war
tête-à-tête with the man named La Chesnaye. Everybody says that the war
is a sham, that these two will arrange every thing between them, and, in
a word, do whatever will help their trade. The whole country is in
despair to see how matters are managed." [18]
[18] Meules au Ministre, 8-11 Juillet, 1684.
After a long stay at Montreal, La Barre embarked his little army at La
Chine, crossed Lake St. Louis, and began the ascent of the upper St.
Lawrence. In one of the three companies of regulars which formed a part
of the force was a young subaltern, the Baron la Hontan, who has left a
lively account of the expedition. Some of the men were in flat boats,
and some were in birch canoes. Of the latter was La Hontan, whose craft
was paddled by three Canadians. Several times they shouldered it through
the forest to escape the turmoil of the rapids. The flat boats could not
be so handled, and were dragged or pushed up in the shallow water close
to the bank, by gangs of militia men, toiling and struggling among the
rocks and foam. The regulars, unskilled in such matters, were spared
these fatigues, though tormented night and day by swarms of gnats and
mosquitoes, objects of La Hontan's bitterest invective. At length the
last rapid was passed, and they moved serenely on their way, threaded
the mazes of the Thousand Islands, entered what is now the harbor of
Kingston, and landed under the palisades of Fort Frontenac.
Here the whole force was soon assembled, the regulars in their tents,
the Canadian militia and the Indians in huts and under sheds of bark. Of
these red allies there were several hundred: Abenakis and Algonquins
from Sillery, Hurons from Lorette, and converted Iroquois from the
Jesuit mission of Saut St. Louis, near Montreal. The camp of the French
was on a low, damp plain near the fort; and here a malarious fever
presently attacked them, killing many and disabling many more. La Hontan
says that La Barre himself was brought by it to the brink of the grave.
If he had ever entertained any other purpose than that of inducing the
Senecas to agree to a temporary peace, he now completely abandoned it.
He dared not even insist that the offending tribe should meet him in
council, but hastened to ask the mediation of the Onondagas, which the
letters of Lamberville had assured him that they were disposed to offer.
He sent Le Moyne to persuade them to meet him on their own side of the
lake, and, with such of his men as were able to move, crossed to the
mouth of Salmon River, then called La Famine.
The name proved prophetic. Provisions fell short from bad management in
transportation, and the men grew hungry and discontented. September had
begun; the place was unwholesome, and the malarious fever of Fort
Frontenac infected the new encampment. The soldiers sickened rapidly. La
Barre, racked with suspense, waited impatiently the return of Le Moyne.
We have seen already the result of his mission, and how he and
Lamberville, in spite of the envoy of the English governor, gained from
the Onondaga chiefs the promise to meet Onontio in council. Le Moyne
appeared at La Famine on the third of the month, bringing with him Big
Mouth and thirteen other deputies. La Barre gave them a feast of bread,
wine, and salmon trout, and on the morning of the fourth the council
began.
Before the deputies arrived, the governor had sent the sick men homeward
in order to conceal his helpless condition; and he now told the Iroquois
that he had left his army at Fort Frontenac, and had come to meet them
attended only by an escort. The Onondaga politician was not to be so
deceived. He, or one of his party, spoke a little French; and during the
night, roaming noiselessly among the tents, he contrived to learn the
true state of the case from the soldiers.
The council was held on an open spot near the French encampment. La
Barre was seated in an arm-chair. The Jesuit Bruyas stood by him as
interpreter, and the officers were ranged on his right and left. The
Indians sat on the ground in a row opposite the governor; and two lines
of soldiers, forming two sides of a square, closed the intervening
space. Among the officers was La Hontan, a spectator of the whole
proceeding. He may be called a man in advance of his time; for he had
the caustic, sceptical, and mocking spirit which a century later marked
the approach of the great revolution, but which was not a characteristic
of the reign of Louis XIV. He usually told the truth when he had no
motive to do otherwise, and yet was capable at times of prodigious
mendacity. [19] There is no reason to believe that he indulged in it on
the present occasion, and his account of what he now saw and heard may
probably be taken as substantially correct. According to him, La Barre
opened the council as follows:--
"The king my master, being informed that the Five Nations of the
Iroquois have long acted in a manner adverse to peace, has ordered me to
come with an escort to this place, and to send Akouessan (Le Moyne) to
Onondaga to invite the principal chiefs to meet me. It is the wish of
this great king that you and I should smoke the calumet of peace
together, provided that you promise, in the name of the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to give entire satisfaction
and indemnity to his subjects, and do nothing in future which may
occasion rupture."
