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THE
Marquis de Denonville was sent to Canada to retrieve a difficult and
dangerous situation. He was a soldier by profession, and had had
thirty years' experience of military life. His courage and honour
were alike beyond question. In morals he was irreproachable. He was
one of those laymen who are half churchmen ; and on the voyage from
France he greatly edified Saint Vallier by the gravity of his
conduct and his punctilious observance of all the forms and
practices of religion. " He spent," Saint Vallier himself tells us,
"nearly all his time in prayer and the reading of good books. The
Psalms of David were always in his hands. In all the voyage I never
saw him do anything wrong ; and there was nothing in his words or
acts which did not show a solid virtue and a consummate prudence, as
well in the duties of the Christian life as in the wisdom of this
world." Three years later Saint Vallier speaks of him in terms of
equal praise, adding that "there is no need to be astonished at the
benedictions which God is bestowing upon his government and upon his
enterprises against the Indians." Unfortunately, this interpretation
of the ways of Providence preceded by
just a year the greatest calamity in early Canadian history, the
massacre of Lachine.
The three hundred men who were sent out with
Denonville were far from constituting, even had their number not
been sensibly reduced by fever on the voyage, the reinforcement he
required in order to assume the offensive against the Iroquois with
any hope of success. He was compelled, therefore, to temporize while
making the most earnest appeals for a more liberal supply of troops.
To counteract English intrigues among the Five Nations, he sent
numerous presents in that direction, and carefully avoided any «acts
which could precipitate a conflict. One of the chief perils of the
situation was the disaffection produced in the minds of the Lake
tribes by the dismal failure of La Barre's expedition of 1684. The
only way to regain credit, he says in a despatch to the minister (Seignelay),
dated 12th June 1686, is to put a sufficient number of French
troops, militia and regulars, into the field to attack and defeat
the Iroquois without any assistance from the western allies. He
wished to begin building blockhouses for defensive purposes, but was
afraid to do so, lest the enemy should consider it a preparation for
war. Like La Barre, he entered into correspondence with the governor
of New York, Colonel Dongan, but in a more guarded manner. He wrote
first simply announcing his appointment to the governorship of
Canada. Dongan replied in his usual high-flown manner with many
expressions of courtesy. Denonville
returned the compliment, and then took occasion to speak of the
Senecas and the difficulty of keeping peace with them, inviting
Dongan to assist him in protecting the missionaries who were
labouring amongst those heathen at the peril of their lives. Dongan,
who had been appointed by the Duke of York before he ascended the
throne of England as James II, and who, as might be supposed, was a
good Catholic, was quite ready to do justice to the personal merits
of the missionaries ; but his fidelity to the English Crown made it
impossible for him to overlook the fact that they were Frenchmen
operating on what he claimed to be English territory. Their
influence, he knew, could not fail to be cast in favour of the rival
claims of their own people; and his desire was to replace them, as
soon as it could conveniently be done, by English priests, who,
without being less sound in theological matters, would be more so on
the political side.
The two governors were thus playing at cross
purposes, and it was not long before all disguise in the matter was
set aside. Each was planning the construction of a fort at Niagara
for the purpose both of strengthening his influence in the Iroquois
country and of shutting the other out of Lake Erie. Dongan heard of
Denonville's intention from some
coureurs de bois who had deserted to
Albany; whereupon he wrote to the French governor to say that he
found it hard to believe that a man of his reputation would be so
ill-advised as to follow m the footsteps of M. de la Barre, and seek
to make trouble by planting a fort on territory clearly belonging to
the King of England, and all for the sake of " a little peltry."
Denonville replied with more diplomacy than truth that he had no
intention of building a fort at Niagara; and expressed in turn his
surprise that a gentleman ofDongan's character should "harbour
rogues, vagabonds, and thieves," and believe all the silly stories
they told him. As the correspondence went on its tone became warmer.
Dongan had promised to send back deserters; but he found these men
too valuable, and did not keep his promise. Denonville upbraids him
for this want of good faith, and also for exciting the Indians by
telling them that the French are preparing to attack them. He blamed
him also for furnishing the savages with rum to the great detriment
of their religious and moral interests; to which Dongan retorted
that, in the opinion of Christians, English rum was more wholesome
than French brandy.
While this correspondence was going on, both
governors were doing their best to. win over the Indians of the lake
region. If these could be drawn into an alliance with the Iroquois,
so that their trade should pass through the Iroquois country to the
English, not only would the French lose the most profitable part of
their traffic, but their political position would be seriously
endangered, in fact would become untenable.
