YEARS OF GLOOM—THE KING COMES TO THE RESCUE OF
CANADA—THE IROQUOIS HUMBLED.
(1652-1667.)
It was noon on the 20th May, 1656, when the residents of Quebec were startled by the remarkable spectacle of a long line of bark canoes drawn up on the river immediately in front of the town. They could hear the shouts of the Mohawk warriors making boast of the murder and capture of unhappy Hurons, whom they had surprised on the Isle of Orleans close by. The voices of Huron girls—"the very flower of the tribe," says the Jesuit narrator—were raised in plaintive chants at the rude command of their savage captors, who even forced them to dance in sight of the French, on whose protection they had relied. The governor, M. de Lauzon, a weak, incapable man, only noted for his greed, was perfectly paralysed at a scene without example, even in those days of terror, when the Iroquois were virtually masters of the St. Lawrence valley from Huron to Gaspé.
At this very time a number of Frenchmen—probably fifty in all—were in the power of the Iroquois, and the governor had no nerve to make even an effort to save the Hurons from their fate. To understand the situation of affairs, it is necessary to go back for a few years. After the dispersion of the Hurons, the Iroquois, principally the Mohawks, became bolder than ever on the St. Lawrence. M. du Plessis-Bochat, the governor of Three Rivers, lost his life in a courageous but ill-advised attempt to chastise a band of warriors that were in ambush not far from the fort. Father Buteux was killed on his way to his mission of the Attikamegs or White Fish tribe, at the headwaters of the St. Maurice. In 1653, Father Poucet was carried off to a Mohawk village, where he was tortured in the usual fashion, and then sent back to Canada with offers of peace. The Senecas and Cayugas were then busily engaged in exterminating the Eries, who had burned one of their most famous chiefs, whose last words at the stake were prophetic: "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!"
A peace, or rather a truce, was declared formally in the fall of 1653. Then, at the request of the Onondagas, Father Simon le Moyne, a missionary of great tact and courage, who was the first Frenchman to ascend the St. Lawrence as far as the Thousand Isles, ventured into the Iroquois country, where he soon became a favourite. As a result of the negotiations which followed this mission, Governor de Lauzon was persuaded to send a colony to the villages of the Onondagas. This colony was composed of Captain Dupuy, an officer of the garrison, ten soldiers, and between thirty and forty volunteers. Father Dablon, who had previously gone with Father Chaumonot among the Onondagas, and had brought back the request for a colony, accompanied the expedition, which left Quebec in the month of June, 1656. On the way up the river the Onondagas were attacked by a band of Mohawks, when the boats carrying the French had gone ahead and were not within sight. Some of the Onondagas were killed and wounded, and then the Mohawks found out that they had surprised and injured warriors belonging to a tribe of their own confederacy. They endeavoured to explain this very serious act of hostility against their own friends and allies by the excuse that they had mistaken them for Hurons, whom they were on the way to attack. There is little doubt that they well understood the character of the expedition, and attacked it through envy of the success of the Onondagas in obtaining the settlement of Frenchmen in their villages.
When the Mohawks had made their explanations, they allowed the angry Onondagas to proceed on their journey, while they themselves went on to Quebec where, as we have already seen, they showed their contempt of the French by assailing the Hurons under the very guns of the fort of St. Louis. As soon as the French colony arrived at the Onondaga villages, they took possession of the country in the name of Jesus. On an eminence overlooking the lake they erected the mission of St. Mary of Gannentaha, the correct Iroquois name for Onondaga, in the vicinity of the present city of Syracuse. The Onondagas generally appeared delighted at the presence of the French, though at this very time the Mohawks continued to paddle up and down the St. Lawrence to the consternation of the French and Canadian Indians alike. The Jesuit priest Garreau was killed in one of these excursions while accompanying a party of Ottawas to Lake Superior.
The colonists at Gannentaha at last found that their own lives were threatened by a conspiracy to destroy them, but they succeeded in deceiving the Indians and in escaping to Canada in the month of March, after living only two years among the Onondagas. Whilst the Indians were sleeping away the effects of one of those mystic feasts, at which they invariably stuffed themselves to repletion, the Frenchmen escaped at night and reached the Oswego River, which they successfully descended by the aid of flat-boats which they had secretly constructed after the discovery of the plot. The party reached the French settlement with the loss of three men, drowned in the descent of the rapids of the St. Lawrence, probably the Cedars. The enterprise was most hazardous at this season when the ice had to be broken on the rivers before the boats could be used. But this very fact had its advantage, since the bark canoes of the Indians would have been useless had they followed the party. This exploit is one of the most remarkable ever performed by the French in those early days, and shows of what excellent material those pioneers of French colonisation were made.
In the spring of 1660 it was discovered that an organised attack was to be made on all the settlements by a large force of over a thousand Iroquois, who were to assemble at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers. It is stated on credible authority that Montreal—Canada in fact—was saved at this critical juncture by the heroism of a few devoted Frenchmen. Among the officers of the little garrison that then protected Montreal, was Adam Daulac or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, who obtained leave from Maisonneuve, the governor, to lead a party of volunteers against the Iroquois, who were wintering in large numbers on the upper Ottawa. Sixteen brave fellows, whose names are all recorded in the early records of Montreal, took a solemn oath to accept and give no quarter, and after settling their private affairs and receiving the sacrament, they set out on their mission of inevitable death. Dollard and his band soon reached the impetuous rapids of the Long Sault of the Ottawa, destined to be their Thermopylae. There, among the woods, they found an old circular inclosure of logs, which had been built by some Indians for defensive purposes. This was only a wretched bulwark, but the Frenchmen were in a state of exalted enthusiasm, and proceeded to strengthen it. Only two or three days after their arrival, they heard that the Iroquois were descending the river. The first attacks of the Iroquois were repulsed, and then they sent out scouts to bring up a large force of five hundred warriors who were at the mouth of the Richelieu. In the meantime they continued harassing the inmates of the fort, who were suffering for food and water. A band of Hurons who had joined the French just before the arrival of the Iroquois, now deserted them, with the exception of their chief, who as well as four Algonquins, remained faithful to the end. The forests soon resounded with the yells of the Iroquois, when reinforced. Still Dollard and his brave companions never faltered, but day after day beat back the astonished assailants, who knew the weakness of the defenders, and had anticipated an easy victory. At last a general assault was made, and in the struggle Dollard was killed. Even then the survivors kept up the fight, and when the Iroquois stood within the inclosure there was no one to meet them. Four Frenchmen, still alive, were picked up from the pile of corpses. Three of these were instantly burned, while the fourth was reserved for continuous torture a day or so later. The faithless Hurons gained nothing by their desertion, for they were put to death, with the exception of five who eluded their captors, and took an account of this remarkable episode to the French at Montreal. The Iroquois were obviously amazed at the courage of a few Frenchmen, and decided to give up, for the present, their project of attacking settlements defended by men so dauntless.
Even the forces of nature seemed at this time to conspire against the unfortunate colony. A remarkable earthquake, the effects of which can still be seen on the St. Lawrence,—at picturesque Les Eboulements, which means "earth slips," for instance,—commenced in the month of February, 1663, and did not cease entirely until the following summer.