Deeds of Daring Done by Girls

by N. Hudson Moore

When our story opens, Seignior Verchères was on military duty at Quebec, his wife had gone on a visit to Montreal, and they had left the little family at home in charge of Madelon, the only daughter, a girl about fourteen years old. There were two young brothers,—Louis, a lad of twelve, and Alexander, who was about a year younger. There were, besides, the settlers who looked on Madelon as the representative of her father.

We can hardly picture to ourselves what a very rude place the settlement was, and as it lay near the trail of the Iroquois, it had become known throughout New France as “Castle Dangerous.”

At this time the Iroquois, containing the strong and invincible Five Nations, had two motives which swayed their savage breasts most powerfully; these were love of fighting and love of gain. They were dependent on the Dutch and English at Albany for guns, powder, lead, brandy, and many other things which the white man had brought with him from the Old World, and which these children of the woods had come to regard only too quickly as necessary to their comfort.

True, beaver skins could buy these things which they coveted, but with the Iroquois the supply was limited. The great forests stretching to the west and northwest, and those of the upper lakes, were occupied by tribes who were bound to French interests, and it was the French traders who controlled their immense annual product of furs.

Every summer there was a great Fair at Montreal, where the trading for a whole year took place, and the remote tribes brought in their accumulated beaver skins. The Iroquois saw and envied these furs and the strong waters which they enabled their possessors to buy, so they became more than ever bent on mastering all this traffic by first conquering the tribes. The Dutch and English urged them on, for the Hurons, Ottawas, and other tribes were the “children” of the French, working in their interests and protected by them, while French and Indians alike were enemies of the Iroquois.

Thus it was no accidental attack that the French had to fear at “Castle Dangerous,” but a determined effort by a race that could put nearly three thousand warriors in the field, and that constantly increased this force by adopting captives into the tribes.

The settlement at Castle Dangerous consisted of the blockhouse, a strong building made of timbers; of the house of the Seignior; some rude shacks, and the fort itself, which was connected with the blockhouse by a covered way. All the settlers lived in these buildings for safety, since their pitiless enemy the Iroquois had always to be guarded against. There were as well bands of wandering Indians that were constantly passing up and down the trail that lay along the St. Lawrence River.

Rude and dangerous as the place seemed, Madelon loved it, since it was home to her. She was brave, and had been trained by her father in the use of firearms, to be cool in the face of danger and quick to meet emergencies.

The morning of the twenty-second of October broke fair, the sun rose amid banks of purple and gold clouds, and as there was still work to be done in the fields, the men of the settlement started off directly after the morning meal, leaving the women and children, two soldiers, one old man of eighty, and Madelon in charge of the fort.

For a long time Verchères had been unmolested. The settlers had come to feel that perhaps there was not much further danger to be feared from the foe, and with this feeling of fancied security they had grown less vigilant. Madelon, attracted by the beauty of the day, started to go down to the landing-place, which hung over the river and made an admirable spot from which to fish, the river being noted for the excellence and number of fine fish to be found there.