Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

The three hundred men who were sent out with Denonville were far from constituting, even had their number not been sensibly reduced by fever on the voyage, the reinforcement he required in order to assume the offensive against the Iroquois with any hope of success. He was compelled, therefore, to temporize while making the most earnest appeals for a more liberal supply of troops. To counteract English intrigues among the Five Nations, he sent numerous presents in that direction, and carefully avoided any acts which could precipitate a conflict. One of the chief perils of the situation was the disaffection produced in the minds of the Lake tribes by the dismal failure of La Barre's expedition of 1684. The only way to regain credit, he says in a despatch to the minister (Seignelay), dated 12th June 1686, is to put a sufficient number of French troops, militia and regulars, into the field to attack and defeat the Iroquois without any assistance from the western allies. He wished to begin building blockhouses for defensive purposes, but was afraid to do so, lest the enemy should consider it a preparation for war. Like La Barre, he entered into correspondence with the governor of New York, Colonel Dongan, but in a more guarded manner. He wrote first simply announcing his appointment to the governorship of Canada. Dongan replied in his usual high-flown manner with many expressions of courtesy. Denonville returned the compliment, and then took occasion to speak of the Senecas and the difficulty of keeping peace with them, inviting Dongan to assist him in protecting the missionaries who were labouring amongst those heathen at the peril of their lives. Dongan, who had been appointed by the Duke of York before he ascended the throne of England as James II, and who, as might be supposed, was a good Catholic, was quite ready to do justice to the personal merits of the missionaries; but his fidelity to the English Crown made it impossible for him to overlook the fact that they were Frenchmen operating on what he claimed to be English territory. Their influence, he knew, could not fail to be cast in favour of the rival claims of their own people; and his desire was to replace them, as soon as it could conveniently be done, by English priests, who, without being less sound in theological matters, would be more so on the political side.

The two governors were thus playing at cross purposes, and it was not long before all disguise in the matter was set aside. Each was planning the construction of a fort at Niagara for the purpose both of strengthening his influence in the Iroquois country and of shutting the other out of Lake Erie. Dongan heard of Denonville's intention from some coureurs de bois who had deserted to Albany; whereupon he wrote to the French governor to say that he found it hard to believe that a man of his reputation would be so ill-advised as to follow in the footsteps of M. de la Barre, and seek to make trouble by planting a fort on territory clearly belonging to the King of England, and all for the sake of "a little peltry." Denonville replied with more diplomacy than truth that he had no intention of building a fort at Niagara; and expressed in turn his surprise that a gentleman of Dongan's character should "harbour rogues, vagabonds, and thieves," and believe all the silly stories they told him. As the correspondence went on its tone became warmer. Dongan had promised to send back deserters; but he found these men too valuable, and did not keep his promise. Denonville upbraids him for this want of good faith, and also for exciting the Indians by telling them that the French are preparing to attack them. He blamed him also for furnishing the savages with rum to the great detriment of their religious and moral interests; to which Dongan retorted that, in the opinion of Christians, English rum was more wholesome than French brandy.

While this correspondence was going on, both governors were doing their best to win over the Indians of the lake region. If these could be drawn into an alliance with the Iroquois, so that their trade should pass through the Iroquois country to the English, not only would the French lose the most profitable part of their traffic, but their political position would be seriously endangered, in fact would become untenable. There was much in the arrangement from a business point of view to recommend it to the savage mind. The English paid better prices for goods, and gave their merchandise at lower prices; and, if their traders once had free access to the lake region, the effects of their more liberal dealing would be felt in every wigwam. Against this highly practical consideration was to be set a certain hereditary distrust of the Iroquois on the part of the Huron and Ottawa tribes, to which might be added the personal influence of the French missionaries and a few noted French leaders. The situation was for some time a most doubtful one; but in the end it was not the economic argument that triumphed.

In the winter of 1685-6, a Dutchman, named Johannes Rooseboom, had set out from Albany, by Dongan's directions, with a party of armed traders in eleven canoes, filled with English goods, to trade in the Upper Lakes. There was no resistance to their progress; and after trading most successfully, and to the great satisfaction of the Indians, they returned in safety. This was encouragement for a larger expedition the following year; so, in the fall of 1686, the same adventurer set out with a similar party in twenty canoes. On this occasion they were to winter with the Senecas and resume their journey in the spring, accompanied by fifty men, who were to come from Albany under the charge of a Scots officer named M'Gregory, and a band of Iroquois; the whole party to be under M'Gregory's command. The intention was to form a general treaty of trade and alliance with the tribes that hitherto had been under the domination of the French.

