On their arrival at Quebec, Champlain addressed himself immediately to the preparation of lodgings for the missionaries and the erection of a chapel for the celebration of divine service. The Fathers were impatient to enter the fields of labor severally assigned to them. Joseph le Caron was appointed to visit the Hurons in their distant forest home, concerning which he had little or no information; but he nevertheless entered upon the duty with manly courage and Christian zeal. Jean d'Olbeau assumed the mission to the Montagnais, embracing the region about Tadoussac and the river Saguenay, while Denis Jamay and Pacifique du Plessis took charge of the chapel at Quebec.
At the earliest moment possible Champlain hastened to the rendezvous at Montreal, to meet the Indians who had already reached there on their annual visit for trade. The chiefs were in raptures of delight on seeing their old friend again, and had a grand scheme to propose. They had not forgotten that Champlain had often promised to aid them in their wars. They approached the subject, however, with moderation and diplomatic wisdom. They knew perfectly well that the trade in peltry was greatly desired, in fact that it was indispensable to the French. The substance of what they had to say was this. It had become now, if not impossible, exceedingly hazardous, to bring their furs to market. Their enemies, the Iroquois, like so many prowling wolves, were sure to be on their trail as they came down the Ottawa, and, incumbered with their loaded canoes, the struggle must be unequal, and it was nearly impossible for them ever to be winners. The only solution of the difficulty known to them, or which they cared to consider, as in all Indian warfare, was to annihilate their enemies utterly and wipe out their name for ever. Let this be done, and the fruits of peace would return, their commerce would be safe, prosperous, and greatly augmented.
Such were the reasons presented by the allies. But there were other considerations, likewise, which influenced the mind of Champlain. It was necessary to maintain a close and firm alliance with the Indians in order to extend the French discoveries and domain into new and more distant regions, and on this extension of French influence depended their hope of converting the savages to the Christian faith. The force of these considerations could not be resisted. Champlain decided that, under the circumstances, it was necessary to give them the desired assistance.
A general assembly was called, and the nature and extent of the campaign fully considered. It was to be of vastly greater proportions than any that had hitherto been proposed. The Indians offered to furnish two thousand five hundred and fifty men, but they were to be gathered together from different and distant points. The journey must, therefore, be long and perilous. The objective point, viz., a celebrated Iroquois fort, could not be reached by the only feasible route in a less distance than eight hundred or nine hundred miles, and it would require an absence of three or four months. Preparations for the journey were entered upon at once. Champlain visited Quebec to make arrangements for his long absence. On his return to Montreal, the Indians, impatient of delay, had already departed, and Father Joseph le Caron had gone with them to his distant field of missionary labor among the Hurons.
On the 9th of July, 1615, Champlain embarked, taking with him an interpreter, probably Etienne Brûlé, a French servant, and ten savages, who, with their equipments, were to be accommodated in two canoes. They entered the Rivière des Prairies, which flows into the St. Lawrence some leagues east of Montreal, crossing the Lake of the Two Mountains, passed up the Ottawa, taking the same route which he had traversed some years before, revisiting its long succession of reaches, its placid lakes, impetuous rapids, and magnificent falls, and at length arrived at the point where the river, by an abrupt angle, begins to flow from the northwest. Here, leaving the Ottawa, they entered the Mattawan, passing down this river into Lac du Talon, thence into Lac la Tortue, and by a short portage, into Lake Nipissing. After remaining here two days, entertained generously by the Nipissingian chiefs, they crossed the lake, and, following the channel of French River, entered Lake Huron, or rather the Georgian Bay. They coasted along until they reached the northern limits of the county of Simcoe. Here they disembarked and entered the territory of their old friends and allies, the Hurons.
The domain of this tribe consisted of a peninsula formed by the Georgian Bay, the river Severn, and Lake Simcoe, at the farthest, not more than forty by twenty-five miles in extent, but more generally cultivated by the native population, and of a richer soil than any region hitherto explored north of the St. Lawrence and the lakes. They visited four of their villages and were cordially received and feasted on Indian corn, squashes, and fish, with some variety in the methods of cooking. They then proceeded to Carhagouha, [80] a town fortified with a triple palisade of wood thirty-five feet in height. Here they found the Recollect Father Joseph Le Caron, who, having preceded them but a few days, and not anticipating the visit, was filled with raptures of astonishment and joy. The good Father was intent upon his pious work. On the 12th of August, surrounded by his followers, he formally erected a cross as a symbol of the faith, and on the same day they celebrated the mass and chanted TE DEUM LAUDAMUS for the first time.