[19] La Hontan attempted to impose on his readers a marvellous story of
pretended discoveries beyond the Mississippi; and his ill repute in the
matter of veracity is due chiefly to this fabrication. On the other
hand, his account of what he saw in the colony is commonly in accord
with the best contemporary evidence.
Then he recounted the offences of the Iroquois. First, they had
maltreated and robbed French traders in the country of the Illinois;
"wherefore," said the governor, "I am ordered to demand reparation, and
in case of refusal to declare war against you."
Next, "the warriors of the Five Nations have introduced the English into
the lakes which belong to the king my master, and among the tribes who
are his children, in order to destroy the trade of his subjects, and
seduce these people from the obedience they owe him. I am willing to
forget this; but, should it happen again, I am expressly ordered to
declare war against you."
Thirdly, "the warriors of the Five Nations have made sundry barbarous
inroads into the country of the Illinois and Miamis, seizing, binding,
and leading into captivity an infinite number of these savages in time
of peace. They are the children of my king, and are not to remain your
slaves. They must at once be set free and sent home. If you refuse to do
this, I am expressly ordered to declare war against you."
La Barre concluded by assuring Big Mouth, as representing the Five
Nations of the Iroquois, that the French would leave them in peace if
they made atonement for the past, and promised good conduct for the
future; but that, if they did not heed his words, their villages should
be burned, and they themselves destroyed. He added, though he knew the
contrary, that the governor of New York would join him in war against
them.
During the delivery of this martial harangue, Big Mouth sat silent and
attentive, his eyes fixed on the bowl of his pipe. When the interpreter
had ceased, he rose, walked gravely two or three times around the lines
of the assembly, then stopped before the governor, looked steadily at
him, stretched his tawny arm, opened his capacious jaws, and uttered
himself as follows:--
"Onontio, I honor you, and all the warriors who are with me honor you.
Your interpreter has ended his speech, and now I begin mine. Listen to
my words.
"Onontio, when you left Quebec, you must have thought that the heat of
the sun had burned the forests that make our country inaccessible to the
French, or that the lake had overflowed them so that we could not escape
from our villages. You must have thought so, Onontio; and curiosity to
see such a fire or such a flood must have brought you to this place. Now
your eyes are opened; for I and my warriors have come to tell you that
the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks are all alive. I
thank you in their name for bringing back the calumet of peace which
they gave to your predecessors; and I give you joy that you have not dug
up the hatchet which has been so often red with the blood of your
countrymen.
"Listen, Onontio. I am not asleep. My eyes are open; and by the sun that
gives me light I see a great captain at the head of a band of soldiers,
who talks like a man in a dream. He says that he has come to smoke the
pipe of peace with the Onondagas; but I see that he came to knock them
in the head, if so many of his Frenchmen were not too weak to fight. I
see Onontio raving in a camp of sick men, whose lives the Great Spirit
has saved by smiting them with disease. Our women had snatched
war-clubs, and our children and old men seized bows and arrows to attack
your camp, if our warriors had not restrained them, when your messenger,
Akouessan, appeared in our village."
He next justified the pillage of French traders on the ground, very
doubtful in this case, that they were carrying arms to the Illinois,
enemies of the confederacy; and he flatly refused to make reparation,
telling La Barre that even the old men of his tribe had no fear of the
French. He also avowed boldly that the Iroquois had conducted English
traders to the lakes. "We are born free," he exclaimed, "we depend
neither on Onontio nor on Corlaer. We have the right to go whithersoever
we please, to take with us whomever we please, and buy and sell of
whomever we please. If your allies are your slaves or your children,
treat them like slaves or children, and forbid them to deal with anybody
but your Frenchmen.
