[Illustration: Voyageurs running the Rapids of the Ottawa River.]
A terrible spectacle awaited Radisson inside the enclosure of the palisades.[21] The scalps of dead Indians flaunted from the pickets. Not a tree but was spattered with bullet marks as with bird shot. Here and there burnt holes gaped in the stockades like wounds. Outside along the river bank lay the charred bones of captives who had been burned. The scarred fort told its own tale. Here refugees had been penned up by the Iroquois till thirst and starvation did their work. In the clay a hole had been dug for water by the parched victims, and the ooze through the mud eagerly scooped up. Only when he reached Montreal did Radisson learn the story of the dismantled fort. The rumor carried to the explorers on Lake Michigan of a thousand Iroquois going on the war-path to exterminate the French had been only too true. Half the warriors were to assault Quebec, half to come down on Montreal from the Ottawa. One thing only could save the French—to keep the bands apart. Those on the Ottawa had been hunting all winter and must necessarily be short of powder. To intercept them, a gallant band of seventeen French, four Algonquins, and sixty Hurons led by Dollard took their stand at the Long Sault. The French and their Indian allies were boiling their kettles when two hundred Iroquois broke from the woods. There was no time to build a fort. Leaving their food, Dollard and his men threw themselves into the rude palisades which Indians had erected the previous year. The Iroquois kept up a constant fire and sent for reinforcements of six hundred warriors, who were on the Richelieu. In defiance the Indians fighting for the French sallied out, scalped the fallen Iroquois, and hoisted the sanguinary trophies on long poles above the pickets. The enraged Iroquois redoubled their fury. The fort was too small to admit all the Hurons; and when the Iroquois came up from the Richelieu with Huron renegades among their warriors, the Hurons deserted their French allies and went over in a body to the enemy. For two days the French had fought against two hundred Iroquois. For five more days they fought against eight hundred. "The worst of it was," relates Radisson, "the French had no water, as we plainly saw; for they had made a hole in the ground out of which they could get but little because the fort was on a hill. It was pitiable. There was not a tree but what was shot with bullets. The Iroquois had rushed to make a breach (in the wall).… The French set fire to a barrel of powder to drive the Iroquois back … but it fell inside the fort.… Upon this, the Iroquois entered … so that not one of the French escaped.… It was terrible … for we came there eight days after the defeat." [22]
Without a doubt it was Dollard's splendid fight that put fear in the hearts of the Iroquois who fled before Radisson. The passage to Montreal was clear. The boats ran the rapids without unloading; but Groseillers almost lost his life. His canoe caught on a rock in midstream, but righting herself shot down safely to the landing with no greater loss than a damaged keel. The next day, after two years' absence, Radisson and Groseillers arrived at Montreal. A brief stop was made at Three Rivers for rest till twenty citizens had fitted out two shallops with cannon to escort the discoverers in fitting pomp to Quebec. As the fleet of canoes glided round Cape Diamond, battery and bastion thundered a welcome. Welcome they were, and thrice welcome; for so ceaseless had been the Iroquois wars that the three French ships lying at anchor would have returned to France without a single beaver skin if the explorers had not come. Citizens shouted from the terraced heights of Château St. Louis, and bells rang out the joy of all New France over the discoverers' return. For a week Radisson and Groseillers were fêted. Viscomte d'Argenson, the new governor, presented them with gifts and sent two brigantines to carry them home to Three Rivers. There they rested for the remainder of the year, Groseillers at his seigniory with his wife, Marguerite; Radisson, under the parental roof.[23]
[1] Mr. Benjamin Sulte establishes this date as 1634.
[2] See Jesuit Relations, 1656-57-58. I have purposely refrained from entering into the heated controversy as to the identity of these two men. It is apart from the subject, as there is no proof these men went beyond the Green Bay region.
[3] These routes were; (1) By the Saguenay, (2) by Three Rivers and the St. Maurice, (3) by Lake Nipissing, (4) by Lake Huron, through the land of the Sautaux, (5) by Lake Superior overland, (6) by the Ottawa. See Jesuit Relations for detailed accounts of these routes. Dreuillettes went farther west to the Crees a few years later, but that does not concern this narrative.
[4] The dispute as to whether eastern Minnesota was discovered on the 1654-55-56 trip, and whether Groseillers discovered it, is a point for savants, but will, I think, remain an unsettled dispute.
[5] The Relations do not give the names of these two Jesuits, probably owing to the fact that the enterprise failed. They simply state that two priests set out, but were compelled to remain behind owing to the caprice of the savages.
[6] Whether they were now on the Ottawa or the St. Lawrence, it is impossible to tell. Dr. Dionne thinks that the band went overland from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron. I know both waters—Lake Ontario and the Ottawa—from many trips, and I think Radisson's description here tallies with his other descriptions of the Ottawa. It is certain that they must have been on the Ottawa before they came to the Lake of the Castors or Nipissing. The noise of the waterfall seems to point to the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa. If so, the landing place would be the tongue of land running out from Hull, opposite the city of Ottawa, and the portage would be the Aylmer Road beyond the rapids above the falls. Mr. Benjamin Sulte, the scholarly historian, thinks they went by way of the Ottawa, not Lake Ontario, as the St. Lawrence route was not used till 1702.
[7] Jesuit Relations, 1660.