There was much in the arrangement from a business point of view to
recommend it to the savage mind. The English paid better prices for
goods, and gave their merchandise at lower prices; and, if their
traders once had free access to the lake region, the effects of
their more liberal dealing would be felt in every wigwam. Against
this highly practical consideration was to be set a certain
hereditary distrust of the Iroquois on the part of the Huron and
Ottawa tribes, to which might be added the personal influence of the
French missionaries and a few noted French leaders. The situation
was for some time a most doubtful one; but in the end it was not the
economic argument that triumphed.
In the winter of 1685-6, a Dutchman, named
Johannes Rooseboom, had set out from Albany, by Dongan's directions,
with a party of armed traders in eleven canoes, filled with English
goods, to trade in the Upper Lakes. There was no resistance to their
progress; and after trading most successfully, and to the great
satisfaction of the Indians, they returned in safety. This was
encouragement for a larger expedition the following year; so, in the
fall of 1686, the same adventurer set out with a similar party in
twenty canoes. On this occasion they were to winter with the Senecas
and resume their journey in the spring, accompanied by fifty men,
who were to come from Albany under the charge of a Scots officer
named M'Gregory, and a band of Iroquois; the whole party to be under
M'Gregory's command. The intention was to form a general treaty of
trade and alliance with the tribes that hitherto had been under the
domination of the French.
This was a bold step to take, and shows Dongan
in the light of an early advocate of the policy of " Forward." It
was too bold. Fortunately for Denonville, he had in the early summer
of 1686 sent an order to Du Lhut, then at Michili-mackinac, to
fortify a post at the outlet of Lake Huron, which that capable and
zealous officer lost no time in doing. On hearing of the projected
expedition, the governor was greatly incensed. He wrote to Dongan in
strong terms, and at the same time laid the matter before the
minister, declaring that it would be better to have open war with
the English than to be in constant danger from their intrigues. A
favourite plan of his was that Louis XIV should buy the colony of
New York from James II, as he had previously bought Dunkirk from
Charles II. The idea was not taken up by the French court, and there
is much reason to doubt whether, with the best will in the world,
the English king could have transferred the colony to France. It
would have been an easy thing to send out orders, but it would have
been quite a different thing to get them obeyed. In the New World
men were already learning to put a very wide construction upon their
civil rights; and, as far the larger portion of the population were
of the reformed faith in one or other of
its branches, they would certainly have made strong objection to
being handed over to the tender mercies of the monarch who, at this
very moment, was extirpating Protestanism in his own kingdom by the
cruelest forms of persecution! The appeal to Dongan drew forth from
that worthy the declaration that, in his belief, it was " as lawful
for the English as for the French to trade with the remotest
Indians." He denied, however, that he had incited the Iroquois to
acts of aggression, and protested, in regard to the deserters, that
he would much rather " such rascalls and bankrouts " would stay in
their own country, and that Denonville was welcome to send for them.
Negotiations, however, were going on at this time between the
English and French courts in relation to affairs in America; and
both Denonville and Dongan re^ ceived injunctions, to cultivate
peaceful relations with one another pending the settlement of all
matters in dispute by a joint commission.
If Dongan was preparing to trespass upon French
rights in the region of the Great Lakes, Denonville himself was
acting with even less scruple in another direction. For several
years before this, the Hudson's Bay Company, under the charter
granted to them by Charles II in the year 1670, had been trading to
the bay from which they derived their name, and had established a
number of posts along its shores. The charter had been granted in
perfect good faith, as the region in question, which had been
discovered and explored by navigators sailing under the English
flag, Cabot, Hudson, Baffin, and Davis, was regarded as English
territory. It is true that a memoir prepared by M. de Calli&res,
Governor of Montreal, for the minister of marine and colonies,1mentions
proceedings taken at different times by governors of Canada, between
the years 1656 and 1663, to bring the country under French
sovereignty; but there is nothing to show that any attempt was made
at settlement or even at trading on the coast. The Hudson's Bay
Company, on the other hand, had from the date of its charter, not to
mention earlier operations, been carrying on trade, and establishing
posts in that region without any remonstrance from the French
government, and without disturbance of any kind until the year 1682,
in the early winter of which two Frenchmen, named Radisson and Des
Groseilliers, sailed into Hudson's Bay with two vessels, and took
possession of a fort which the English had established near the
mouth of the Nelson River. The explanation given by these parties
was that they were acting on behalf of the "Compagnie Franchise de
la Baie du Nord de Canada," which had previously formed
establishments some distance up that river, and that finding that
some English had begun to erect dwellings on an island at the mouth
of the river, they had forced them to retire, considering their own
claim to the river and its outlet the better.