This was a bold step to take, and shows Dongan in the light of an early advocate of the policy of "Forward." It was too bold. Fortunately for Denonville, he had in the early summer of 1686 sent an order to Du Lhut, then at Michilimackinac, to fortify a post at the outlet of Lake Huron, which that capable and zealous officer lost no time in doing. On hearing of the projected expedition, the governor was greatly incensed. He wrote to Dongan in strong terms, and at the same time laid the matter before the minister, declaring that it would be better to have open war with the English than to be in constant danger from their intrigues. A favourite plan of his was that Louis XIV should buy the colony of New York from James II, as he had previously bought Dunkirk from Charles II. The idea was not taken up by the French court, and there is much reason to doubt whether, with the best will in the world, the English king could have transferred the colony to France. It would have been an easy thing to send out orders, but it would have been quite a different thing to get them obeyed. In the New World men were already learning to put a very wide construction upon their civil rights; and, as far the larger portion of the population were of the reformed faith in one or other of its branches, they would certainly have made strong objection to being handed over to the tender mercies of the monarch who, at this very moment, was extirpating Protestantism in his own kingdom by the cruelest forms of persecution. The appeal to Dongan drew forth from that worthy the declaration that, in his belief, it was "as lawful for the English as for the French to trade with the remotest Indians." He denied, however, that he had incited the Iroquois to acts of aggression, and protested, in regard to the deserters, that he would much rather "such rascalls and bankrouts" would stay in their own country, and that Denonville was welcome to send for them. Negotiations, however, were going on at this time between the English and French courts in relation to affairs in America; and both Denonville and Dongan received injunctions to cultivate peaceful relations with one another pending the settlement of all matters in dispute by a joint commission.

If Dongan was preparing to trespass upon French rights in the region of the Great Lakes, Denonville himself was acting with even less scruple in another direction. For several years before this, the Hudson's Bay Company, under the charter granted to them by Charles II in the year 1670, had been trading to the bay from which they derived their name, and had established a number of posts along its shores. The charter had been granted in perfect good faith, as the region in question, which had been discovered and explored by navigators sailing under the English flag, Cabot, Hudson, Baffin, and Davis, was regarded as English territory. It is true that a memoir prepared by M. de Callières, Governor of Montreal, for the minister of marine and colonies,[27] mentions proceedings taken at different times by governors of Canada, between the years 1656 and 1663, to bring the country under French sovereignty; but there is nothing to show that any attempt was made at settlement or even at trading on the coast. The Hudson's Bay Company, on the other hand, had from the date of its charter, not to mention earlier operations, been carrying on trade, and establishing posts in that region without any remonstrance from the French government, and without disturbance of any kind until the year 1682, in the early winter of which two Frenchmen, named Radisson and Des Groseilliers, sailed into Hudson's Bay with two vessels, and took possession of a fort which the English had established near the mouth of the Nelson River. The explanation given by these parties was that they were acting on behalf of the "Compagnie Française de la Baie du Nord de Canada," which had previously formed establishments some distance up that river, and that finding that some English had begun to erect dwellings on an island at the mouth of the river, they had forced them to retire, considering their own claim to the river and its outlet the better.

