1686-1687
PIERRE LE MOYNE D’IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY
With Captain Outlaw’s crew adding strength to Albany, and Governor
Bridgar’s crew wintering at Rupert River, the Adventurers on Hudson
Bay once more felt secure. Like a bolt from the blue came the French
raiders into the midst of this security.
It was one of the long summer nights on the 18th of June, 1686,
when twilight of the North merges with dawn. Fourteen cannon in all
protruded from the embrasures of the four stone bastions round Moose
Factory—the southwest corner of the bay; and the eighteen-foot pickets
of the palisaded square wall were everywhere punctured with holes for
musketry. In one bastion were three thousand pounds of powder. In
another, twelve soldiers slept. In a third were stored furs. The fourth
bastion served as kitchen. Across the middle of the courtyard was the
two-story storehouse and residence of the chief factor. The sentinel
had shot the strong iron bolts of the main gate facing the waterway,
and had lain down to sleep wrapped in a blanket without loading the
cannon it was his duty to guard. Twilight of the long June night—almost
the longest day in the year—had deepened into the white stillness that
precedes dawn, when two forms took shape in the thicket of underbrush
behind the fort, and there stepped forth clad in buckskin _cap-à-pie_,
musket over shoulder, war hatchet, powderhorn, dagger, pistol in belt
and unscabbarded sword aglint in hand, two French wood-lopers, the
far-famed _coureurs des bois_, whose scalping raids were to strike
terror from Louisiana to Hudson Bay.
At first glance, the two scouts might have been marauding Iroquois
come this outrageous distance through swamp and forest from their
own fighting ground. Closer scrutiny showed them to be young French
noblemen, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville, age twenty-four, and his
brother, Sainte Hélène, native to the roving life of the bushranger,
to pillage and raid and ambuscade as the war-eagle to prey. Born in
Montreal in 1661 and schooled to all the wilderness perils of the
struggling colony’s early life, Pierre le Moyne, one of nine sons of
Charles le Moyne, at Montreal, became the Robin Hood of American wilds.
Sending his brother Ste. Hélène round one side of the pickets to
peer through the embrasures of the moonlit fortress, Pierre le Moyne
d’Iberville skirted the other side himself and quickly made the
discovery that not one of the cannon was loaded. The tompion was in
every muzzle. Scarcely a cat’s-paw of wind dimpled the waters. The bay
was smooth as silk. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasined tread of
the two spies. There was the white silence, the white midnight pallor
of Arctic night, the diaphanous play of Northern lights over skyey
waters, the fine etched shadows of juniper and fir and spruce black as
crayon across the pale-amber swamps.
With a quick glance, d’Iberville and his brother took in every detail.
Then they melted back in the pallid half-light like shadows. In a
trice, a hundred forms had taken shape in the mist—sixty-six Indians
decked in all the war-gear of savage glory from head-dress and
vermilion cheeks to naked red-stained limbs lithe as tiger, smooth and
supple as satin—sixty-six Indians and thirty-three half-wild French
soldiers gay in all the regimentals of French pomp, commanded by old
Chevalier de Troyes, veteran of a hundred wars, now commissioned to
demand the release of Monsieur Péré from the forts of the English fur
traders. Beside De Troyes, stood De la Chesnay, head of the Northern
Company of Fur Traders in Quebec, only too glad of this chance to raid
the forts of rivals. And well to the fore, cross in hand, head bared,
the Jesuit Sylvie had come to rescue the souls of Northern heathendom
from hell.
Impossible as it may seem, these hundred intrepid wood-runners had
come overland from Montreal. While Grimmington and Smithsend were
still in prison at Quebec, d’Iberville and his half-wild followers had
set out in midwinter on a voyage men hardly dared in summer. Without
waiting for the ice to break up, leaving Montreal in March, they had
followed the frozen river bed of the Ottawa northward, past the Rideau
and Chaudiere Falls tossing their curtains of spray in midair where
the city of Ottawa stands to-day, past the Mattawa which led off to
the portages of Michilimackinac and the Great Lakes, up the palisaded
shores of the Temiscamingue to Lake Abbittibbi, the half-way watershed
between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. French silver mines, which
the English did not rediscover to the present century, were worked at
Temiscamingue. At Abbittibbi, a stockade was built in the month of May,
and three Canadians left to keep guard. Here, too, pause was made to
construct canoes for the voyage down the watershed of Moose River to
James Bay. Instead of waiting for the ice of the Ottawa to break up,
the raiders had forced their march to be on time to float down on the
swollen currents of the spring thaw to Moose Factory, four-hundred
miles from the height of land.