This was the beginning of trouble. The French
king in writing to La Barre on the subject authorized him to check,
as far as possible, English encroachments in that quarter. In the
spring of 1684 he writes again, and says that he has had a further
communication from the English ambassador in regard to the
proceedings of Radisson and Des Groseilliers, and that, while he is
anxious not to give the English king any cause of complaint, he
still thinks it desirable that the English should not be allowed to
establish themselves on the Nelson River. La Barre was therefore to
make a proposal to the English commandant in Hudson's Bay that no
new establishments should be formed there by either French or
English. This was at the very least an acknowledgment of the
status quo. Nevertheless, a charter
having been granted by the French king in the following year to a
Canadian company authorizing it to trade
on the Bourbon
River, called in previous correspondence the
Nelson,
Denonville chose to consider that fact a
warrant for making a general attack on
the English in
the bay. While
his discussion with Dongan
was in progress in
the summer of
1686, he organized an expedition of about
a hundred
picked men, thirty being regular soldiers, and placed it under the
command of a
very capable officer, the Chevalier de Troyes, assigning to him as
lieutenants three sons of Charles Le
Moyne, of Montreal: Iberville, Ste. TMkne, and Maricourt The
difficulties of the overland route were most formidable, but Troyes
surmounted them with the loss of only one man. He did not attempt
any negotiation with the English, nor send any summons to surrender,
but fell upon Port Hayes, the first to which he came, in the dead of
night, and captured it without difficulty, the garrison being
totally unprepared to resist an attack. At this point there does not
appear to have been any loss of life; but at Fort Rupert, which was
similarly attacked at night, three of the occupants were killed, and
two were wounded. Three more men were killed on the "same night on
board a vessel anchored near the shore. When the assailants reached
Fort Albany, held by a garrison of thirty men, they found that their
coming had been anticipated, but, with the aid of cannon captured in
the other forts, they had little difficulty in forcing a surrender.
Leaving Maricourt in command at the bay, Troyes returned to Quebec.
The English captured in this buccaneer fashion were sent home in one
of their own vessels which happened to arrive opportunely for the
purpose.
Denonville had succeeded in' arousing the French
government to the importance of proceeding vigorously against the
Iroquois. Eight hundred men were sent out to him in the spring of
1687, which, with about eight hundred already in the colony, made
the force at his disposal quite a formidable one. In the summer of
the previous year there had been a change of intendant. M. de
Meulles had been recalled, and a new man, Bochart de Champigny, sent
out in his place. As the appointment of the latter was made as early
as April 1686, it may be surmised that Denonville, shortly after
arriving in the country, signified to the king that he and Meulles
were not adapted to work together satisfactorily. Meulles was
certainly far from having the fervent piety of the governor; and it
may not improbably have been some difference of opinion or policy
arising out of this fact that caused his recall. His successor was a
man conspicuously devoted to the church; and Denonville in his
despatches praises him in high terms. Having now the necessary force
at his command, and being zealously seconded in all his views by the
new intendant, the governor determined not to let the summer of 1687
pass without undertaking his long meditated campaign against the
Iroquois. While preparing for war, however, he talked of peace, in
the hope of taking the enemy unawares. So far did he carry his
dissimulation that he completely misled the colonists, so that, when
they discovered that war was intended, they manifested a strong
indisposition to respond to the call to arms. There were enough
regular soldiers, they said, in the country to meet all military
requirements. Denonville was too well advised, however, to dream of
taking a force of regulars into the woods, unsupported by militia
accustomed to the country and familiar with the
methods of Indian warfare. He therefore issued a
special proclamation, which the vicars-general, in the absence of
the bishop, supported by a
mandement,
with the result that the inhabitants, accustomed to yield to
authority, furnished the quota of men required, about eight hundred.
The more effectually to throw the Iroquois off
their guard, the governor had instructed his chief agent amongst
them, Father Lamberville, a man in whom they had perfect confidence,
to invite them to a friendly conference at Fort Frontenac. The good
father was kept completely in the dark as to what was really
intended, and was allowed to continue his solicitations to the
Indians to attend the conference up to the moment when all disguise
was thrown off. He was still with them when they discovered that
they had been deceived; and, had it not been for the unbounded faith
they had learnt to place in the good priest's word, they would
certainly have put him to death with torture as a traitor. As it was
they charged the deception entirely on Denonville, who, in this
case, had certainly carried craft to very dangerous, not to say
indefensible, lengths.
