on the scene of action. By this time the civil war had been fought in
{107} England, the King beheaded, and Cromwell proclaimed Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth. In 1653 very strong representations
were made to the latter by the colonists of New England with respect to
the movements of the French in Acadia, and the necessity of reducing
the country to the dominion of England. Peace then nominally prevailed
between France and Great Britain, but we have seen, as the case of
Argall proved, that matters in America were often arranged without much
reference to international obligations. A fleet, which had been sent
out by Cromwell to operate against the Dutch colony at Manhattan,
arrived at Boston in June, 1654, and the news came a few days later
that peace had been proclaimed between the English and Dutch.
Thereupon an expedition was organised against the French under the
command of Major Robert Sedgewick of Massachusetts. Le Borgne at Port
Royal and La Tour on the St. John immediately surrendered to this
force, and in a few days all Acadia was once more in the hands of the
English. Denys was almost ruined by these events and obliged to retire
for a time from the country. La Tour was now far advanced in years,
and did not attempt to resist the evil destiny that seemed to follow
all the efforts of France to establish herself in Nova Scotia. No
doubt the injuries he had received from his own countrymen, together
with the apathy which the French Government always displayed in the
affairs of Acadia, were strong arguments, if any were needed, to induce
him to place himself under the protection of the English. The
representations he {108} made to the Protector met with a favourable
response, and obtained for him letters patent, dated August 9, 1656,
granting to him, Sir Charles La Tour, in conjunction with Sir Thomas
Temple and William Crowne, the whole territory of Acadia, the mines and
minerals alone being reserved for the government. Sir Thomas Temple, a
man of generous disposition and remarkably free from religious
prejudices, subsequently purchased La Tour's rights, and carried on a
large trade in Acadia with much energy. La Tour now disappears from
the scene, and is understood to have died in the country he loved in
the year 1666, at the ripe age of seventy-four. He left several
descendants, none of whom played a prominent part in Acadian history,
though there are persons still in the maritime provinces of Canada who
claim a connection with his family. His name clings to the little
harbour near Cape Sable, where he built his post of Lomeron, and
antiquaries now alone fight over the site of the more famous fort at
the mouth of the St. John, where a large and enterprising city has
grown up since the English occupation. About the figure of this bold
gentleman-adventurer the romance of history has cast a veil of interest
and generous appreciation on account of the devotion of his wife and of
the obstinate fight he waged under tremendous disadvantages against a
wealthy rival, supported by the authority of France. He was made of
the same material as those brave men of the west coast of England who
fought and robbed the Spaniard in the Spanish Main, but as he plundered
only Puritans by giving them worthier {109} mortgages, and fought only
in the Acadian wilds, history has given him a relatively small space in
its pages.
Acadia remained in possession of England until the Treaty of Breda,
which was concluded in July of 1667, between Charles II. and Louis XIV.
Temple, who had invested his fortune in the country, was nearly ruined,
and never received any compensation for his efforts to develop Acadia.
In a later chapter, when we continue the chequered history of Acadia,
we shall see that her fortunes from this time become more closely
connected with those of the greater and more favoured colony of France
in the valley of the St. Lawrence.
[1] See _Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada_, vol. x., sec. 2, p. 93.
[2] This story of the capture of Fort La Tour rests on the authority of
Denys (Description Géographique et Historique de l'Amérique
Septentrionale, Paris, 1672), who was in Acadia at the time and must
have had an account from eyewitnesses of the tragedy. The details
which make D'Aunay so cruel and relentless are denied by a Mr. Moreau
in his _Histoire de l'Acadie Française_ (Paris, 1873). This book is
confessedly written at the dictation of living members of the D'Aunay
family, and is, from the beginning to the end, an undiscriminating
eulogy of D'Aunay and an uncompromising attack on the memory of La Tour
and his wife. He attempts to deny that the fort was seized by
treachery, when on another page he has gone so far as to accuse some
Recollets of having made, at the instigation of D'Aunay himself, an
attempt to win the garrison from Madame La Tour who was a Protestant
and disliked by the priests. He also admits that a number of the
defenders of the fort were executed, while others, probably the
traitors, had their lives spared. The attacks on Madame La Tour's
character are not warranted by impartial history, and clearly show the
bias of the book.
{110}
VIII.
THE CANADIAN INDIANS AND THE IROQUOIS:
THEIR ORGANISATION, CHARACTER, AND CUSTOMS.