And a march forced against the very powers of the elements, it had
proved. No tents were carried; only the blanket, knapsack fashion, tied
to each man’s back. Bivouac was made under the stars. No provisions but
what each blanket carried! No protection but the musket over shoulder,
the war axe and powderhorn, and pistol in belt! No reward but the vague
promise of loot from the English wigwamming—as the Indians say—on the
Northern Bay! Do the border raids of older lands record more heroic
daring than this? A march through six-hundred miles of trackless forest
in midwinter, then down the maelstrom sweep of torrents swollen by
spring thaw, for three-hundred miles to the juniper swamps of rotting
windfall and dank forest growth around the bay?
If the march had been difficult by snowshoe, it was ten-fold more now.
Unknown cataracts, unknown whirlpools, unknown reaches of endless
rapids dashed the canoes against the ice jam, under huge trunks of
rotting trees lying athwart the way, so that Pierre d’Iberville’s canoe
was swamped, two of his voyageurs swept to death before his eyes, and
two others only saved by d’Iberville, himself, leaping to the rescue
and dragging them ashore. In places, the ice had to be cut away with
hatchets. In places, portage was made over the ice jams, men sinking
to their armpits in a slither of ice and snow. For as long as eleven
miles, the canoes were tracked over rapids with the men wading barefoot
over ice-cold, slippery river bed.
It had been no play, this fur-trade raid, and now Iberville was back
from his scouting, having seen with his own eyes that the English fur
traders were really wigwamming on the bay—by which the Indians meant
“wintering.” Hastily, all burdens of blanket and food and clothes
were cast aside and _cached_. Hastily, each raider fell to his knees
invoking the blessing of Ste. Anne, patron saint of Canadian voyageur.
Hastily, the Jesuit Sylvie passed from man to man absolving all sin;
for these men fought with all the Spartan ferocity of the Indian
fighter—that it was better to die fighting than to suffer torture in
defeat.
Then each man recharged his musket lest the swamp mists had dampened
powder. Perhaps, Iberville reminded his bush-lopers that the Sovereign
Council of Quebec had a standing offer of ten crowns reward for every
enemy slain, twenty crowns for every enemy captured. Perhaps, old
Chevalier de Troyes called up memories of Dollard’s fight on the Long
Sault twenty years before, and warned his thirty soldiers that there
was no retreat now through a thousand miles of forest. They must win or
perish! Perhaps Dechesnay, the fur trader, told these wood-rovers that
in at least one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s forts were fifty-thousand
crowns’ worth of beaver to be divided as spoils among the victors.
De Troyes led his soldiers round the fore to make a feint of furious
onslaught from the water front. Iberville posted his Indians along each
flank to fire through the embrasures of the pickets. Then, with a wild
yell, the French raiders swooped upon the sleeping fort. Iberville and
his brothers, Ste. Hélène and Maricourt, were over the rear pickets and
across the courtyard, swords in hand, before the sleepy gunner behind
the main gate could get his eyes open. One blow of Ste. Hélène’s saber
split the fellow’s head to the collar bone. The trunk of a tree was
used to ram the main gate. Iberville’s Indians had hacked down the
rear pickets, and he, himself, led the way into the house. Before the
sixteen terrified inmates dashing out in their shirts had realized what
was happening, the raiders were masters of Moose. Only one man besides
the gunner was killed, and he was a Frenchman slain by the cross-fire
of his comrades. Cellars were searched, but there was small loot. Furs
were evidently stored elsewhere, but the French were the richer by
sixteen captives, twelve portable cannon, and three-thousand pounds of
powder. Flag unfurled, muskets firing, sod heaved in air, Chevalier
de Troyes took possession of the fort for the Most Redoubtable, Most
Mighty, Most Christian King of France, though a cynic might wonder how
such an act was accomplished in time of peace, when the sole object of
the raid had been the rescue of Monsieur Péré, imprisoned as a spy.
Eastward of Moose, a hundred and thirty miles along the south coast of
the bay on Rupert’s River, was the other fort, stronger, the bastions
of stone, with a dock where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships commonly
anchored for the summer. Northwestward of Moose, some hundred miles,
was a third fort, Albany, the citadel of the English fur traders’
strength, forty paces back from the water. Unassailable by sea, it was
the storehouse of the best furs. It was decided to attack Rupert first.
Staying only long enough at Moose to build a raft to carry Chevalier de
Troyes and his prisoners along the coast, the raiders set out by sea on
the 27th of June.
[Illustration: Petition to the H. B. C. signed by Churchill, or
Marlborough.]
Iberville led the way with two canoes and eight or nine men. By
sailboat, it was necessary to round a long point of land. By canoe,
this land could be portaged, and Iberville was probably the first
man to blaze the trail across the swamp, which has been used by
hunters from that day to this. By the first of July, he had caught a
glimpse of Rupert’s bastions through the woods. Concealing his Indians,
he went forward to reconnoiter. To his delight, he espied the Company’s
ship with the H. B. C. ensign flying that signified Governor Bridgar
was on board. Choosing the night, as usual, for attack, Iberville
stationed his bandits where they could fire on the decks if necessary.
