1687.
Denonville and the Senecas.
Treachery of Denonville • Iroquois Generosity • The Invading Army • The
Western Allies • Plunder of English Traders • Arrival of the Allies •
Scene at the French Camp • March of Denonville • Ambuscade • Battle •
Victory • The Seneca Babylon • Imperfect Success.
A host of flat-boats filled with soldiers, and a host of Indian canoes,
struggled against the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and slowly made their
way to Fort Frontenac. Among the troops was La Hontan. When on his
arrival he entered the gate of the fort, he saw a strange sight. A row
of posts was planted across the area within, and to each post an
Iroquois was tied by the neck, hands, and feet, "in such a way," says
the indignant witness, "that he could neither sleep nor drive off the
mosquitoes." A number of Indians attached to the expedition, all of whom
were Christian converts from the mission villages, were amusing
themselves by burning the fingers of these unfortunates in the bowls of
their pipes, while the sufferers sang their death songs. La Hontan
recognized one of them who, during his campaign with La Barre, had often
feasted him in his wigwam; and the sight so exasperated the young
officer that he could scarcely refrain from thrashing the tormentors
with his walking stick. [1]
[1] La Hontan, I. 93-95 (1709).
Though the prisoners were Iroquois, they were not those against whom the
expedition was directed; nor had they, so far as appears, ever given the
French any cause of complaint. They belonged to two neutral villages,
called Kenté and Ganneious, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, forming
a sort of colony, where the Sulpitians of Montreal had established a
mission. [2] They hunted and fished for the garrison of the fort, and
had been on excellent terms with it. Denonville, however, feared that
they would report his movements to their relations across the lake; but
this was not his chief motive for seizing them. Like La Barre before
him, he had received orders from the court that, as the Iroquois were
robust and strong, he should capture as many of them as possible, and
send them to France as galley slaves. [3] The order, without doubt,
referred to prisoners taken in war; but Denonville, aware that the
hostile Iroquois were not easily caught, resolved to entrap their
unsuspecting relatives.
[2] Ganneious or Ganéyout was on an arm of the lake a little west of the
present town of Fredericksburg. Kenté or Quinte was on Quinte Bay.
[3] Le Roy à La Barre, 21 Juillet, 1684; Le Roy à Denonville et
Champigny, 30 Mars, 1687.
The intendant Champigny accordingly proceeded to the fort in advance of
the troops, and invited the neighboring Iroquois to a feast. They came
to the number of thirty men and about ninety women and children,
whereupon they were surrounded and captured by the intendant's escort
and the two hundred men of the garrison. The inhabitants of the village
of Ganneious were not present; and one Perré, with a strong party of
Canadians and Christian Indians, went to secure them. He acquitted
himself of his errand with great address, and returned with eighteen
warriors and about sixty women and children. Champigny's exertions did
not end here. Learning that a party of Iroquois were peaceably fishing
on an island in the St. Lawrence, he offered them also the hospitalities
of Fort Frontenac; but they were too wary to be entrapped. Four or five
Iroquois were however caught by the troops on their way up the river.
They were in two or more parties, and they all had with them their women
and children, which was never the case with Iroquois on the war-path.
Hence the assertion of Denonville, that they came with hostile designs,
is very improbable. As for the last six months he had constantly urged
them, by the lips of Lamberville, to visit him and smoke the pipe of
peace, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these Indian families were
on their way to the colony in consequence of his invitations. Among them
were the son and brother of Big Mouth, who of late had been an advocate
of peace; and, in order not to alienate him, these two were eventually
set free. The other warriors were tied like the rest to stakes at the
fort.
The whole number of prisoners thus secured was fifty-one, sustained by
such food as their wives were able to get for them. Of more than a
hundred and fifty women and children captured with them, many died at
the fort, partly from excitement and distress, and partly from a
pestilential disease. The survivors were all baptized, and then
distributed among the mission villages in the colony. The men were sent
to Quebec, where some of them were given up to their Christian relatives
in the missions who had claimed them, and whom it was not expedient to
offend; and the rest, after being baptized, were sent to France, to
share with convicts and Huguenots the horrible slavery of the royal
galleys. [4]
[4] The authorities for the above are Denonville, Champigny, Abbé
Belmont, Bishop Saint-Vallier, and the author of Recueil de ce qui s'est
passé en Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, etc., depuis l'année 1682.