"We have knocked the Illinois in the head, because they cut down the
tree of peace and hunted the beaver on our lands. We have done less than
the English and the French, who have seized upon the lands of many
tribes, driven them away, and built towns, villages, and forts in their
country.
"Listen, Onontio. My voice is the voice of the Five Tribes of the
Iroquois. When they buried the hatchet at Cataraqui (Fort Frontenac) in
presence of your predecessor, they planted the tree of peace in the
middle of the fort, that it might be a post of traders and not of
soldiers. Take care that all the soldiers you have brought with you,
shut up in so small a fort, do not choke this tree of peace. I assure
you in the name of the Five Tribes that our warriors will dance the
dance of the calumet under its branches; and that they will sit quiet on
their mats and never dig up the hatchet, till their brothers, Onontio
and Corlaer, separately or together, make ready to attack the country
that the Great Spirit has given to our ancestors."
The session presently closed; and La Barre withdrew to his tent, where,
according to La Hontan, he vented his feelings in invective, till
reminded that good manners were not to be expected from an Iroquois. Big
Mouth, on his part, entertained some of the French at a feast which he
opened in person by a dance. There was another session in the afternoon,
and the terms of peace were settled in the evening. The tree of peace
was planted anew; La Barre promised not to attack the Senecas; and Big
Mouth, in spite of his former declaration, consented that they should
make amends for the pillage of the traders. On the other hand, he
declared that the Iroquois would fight the Illinois to the death; and La
Barre dared not utter a word in behalf of his allies. The Onondaga next
demanded that the council fire should be removed from Fort Frontenac to
La Famine, in the Iroquois country. This point was yielded without
resistance; and La Barre promised to decamp and set out for home on the
following morning. [20]
[20] The articles of peace will be found in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 236.
Compare Memoir of M. de la Barre regarding the War against the Senecas,
ibid., 239. These two documents do not agree as to date, one placing the
council on the 4th and the other on the 5th.
Such was the futile and miserable end of the grand expedition. Even the
promise to pay for the plundered goods was contemptuously broken. [21]
The honor rested with the Iroquois. They had spurned the French,
repelled the claims of the English, and by act and word asserted their
independence of both.
[21] This appears from the letters of Denonville, La Barre's successor.
La Barre embarked and hastened home in advance of his men. His camp was
again full of the sick. Their comrades placed them, shivering with ague
fits, on board the flat-boats and canoes; and the whole force, scattered
and disordered, floated down the current to Montreal. Nothing had been
gained but a thin and flimsy truce, with new troubles and dangers
plainly visible behind it. The better to understand their nature, let us
look for a moment at an episode of the campaign.
When La Barre sent messengers with gifts and wampum belts to summon the
Indians of the Upper Lakes to join in the war, his appeal found a cold
response. La Durantaye and Du Lhut, French commanders in that region,
vainly urged the surrounding tribes to lift the hatchet. None but the
Hurons would consent, when, fortunately, Nicolas Perrot arrived at
Michillimackinac on an errand of trade. This famous coureur de bois--a
very different person from Perrot, governor of Montreal--was well
skilled in dealing with Indians. Through his influence, their scruples
were overcome; and some five hundred warriors, Hurons, Ottawas, Ojibwas,
Pottawatamies, and Foxes, were persuaded to embark for the rendezvous at
Niagara, along with a hundred or more Frenchmen. The fleet of canoes,
numerous as a flock of blackbirds in autumn, began the long and weary
voyage. The two commanders had a heavy task. Discipline was impossible.