At the time of Champlain's death we see gathering in America the forces
that were to influence the fortunes of French Canada--the English
colonies growing up by the side of the Atlantic and the Iroquois, those
dangerous foes, already irritated by the founder of Quebec. These
Indians were able to buy firearms and ammunition from the Dutch traders
at Fort Orange, now Albany, on the beautiful river which had been
discovered by Hudson in 1609. From their warlike qualities and their
strong natural position between the Hudson and Niagara rivers, they had
now become most important factors in the early development of the
French and English colonies, and it is consequently important to give
some particulars of their character and organisation. In the first
place, however, I shall refer to those Indian tribes who lived in
Canada, and were closely identified with the interests of the French
settlements. These Indians also became possessed of {112} firearms,
sold to them from time to time by greedy traders, despite the interdict
of the French authorities in the early days of the colonies.
[Illustration: Indian costumes, from Lafitau. 1. Iroquois; 2.
Algonquin.]
Champlain found no traces of the Indians of Cartier's time at Stadacona
and Hochelaga. The tribes which had frequented the St. Lawrence
seventy years before had vanished, and in their place he saw bands of
wandering Algonquins. It was only when he reached the shores of
Georgian Bay that he came to Indian villages resembling that Hochelaga
which had disappeared so mysteriously. The St. Lawrence in Cartier's
day had been frequented by tribes speaking one or more of the dialects
of the Huron-Iroquois family, one of the seven great families that then
inhabited North America east of the Mississippi, from the Gulf of
Mexico to the Hudson's Bay. The short and imperfect vocabulary of
Indian words which Cartier left behind, his account of Hochelaga, the
intimacy of the two Gaspé Indians with the inhabitants of
Stadacona--these and other facts go to show that the barbarous tribes
he met were of the Iroquois stock.
The Indians have never had any written records, in the European sense,
to perpetuate the doings of their nations or tribes. From generation
to generation, from century to century, however, tradition has told of
the deeds of ancestors, and given us vague stories of the origin and
history of the tribes. It is only in this folk-lore--proved often on
patient investigation to be of historic value--that we can find some
threads to guide us through the labyrinth of mystery to which we come
in the prehistoric {113} times of Canada. Popular tradition tells us
that the Hurons and Iroquois, branches of the same family, speaking
dialects of one common language, were living at one time in villages
not far from each other--the Hurons probably at Hochelaga and the
Senecas on the opposite side of the mountain. It was against the law
of the two communities for their men and women to intermarry, but the
potent influence of true love, so rare in an Indian's bosom, soon broke
this command. A Huron girl entered the cabin of an Iroquois chief as
his wife. It was an unhappy marriage, the husband killed the wife in
an angry moment. This was a serious matter, requiring a council
meeting of the two tribes. Murder must be avenged, or liberal
compensation given to the friends of the dead. The council decided
that the woman deserved death, but the verdict did not please all her
relatives, one of whom went off secretly and killed an Iroquois
warrior. Then both tribes took up the hatchet and went on the warpath
against each other, with the result that the village of Hochelaga, with
all the women and children, was destroyed, and the Hurons, who were
probably beaten, left the St. Lawrence, and eventually found a new home
on Lake Huron.[1]
Leaving this realm of tradition, which has probably a basis of fact, we
come to historic times. In Champlain's interesting narrative, and in
the Jesuit _Relations_, we find very few facts relating to Indian
history, though we have very full information {114} respecting their
customs, superstitions, and methods of living. The reports of the
missionaries, in fact, form the basis of all the knowledge we have of
the Canadian tribes as well as of the Five Nations themselves.
It is only necessary that we should here take account of the Algonquins
and Huron-Iroquois, two great families separated from one another by
radical differences of language, and not by special racial or physical
characteristics. The Eskimo, Dacotah, Mandan, Pawnee, and Muskoki
groups have no immediate connection with this Canadian story, although
we shall meet representatives of these natural divisions in later
chapters when we find the French in the Northwest, and on the waters of
the Missouri and Mississippi. The Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois
occupied the country extending, roughly speaking, from Virginia to
Hudson's Bay, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. The Algonquins
were by far the most numerous and widely distributed. Dialects of
their common language were heard on the Atlantic coast all the way from
Cape Fear to the Arctic region where the Eskimo hunted the seal or the
walrus in his skin kayak. On the banks of the Kennebec and Penobscot
in Acadia we find the Abenakis, who were firm friends of the French.