The expedition as organized by Denonville
consisted of four companies of regulars, men who had been some time
in the country, and four of militia, making in all fifteen hundred
Frenchmen, to whom were added five hundred mission Indians,
Christian in name, but scarcely less savage in instinct than their
unreclaimed brethren of the forest. The regulars were commanded by
their own officers, amongst whom we recognize Troyes, the hero of
the Hudson's Bay exploit. The militia were led by four notable
seigneurs, Berthier, Lavaltrie, Grandville, and Le Moyne de
Longueuil, brother of the three Le Moynes who had accompanied
Troyes. All the French troops were placed under the general command
of Callieres, Governor of Montreal, a very capable officer. M. de
Vaudreuil, who had just come out from France as commander of the
king's forces, accompanied the expedition in the capacity of
chief-of-staff to the governor. The troops that he brought with him
were left behind to take care of the country in the absence of its
other defenders.
Starting from Montreal on the 13th June 1687,
the expedition, after encountering the usual perils and fatigues of
the St. Lawrence route, and losing one or two men in the rapids,
arrived at Fort Frontenac on the 1st July. Here news was received of
a reinforcement on which the governor had not permitted himself to
count. In October of the previous year orders had been sent to the
commanders in the West to rally the Indians of that region for
another movement against the Iroquois. As Denonville well knew,
there were serious difficulties in the way. The fiasco of 1684 had
left a deplorable impression on the minds of the Lake tribes, whose
loyalty was being further undermined by the pleasing prospect of
trade with the English. These arguments,
however, did not weigh with the Illinois, the latest victims of
Iroquois barbarity; and Tonty in charge at Fort St. Louis, who had
been notified with the others, had little trouble in getting a
couple of hundred of them to follow him to Detroit on the way to
Niagara. Nicolas Perrot in like manner raised a contingent among the
tribes to the west of Lake Michigan, and, passing by way of
Michilimackinac, joined his efforts to those of La Durantaye who had
been labouring all winter to win over the dissatisfied Hurons and
Ottawas. The Hurons were at last persuaded to move ; but the Ottawas
still refused, and La Durantaye and the Hurons started for Detroit,
the first place of rendezvous, without them. Scarcely had they left
Michilimackinac when they fell in with a number of the canoes which
Dongan had sent to trade in the lakes. La Durantaye at once summoned
the intruders to surrender; and, as he seemed to have a formidable
force with him, the summons was obeyed. The commander distributed
most of the goods among his Indian followers to their great delight,
and sent some barrels of rum to the Ottawas in the hope that it
would incline them to follow. It is difficult to say what did
influence the minds of these savages; but in a few days they set
out, taking, however, a route of their own by way of the Georgian
Bay and overland to what is now Toronto. Perrot and his men went to
Detroit, and from that point he and the others conducted their
respective commands to Niagara, arriving there just about the same
time that Denonville's force reached Fort Frontenac.
The gratification of the governor on learning
that this important reinforcement had arrived just in the nick of
time may be imagined. He sent word to the commanders to proceed to
Ironde-quoit Bay, the entrance to the Seneca country; and,
conducting his force thither, saw the western men approaching just
as he himself was about to land. Such a concentration, on the same
day, of troops brought from as far east as Quebec, and from as far
west as the sources of the Mississippi, was indeed remarkable. It
seemed on this occasion at least as if everything was destined to go
well.
Denonville had now nearly three thousand men
under his command. Forming a camp and erecting temporary
fortifications on the point of land which shuts in Irondequoit Bay
from Lake Ontario, he left four hundred men at that place to guard
supplies, and arranged his army in marching order. The van was led
by La Durantaye, Du Lhut and Tonty with their
coureurs de bois, about two hundred in
number. On their left were the mission Indians, and on their right
the Lake and other western tribes—a wild and motley gathering of,
for the most part, naked savages, made hideous with paint and horns
and tails. Separated from these by a short interval, the main body
of the army followed, regulars and militia in alternate companies. A
broad trail ran southwards to the heart of the Seneca country, but
on either side was a dense bush in which enemies might well be
concealed. The first day a distance of about ten miles was covered.
It was mid-July, the heat was intense, the flies were outrageous,
and the men were burdened with thirteen days' provisions in addition
to their arms and ammunition. On the second day, as they were
drawing near to the first fortified habitation of the enemy, whom
they supposed to be awaiting them behind their defences, the advance
guard was vigorously attacked both in front and rear by a foe as yet
invisible. The Senecas had supposed that the advance guard,
coureurs de bois
and Indians, constituted the entire army, but learnt their error
when those making the rear attack found themselves, as they soon
did, between two fires.
