CHAPTER VI

THE FURY OF THE IROQUOIS

When the poor harassed "Black Robes" and their panic-stricken Indian charges finally rested under the sheltering walls of Quebec, Montmagny was no longer Governor. He had, after twelve years' service, gone back to France, and a new Governor had arrived in his stead. But the Indians still called the new Governor, and all the Governors who came afterwards, by the name of "Onontio." They were told that Montmagny in French signified "Great Mountain," Onontio in the Huron tongue, and supposed it was a title bestowed by the pale-faces on all their rulers in Canada.

Despite the unspeakable horrors, bloodshed, and martyrdom related in the last chapter, nothing of lasting value was accomplished by the hapless mission to the Hurons except a knowledge of the great Lake Superior, which an interpreter, named Jean Nicollet, had discovered a few years before.

Season now followed season, and each saw the French but little better than prisoners in their three towns on the St. Lawrence. If they ventured very far out of these fortified posts, it was only to give the Iroquois a chance to spring upon them and bear {77} back their scalps in triumph to their lodges in the wilderness. The French might have made a treaty of alliance with their English neighbours in New England, who had now set up a number of towns and were flourishing, although they too were at the mercy of the surrounding savages. But the French Governor made it a condition of the treaty that the New Englanders should help Canada to exterminate the terrible Iroquois. This the English colonists were loath to do; they had no wish to bring the Iroquois tomahawks down upon their heads also, as the French had done; and so the plan fell through. After a time one of the Iroquois tribes, having lost a great many of their fighting men in the long war, began to think of making recruits. The idea occurred to them that the unfortunate Hurons and Algonquins, who had joined their fortunes to the French, would be the very men for their purpose, if they could only induce them to desert the alliance. Forthwith they sent courtiers to announce to the Hurons that they no longer bore them any grudge and were willing to adopt them--to receive them into the bosom of their lodges. But it soon appeared that all the Iroquois were not unanimous in their approval of this plan, and as their treachery was well known, the Hurons and Algonquins, now settled on the Isle of Orleans near Quebec, naturally hesitated about accepting the offer. The few foolish ones who trusted in Iroquois good faith were actually tomahawked by their so-called friends on the way to the Iroquois lodges. In attempting to punish a band of Iroquois ambushed near his fort, Du Plessis Bochat, the Governor of {78} Three Rivers, lost his life; Father Buteaux was killed on his way to his mission, and another priest, Father Poucet, was borne away to a Mohawk village, and after being tortured was sent back to Quebec to offer peace to the French. Peace was indeed welcome, but the French were naturally still suspicious. The truth was that the Iroquois were then too busily engaged in destroying the Eries, a tribe which had burned one of their most illustrious chiefs, to spare time to massacre the pale-faces. As the chief, a Seneca, had stood with unquivering nerve at the stake he had cried out, "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!" for he knew the Senecas would avenge his death. Much, then, as the Governor, De Lauzon, wanted peace, neither he nor his Indian allies knew how far they could trust the Iroquois. It was at last decided that if the Onondagas, one of the five Iroquois nations, would receive a Jesuit mission, a body of Hurons should be sent under escort to be adopted into their tribe. From the Onondagas there came a message to say they would agree to this, and in June 1656 the expedition set out from Quebec. It consisted of a large body of Hurons, as well as Onondagas, fifty French soldiers, led by the brave captain, Dupuy, and two priests, Dablon and Chaumonot. Scarcely was the party well under way, when a band of Mohawks fell upon them, and before they pretended to discover that they were attacking members of their own confederacy, they had killed and wounded a number of Onondagas. Profuse excuses and apologies followed, the Mohawks explaining that they took them, the Onondagas, for Hurons. {79} The expedition was suffered to proceed. The truth is, the Mohawks were jealous of the Onondagas in obtaining an alliance with the French and Hurons. To show their power and their contempt of the pale-faces, they continued their journey eastward to the Isle of Orleans, and under the very guns of the fort of Quebec surprised the defenceless Hurons who dwelt there, and fiercely murdered or captured all they came upon, even the women and children. In broad daylight they paddled their fleet of bark canoes in front of Quebec, laughing and yelling defiance to the French, and making their unhappy captives join in dancing and songs of triumph. The Governor this time was a weak man, and all he could do was to wring his hands and regret bitterly that he had ever sent any mission to the Onondagas. He began to fear for their safety.