The French were scarcely less wild than the savages. Many of them were
painted and feathered like their red companions, whose ways they
imitated with perfect success. The Indians, on their part, were but
half-hearted for the work in hand, for they had already discovered that
the English would pay twice as much for a beaver skin as the French; and
they asked nothing better than the appearance of English traders on the
lakes, and a safe peace with the Iroquois, which should open to them the
market of New York. But they were like children with the passions of
men, inconsequent, fickle, and wayward. They stopped to hunt on the
shore of Michigan, where a Frenchman accidentally shot himself with his
own gun. Here was an evil omen. But for the efforts of Perrot, half the
party would have given up the enterprise, and paddled home. In the
Strait of Detroit there was another hunt, and another accident. In
firing at a deer, an Indian wounded his own brother. On this the
tribesmen of the wounded man proposed to kill the French, as being the
occasion of the mischance. Once more the skill of Perrot prevailed; but
when they reached the Long Point of Lake Erie, the Foxes, about a
hundred in number, were on the point of deserting in a body. As
persuasion failed, Perrot tried the effect of taunts. "You are cowards,"
he said to the naked crew, as they crowded about him with their wild
eyes and long lank hair. "You do not know what war is: you never killed
a man and you never ate one, except those that were given you tied hand
and foot." They broke out against him in a storm of abuse. "You shall
see whether we are men. We are going to fight the Iroquois; and, unless
you do your part, we will knock you in the head." "You will never have
to give yourselves the trouble," retorted Perrot, "for at the first
war-whoop you will all run off." He gained his point. Their pride was
roused, and for the moment they were full of fight. [22]
[22] La Potherie, II. 159 (ed. 1722). Perrot himself, in his Mœurs des
Sauvages, briefly mentions the incident.
Immediately after, there was trouble with the Ottawas, who became
turbulent and threatening, and refused to proceed. With much ado, they
were persuaded to go as far as Niagara, being lured by the rash
assurance of La Durantaye that three vessels were there, loaded with a
present of guns for them. They carried their canoes by the cataract,
launched them again, paddled to the mouth of the river, and looked for
the vessels in vain. At length a solitary sail appeared on the lake. She
brought no guns, but instead a letter from La Barre, telling them that
peace was made, and that they might all go home. Some of them had
paddled already a thousand miles, in the hope of seeing the Senecas
humbled. They turned back in disgust, filled with wrath and scorn
against the governor and all the French. Canada had incurred the
contempt, not only of enemies, but of allies. There was danger that
these tribes would repudiate the French alliance, welcome the English
traders, make peace at any price with the Iroquois, and carry their
beaver skins to Albany instead of Montreal.
The treaty made at La Famine was greeted with contumely through all the
colony. The governor found, however, a comforter in the Jesuit
Lamberville, who stood fast in the position which he had held from the
beginning. He wrote to La Barre: "You deserve the title of saviour of
the country for making peace at so critical a time. In the condition in
which your army was, you could not have advanced into the Seneca country
without utter defeat. The Senecas had double palisades, which could not
have been forced without great loss. Their plan was to keep three
hundred men inside, and to perpetually harass you with twelve hundred
others. All the Iroquois were to collect together, and fire only at the
legs of your people, so as to master them, and burn them at their
leisure, and then, after having thinned their numbers by a hundred
ambuscades in the woods and grass, to pursue you in your retreat even to
Montreal, and spread desolation around it." [23]
[23] Lamberville to La Barre, 9 Oct., 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
260.
La Barre was greatly pleased with this letter, and made use of it to
justify himself to the king. His colleague, Meules, on the other hand,
declared that Lamberville, anxious to make favor with the governor, had
written only what La Barre wished to hear. The intendant also informs
the minister that La Barre's excuses are a mere pretence; that everybody
is astonished and disgusted with him; that the sickness of the troops
was his own fault, because he kept them encamped on wet ground for an
unconscionable length of time; that Big Mouth shamefully befooled and
bullied him; that, after the council at La Famine, he lost his wits, and
went off in a fright; that, since the return of the troops, the officers
have openly expressed their contempt for him; and that the people would
have risen against him, if he, Meules, had not taken measures to quiet
them. [24] These, with many other charges, flew across the sea from the
pen of the intendant.
[24] Meules au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1684.
The next ship from France brought the following letter from the king:--
Monsieur de la Barre,--Having been informed that your years do not
permit you to support the fatigues inseparable from your office of
governor and lieutenant-general in Canada, I send you this letter to
acquaint you that I have selected Monsieur de Denonville to serve in
your place; and my intention is that, on his arrival, after resigning to
him the command, with all instructions concerning it, you embark for
your return to France.
Louis.
La Barre sailed for home; and the Marquis de Denonville, a pious colonel
of dragoons, assumed the vacant office.