Meantime, however, no little confusion had been
caused in the ranks of the invaders; and Denonville and his
principal officers had to exercise all their powers of command to
prevent a panic. As soon as confidence was restored, the vigorous
firing of the French and their allies put the enemy to flight. "The
Canadians," says Charlevoix, " fought with their accustomed bravery;
but the regular troops did themselves little credit in the whole
campaign." "What can one do with such men ?" wrote Denonville in a
despatch to the minister. On the Canadian side five militiamen, one
regular soldier and five Indians were killed, and about an equal
number, according to Denonville's
statement, were wounded. The Senecas left twenty-seven dead upon the
field. Their wounded they succeeded in carrying off; to have
abandoned them would have meant to leave them to torture at the
hands of the hostile Indians. As it was, the victory was followed by
horrible scenes of cannibalism, in which the Ottawas, who, in the
fight had showed marked cowardice, took the principal part.
This engagement, which has been localized as
having occurred near the village of Victor, some fifteen miles
south-east of the city of Rochester, N. Y., was the only one of the
campaign. Not meeting again with the enemy, the army spent some days
in burning the Seneca habitations, in which large quantities of
grain were stored, and in destroying the standing crops. When this
had been accomplished, they retraced their steps to their fortified
camp on the lake shore. Already the army was getting into bad shape;
the Indians were deserting and the French were falling sick through
eating too abundantly of green corn and fresh pork; the latter
article of diet being furnished by herds of swine kept by the
Senecas. Despatching the sick in bateaux to Fort Frontenac^
Denonville conducted the rest of his troops to Niagara in order to
carry out the long-cherished design, which, in his correspondence
with Dongan, he had disavowed, of erecting a fort at that point.
This only occupied a few days; and on the 3rd August he was able to
set out on the return journey, after detaching one hundred men to
garrison the fort, which he placed under the command of M. de
Troyes. Proceeding further up the lake to a point where it narrows,
he crossed over to the north shore, and so made his way to Fort
Frontenac, and thence to Montreal, where he arrived on the 13th of
the month. The campaign, as Parkman observes, was but half a
success; it certainly fell short of being what Abb£ Gosselin calls
it, "une
victoire eclatante." The Senecas had been
put to flight; and their dwellings had been destroyed, together with
their stores of food; but their loss in men was not serious, and
they could rely on the neighbouring Cayugas and Onondagas to tide
them over a season of distress. Denonville writes, indeed, that they
were succoured by the English. At the same time the injury they had
received sank deep into minds not prone to forgive.
An incident which happened before the expedition
set out from Fort Frontenac tended greatly to aggravate the
situation. It had been intimated to Denonville in a despatch from
the French government that the king desired to have some captured
Iroquois sent over to France for service in the galleys, as it was
understood that they were muscular fellows, well fitted for such
work. Champigny, who left Montreal with Denonville, went ahead of
the expedition with a few light canoes, in order to make
arrangements for its reception at Fort Frontenac. Finding at that
place a number of Iroquois, chiefly Onondagas, who,
relying on Denonville's professions of peace,
had come thither for trade or conference, and being anxious to show
his zeal for his royal master, he did not hesitate to make them
prisoners. The savages had their wives and children with them, a
sure sign that they had come with friendly intent This circumstance
did not weigh with the intendant, nor was he influenced by the tears
and entreaties of the families of the captured men. He doubtless
thought that the formidable force which the governor was leading
would strike such terror into the hearts of the Iroquois nation as
to put anything in the way of reprisals quite out of the question :
in any case there was advantage for himself in obeying the mandate
of the king. What kind of a service it was for which the unfortunate
captives were destined may be learnt from a description given by a
careful French writer: "Chained in gangs of six, with no clothing
save a loose short jacket, devoured by itch and vermin, shoeless and
stockingless, the galley slaves toiled for ten hours consecutively
at a rate of exertion which one would hardly have believed a man
could endure for one hour. They were indeed in luck when they were
not made to work twenty-four hours consecutively, with nothing to
sustain their strength but a biscuit steeped in wine, which was put
into their mouths, so that they should not have to stop rowing. If
their galley began to lose ground the petty officers would rain
curses on their heads and blows on their backs. Many a time, when
the puce was being forced under a blazing Mediterranean sun, some
poor wretch would sink down dead on his bench. In such a case his
companions would pass on his body, throw it overboard, and that was
all."