Not wholly unfounded were the Governor's alarms. At first all went smoothly enough with the little band of Frenchmen in the heart of the Onondaga country. This particular tribe of the Iroquois appeared delighted at the coming of the French. But quickly signs of danger began to multiply. The pale-face soldiers grew aware that a plot was on foot to murder them in the little fort they had built, close to where the present prosperous city of Syracuse now stands. Dupuy, being an able and courageous man, resolved by some means or another to foil the savages and escape back to Canada. This is the stratagem he hit upon; it was the custom of these Indians to hold mystic feasts, at which it was a point of honour to eat everything that was set before them {80} by their hosts. If a man failed to eat the whole of a dish--even to the fifth helping--it was taken by the host as a personal insult. Dupuy planned such a feast, and arranged to stuff them so plentifully that not a single brave would be capable of rising from the banquet. The plan worked perfectly, the Indians not observing that the French concealed most of their food instead of eating it, so that by midnight the gorged and drunken Onondagas were sunk in a gluttonous sleep. Dupuy had taken good care beforehand to build secretly within his fort a number of large, light, flat-bottomed skiffs, and now when dawn came the Frenchmen stole away, carrying these with them to the Oswego River, reaching Quebec at last, in spite of ice and rapids, with the loss of only three men, who were drowned. The Indians pursued, but their birch-bark canoes were useless on the icy stream, and they had to give up the chase.

The escape from the Onondagas was a very clever and daring deed, and shows the material the colonists of New France were made of in those days. A deed still more daring and important was to follow. The Iroquois threw off the mask and determined to deal the French in Canada a deadly blow. A mighty force of the Five Nations was organised, to meet at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers, and swoop down first upon Montreal and then upon the other settlements. It so happened that there lived in Ville Marie at this time a young nobleman, Daulac des Ormeaux, who chose to be known to the other colonists as Adam Dollard. Having left France in order to escape the consequences of {81} some rash act, he burned for some chance to retrieve the honour of his name. The valiant youth now saw with joy the long-looked-for opportunity arrive at his door, and he obeyed the summons. From the Governor did Dollard obtain leave to lead a party of volunteers against the savage foe. Gathering sixteen gallant fellows about him, all swore a solemn oath to give or take no quarter, but by sheer force of their arms break the force of the blow which was about to descend on their beloved town. A mad enterprise truly did it seem, but for sheer valour nothing finer has been known since fearless Leonidas and his handful of Greeks held the pass at Thermopylae. The seventeen heroes, together kneeling, took the Sacrament at the hands of the pale priest, and set forth for the Long Sault (or Rapids) of the Ottawa. There in the dense woods they found a disused old Indian stockade by which the invading host had to pass. Entrenching themselves as well as they could, they waited. A few friendly Hurons and Algonquins joined them, wondering at the hardihood of the pale-face warriors, and shamed into lending them a helping hand. The storm broke. A horde of 700 screaming savages, picked men of the Iroquois, flung themselves upon them. Easy work it seemed to crush out this feeble band. To their astonishment, Dollard and his men beat them back. Again and again they came on, and again and again were they repulsed. By this time, appalled at the fearful odds against them, the friendly Indians had fled from the side of the besieged, all but one Huron chief, Annahotaha, and four Algonquins. These stood firm. {82} Every loophole in the stockade darted its tongue of fire; so faultless was the aim that nearly every time a musket rang out an Iroquois fell dead. Fortunately Dollard had brought plenty of ammunition. Some musketoons of large calibre, from whose throats scraps of lead and iron belched forth, slew and wounded several of the enemy at a single discharge. Thus three days wore away and still the terrible struggle came to no end. In the intervals, by day and night, Dollard and his men offered up prayers to Heaven on their knees in the melting snow. Their food was now gone, and, worse still, they had no water. No hope now remained save to keep the Iroquois a few hours longer at bay; they were certain only of a martyr's reward. On the part of the besiegers so many men had they lost that they sickened of the fight, and some amongst them even counselled going home. But other chiefs shrank from such a disgrace.

"Shall we," they cried, "confess ourselves beaten by so paltry an enemy? Our squaws would laugh in our faces! Let us now rather band ourselves together and storm the fort of the white men, at whatever cost."