Belmont, who accompanied the expedition, speaks of the affair with
indignation, which was shared by many French officers. The bishop, on
the other hand, mentions the success of the stratagem as a reward
accorded by Heaven to the piety of Denonville. État Présent de l'Église,
91, 92 (reprint, 1856).
Denonville's account, which is sufficiently explicit, is contained in
the long journal of the expedition which he sent to the court, and in
several letters to the minister. Both Belmont and the author of the
Recueil speak of the prisoners as having been "pris par l'appât d'un
festin."
Mr. Shea, usually so exact, has been led into some error by confounding
the different acts of this affair. By Denonville's official journal, it
appears that, on the 19th June, Perré, by his order, captured several
Indians on the St. Lawrence; that, on the 25th June, the governor, then
at Rapide Plat on his way up the river, received a letter from
Champigny, informing him that he had seized all the Iroquois near Fort
Frontenac; and that, on the 3d July, Perré, whom Denonville had sent
several days before to attack Ganneious, arrived with his prisoners.
Before reaching Fort Frontenac, Denonville, to his great relief, was
joined by Lamberville, delivered from the peril to which the governor
had exposed him. He owed his life to an act of magnanimity on the part
of the Iroquois, which does them signal honor. One of the prisoners at
Fort Frontenac had contrived to escape, and, leaping sixteen feet to the
ground from the window of a blockhouse, crossed the lake, and gave the
alarm to his countrymen. Apparently, it was from him that the Onondagas
learned that the invitations of Onontio were a snare; that he had
entrapped their relatives, and was about to fall on their Seneca
brethren with all the force of Canada. The Jesuit, whom they trusted and
esteemed, but who had been used as an instrument to beguile them, was
summoned before a council of the chiefs. They were in a fury at the
news; and Lamberville, as much astonished by it as they, expected
instant death, when one of them is said to have addressed him to the
following effect: "We know you too well to believe that you meant to
betray us. We think that you have been deceived as well as we; and we
are not unjust enough to punish you for the crime of others. But you are
not safe here. When once our young men have sung the war-song, they will
listen to nothing but their fury; and we shall not be able to save you."
They gave him guides, and sent him by secret paths to meet the advancing
army. [5]
[5] I have ventured to give this story on the sole authority of
Charlevoix, for the contemporary writers are silent concerning it. Mr.
Shea thinks that it involves a contradiction of date; but this is
entirely due to confounding the capture of prisoners by Perré at
Ganneious on July 3d with the capture by Champigny at Fort Frontenac
about June 20th. Lamberville reached Denonville's camp, one day's
journey from the fort, on the evening of the 29th. (Journal of
Denonville.) This would give four and a half days for news of the
treachery to reach Onondaga, and four and a half days for the Jesuit to
rejoin his countrymen.
Charlevoix, with his usual carelessness, says that the Jesuit Milet had
also been used to lure the Iroquois into the snare, and that he was soon
after captured by the Oneidas, and delivered by an Indian matron.
Milet's captivity did not take place till 1689-90.
Again the fields about Fort Frontenac were covered with tents,
camp-sheds, and wigwams. Regulars, militia, and Indians, there were
about two thousand men; and, besides these, eight hundred regulars just
arrived from France had been left at Montreal to protect the settlers.
[6] Fortune thus far had smiled on the enterprise, and she now gave
Denonville a fresh proof of her favor. On the very day of his arrival, a
canoe came from Niagara with news that a large body of allies from the
west had reached that place three days before, and were waiting his
commands. It was more than he had dared to hope. In the preceding
autumn, he had ordered Tonty, commanding at the Illinois, and La
Durantaye, commanding at Michillimackinac, to muster as many coureurs de
bois and Indians as possible, and join him early in July at Niagara. The
distances were vast, and the difficulties incalculable. In the eyes of
the pious governor, their timely arrival was a manifest sign of the
favor of Heaven. At Fort St. Louis, of the Illinois, Tonty had mustered
sixteen Frenchmen and about two hundred Indians, whom he led across the
country to Detroit; and here he found Du Lhut, La Forêt, and La
Durantaye, with a large body of French and Indians from the upper lakes.