Then he glided across the water to the schooner.
Hand over fist, he was up the ship’s sides when the sleeping sentinel
awakened with a spring at his throat. One cleft of Iberville’s sword,
and the fellow rolled dead at the Frenchman’s feet. Iberville then
stamped on the deck to call the crew aloft, and sabered three men
in turn as they tumbled up the hatchway, till the fourth, Governor
Bridgar, himself, threw up his hands in unconditional surrender of
the ship and crew of fourteen. Twice in four years, Bridgar found
himself a captive. The din had alarmed the fort. Though the bastions
were dismantled for repairs, gates were slammed shut and musketry
poured hot shot through the embrasures, that kept the raiders at a
distance. Again, it was the Le Moyne brothers who led the fray. The
bastions served the usual two-fold purpose of defense and barracks.
Extemporizing ladders, Iberville went scrambling up like a monkey to
the roofs, hacked holes through the rough thatch of the bastions and
threw down hand grenades at the imminent risk of blowing himself as
well as the enemy to eternity. “It was,” says the old chronicle, “with
an effect most admirable”—which depends on the point of view; for when
the defenders were driven from the bastions to the main house inside,
gates were rammed down, palisades hacked out, and Iberville with his
followers, was on the roof of the main house throwing down more bombs.
As one explosive left his hand, a terrified English woman dashed up
stairs into the room directly below. Iberville shouted for her to
retire. The explosion drowned his warning, and the next moment he was
down stairs dashing from hall to hall, candle in hand, followed by
the priest, Sylvie. A plaintive cry came from the closet of what had
been the factor’s room. Followed by his powder-grimed, wild raiders,
Iberville threw open the door. With a scream, there fell at his feet a
woman with a shattered hip. However black a record these raiders left
for braining children and mutilating women, four years later in what is
now New York State, they made no war on women here. Lifting her to a
bed, the priest Sylvie and Iberville called in the surgeon, and barring
the door from the outside, forbade intrusion. The raid became a riot.
The French possessed Rupert, though little the richer but for the ship
and thirty prisoners.
The wild wood-rovers were now strong enough to attempt Albany, three
hundred miles northwest. It was at Albany that the French spy Péré
was supposed to be panting for rescue. It was also at Albany that
the English fur traders had their greatest store of pelts. As usual,
Iberville led off in canoes; De Troyes, the French fur traders, the
soldiers and the captives following with the cannon on the ship. It was
sunset when the canoes launched out from Rupert River. To save time by
crossing the south end of the bay diagonally, they had sheered out from
the coast when there blew down from the upper bay one of those bitter
northeast gales, that at once swept a maelstrom of churning ice floes
about the cockleshell birch canoes. To make matters worse, fog fell
thick as night. A birch canoe in a cross sea is bad enough. With ice
floes it was destruction.
Some made for the main shore and took refuge on land. The Le Moynes’
two canoes kept on. A sea of boiling ice floes got between the two.
There was nothing to do for the night but camp on the shifting ice,
hanging for dear life to the canoe held high on the voyageurs’ heads
out of danger, clinging hand to hand so that if one man slithered
through the iceslush the human rope pulled him out. It was a new kind
of canoe work for Iberville’s Indians. When daylight came through the
gray fog, Iberville did not wait for the weather to clear. He kept guns
firing to guide the canoe that followed and pushed across the traverse,
portaging where there was ice, paddling where there was water. Four
days the traverse lasted, and not once did this Robin Hood of Canadian
wildwoods flinch. The first of August saw his Indians and bush-lopers
below the embankments of Albany. A few days later came De Troyes on the
boat with soldiers and cannon.
Governor Sargeant of Albany had been warned of the raiders by Indian
coureurs. The fort was shut fast as a sealed box. Neither side gave
sign. Not till the French began trundling their cannon ashore by all
sorts of clumsy contrivances to get them in range of the fort forty
yards back, was there a sign of life, when forty-three big guns inside
the wall of Albany simultaneously let go forty-three bombs in midair
that flattened the raiders to earth under shelter of the embankment.
Chevalier De Troyes then mustered all the pomp and fustian of court
pageantry, flag flying, drummers beating to the fore, guard in line,
and marching forward demanded of the English traders, come half-way out
to meet him, satisfaction for and the delivery of Sieur Péré, a loyal
subject of France suffering imprisonment on the shores of Hudson Bay at
the hands of the English. One may wonder, perhaps, what these raiders
would have done without the excuse of Péré. The messenger came back
from Governor Sargeant with word that Péré had been sent home to France
by way of England long ago. (That Péré had been delayed in an English
prison was not told.) De Troyes then pompously demanded the surrender
of the fort. Sargeant sent back word such a demand was an insult in
time of peace. Under cover of night the French retired to consider.