A general assault was made. So high by this time was piled the bodies of the Iroquois, that their fellows could now leap over the stockade. Dollard fell, and one after another of the exhausted defenders was slain, although each fought like a madman, a sword or hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other. Amongst the heap of corpses one Frenchman still breathed, and he was dragged out and {83} tortured. This was the end; thus perished Dollard and his valiant sixteen, whose names are imperishably written in the annals of Montreal. Nor did they offer their lives to the Iroquois hatchets in vain. The Iroquois had been taught a lesson, and to their lodges the tribe slunk back like whipped curs. "If," said they, "seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron can, behind a picket fence, hold seven hundred of our best warriors at bay, what defence would their hundreds do behind yonder ramparts of stone?" And so the colony of New France was saved.

The cowardly native allies of the French in this fight were not to escape the penalty of their treacherous desertion. The Iroquois turned upon them, burning some on the spot, and making captives of others. Five only succeeded in escaping to carry the tale of the defence, the butchery, and the martyrdom to Ville Marie.

It seemed, however, as if Canada had only been saved in order to perish from other causes. The colony was impoverished and torn, besides, with civil and religious dissensions. The Society of Notre Dame of Montreal, those rich and influential persons in France who had founded the city, now wearied of their enterprise. It was turned over to the great Seminary of St. Sulpicius, and a number of Sulpician fathers were sent out to take charge and to found a seminary in Montreal. Amongst these was the Abbe de Queylus, who hoped the King would eventually make him a bishop. But the Jesuits were too powerful not to prevent any priest but a {84} Jesuit from receiving such an appointment, and at last succeeded in getting François de Laval, Bishop of Petræa, appointed to control the Church in Canada. A striking figure was Laval, playing a great part in the early history of Canada; but in spite of his virtue, he was narrow-minded and domineering, perpetually quarrelling with the various Governors of the colony during the next thirty-five years.

So desperate did the people of New France become at the dangers which surrounded them, at the quarrels between the Bishop and the Governor, at the excesses of the fur-traders, who insisted on intoxicating the Indians and themselves with brandy, that it hardly needed the terrible earthquake which took place in 1663 to make them lose heart altogether. The total population then was some two thousand souls, and the Company of the Hundred Associates had been found powerless to settle, develop, and defend the country properly. Thinking only of the profits of the fur trade, it had shamefully neglected its promises, and when any of its officials made money in Canada, they at once went home to spend it. All this was pointed out by the Marquis d'Avaugour when the Governorship at last fell from his hands; and remembering that others, including Laval, had made the same charge, Colbert, the new Minister of young King Louis the Fourteenth, decided to plead the cause of Canada to his master. It was on his advice that King Louis resolved to take the government directly into his own hands. By royal edict was revoked the charter of the Hundred Associates, and three men appointed as a {85} Sovereign Council in Canada to carry out royal authority. These three officials were the Governor, the Bishop, and the Intendant, the latter having charge of the commerce and finances of the colony. To the post of Governor the Sieur de Courcelle was appointed, and Jean Baptiste Talon became Intendant. The office of Bishop, of course, continued to be filled by Laval.

And now the drooping fortunes of New France began to revive. Soldiers and settlers began to pour into the country. Besides De Courcelle, the King sent also his Viceroy for the whole of his Trans-atlantic domains, the veteran Marquis de Tracy, to report to him personally upon the state of Canada. When De Tracy set sail a throng of eager young nobles accompanied him. Their imagination had been stirred by the tales they had heard of the country by the St. Lawrence River. They thirsted for adventure and renown. There came also the famous disbanded regiment, called the Carignan-Callières, after the names of its commanders, the first regiment of regular troops ever sent to Canada by the King. It had lately been serving in the wars of France against the Turks, and had provoked the admiration of the Turkish Sultan.