[7] It had been the work of the whole winter to induce these savages to
move. Presents, persuasion, and promises had not been spared; and while
La Durantaye, aided by the Jesuit Engelran, labored to gain over the
tribes of Michillimackinac, the indefatigable Nicolas Perrot was at work
among those of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. They were of a race
unsteady as aspens and fierce as wild-cats, full of mutual jealousies,
without rulers, and without laws; for each was a law to himself. It was
difficult to persuade them, and, when persuaded, scarcely possible to
keep them so. Perrot, however, induced some of them to follow him to
Michillimackinac, where many hundreds of Algonquin savages were
presently gathered: a perilous crew, who changed their minds every day,
and whose dancing, singing, and yelping might turn at any moment into
war-whoops against each other or against their hosts, the French. The
Hurons showed more stability; and La Durantaye was reasonably sure that
some of them would follow him to the war, though it was clear that
others were bent on allying themselves with the Senecas and the English.
As for the Pottawatamies, Sacs, Ojibwas, Ottawas, and other Algonquin
hordes, no man could foresee what they would do. [8]
[6] Denonville. Champigny says 832 regulars, 930 militia, and 300
Indians. This was when the army left Montreal. More Indians afterwards
joined it. Belmont says 1,800 French and Canadians and about 300
Indians.
[7] Tonty, Mémoire in Margry, Relations Inédites.
[8] The name of Ottawas, here used specifically, was often employed by
the French as a generic term for the Algonquin tribes of the Great
Lakes.
Suddenly a canoe arrived with news that a party of English traders was
approaching. It will be remembered that two bands of Dutch and English,
under Rooseboom and McGregory, had prepared to set out together for
Michillimackinac, armed with commissions from Dongan. They had rashly
changed their plan, and parted company. Rooseboom took the lead, and
McGregory followed some time after. Their hope was that, on reaching
Michillimackinac, the Indians of the place, attracted by their cheap
goods and their abundant supplies of rum, would declare for them and
drive off the French; and this would probably have happened, but for the
prompt action of La Durantaye. The canoes of Rooseboom, bearing
twenty-nine whites and five Mohawks and Mohicans, were not far distant,
when, amid a prodigious hubbub, the French commander embarked to meet
him with a hundred and twenty coureurs de bois. [9] Behind them followed
a swarm of Indian canoes, whose occupants scarcely knew which side to
take, but for the most part inclined to the English. Rooseboom and his
men, however, naturally thought that they came to support the French;
and, when La Durantaye bore down upon them with threats of instant death
if they made the least resistance, they surrendered at once. The captors
carried them in triumph to Michillimackinac, and gave their goods to the
delighted Indians.
[9] Attestation of N. Harmentse and others of Rooseboom's party. N. Y.
Col. Docs., III. 436. La Potherie says, three hundred.
"It is certain," wrote Denonville; "that, if the English had not been
stopped and pillaged, the Hurons and Ottawas would have revolted and cut
the throats of all our Frenchmen." [10] As it was, La Durantaye's
exploit produced a revulsion of feeling, and many of the Indians
consented to follow him. He lost no time in leading them down the lake
to join Du Lhut at Detroit; and, when Tonty arrived, they all paddled
for Niagara. On the way, they met McGregory with a party about equal to
that of Rooseboom. He had with him a considerable number of Ottawa and
Huron prisoners whom the Iroquois had captured, and whom he meant to
return to their countrymen as a means of concluding the long projected
triple alliance between the English, the Iroquois, and the tribes of the
lakes. This bold scheme was now completely crushed. All the English were
captured and carried to Niagara, whence they and their luckless
precursors were sent prisoners to Quebec.
[10] Denonville au Ministre, 25 Août, 1687.
La Durantaye and his companions, with a hundred and eighty coureurs de
bois and four hundred Indians, waited impatiently at Niagara for orders
from the governor. A canoe despatched in haste from Fort Frontenac soon
appeared; and they were directed to repair at once to the rendezvous at
Irondequoit Bay, on the borders of the Seneca country. [11]
[11] The above is drawn from papers in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 436, IX.
324, 336, 346, 405; Saint-Vallier, État Présent, 92; Denonville,
Journal; Belmont, Histoire du Canada; La Potherie, II. chap. xvi; La
Hontan. I. 96. Colden's account is confused and incorrect.
Denonville was already on his way thither. On the fourth of July, he had
embarked at Fort Frontenac with four hundred bateaux and canoes, crossed
the foot of Lake Ontario, and moved westward along the southern shore.
The weather was rough, and six days passed before he descried the low
headlands of Irondequoit Bay. Far off on the glimmering water, he saw a
multitude of canoes advancing to meet him. It was the flotilla of La
Durantaye. Good management and good luck had so disposed it that the
allied bands, concentring from points more than a thousand miles
distant, reached the rendezvous on the same day. This was not all. The
Ottawas of Michillimackinac, who refused to follow La Durantaye, had
changed their minds the next morning, embarked in a body, paddled up the
Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, crossed to Toronto, and joined the allies at
Niagara. White and red, Denonville now had nearly three thousand men
under his command. [12]
[12] Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en Canada depuis 1682; Captain
Duplessis's Plan for the Defence of Canada, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX.