They were hunters in the great forests of Maine, where even yet roam
the deer and moose. The Etchemins or Canoemen, inhabited the country
west and east of the St. Croix River, which had been named by De Monts.
In Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, we see the
Micmacs {115} or Souriquois, a fierce, cruel race in early times, whose
chief, Membertou, was the first convert of the Acadian missionaries.
They were hunters and fishermen, and did not till the soil even in the
lazy fashion of their Algonquin kindred in New England. The climate of
Nova Scotia was not so congenial to the production of maize as that of
the more southern countries. It was the culture of this very prolific
plant, so easily sown, gathered, and dried, that largely modified and
improved the savage conditions of Indian life elsewhere on the
continent. It is where the maize was most abundant, in the valley of
the Ohio, that we find relics of Indian arts--such as we never find in
Acadia or Canada.
On the St. Lawrence, between the Gulf and Quebec, there were wandering
Algonquin tribes, generally known as Montagnais or Mountaineers, living
in rude camps covered with bark or brush, eking a precarious existence
from the rivers and woods, and at times on the verge of starvation,
when they did not hesitate at cannibalism. Between Quebec and the
Upper Ottawa there were no village communities of any importance; for
the _Petite Nation_ of the river of that name was only a small band of
Algonquins, living some distance from the Ottawa. On the Upper Ottawa
we meet with the nation of the Isle (Allumette) and the Nipissings,
both Algonquin tribes, mentioned in a previous chapter. They were
chiefly hunters and fishermen, although the former cultivated some
patches of ground. On Georgian Bay we come to a nation speaking one of
the dialects of a language quite distinct from that {116} of the
Algonquins. These were Hurons, numbering in all some twenty thousand
souls, of whom ten thousand or more were adults, living in thirty-two
villages, comprising seven hundred dwellings of the same style as
Cartier saw at Hochelaga. These villages were protected by stockades
or palisades, and by some natural features of their situation--a river,
a lake, or a hill. Neither the long houses nor the fortifications were
as strongly or as cleverly constructed as those of the Iroquois.
Maize, pumpkins, and tobacco were the principal plants cultivated.
Sunflowers were also raised, chiefly for the oil with which they
greased their hair and bodies. Their very name meant "Shock-heads"--a
nickname originating from the exclamation of some Frenchmen, when they
first saw their grotesque way of wearing their hair, "_Quelles hures!_"
(What a head of hair!) Champlain speaks of a tribe whom he met after
leaving Lake Nipissing, in 1615, and called the _Cheveux Relevés_, or
people with the stiff hair, but they were wandering Algonquins.
Champlain called the Hurons, Attigouantans, though their true name was
Ouendat, afterwards corrupted to Wyandot, which still clings to a
remnant of the race in America.
They were brave and warlike, with perhaps more amiable qualities than
the more ferocious, robust Iroquois. The nation appears to have been a
confederacy of tribes, each of which was divided into clans or _gentes_
on the Iroquois principle, which I shall shortly explain. Two chiefs,
one for peace and one for war, assisted by a council of tribal chiefs,
{117} constituted the general government. Each tribe had a system of
local or self-government--to use a phrase applicable to modern federal
conditions--consisting of chiefs and council. The federal organisation
was not, however, so carefully framed and adjusted as that of their
kin, the Iroquois. At council meetings all the principal men attended
and votes were taken with the aid of reeds or sticks, the majority
prevailing in all cases. The whole organisation was essentially a
democracy, as the chiefs, although an oligarchy in appearance, were
controlled by the voices and results of the councils. In this as in
other American savage nations, the rule governing the transmission of
hereditary honours and possessions was through the female line.
Beyond the Huron villages, south of Nottawasaga Bay--so named probably
from the Nottaways, a branch of the same family, driven by war to the
south--we come to the Tionotates or Tobacco tribe, who were kin in
language and customs to their neighbours and afterwards joined their
confederacy. The Neutral Nation, or Attiwandaronks of Iroquois stock,
had their homes on the north shore of Lake Erie, and reached even as
far as the Niagara. They were extremely cruel, and kept for a long
while their position of neutrality between the Hurons and Five Nations.
To the south of Lake Erie rose the smoke of the fires of the Eries,
generally translated "Cats," but, properly speaking, the "Raccoons."
Like the Andastes, near the Susquehanna, mentioned in a previous
chapter, they were famous warriors, and for years held their own
against the Iroquois, but {118} eventually both these nations yielded
to the fury of the relentless confederacy.