On the last day of June 1665 a brilliant scene was witnessed in Quebec. On that glowing summer's day the gallant Marquis and the troops landed at the flowery base of towering Cape Diamond. What a different scene was now presented from that which had taken place but a few seasons before, when the impudent Iroquois had shaken their hatchets from {86} their canoes at the trembling and helpless Governor! The population had doubled as if by magic; thousands were on the ramparts shouting a welcome to the broad white standard blazoned with the arms of France, which floated proudly from fleet and fortress. The river-banks echoed with the hoarse note of cannon. The bells of the church and seminaries pealed in a frenzy of joy. Tracy, a giant six feet and a half high, and his officers stepped ashore, all gorgeously attired in crimson and white and gold. In the vanguard of the procession which climbed that day the heights of Quebec were twenty-four guards in the King's livery, followed by four pages and six valets. On arrival at the square, Laval, in his resplendent pontificals, received them, and noted with pleasure that the old marquis, although suffering from fever caught in the tropics, knelt on the bare pavement. A new order of things everywhere was begun. With the 2000 settlers came young women for wives, as well as horses, oxen, and sheep in abundance. It became Tracy's duty to look to the colony's protection in order that it might increase and multiply, and the only way to accomplish this was by curbing the power of the Iroquois. No time was lost in taking measures to this end. The forts at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were strengthened, three new forts, St. Theresa, Sorel, and Chambly, were built on the Richelieu River. Reports of the arrival of the troops, and of all their preparations, naturally spread far and wide amongst the Indians, and very soon four of the Five Nations thought it prudent to sue for peace. The fierce {87} Mohawks alone remained defiant; they were not to be cowed by all this martial pomp, and at last Courcelle, the Governor, with Tracy, the Viceroy's, permission, resolved to chastise them as soundly as they deserved. He would take them when they least expected it: surprise them in their lodges in the depths of winter, when his soldiers could travel over the frozen rivers as though on a paved highway. Many who had had experience of winter journeyings in Canada sought to dissuade him from the attempt, but the new Governor was anxious to distinguish himself, and win the approval of the Viceroy and his King. Early in January he and his 500 men began to march. Before they had reached Three Rivers many had their ears, noses, and fingers frozen, while some of the newly-arrived troops were so disabled by the cold, that they had to be left behind. But the old Indian fighters and native Canadians, of whom there were nearly a hundred, pressed forward bravely in the van, in spite of the heavy loads which all were obliged to carry. For six weeks they travelled to reach the Iroquois lodges, but they lost their way, and came at last to the Dutch settlement of Schenectady. Here they learnt that the Mohawks had gone far afield on a war-like expedition, and that the country they were now in belonged to the Duke of York, afterwards James II. New Netherlands having thus passed into English hands, Courcelle and his troops were asked to quit the territory at once. There was nothing, therefore, to do but to steal away to Canada, whence they had come. It was not an easy feat, for a body of Mohawks hung at {88} their heels tomahawking stragglers. The cold was intense, and, to make matters worse, the provisions gave out. Sixty men perished on the march. Nevertheless, unlucky as Courcelle had been, his expedition had served to convince the Mohawks that they and their families were no longer safe in their lodges. There was no telling what these Frenchmen would do next, so they sent a deputation to offer peace. The Viceroy, in his turn, sent a priest as his ambassador to visit their deputation, but he had scarcely left when tidings came that a party of seven French officers out hunting near Lake Champlain had been set upon and killed by the Mohawks. A cousin of Tracy's had been captured, and a nephew had been slain.

"Now, by the Virgin!" cried the sick old soldier, bringing down his giant palm on the table, "they have gone far enough. Recall the holy father. We must teach these savages a lesson." But the cup of his anger was not yet full. A couple of boastful Mohawk deputies arrived in Quebec and came to his house. When the indignant Tracy happened to mention the murder of his nephew, one of them actually had the effrontery to laugh and exclaim, as he stretched out his arm, "Yes, this is the hand that split the head of that young man!"

The Viceroy, veteran soldier as he was, and used to deeds of violence, shuddered with horror.

"Very well," he said, "never shall it slay any one else. Take that base wretch out," he added to one of the guard, "and hang him in the presence of his fellows!"