447.
All were gathered on the low point of land that separates Irondequoit
Bay from Lake Ontario. "Never," says an eye-witness, "had Canada seen
such a sight; and never, perhaps, will she see such a sight again. Here
was the camp of the regulars from France, with the general's
head-quarters; the camp of the four battalions of Canadian militia,
commanded by the noblesse of the country; the camp of the Christian
Indians; and, farther on, a swarm of savages of every nation. Their
features were different, and so were their manners, their weapons, their
decorations, and their dances. They sang and whooped and harangued in
every accent and tongue. Most of them wore nothing but horns on their
heads, and the tails of beasts behind their backs. Their faces were
painted red or green, with black or white spots; their ears and noses
were hung with ornaments of iron; and their naked bodies were daubed
with figures of various sorts of animals." [13]
[13] The first part of the extract is from Belmont; the second, from
Saint-Vallier.
These were the allies from the upper lakes. The enemy, meanwhile, had
taken alarm. Just after the army arrived, three Seneca scouts called
from the edge of the woods, and demanded what they meant to do. "To
fight you, you blockheads," answered a Mohawk Christian attached to the
French. A volley of bullets was fired at the scouts; but they escaped,
and carried the news to their villages. [14] Many of the best warriors
were absent. Those that remained, four hundred or four hundred and fifty
by their own accounts, and eight hundred by that of the French, mustered
in haste; and, though many of them were mere boys, they sent off the
women and children, hid their most valued possessions, burned their
chief town, and prepared to meet the invaders.
[14] Information received from several Indians, in N. Y. Col. Docs.,
III. 444.
On the twelfth, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Denonville began his
march, leaving four hundred men in a hastily built fort to guard the
bateaux and canoes. Troops, officers, and Indians, all carried their
provisions at their backs. Some of the Christian Mohawks guided them;
but guides were scarcely needed, for a broad Indian trail led from the
bay to the great Seneca town, twenty-two miles southward. They marched
three leagues through the open forests of oak, and encamped for the
night. In the morning, the heat was intense. The men gasped in the dead
and sultry air of the woods, or grew faint in the pitiless sun, as they
waded waist-deep through the rank grass of the narrow intervales. They
passed safely through two dangerous defiles, and, about two in the
afternoon, began to enter a third. Dense forests covered the hills on
either hand. La Durantaye with Tonty and his cousin Du Lhut led the
advance, nor could all Canada have supplied three men better for the
work. Each led his band of coureurs de bois, white Indians, without
discipline, and scarcely capable of it, but brave and accustomed to the
woods. On their left were the Iroquois converts from the missions of
Saut St. Louis and the Mountain of Montreal, fighting under the
influence of their ghostly prompters against their own countrymen. On
the right were the pagan Indians from the west. The woods were full of
these painted spectres, grotesquely horrible in horns and tail; and
among them flitted the black robe of Father Engelran, the Jesuit of
Michillimackinac. Nicolas Perrot and two other bush-ranging Frenchmen
were assigned to command them, but in fact they obeyed no man. These
formed the vanguard, eight or nine hundred in all, under an excellent
officer, Callières, governor of Montreal. Behind came the main body
under Denonville, each of the four battalions of regulars alternating
with a battalion of Canadians. Some of the regulars wore light armor,
while the Canadians were in plain attire of coarse cloth or buckskin.
Denonville, oppressed by the heat, marched in his shirt. "It is a rough
life," wrote the marquis, "to tramp afoot through the woods, carrying
one's own provisions in a haversack, devoured by mosquitoes, and faring
no better than a mere soldier." [15] With him was the Chevalier de
Vaudreuil, who had just arrived from France in command of the eight
hundred men left to guard the colony, and who, eager to take part in the
campaign, had pushed forward alone to join the army. Here, too, were the
Canadian seigniors at the head of their vassals, Berthier, La Valterie,
Granville, Longueuil, and many more. A guard of rangers and Indians
brought up the rear.
[15] Denonville au Ministre, 8 Juin, 1687.