With an extravagance now lamented, they had used at Rupert the most
of their captured ammunition. Cannon, they had in plenty, but only a
few rounds of balls. They had thirty prisoners, but no provisions; a
ship, but no booty of furs. Between them and home lay a wilderness of
forest and swamp. They must capture the fort by an escalade, or retreat
empty-handed.
Inside the fort such bedlam reigned as might have delighted the
raiders’ hearts. Sargeant, the sturdy old governor, was for keeping his
teeth clinched to the end, though the larder was lean and only enough
powder left to do the French slight damage as they landed their cannon.
When a servant fell dead from a French ball, Turner, the chief gunner,
dashed from his post roaring out he was going to throw himself on the
mercy of the French. Sargeant rounded the fellow back to his guns with
the generous promise to blow his brains out if he budged an inch. Two
English spies sent out came back with word the French were mounting
their battery in the dark. Instantly, there was a scurry of men to
hide in attics, in cellars, under bales of fur, while six worthies,
over signed names, presented a petition to the sturdy old governor,
imploring him to surrender. Declaring they would not fight without
an advance of pay anyway, they added in words that should go down to
posterity, “_for if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make
it good_.” Still Sargeant kept his teeth set, his gates shut, his guns
spitting defiance at the enemy.
For two days bombs sang back and forward through the air. There was
more parleying. Bridgar, the governor captured down at Rupert, came to
tell Sargeant that the French were desperate; if they were compelled
to fight to the end, there would be no quarter. Still Sargeant hoped
against hope for the yearly English vessel to relieve the siege. Then
Captain Outlaw came from the powder magazines with word there was no
more ammunition. The people threw down their arms and threatened to
desert _en masse_ to the French. Sargeant still stubbornly refused to
beat a parley; so Dixon, the under factor, hung out a white sheet as
flag of truce, from an upper window. The French had just ceased firing
to cool their cannon. They had actually been reduced to melting iron
round wooden disks for balls, when the messenger came out with word
of surrender. Bluff and resolute to the end, Sargeant marched out
with two flagons of port, seated himself on the French cannon, drank
healths with De Troyes, and proceeded to drive as hard a bargain as if
his larders had been crammed and his magazines full of powder. Drums
beating, flags flying, in full possession of arms, governor, officers,
wives and servants were to be permitted to march out in honor, to
be transported to Charlton Island, there to await the coming of the
English ship.
Barely had the thirty English sallied out, when the bush-lopers dashed
into the fort, ransacking house and cellar. The fifty-thousand-crowns’
worth of beaver were found, but not a morsel of food except one bowl of
barley sprouts. Thirteen hundred miles from Canada with neither powder
nor food! De Troyes gave his men leave to disband on August 10, and it
was a wild scramble for home—_sauve qui peut_, as the old chronicler
relates, some of the prisoners being taken to Quebec as carriers of
the raided furs, others to the number of fifty, being turned adrift in
the desolate wilderness of the bay! It was October before Iberville’s
forest rovers were back in Montreal.
From Charlton Island, the English refugees found their way up to Port
Nelson, there to go back on the annual ship to England. Among these
were Bridgar and Outlaw, but the poor outcasts, who were driven to the
woods, and the Hudson’s Bay servants, who were compelled to carry the
loot for the French raiders back to Quebec—suffered slim mercies from
their captors. Those round Albany were compelled to act as beasts of
burden for the small French garrison, and received no food but what
they hunted. Some perished of starvation outside the walls. Others
attempted to escape north overland to Nelson. Of the crew from Outlaw’s
ship _Success_, eight perished on the way north, and the surviving six
were accused of cannibalism. In all, fifty English fur traders were
set adrift when Albany surrendered to the French. Not twenty were ever
heard of again.
_Notes on Chapter XII._—The contents of this chapter are drawn from the
documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, and the State Papers of the
Marine, Paris, for 1685-87. It is remarkable how completely the State
papers of the two hostile parties agree. Those in H. B. C. House are
the Minutes, Governor Sargeant’s affidavit, Bridgar’s report, Outlaw’s
oath and the petition of the survivors of Outlaw’s crew—namely, John
Jarrett, John Howard, John Parsons, William Gray, Edmund Clough,
Thomas Rawlin, G. B. Barlow, Thomas Lyon. As the raids now became an
international matter, duplicates of most of these papers are to be
found in the Public Records Office, London. All French historians give
some account of this raid of Iberville’s; but all are drawn from the
same source, the account of the Jesuit Sylvie, or from one De Lery,
who was supposed to have been present. Oldmixon, the old English
chronicler, must have had access to Sargeant’s papers, as he relates
some details only to be found in Hudson’s Bay House.