This was the beginning of trouble. The French king in writing to La Barre on the subject authorized him to check, as far as possible, English encroachments in that quarter. In the spring of 1684 he writes again, and says that he has had a further communication from the English ambassador in regard to the proceedings of Radisson and Des Groseilliers, and that, while he is anxious not to give the English king any cause of complaint, he still thinks it desirable that the English should not be allowed to establish themselves on the Nelson River. La Barre was therefore to make a proposal to the English commandant in Hudson's Bay that no new establishments should be formed there by either French or English. This was at the very least an acknowledgment of the status quo. Nevertheless, a charter having been granted by the French king in the following year to a Canadian company authorizing it to trade on the Bourbon River, called in previous correspondence the Nelson, Denonville chose to consider that fact a warrant for making a general attack on the English in the bay. While his discussion with Dongan was in progress in the summer of 1686, he organized an expedition of about a hundred picked men, thirty being regular soldiers, and placed it under the command of a very capable officer, the Chevalier de Troyes, assigning to him as lieutenants three sons of Charles Le Moyne, of Montreal: Iberville, Ste. Hélène, and Maricourt. The difficulties of the overland route were most formidable, but Troyes surmounted them with the loss of only one man. He did not attempt any negotiation with the English, nor send any summons to surrender, but fell upon Port Hayes, the first to which he came, in the dead of night, and captured it without difficulty, the garrison being totally unprepared to resist an attack. At this point there does not appear to have been any loss of life; but at Fort Rupert, which was similarly attacked at night, three of the occupants were killed, and two were wounded. Three more men were killed on the same night on board a vessel anchored near the shore. When the assailants reached Fort Albany, held by a garrison of thirty men, they found that their coming had been anticipated, but, with the aid of cannon captured in the other forts, they had little difficulty in forcing a surrender. Leaving Maricourt in command at the bay, Troyes returned to Quebec. The English captured in this buccaneer fashion were sent home in one of their own vessels which happened to arrive opportunely for the purpose.

Denonville had succeeded in arousing the French government to the importance of proceeding vigorously against the Iroquois. Eight hundred men were sent out to him in the spring of 1687, which, with about eight hundred already in the colony, made the force at his disposal quite a formidable one. In the summer of the previous year there had been a change of intendant. M. de Meulles had been recalled, and a new man, Bochart de Champigny, sent out in his place. As the appointment of the latter was made as early as April 1686, it may be surmised that Denonville, shortly after arriving in the country, signified to the king that he and Meulles were not adapted to work together satisfactorily. Meulles was certainly far from having the fervent piety of the governor; and it may not improbably have been some difference of opinion or policy arising out of this fact that caused his recall. His successor was a man conspicuously devoted to the church; and Denonville in his despatches praises him in high terms. Having now the necessary force at his command, and being zealously seconded in all his views by the new intendant, the governor determined not to let the summer of 1687 pass without undertaking his long meditated campaign against the Iroquois. While preparing for war, however, he talked of peace, in the hope of taking the enemy unawares. So far did he carry his dissimulation that he completely misled the colonists, so that, when they discovered that war was intended, they manifested a strong indisposition to respond to the call to arms. There were enough regular soldiers, they said, in the country to meet all military requirements. Denonville was too well advised, however, to dream of taking a force of regulars into the woods, unsupported by militia accustomed to the country and familiar with the methods of Indian warfare. He therefore issued a special proclamation, which the vicars-general, in the absence of the bishop, supported by a mandement, with the result that the inhabitants, accustomed to yield to authority, furnished the quota of men required, about eight hundred.

The more effectually to throw the Iroquois off their guard, the governor had instructed his chief agent amongst them, Father Lamberville, a man in whom they had perfect confidence, to invite them to a friendly conference at Fort Frontenac. The good father was kept completely in the dark as to what was really intended, and was allowed to continue his solicitations to the Indians to attend the conference up to the moment when all disguise was thrown off. He was still with them when they discovered that they had been deceived; and, had it not been for the unbounded faith they had learnt to place in the good priest's word, they would certainly have put him to death with torture as a traitor. As it was they charged the deception entirely on Denonville, who, in this case, had certainly carried craft to very dangerous, not to say indefensible, lengths.

The expedition as organized by Denonville consisted of four companies of regulars, men who had been some time in the country, and four of militia, making in all fifteen hundred Frenchmen, to whom were added five hundred mission Indians, Christian in name, but scarcely less savage in instinct than their unreclaimed brethren of the forest. The regulars were commanded by their own officers, amongst whom we recognize Troyes, the hero of the Hudson's Bay exploit. The militia were led by four notable seigneurs, Berthier, Lavaltrie, Grandville, and Le Moyne de Longueuil, brother of the three Le Moynes who had accompanied Troyes. All the French troops were placed under the general command of Callières, Governor of Montreal, a very capable officer. M. de Vaudreuil, who had just come out from France as commander of the king's forces, accompanied the expedition in the capacity of chief-of-staff to the governor. The troops that he brought with him were left behind to take care of the country in the absence of its other defenders.