Scouts thrown out in front ran back with the report that they had
reached the Seneca clearings, and had seen no more dangerous enemy than
three or four women in the cornfields. This was a device of the Senecas
to cheat the French into the belief that the inhabitants were still in
the town. It had the desired effect. The vanguard pushed rapidly
forward, hoping to surprise the place, and ignorant that, behind the
ridge of thick forests on their right, among a tangled growth of
beech-trees in the gorge of a brook, three hundred ambushed warriors lay
biding their time.
Hurrying forward through the forest, they left the main body behind, and
soon reached the end of the defile. The woods were still dense on their
left and front; but on their right lay a great marsh, covered with alder
thickets and rank grass. Suddenly the air was filled with yells, and a
rapid though distant fire was opened from the thickets and the forest.
Scores of painted savages, stark naked, some armed with swords and some
with hatchets, leaped screeching from their ambuscade, and rushed
against the van. Almost at the same moment a burst of whoops and firing
sounded in the defile behind. It was the ambushed three hundred
supporting the onset of their countrymen in front; but they had made a
fatal mistake. Deceived by the numbers of the vanguard, they supposed it
to be the whole army, never suspecting that Denonville was close behind
with sixteen hundred men. It was a surprise on both sides. So dense was
the forest that the advancing battalions could see neither the enemy nor
each other. Appalled by the din of whoops and firing, redoubled by the
echoes of the narrow valley, the whole army was seized with something
like a panic. Some of the officers, it is said, threw themselves on the
ground in their fright. There were a few moments of intense
bewilderment. The various corps became broken and confused, and moved
hither and thither without knowing why. Denonville behaved with great
courage. He ran, sword in hand, to where the uproar was greatest,
ordered the drums to beat the charge, turned back the militia of
Berthier who were trying to escape, and commanded them and all others
whom he met to fire on whatever looked like an enemy. He was bravely
seconded by Callières, La Valterie, and several other officers. The
Christian Iroquois fought well from the first, leaping from tree to
tree, and exchanging shots and defiance with their heathen countrymen;
till the Senecas, seeing themselves confronted by numbers that seemed
endless, abandoned the field, after heavy loss, carrying with them many
of their dead and all of their wounded. [16]
[16] For authorities, see note at the end of the chapter. The account of
Charlevoix is contradicted at several points by the contemporary
writers.
Denonville made no attempt to pursue. He had learned the dangers of this
blind warfare of the woods; and he feared that the Senecas would waylay
him again in the labyrinth of bushes that lay between him and the town.
"Our troops," he says, "were all so overcome by the extreme heat and the
long march that we were forced to remain where we were till morning. We
had the pain of witnessing the usual cruelties of the Indians, who cut
the dead bodies into quarters, like butchers' meat, to put into their
kettles, and opened most of them while still warm to drink the blood.
Our rascally Ottawas particularly distinguished themselves by these
barbarities, as well as by cowardice; for they made off in the fight. We
had five or six men killed on the spot, and about twenty wounded, among
whom was Father Engelran, who was badly hurt by a gun-shot. Some
prisoners who escaped from the Senecas tell us that they lost forty men
killed outright, twenty-five of whom we saw butchered. One of the
escaped prisoners saw the rest buried, and he saw also more than sixty
very dangerously wounded." [17]
[17] Denonville au Ministre, 25 Août, 1687. In his journal, written
afterwards, he says that the Senecas left twenty-seven dead on the
field, and carried off twenty more, besides upwards of sixty mortally
wounded.
In the morning, the troops advanced in order of battle through a marsh
covered with alders and tall grass, whence they had no sooner emerged
than, says Abbé Belmont, "we began to see the famous Babylon of the
Senecas, where so many crimes have been committed, so much blood
spilled, and so many men burned. It was a village or town of bark, on
the top of a hill. They had burned it a week before. We found nothing in
it but the graveyard and the graves, full of snakes and other creatures;
a great mask, with teeth and eyes of brass, and a bearskin drawn over
it, with which they performed their conjurations." [18] The fire had
also spared a number of huge receptacles of bark, still filled with the
last season's corn; while the fields around were covered with the
growing crop, ripening in the July sun. There were hogs, too, in great
number; for the Iroquois did not share the antipathy with which Indians
are apt to regard that unsavory animal, and from which certain
philosophers have argued their descent from the Jews.
[18] Belmont. A few words are added from Saint-Vallier.
The soldiers killed the hogs, burned the old corn, and hacked down the
new with their swords. Next they advanced to an abandoned Seneca fort on
a hill half a league distant, and burned it, with all that it contained.