We have now come to the western door of the "long house"
(_Ho-dé-no-sote_) of the Iroquois, who called themselves "the people of
the long house" (_Ho-dé-no-sau-nee_), because they dwelt in a line of
villages of "long houses," reaching from the Genesee to the Mohawk,
where the eastern door looked toward the Hudson and Lake Champlain.
The name by which they have been best known is considered by Charlevoix
and other writers to be originally French; derived from "Hiro" (I have
spoken)--the conclusion of all their harangues--and Koué, an
exclamation of sorrow when it was prolonged, and of joy when pronounced
shortly. They comprised five nations, living by the lakes, that still
bear their names in the State of New York, in the following order as we
go east from Niagara:
IROQUOIS NATIONS. ENGLISH NAMES. FRENCH NAMES.
Nundawäona ) Seneca Tsonnontouans
Great hill people )
Guéugwehono ) Cayuga Goyogouin
People of the marsh )
Onundägaono ) Onondaga Onnontague
People of the hills )
Onayotékäono ) Oneida Onneyote
Granite people )
Gäneägaono ) Mohawk Agnier
Possessors of the flint )
[Illustration: Iroquois long house (from Morgan).]
Each tribe lived in a separate village of long houses, large enough to
hold from five to twenty families. Each family was a clan or
kin--resembling the _gens_ of the Roman, the _genos_ of the Greek--a
{119} group of males and females, whose kinship was reckoned only
through females--the universal custom in archaic times in America. As
among these people the marriage tie was easily sundered and chastity
was the exception,--remarkably so among the Hurons, their kindred--it
is not strange that all rank, titles, and property should be based on
the rights of the woman alone. The child belonged consequently to the
clan, not of the father, but of the mother. Each of these tenement
houses, as they may well be called, was occupied by related families,
the mothers and their children belonging to the same clan, while the
husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other clans;
consequently, the clan or kin of the mother easily predominated in the
household.[2] Every clan had a name derived from the animal world, as
a rule, and a rude picture {120} of the same was the "totem" or
coat-of-arms of the kin or _gens_, found over the door of a long house
or tattooed on the arms or bodies of its members. The Tortoise, Bear,
and Wolf, were for a long time the most conspicuous totems of the
Iroquois. These people were originally a nation of one stock of eight
clans, and when they separated into five tribes or sections, each
contained parts of the original clans. Consequently, "all the members
of the same clan, whatever tribe they belonged to, were brothers or
sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common
female ancestor, and they recognised each other as such with the
fullest cordiality."
Whatever was taken in the hunt, or raised in cultivation, by any member
of the household--and the Iroquois were good cultivators of maize,
beans, and squash--was used as a common stock for that particular
household. No woman could marry a member of her own clan or kin. The
marriage might be severed at the will of either party. Yet, while the
Iroquois women had so much importance in the household and in the
regulation of inheritance, she was almost as much a drudge as the squaw
of the savage Micmacs of Acadia and the Gulf.
The tribe was simply a community of Indians of a particular family or
stock, speaking one of the dialects of its language. For instance, the
Five Nations or Tribes spoke different dialects of the Iroquoian stock
language, but each could understand the other sufficiently for all
purposes of deliberation and discussion. Each tribe was governed by
its {121} own council of sachems and chiefs--the latter inferior in
rank--elected by their respective clans, but invested with office by
the whole tribe. For all purposes of tribal government the tribes had
separate territories and jurisdiction. For common purposes they united
in a confederation in which each tribe occupied a position of complete
equality--the exception being the Tuscaroras--Dusgaóweh or
"shirt-wearing people"--who came from the south at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and made up the "Six Nations." If a tribe made
peace it would not bind the other tribes unless they had given their
consent in formal council, or by the presence of their representatives.
A general council of fifty sachems, equal in rank and authority,
administered the affairs of the confederation. These sachems were
created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes and
invested with office by the general council. They were also sachems in
their respective tribes, and with other clan-chiefs formed the council
which was supreme over all matters appertaining to the tribe
exclusively. Women, too, had their clan and other councils, and could
make their wishes known through the delegates they appointed to the
council of the league. In the federal council the sachems voted by
tribes, and unanimity was essential before action was taken or a
conclusion arrived at. The general council was open to the whole
community for the discussion of public questions, but the council alone
decided. The council of each tribe had power to convene the general
council, but the latter could not convene itself. {122} With the
object of preventing the concentration of too much power in one man's
hands, the federal council appointed two war chiefs, equal in
authority. The council fire or brand was always burning in the valley
of the Onondagas, where the central council met as a rule in the
autumn, or whenever a tribe might consider a special meeting necessary.
