But this side of the Indian nature is too horrible to dwell on; let it pass. At times the Iroquois were like incarnate devils; and yet each tale of frightful cruelty that history preserves for us brings with it some redeeming trait, some act of kindness or humanity done in the face of savage enmity. There were always a few among them ready like Pocahontas to avert the threatened blow or to relieve the sufferers whenever it was possible. One of these in days gone by had administered to Jogues; and one of these in days now soon to come will prove to be our Tekakwitha.
There is little more to say about her parents. Her mother may have learned from some of the captives brought to Gandawague from Canada the true ending of the French colony at Onondaga. At all events, the following explanation of their sudden disappearance has been given by Ragueneau, who shared the fate of the adventurous little band. He says in one of his letters:—
"To supply the want of canoes, we had built in secret two batteaux of a novel and excellent structure to pass the rapids; these batteaux drew but very little water and carried considerable freight, fourteen or fifteen men each, amounting to fifteen or sixteen hundred weight. We had moreover four Algonquin and four Iroquois canoes, which were to compose our little fleet of fifty-three Frenchmen. But the difficulty was to embark unperceived by the Iroquois, who constantly beset us. The batteaux, canoes, and all the equipage could not be conveyed without great noise, and yet without secrecy there was nothing to be expected, save a general massacre of all of us the moment it would be discovered that we entertained the least thought of withdrawing.
On that account we invited all the savages in our neighborhood to a solemn feast, at which we employed all our industry, and spared neither the noise of drums nor instruments of music, to deceive them by harmless device. He who presided at this ceremony played his part with so much address and success that all were desirous to contribute to the public joy. Every one vied in uttering the most piercing cries, now of war, anon of rejoicing. The savages, through complaisance, sung and danced after the French fashion, and the French in the Indian style. To encourage them the more in this fine play, presents were distributed among those who acted best their parts and who made the greatest noise to drown that caused by about forty of our people outside who were engaged in removing all our equipage. The embarkation being completed, the feast was concluded at a fixed time; the guests retired, and sleep having soon overwhelmed them, we withdrew from our house by a back door and embarked with very little noise, without bidding adieu to the savages, who were acting cunning parts and were thinking to amuse us to the hour of our massacre with fair appearances and evidences of good will.
"Our little lake,[12] on which we silently sailed in the darkness of the night, froze according as we advanced, and caused us to fear being stopt by the ice after having evaded the fires of the Iroquois. God, however, delivered us, and after having advanced all night and all the following day through frightful precipices and waterfalls, we arrived finally in the evening at the great Lake Ontario, twenty leagues from the place of our departure. This first day was the most dangerous; for had the Iroquois observed our departure, they would have intercepted us, and had they been ten or twelve it would have been easy for them to have thrown us into disorder, the river being very narrow, and terminating after travelling ten leagues in a frightful precipice where we were obliged to land and carry our baggage and canoes during four hours, through unknown roads covered with a thick forest which could have served the enemy for a fort, whence at each step he could have struck and fired on us without being perceived. God's protection visibly accompanied us during the remainder of the road, in which we walked through perils which made us shudder after we escaped them, having at night no other bed except the snow after having passed entire days in the water and amid the ice.
Ten days after our departure we found Lake Ontario, on which we floated, still frozen at its mouth. We were obliged to break the ice, axe in hand, to make an opening, to enter two days afterwards a rapid where our little fleet had well-nigh foundered. For having entered a great sault without knowing it, we found ourselves in the midst of breakers which, meeting a quantity of big rocks, threw up mountains of water and cast us on as many precipices as we gave strokes of paddles. Our batteaux, which drew scarcely half a foot, were soon filled with water, and all our people in such confusion that their cries mingled with the roar of the torrent presented to us the spectacle of a dreadful wreck. It became imperative, however, to extricate ourselves, the violence of the current dragging us despite ourselves into the large rapids and through passes in which we had never been. Terror redoubled at the sight of one of our canoes being engulfed in a breaker which barred the entire rapid, and which, notwithstanding, was the course that all the others must keep. Three Frenchmen were drowned there; a fourth fortunately escaped, having held on to the canoe and being saved at the foot of the sault when at the point of letting go his hold, his strength being exhausted....
"The 3d of April we landed at Montreal in the beginning of the night."
This escape, so wonderful to the Indian mind and so successful, made a profound impression at Gandawague as among all the Mohawks, and produced most important results in the neighborhood of Tekakwitha's home, interrupting the work of the missionary there.
Ondessonk or Lemoyne, the namesake of Jogues, who made a third visit to the Mohawk Valley in the fall of 1657, was no longer even tolerated by its people. He was held half a hostage, half a prisoner, at Tionnontogen, during the time that the French colony were in peril at Onondaga, and was finally sent back to Canada. He left the Mohawk country for the last time, just after Onondaga was abandoned by the French. He reached his countrymen on the St. Lawrence in May, 1658, to be greeted there with a glad welcome and many inquiries from the newly arrived refugees from Onondaga, concerning his experiences among the Mohawks; they were anxious to hear whether he had fared any better than themselves.
Not one blackgown was now left among the Five Nations of Iroquois. The Algonquin mother at Gandawague had been unable to profit by their brief stay in the land, and her life grew ever sadder towards its close. She was finally laid low by a terrible disease, the small-pox, which spread like wild fire through the Mohawk nation in 1659 and 1660. Her brave, an early victim to this redman's plague, soon lay cold in death, and with aching heart she too bade good-by to the world, leaving her helpless children alone and struggling with the disease in a desolate lodge in a desolate land.
Chauchetière relates what he learned long afterwards from Anastasia Tegonhatsihongo,—that in leaving her two little children the mother grieved at having to abandon them without baptism; that she was a fervent Christian to the last, and that she met death with a prayer on her lips.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Schoolcraft's Red Race.
[11] The site of this fort is still pointed out between Salina and Liverpool, near the "Jesuit's Spring," or "Well," as it is called. For a plan of the fort made by Judge Geddes in 1797, from remains of it then in existence, see Clark's "Onondaga," p. 147. See also "Relations des Jésuites," and translations of the same in the "Documentary History of New York," vol. i., for a full account of the Onondaga Colony in 1658.