* Carte... des pays traversez par MM. de Tracy et
Courcelle, etc.
that the lakes might thaw and cut off their retreat. “Ye Mohaukes,” says the old English report of the affair, “were all gone to their Castles with resolution to fight it out against the french, who, being refresht and supplyed with the aforesaid provisions, made a shew of marching towards the Mohaukes Castles, but with faces about, and great sylence and dilligence, return’d towards Cannada.” “Surely,” observes the narrator, “so bould and hardy an attempt hath not hapned in any age.” * The end hardly answered to the beginning. The retreat, which began on Sunday night, was rather precipitate. The Mohawks hovered about their rear, and took a few prisoners; but famine and cold proved more deadly foes, and sixty men perished before they reached the shelter of Fort Ste. Thérèse. On the eighth of March, Courcelle came to the neighboring fort of St. Louis or Chambly. Here he found the Jesuit Albanel acting as chaplain; and, being in great ill humor, he charged him with causing the failure of the expedition by detaining the Algonquin guides. This singular notion took such possession of him, that, when a few days after he met the Jesuit Frémin at Three Rivers, he embraced him ironically, saying, at the same time, “My father, I am the unluckiest gentleman in the world; and you, and the rest of you, are the cause of it.” ** The pious Tracy, and the prudent
* A Relation of the Governr. of Cannada, his March with 600
Volunteire into if Territoryes of His Roy all Highnesse the
Duke of Yorke in America. See Doc. Hist. N. Y. I. 71.
** Journal des Jésuites, Mars, 1666. .
Talon, tried to disarm his suspicions, and with such success that he gave up an intention he had entertained of discarding his Jesuit confessor, and forgot or forgave the imagined wrong.
Unfortunate as this expedition was, it produced a strong effect on the Iroquois by convincing them that their forest homes were no safe asylum from French attacks. In May, the Senecas sent an embassy of peace; and the other nations, including the Mohawks, soon followed. Tracy, on his part, sent the Jesuit Bêchefer to learn on the spot the real temper of the savages, and ascertain whether peace could safely be made with them. The Jesuit was scarcely gone when news came that a party of officers hunting near the outlet of Lake Champlain had been set upon by the Mohawks, and that seven of them had been captured or killed. Among the captured was Leroles, a cousin of Tracy, and among the killed was a young gentleman named Chasy, his nephew.
On this the Jesuit envoy was recalled; twenty-four Iroquois deputies were seized and imprisoned; and Sorel, captain in the regiment of Carignan, was sent with three hundred men to chastise the perfidious Mohawks. If, as it seems, he was expected to attack their fortified towns or “castles,” as the English call them, his force was too small. This time, however, there was no fighting. At two days from his journey’s end, Sorel met the famous chief called the Flemish Bastard, bringing back Leroles and his fellow-captives, and charged, as he alleged, to offer full satisfaction for the murder of Chasy.
Sorel believed him, retraced his course, and with the Bastard in his train returned to Quebec.
Quebec was full of Iroquois deputies, all bent on peace or pretending to be so. On the last day of August, there was a grand council in the garden of the Jesuits. Some days later, Tracy invited the Flemish Bastard and a Mohawk chief named Agariata to his table, when allusion was made to the murder of Chasy. On this the Mohawk, stretching out his arm, exclaimed in a braggart tone, “This is the hand that split the head of that young man.” The indignation of the company may be imagined. Tracy told his insolent guest that he should never kill anybody else; and he was led out and hanged in presence of the Bastard. * There was no more talk of peace. Tracy prepared to march in person against the Mohawks with all the force of Canada.
On the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, “for whose glory,” says the chronicler, “this expedition is undertaken,” Tracy and Courcelle left Quebec with thirteen hundred men. They crossed Lake Champlain, and launched their boats again on the waters of St. Sacrament, now Lake George. It was the first of the warlike pageants that have made that fair scene historic. October had begun, and the romantic wilds breathed the buoyant life of the most inspiring of American seasons, when
* This story rests chiefly on the authority of Nicolas
Perrot, Mœurs des Saurages, 113. La Potherie also tells it,
with the addition of the chief’s name. Colden follows him.
The Journal des Jésuites mentions that the chief who led the
murderers of Chasy arrived at Quebec on the sixth of
September. Marie de l’Incarnation mentions the hanging of an
Iroquois at Quebec, late in the autumn, for violating the
peace.