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It was September. Tracy himself and Courcelle, commanding 1300 men, put the heights of Quebec behind them. Traversing mountains, swamps, rivers, lakes, and forests, they held steadily on their way to the country of the Mohawks. When the gout seized the commander they bore him on a litter, a mighty load. All day long were the drums beating and the trumpets blowing; when provisions had grown low, luckily they came upon a huge grove yielding chestnuts, on which they largely fed. The Mohawks heard of this martial procession and were terrified. They had no wish now to face the French, whose numbers rumour magnified, and whose drums they took for devils. At the last moment they retreated from their towns, one after another. Tracy pursued them, capturing each place as he arrived at it. At the fourth town he thought he had captured them all, but a squaw told him there was still another, and stronger than any they had yet seen. To this town he sent an officer, who prepared for an assault, but, to the surprise of the French, they found within only an old man, a couple of aged squaws, and a little child. These told the French that the Mohawks had just evacuated, crying, "Let us save ourselves, brothers! The whole world is coming against us!" All loaded with corn and provisions as it was, to the town the French that night applied the torch. A mighty bonfire lit up the forest. In despair at losing all their possessions, the two squaws flung themselves headlong into the flames. All the other places were destroyed, and then, chanting the Te Deum and reciting mass, the victors set out on {90} the return march. They had burned the food of the Mohawks, who they knew must now feel the dread pangs of hunger. Terrible was the blow, and the Mohawks suffered much that winter. Their pride was humbled. By these means was a treaty of peace between the French and all the Iroquois declared, and for twenty years Canada enjoyed the sweets of peace.

Old Marquis de Tracy had done his work well, and could now go back to France with his resplendent bodyguard, his four pages, and his six valets, and leave Courcelle and Talon to rule Canada alone.

After this, when they went amongst the Iroquois, cross and breviary in hand, Jesuit missionaries met with no danger or refusal. They made many converts. Not content with their labours amongst the tribes close at hand, they pierced the distant forests north of Lake Superior, established permanent missions at Michilimackinac and Sault Ste. Marie, which joins the Lakes Huron and Michigan. On the banks of the St. Lawrence a new era began. For when the Carignan-Callières regiment was disbanded, the soldiers turned their swords into ploughshares, and the wise and prudent Intendant, Talon, had the satisfaction of seeing farms arise in the wilderness and yield abundant harvests. Talon's hand was seen everywhere; he spared no pains to make Canada prosperous and self-supporting. He set about establishing the fisheries in the St. Lawrence river and gulf, and encouraged the seal-hunts, by which much oil was obtained and exported to France. He ordered the people to grow hemp, and taught the women to spin wool. He also devoted much attention to the {91} timber trade, and to him is owing the first tannery seen in Canada. By the year 1688 as many as 1100 vessels had in a single season anchored in the Quebec roadstead, laden with every kind of merchandise. According to a letter written by one of the chief nuns, "M. Talon studied with the affection of a father how to succour the poor and cause the colony to grow; entered into the minutest particulars; visited the houses of the inhabitants and caused them to visit him; learned what crop each was raising; taught those who had wheat to sell it at a profit; helped those who had none, and encouraged everybody."

But in nothing were Talon's efforts so extraordinary to us as in his providing wives for the colonists of New France. In his first few years of office 1200 girls were shipped out from France. These French maidens were chosen from the country rather than from the city, strong and accustomed to work. But there was also a consignment of "select young ladies" as wives for the officers. When they arrived in Quebec or Montreal, the girls, tall and short, blonde or brunette, plump and lean, were gathered in a large building, and the young Canadian came and chose a wife to his liking. A priest was in readiness, and they were married on the spot, in batches of thirty at a time. Next day, we are told, the Governor caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money. Besides this bounty, twenty livres were given to each youth who married before he was twenty years old, and to each girl who married before {92} sixteen. All bachelors were heavily taxed. To be unmarried was regarded by the Intendant and the King as a crime. In short, as has been said, the new settler was found by the King, sent over by the King, and supplied by the King with a wife, a farm, and even a house.

Now amongst free-born Britons all this royal interference would have been resented. Britons like to manage their own private affairs. They would call Louis the Fourteenth's system "paternalism," and in truth the system was a failure, because it discouraged the principle of independence. No spirit of self-reliance was stimulated amongst the people. They looked to the Government for everything, not to themselves. The result was that many of the strongest and most self-reliant amongst the young men preferred to live a life of freedom and adventure in the wilderness, hunting, fishing, and trading, rather than suffer the constraints imposed upon them by the well-meaning Talon. Thus came about the creation of a famous class called the _coureurs de bois_, or bushrangers, who at last spread themselves all over Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, owning no laws but their own, living like Indians, taking unto themselves Indian wives, and rearing half-breed children. Talon and all the Governors, Intendants, and Bishops were very angry with these men, who thus set the wishes of the good King at defiance, and made many laws against them. But in vain! The bushrangers, valorous, picturesque, and their companions, the _voyageurs_, continued to flourish almost until our own day.

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