The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval

by Adrien Leblond

The Iroquois were tricked but not disarmed. Beside themselves with rage at the thought that so many victims about to be sacrificed to their hatred had escaped their blows, and desiring to end once for all the feud with their enemies, the Onondagas, they persuaded the other nations to join them in a rush upon Quebec. They succeeded easily, and twelve hundred savage warriors assembled at Cleft Rock, on the outskirts of Montreal, and exposed the colony to the most terrible danger which it had yet experienced.

This was indeed a great peril; the dwellings above Quebec were without defence, and separated so far from each other that they stretched out nearly two leagues. But providentially the plan of these terrible foes was made known to the inhabitants of the town through an Iroquois prisoner. Immediately the most feverish activity was exerted in preparations for defence; the country houses and those of the Lower Town were abandoned, and the inhabitants took refuge in the palace, in the fort, with the Ursulines, or with the Jesuits; redoubts were raised, loop-holes bored and patrols established. At Ville-Marie no fewer precautions were taken; the governor surrounded a mill which he had erected in 1658, by a palisade, a ditch, and four bastions well entrenched. It stood on a height of the St. Louis Hill, and, called at first the Mill on the Hill, it became later the citadel of Montreal. Anxiety still prevailed everywhere, but God, who knows how to raise up, in the very moment of despair, the instruments which He uses in His infinite wisdom to protect the countries dear to His heart, that same God who gave to France the heroic Joan of Arc, produced for Canada an unexpected defender. Dollard and sixteen brave Montrealers were to offer themselves as victims to save the colony. Their devotion, which surpasses all that history shows of splendid daring, proves the exaltation of the souls of those early colonists.

One morning in the month of July, 1660, Dollard, accompanied by sixteen valiant comrades, presented himself at the altar of the church in Montreal; these Christian heroes came to ask the God of the strong to bless the resolve which they had taken to go and sacrifice themselves for their brothers. Immediately after mass, tearing themselves from the embraces of their relatives, they set out, and after a long and toilsome march arrived at the foot of the Long Rapid, on the left bank of the Ottawa; the exact point where they stopped is probably Greece's Point, five or six miles above Carillon, for they knew that the Iroquois returning from the hunt must pass this place. They installed themselves within a wretched palisade, where they were joined almost at once by two Indian chiefs who, having challenged each other's courage, sought an occasion to surpass one another in valour. They were Anahotaha, at the head of forty Hurons, and Métiomègue, accompanied by four Algonquins. They had not long to wait; two canoes bore the Iroquois crews within musket shot; those who escaped the terrible volley which received them and killed the majority of them, hastened to warn the band of three hundred other Iroquois from whom they had become detached. The Indians, relying on an easy victory, hastened up, but they hurled themselves in vain upon the French, who, sheltered by their weak palisade, crowned its stakes with the heads of their enemies as these were beaten down. Exasperated by this unexpected check, the Iroquois broke up the canoes of their adversaries, and, with the help of these fragments, which they set on fire, attempted to burn the little fortress; but a well sustained fire prevented the rashest from approaching. Their pride yielding to their thirst for vengeance, these three hundred men found themselves too few before such intrepid enemies, and they sent for aid to a band of five hundred of their people, who were camped on the Richelieu Islands. These hastened to the attack, and eight hundred men rushed upon a band of heroes strengthened by the sentiment of duty, the love of country and faith in a happy future. Futile efforts! The bullets made terrible havoc in their ranks, and they recoiled again, carrying with them only the assurance that their numbers had not paralyzed the courage of the French.

But the aspect of things was about to change, owing to the cowardice of the Hurons. Water failed the besieged tortured by thirst; they made sorties from time to time to procure some, and could bring back in their small and insufficient vessels only a few drops, obtained at the greatest peril. The Iroquois, aware of this fact, profited by it in order to offer life and pardon to the Indians who would go over to their side. No more was necessary to persuade the Hurons, and suddenly thirty of them followed La Mouche, the nephew of the Huron chief, and leaped over the palisades. The brave Anahotaha fired a pistol shot at his nephew, but missed him. The Algonquins remained faithful, and died bravely at their post. The Iroquois learned through these deserters the real number of those who were resisting them so boldly; they then took an oath to die to the last man rather than renounce victory, rather than cast thus an everlasting opprobrium on their nation. The bravest made a sort of shield with fagots tied together, and, placing themselves in front of their comrades, hurled themselves upon the palisades, attempting to tear them up. The supreme moment of the struggle has come; Dollard is aware of it. While his brothers in arms make frightful gaps in the ranks of the savages by well-directed shots, he loads with grape shot a musket which is to explode as it falls, and hurls it with all his might. Unhappily, the branch of a tree stays the passage of the terrible engine of destruction, which falls back upon the French and makes a bloody gap among them. "Surrender!" cries La Mouche to Anahotaha. "I have given my word to the French, I shall die with them," replies the bold chief. Already some stakes were torn up, and the Iroquois were about to rush like an avalanche through this breach, when a new Horatius Cocles, as brave as the Roman, made his body a shield for his brothers, and soon the axe which he held in his hand dripped with blood. He fell, and was at once replaced. The French succumbed one by one; they were seen brandishing their weapons up to the moment of their last breath, and, riddled with wounds, they resisted to the last sigh. Drunk with vengeance, the wild conquerors turned over the bodies to find some still palpitating, that they might bind them to a stake of torture; three were in their mortal agony, but they died before being cast on the pyre. A single one was saved for the stake; he heroically resisted the refinements of the most barbarous cruelty; he showed no weakness, and did not cease to pray for his executioners. Everything in this glorious deed of arms must compel the admiration of the most remote posterity.