The total number of Indians sent home to France
to be consigned to this fate was thirty-five. They were at Fort
Frontenac as captives, bound helplessly to posts when Denonville's
army passed through, and an eye-witness, the Baron La Hontan, tells
how he saw the mission Indians torturing the poor creatures by
burning their fingers in the bowls of their pipes. He tried to
interfere, but was censured for doing so, and put under arrest. The
leaders, doubtless, thought they could not afford to put their
Indian allies out of humour by interfering with their amusements.3
The wrong done in this matter seems to have created a far more
bitter feeling in the minds of the Iroquois than the open war on the
Senecas. The Oneidas retaliated by torturing a Jesuit father named
Millet, and would in the end have put him to death if an Indian
woman had not interceded for him and adopted him as her son. The
temper of the savages generally, in spite of the campaign, was far
from being a submissive one ; and Denonville himself within a month
of his return to Quebec came to the conclusion that another punitive
expedition would be necessary before a solid peace could be
obtained. He therefore wrote home asking that eight hundred
additional troops should be supplied to him, observing that his
Indian allies were not to be depended on, and that the Canadians
were not at all zealous for military service. His opinion was that
he should have a force of not less than three or four thousand men
at his disposal for two years. The French government did not agree
with him on this point. The troops could not be spared, and the king
thought that it ought to be possible to arrange matters by
negotiation. There were those, indeed, in Canada who thought the
whole war had been unnecessary; certainly, for some time before the
Senecas were attacked, they were not acting on the aggressive. The
Iroquois tribes generally had been impressed by the fact that the
military forces of the colony had been considerably augmented ; and
the character of the governor himself, who seemed to possess much
more firmness and resolution than his immediate predecessor, had
more or less influenced them in favour of peace. Had Denonville made
the most of these advantages, and shown in addition a disposition to
act with good faith, it is altogether probable a satisfactory peace
could have been arranged without resort to war.
However, the mischief had been done. All the
Iroquois tribes had been angered, and the hives were ominously
buzzing. Acts of reprisal became frequent. Even the immediate
neighbourhood of Fort Frontenac was not secure, for during the
following winter a woman and three soldiers were carried off within
gunshot of its walls. The Onondagas who effected these captures
stated expressly that they were made in retaliation for those so
treacherously made by Champigny. The captives were not put to death,
but were held as hostages, which gave them an opportunity of
appealing to Dongan. That worthy was not at all sorry that his rival
had got himself into trouble; and answered the appeal by saying that
he could not do anything for them till Fort Niagara, unjustly
planted by their governor on English territory, had been evacuated.
On the last day of the year Denonville sent to Albany an able
negotiator in the person of Father Vaillant, Jesuit, but with no
satisfactory result. The only terms on which Dongan would consent to
use his influence in favour of peace were that the prisoners sent to
France for the galleys should be restored; that the mission Indians
at Laprairie and the Montreal Mountain should be sent back to the
Iroquois country to which they originally belonged; that Forts
Niagara and Frontenac should be razed; and that the goods captured
by the French from English traders on the
Upper Lakes should be restored. Scarcely had Vaillant left Albany on
his return when Dongan summoned representatives of the tribes, and,
acquainting them with the terms he had demanded, asked for their
ratification, which was readily granted. He told the chiefs not to
bury the hatchet, but simply to lay it in the grass where they could
get it if it was wanted, and meantime to post themselves along the
lines of communication to the French country.
The advice was promptly taken. Some bands
operated along the St. Lawrence, others along the Richelieu. Early
in the season of 1688 a convoy had been sent to revictual Forts
Frontenac and Niagara. It passed up the river safely, but on its
return it was attacked, though greatly superior in force, by a party
of twenty-five or thirty Indians, who killed eight men, and took one
prisoner. Other raids more or less destructive were made at Chambly,
St. Ours, Contrecceur, and even as far east as Riviére du Loup. In
the face of these attacks a sort of lethargy seemed to have seized
upon the colonists, making them slow to defend themselves even when
the conditions were in their favour. In other respects also the
state of affairs was one of great depression. The war had been
costly and burdensome; and, owing to the withdrawal of so many men
from the work of the fields, agriculture had greatly suffered. The
pillaging carried on by scattered bands of Iroquois made matters
still worse. Beggars began to be numerous in the streets of Quebec
and Montreal. It is interesting to note that mendicity was not
looked upon with favour in those days, and that praiseworthy
attempts were made to regulate it and restrain it within the
narrowest possible limits. Charitable ladies undertook to inquire
into cases of ostensible want so as to distinguish those which
merited relief from others which might proceed from idleness or
misconduct. M. de Saint Vallier, who had returned to France in the
autumn of 1687, came back as bishop in August of the following year.
He brought with him two hundred copies of his work on
The Present State of the Church in Canada,
written by him after his arrival in France, and
published at Paris in March 1688, in which, as already seen, a
glowing tribute was paid to the piety of the Canadian people.