Lingering but two days, Champlain and ten of the French, eight of whom had belonged to the suite of Le Caron, proceeded slowly towards Cahiagué, [81] the rendezvous where the mustering hosts of the savage warriors were to set forth together upon their hostile excursion into the country of the Iroquois. Of the Huron villages visited by them, six are particularly mentioned as fortified by triple palisades of wood. Cahiagué, the capital, encircled two hundred large cabins within its wooden walls. It was situated on the north of Lake Simcoe, ten or twelve miles from this body of water, surrounded by a country rich in corn, squashes, and a great variety of small fruits, with plenty of game and fish. When the warriors had mostly assembled, the motley crowd, bearing their bark canoes, meal, and equipments on their shoulders, moved down in a southwesterly direction till they reached the narrow strait that unites Lake Chouchiching with Lake Simcoe, where the Hurons had a famous fishing weir. Here they remained some time for other more tardy bands to join them. At this point they despatched twelve of the most stalwart savages, with the interpreter, Étienne Brûlé, on a dangerous journey to a distant tribe dwelling on the west of the Five Nations, to urge them to hasten to the fort of the Iroquois, as they had already received word from them that they would join them in this campaign.
Champlain and his allies soon left the fishing weir and coasted along the northeastern shore of Lake Simcoe until they reached its most eastern border, when they made a portage to Sturgeon Lake, thence sweeping down Pigeon and Stony Lakes, through the Otonabee into Rice Lake, the River Trent, the Bay of Quinté, and finally rounding the eastern point of Amherst Island, they were fairly on the waters of Lake Ontario, just as it merges into the great River St. Lawrence, and where the Thousand Islands begin to loom into sight. Here they crossed the extremity of the lake at its outflow into the river, pausing at this important geographical point to take the latitude, which, by his imperfect instruments, Champlain found to be 43 deg. north. [82]
Sailing down to the southern side of the lake, after a distance, by their estimate, of about fourteen leagues, they landed and concealed their canoes in a thicket near the shore. Taking their arms, they proceeded along the lake some ten miles, through a country diversified with meadows, brooks, ponds, and beautiful forests filled with plenty of wild game, when they struck inland, apparently at the mouth of Little Salmon River. Advancing in a southerly direction, along the course of this stream, they crossed Oneida River, an outlet of the lake of the same name. When within about ten miles of the fort which they intended to capture, they met a small party of savages, men, women, and children, bound on a fishing excursion. Although unarmed, nevertheless, according to their custom, they took them all prisoners of war, and began to inflict the usual tortures, but this was dropped on Champlain's indignant interference. The next day, on the 10th of October, they reached the great fortress of the Iroquois, after a journey of four days from their landing, a distance loosely estimated at from twenty-five to thirty leagues. Here they found the Iroquois in their fields, industriously gathering in their autumnal harvest of corn and squashes. A skirmish ensued, in which several were wounded on both sides.
The fort, a drawing of which has been left us by Champlain, was situated a few miles south of the eastern terminus of Oneida Lake, on a small stream that winds its way in a northwesterly direction, and finally loses itself in the same body of water. This rude military structure was hexagonal in form, one of its sides bordering immediately upon a small pond, while four of the other laterals, two on the right and two on the left were washed by a channel of water flowing along their bases. [83] The side opposite the pond alone had an unobstructed land approach. As an Indian military work, it was of great strength. It was made of the trunks of trees, as large as could be conveniently transported. These were set in the ground, forming four concentric palisades, not more than six inches apart, thirty feet in height, interlaced and bound together near the top, supporting a gallery of double paling extending around the whole enclosure, proof not only against the flint-headed arrows of the Indian, but against the leaden bullets of the French arquebus. Port-holes were opened along the gallery, through which effective service could be done upon assailants by hurling stones and other missiles with which they were well provided. Gutters were laid along between the palisades to conduct water to every part of the fortification for extinguishing fire, in case of need.