The wretched Hurons suffered the fate which they had deserved; they were burned in the different villages. Five escaped, and it was by their reports that men learned the details of an exploit which saved the colony. The Iroquois, in fact, considering what a handful of brave men had accomplished, took it for granted that a frontal attack on such men could only result in failure; they changed their tactics, and had recourse anew to their warfare of surprises and ambuscades, with the purpose of gradually destroying the little colony.

The dangers which might be risked by attacking so fierce a nation were, as may be seen, by no means imaginary. Many would have retreated, and awaited a favourable occasion to try and plant for the third time the cross in the Iroquois village. The sons of Loyola did not hesitate; encouraged by Mgr. de Laval, they retraced their steps to the Five Nations. This time Heaven condescended to reward in a large measure their persistent efforts, and the harvest was abundant. In a short time the number of churches among these people had increased to ten.

The famous chief, Garakontié, whose conversion to Christianity caused so much joy to the pious Bishop of Petræa and to all the Christians of Canada, was endowed with a rare intelligence, and all who approached him recognized in him a mind as keen as it was profound. Not only did he keep faithfully the promises which he had made on receiving baptism, but the gratitude which he continued to feel towards the bishop and the missionaries made him remain until his death the devoted friend of the French. "He is an incomparable man," wrote Father Millet one day. "He is the soul of all the good that is done here; he supports the faith by his influence; he maintains peace by his authority; he declares himself so clearly for France that we may justly call him the protector of the Crown in this country." Feeling life escaping, he wished to give what the savages call their "farewell feast," a touching custom, especially when Christianity comes to sanctify it. His last words were for the venerable prelate, to whom he had vowed a deep attachment and respect. "The guests having retired," wrote Father Lamberville, "he called me to him. 'So we must part at last,' said he to me; 'I am willing, since I hope to go to Heaven.' He then begged me to tell my beads with him, which I did, together with several Christians, and then he called me and said to me: 'I am dying.' Then he gave up the ghost very peacefully."

The labour demanded at this period by pastoral visits in a diocese so extended may readily be imagined. Besides the towns of Quebec, Montreal and Three Rivers, in which was centralized the general activity, there were then several Christian villages, those of Lorette, Ste. Foy, Sillery, the village of La Montagne at Montreal, of the Sault St. Louis, and of the Prairie de la Madeleine. Far from avoiding these trips, Mgr. de Laval took pleasure in visiting all the cabins of the savages, one after another, spreading the good Word, consoling the afflicted, and himself administering the sacraments of the Church to those who wished to receive them.

Father Dablon gives us in these terms the narrative of the visit of the bishop to the Prairie de la Madeleine in 1676. "This man," says he, speaking of the prelate, "this man, great by birth and still greater by his virtues, which have been quite recently the admiration of all France, and which on his last voyage to Europe justly acquired for him the esteem and the approval of the king; this great man, making the rounds of his diocese, was conveyed in a little bark canoe by two peasants, exposed to all the inclemencies of the climate, without other retinue than a single ecclesiastic, and without carrying anything but a wooden cross and the ornaments absolutely necessary to a bishop of gold, according to the expression of authors in speaking of the first prelates of Christianity."

[The expedition of Dollard is related in detail by Dollier de Casson, and by Mother Mary of the Incarnation in her letters. The Abbé de Belmont gives a further account of the episode in his history. The Jesuit Relations place the scene of the affair at the Chaudière Falls. The sceptically-minded are referred to Kingsford's History of Canada, vol. I., p. 261, where a less romantic view of the affair is taken.]—Editors' Note on the Dollard Episode.