Ten days were passed in the work of havoc. Three neighboring villages
were levelled, and all their fields laid waste. The amount of corn
destroyed was prodigious. Denonville reckons it at the absurdly
exaggerated amount of twelve hundred thousand bushels.
The Senecas, laden with such of their possessions as they could carry
off, had fled to their confederates in the east; and Denonville did not
venture to pursue them. His men, feasting without stint on green corn
and fresh pork, were sickening rapidly, and his Indian allies were
deserting him. "It is a miserable business," he wrote, "to command
savages, who, as soon as they have knocked an enemy in the head, ask for
nothing but to go home and carry with them the scalp, which they take
off like a skull-cap. You cannot believe what trouble I had to keep them
till the corn was cut."
On the twenty-fourth, he withdrew, with all his army, to the fortified
post at Irondequoit Bay, whence he proceeded to Niagara, in order to
accomplish his favorite purpose of building a fort there. The troops
were set at work, and a stockade was planted on the point of land at the
eastern angle between the River Niagara and Lake Ontario, the site of
the ruined fort built by La Salle nine years before. [19] Here he left a
hundred men, under the Chevalier de Troyes, and, embarking with the rest
of the army, descended to Montreal.
[19] Procès-verbal de la Prise de Possession de Niagara, 31 Juillet,
1687. There are curious errors of date in this document regarding the
proceedings of La Salle.
The campaign was but half a success. Joined to the capture of the
English traders on the lakes, it had, indeed, prevented the defection of
the western Indians, and in some slight measure restored their respect
for the French, of whom, nevertheless, one of them was heard to say that
they were good for nothing but to make war on hogs and corn. As for the
Senecas, they were more enraged than hurt. They could rebuild their bark
villages in a few weeks; and, though they had lost their harvest, their
confederates would not let them starve. [20] A converted Iroquois had
told the governor before his departure that, if he overset a wasps'
nest, he must crush the wasps, or they would sting him. Denonville left
the wasps alive.
[20] The statement of some later writers, that many of the Senecas died
during the following winter in consequence of the loss of their corn, is
extremely doubtful. Captain Duplessis, in his Plan for the Defence of
Canada, 1690, declares that not one of them perished of hunger.
Denonville's campaign against the Senecas.--The chief authorities on
this matter are the journal of Denonville, of which there is a
translation in the Colonial Documents of New York, IX.; the letters of
Denonville to the Minister; the État Présent de l'Église de la Colonie
Française, by Bishop Saint-Vallier; the Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en
Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, tant des Anglais que des Iroquois, depuis
l'année 1682; and the excellent account by Abbé Belmont in his chronicle
called Histoire du Canada. To these may be added La Hontan, Tonty,
Nicolas Perrot, La Potherie, and the Senecas examined before the
authorities of Albany, whose statements are printed in the Colonial
Documents, III. These are the original sources. Charlevoix drew his
account from a portion of them. It is inexact, and needs the correction
of his learned annotator, Mr. Shea. Colden, Smith, and other English
writers follow La Hontan.
The researches of Mr. O. H. Marshall, of Buffalo, have left no
reasonable doubt as to the scene of the battle, and the site of the
neighboring town. The Seneca ambuscade was on the marsh and the hills
immediately north and west of the present village of Victor; and their
chief town, called Gannagaro by Denonville, was on the top of Boughton's
Hill, about a mile and a quarter distant. Immense quantities of Indian
remains were formerly found here, and many are found to this day.
Charred corn has been turned up in abundance by the plough, showing that
the place was destroyed by fire. The remains of the fort burned by the
French are still plainly visible on a hill a mile and a quarter from the
ancient town. A plan of it will be found in Squier's Aboriginal
Monuments of New York. The site of the three other Seneca towns
destroyed by Denonville, and called Totiakton, Gannondata, and
Gannongarae, can also be identified. See Marshall, in Collections N. Y.
Hist. Soc., 2d Series, II. Indian traditions of historical events are
usually almost worthless; but the old Seneca chief Dyunehogawah, or
"John Blacksmith," who was living a few years ago at the Tonawanda
reservation, recounted to Mr. Marshall with remarkable accuracy the
story of the battle as handed down from his ancestors who lived at
Gannagaro, close to the scene of action. Gannagaro was the Canagorah of
Wentworth Greenalgh's Journal. The old Seneca, on being shown a map of
the locality, placed his finger on the spot where the fight took place,
and which was long known to the Senecas by the name of Dyagodiyu, or
"The Place of a Battle." It answers in the most perfect manner to the
French contemporary descriptions.