The Onondagas had also the custody of the "Wampum," or mnemonic record
of their structure of government, and the Tadodä'ho, or most noble
sachem of the league, was among the same tribe. The origin of the
confederacy is attributed in legendary lore to Hä-yo-went'-hä, the
Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem.
These are the main features of that famous polity of the Iroquois which
gave them so remarkable a power of concentration in war, and was one
reason of their decided superiority over all the other nations of
America. In council, where all common and tribal affairs were decided,
the Iroquois showed great capacity for calm deliberation, and became
quite eloquent at times. Their language was extremely figurative,
though incapable of the expression of abstract thought, as is the case
with Indian tongues generally. The Indian--essentially a
materialist--could only find his similes, metaphors, and illustrations
in the objects of nature, but these he used with great skill. The
Iroquois had a very keen appreciation of their interests, and were well
able to protect them in their bargains or contracts with the white men.
In war they were a terrible foe, and a whisper of their neighbourhood
brought consternation to Indian camps and cabins, from the Kennebec
{123} to the Delaware, from the Susquehanna to the Illinois. They have
been well described as "the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the
continent." In their political organisation, their village life, their
culture of the soil, their power of eloquence, their skill as
politicians as well as warriors, they were superior to all the tribes
in America as far as New Mexico, although in the making of pottery and
other arts they were inferior to the mound-builders of the Ohio and the
Mississippi--probably the Allegewi who gave their names to the
Alleghanies and are believed by some writers to have been either
exterminated by a combination of Algonquin and Iroquois or driven
southward where they were absorbed in other nations. At no time could
the Iroquois muster more than 3000 warriors; and yet they were the
scourge and dread of all the scattered tribes of Algonquins, numbering
in the aggregate probably 90,000 souls, and eventually crushed the
Hurons and those other tribes of their own nationality, who did not
belong to their confederacy and had evoked their wrath.
The Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois nations had many institutions and
customs in common. Every clan had some such totem as I have described
in the case of the Iroquois. Every tribe had its chiefs as military
leaders and its councils for deliberation and decision. Consequently
the democratic principle dominated the whole organisation. Eloquence
was always prized and cultivated as a necessity of the system of
government. Some tribes had their special orators among the chiefs.
Though a general {124} war was dependent on the action of the council,
yet any number of warriors might go on the warpath at any time against
the enemies of the tribe. They had no written records, but their
memories were aided in council or otherwise by reeds or sticks and rude
pictures; strings of wampum--cleverly manufactured from shells--served
as annals, which the skilled men of a tribe could decipher and explain.
The wampum belts performed an important part in the declaration of war
or peace, and the pipe was equally effective in the deliberations of
council and in the profession of amity. Murder might be expiated by
presents to the family or relatives of the dead, and crime was rarely
followed by death except there was a question of other nations, who
would not be content unless the blood of their kinsman was washed away
by blood. Charity and hospitality were among the virtues of the Indian
race, especially among the Iroquois, and while there was food in a
village no one need starve. The purity of love was unknown to a savage
nature, chiefly animated by animal passion. Prisoners were treated
with great ferocity, but the Iroquois exceeded all nations in the
ingenuity of torture. Stoicism and endurance, even heroic, were
characteristics of Indians generally, when in the hands of their
enemies, and the cruellest insult that a warrior could receive was to
be called a woman. Sometimes prisoners were spared and adopted into
the tribe, and among most nations the wife or mother or sister of a
dead chief might demand that he be replaced by a prisoner to whom they
may have taken a fancy. After torture parts {125} of the bodies of the
victim would be eaten as a sort of mystic ceremony, but this custom was
peculiar to the Hurons and Iroquois only. In their warlike expeditions
they had no special discipline, and might be successfully met on the
open field or under the protection of fortified works. Their favourite
system was a surprise or furious onslaught. A siege soon exhausted
their patience and resources. They were as treacherous as they were
brave. In the shades of the forest, whose intricacies and secrets they
understood so well, they were most to be feared. Behind every tree
might lurk a warrior, when once a party was known to be on the warpath.
To steal stealthily at night through the mazes of the woods, tomahawk
their sleeping foes, and take many scalps, was the height of an
Indian's bliss. Curious to say, the Indians took little precautions to
guard against such surprises, but thought they were protected by their
manitous or guardian spirits.