Instead, however, of distributing this work in the country, as he
had doubtless intended, he virtually suppressed it; and, in almost
his first episcopal utterances, told the people that the troubles
and distresses from which they were suffering were the result of
their lukewarmness in religious matters. The statement was not
received in the most submissive spirit. There were some who said
that the mundane causes of the sad plight in which the country found
itself were only too apparent, and that it was not necessary to look
further.
In the course of the summer of 1688, while
Denonville had still under consideration the unpalatable terms
proposed by Dongan, he received at Montreal, through the useful
mediation of Father Lamberville, a visit from La Barre's old friend,
the famous Onondaga orator, Big Mouth, who brought with him six
other warriors. As on the occasion of his meeting with the former
governor, Big Mouth occupied a strong position, and made the most of
it. He had been holding back his own people, he said; otherwise they
would have swarmed down on the colony and destroyed it. The
conditions of peace which he proposed were those already outlined by
Dongan; and he wanted an answer in four days. Denonville told him
that he was prepared to treat for peace if the tribes would send
delegates to Montreal duly empowered for that purpose. Big Mouth
promised that this should be done, and meantime signed a treaty of
neutrality. Denonville had by this time brought himself to the point
of agreeing to abandon Fort Niagara, the garrison of which had been
reduced by sickness from about a hundred men to ten or twelve, and
with which, moreover, he found it impossible to maintain
satisfactory communication. He had also been forced to give way as
regards the captives sent to France, and had written asking that as
many of them as survived might be sent out; suggesting at the same
time that, to produce as good an effect as possible, they should be
decently clothed. These were the
principal points, and he hoped to be able to make peace without any
further concessions.
The negotiations, however, were destined to be
badly wrecked. The Indian allies, Hurons and Algonquins, had only
too good reason to suspect that the peace would not include them.
Big Mouth had been ominously non-committal on that point. It was
doubtless remembered that, when La Barre had made peace with the
Iroquois, he had abandoned the Illinois to their mercy. A leading
Huron, Ivondiaronk, or the Rat, by name, determined that there
should be no peace if he could help it. He was at Fort Frontenac
with a party of forty warriors when he heard that negotiations for
peace were in progress and that delegates from the Five Nations were
expected to arrive in a few days. His plan was at once formed.
Pretending to have set out with his party for Michilimackinac, he
really paddled over to La Famine, placed himself in ambush in the
path of the delegates, and waited their coming. It was four or five
days before they appeared, and no sooner were they within gun shot
than the Huron party fired. One chieftain was killed outright;
several were wounded; the rest, all but one who escaped wounded, and
made his way to Fort Frontenac, were captured. The captives in great
indignation explained to the Rat the mission they were on, when the
wily Huron expressed the most profound regret, saying that the
French had sent him out on the war-path, and had never given him the
slightest hint that peace negotiations
were in progress. He was eloquent in denouncing the bad faith of
Onontio, and at once let his captives go. True, the warrior who had
escaped heard a very-different story at Fort Frontenac—that the Rat
had been specially informed of the negotiations, and had professed
that he was starting for home ; nevertheless, as the Rat expected,
the peace was killed. The party attacked had consisted of some men
of consequence who were preceding the delegates to give assurance to
the governor that the latter would soon be at hand. They never came.
Other thoughts now occupied the Iroquois mind.
For months there was an ominous calm. The winter
of 1688-9 passed without incident, and so did the following summer.
Marauding on the part of the Iroquois had so entirely ceased, that
the opinion began to prevail in the colony that the enemy had lost
courage, and were no longer disposed for war. Some rumours, it is
true, reached the governor that mischief was brewing, but he paid
little heed to them: no special measures of defence whatever were
taken. A strange kind of somnolence seems to have crept over almost
the entire population. The intendant, in a despatch written just
about this time (6th November 1688), after speaking of the
disastrous effect of brandy drinking upon the Indians, goes on to
say : " The Canadians also ruin their health thereby ; and, as the
greater number of these drink a large quantity of it early in the
morning, they are incapable of doing
anything the remainder of the day." It may safely be assumed that
the morning potations were indulged in without prejudice to a
tolerably free use of the bottle in the evening. It is remarkable
that so serious a judgment upon the habits of the people should have
preceded by only a few months a striking and fatal example of their
unreadiness and incapacity.
The night of the 4th
August 1689
was dark and stormy with rain and hail. It was just such a night as
might serve to cover the approach of a stealthy foe ; and the foe,
vengeful and relentless, was at hand. Fourteen hundred Iroquois had
descended the St. Lawrence and taken up their station on the south
side • of the Lake St. Louis, opposite Lachine. About midnight, amid
the darkness and the noise of the elements, they crossed the lake,
and, landing, posted themselves in small bands close to the
dwellings of the slumbering inhabitants. An hour or so before
daybreak, a war-whoop, the preconcerted signal, was raised.
Instantly a thousand savage throats gave forth the dismal howl; and
then began the work of slaughter that made " the massacre of Lachine
" a name of terror for generations. The account of the disaster
given by Charlevoix, who puts the number of the slain at two
hundred, has been generally followed by later writers; but there is
fortunately reason to believe that the massacre was much less in
extent, and perhaps somewhat less horrible in character, than the
reverend father represents.
Judge Girouard, who has gone into the matter in
a most careful and painstaking manner, places the number of persons
killed at Lachine—men, women, and children—at twenty-four. The place
was defended by three forts, all of which had garrisons; but from
these no help seems to have been afforded to the wretched
inhabitants. The torch did its work as well as the tomahawk, and
fifty-six houses were burnt. There were some regular troops—about
two hundred—under an officer named Subercase, encamped about three
miles off. A shot from one of the forts gave the alarm, and
Subercase with his men marched to the scene of action. Many of the
Indians had inebriated themselves with brandy seized in the houses
of the inhabitants ; and it is probable that, had they been promptly
and vigorously attacked, they might have been defeated with heavy
loss. Subercase was just on the point of leading his men against
them, when M. de Vaudreuil, acting-governor of Montreal in the
absence of M. de Calli&res who had gone to France, appeared on the
scene with formal and positive orders from M. de Denonville, who, as
ill-luck would have it, was at Montreal, to remain strictly on the
defensive. Subercase was extremely indignant, and felt strongly
tempted to disobey; but the instinct of subordination prevailed, and
he remained inactive. The Indians meanwhile dispersed themselves
over the Island of Montreal, killing,
capturing, burning, and meeting with little or no resistance.
A really
circumstantial and consistent account of the whole occurrence is
lacking; and it is therefore uncertain how long the Iroquois
remained in the neighbourhood. The
probability would seem to be that the main body retreated with their
prisoners and booty after a brief campaign, but that some bands of
warriors stayed behind for further pillage.
On the 13th of November a bloody raid was
made on the settlement at La Chesnaye, on the north shore of the
St. Lawrence, some twenty miles below
Montreal; all the houses were burnt, and the majority of the
inhabitants either killed or captured.
The total number of persons killed
elsewhere than at Lachine is estimated by Judge Girouard, who has
endeavoured to trace the names in the parish registers, at
forty-two, making, with the twenty-four killed at
Lachine, a total of
sixty-six. As
regards the number of captives, the same authority, whose careful
methods inspire much confidence, accepts the statement of
Belmont, who places it at ninety.
We read that, when
the savages left Lachine,
which they did without any attempt being made
from the forts to harass their retreat, they crossed
Lake St. Louis, and,
encamping on the opposite shore, lit their fires and began to
torture their prisoners. Torture,
there can be no doubt, was sufficiently congenial to the Iroquois
nature; and yet there is room for doubt whether there is sufficient
warrant for the highly coloured narrative which has become the
popular legend on this subject. It was usual with the Iroquois to
carry their captives with them into their villages ; and it is known
that they did this with at least the great majority of those whom
they secured on the Island of Montreal, for many of them were alive
years afterwards. Moreover had there been many burnings on the south
shore of Lake St. Louis, the same pious care which caused the
re-burial a few years later (1694) of the remains of the victims of
the Lachine massacre would have been extended to any that might have
been found on the site of the last encampment. There is no record of
the discovery of any such remains or of their burial or re-burial.
It is true that some burnings of captives occurred in the Iroquois
villages; still it is some satisfaction to think that the calamity
as a whole was not on the scale that tradition has represented.
It is related that as the savages paddled away
from the Lachine shore, they called out: "Onontio, you deceived us;
now we have deceived you." The last days of Onontio, in his official
capacity at least, were at hand. The king had decided early in the
year that he was not the man to support a falling state or rescue an
imperilled community, and had offered the position again to Count
Frontenac notwithstanding the many troubles that had marked that
gallant soldier's former tenure of office. Evidently, with all his
faults of temper, he had at least impressed himself on the king as a
man who could be relied on in the hour of danger. Denonville's last
act was one which strikingly illustrated the condition of feebleness
and dejection into which he had fallen. Dongan and the Iroquois had
demanded the abandonment of Fort Frontenac. Denonville now
determined that this was the only course to follow, and accordingly
sent orders to the garrison to blow up the walls, destroy the
stores, and make the best of their way to Montreal. |
