Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

Starting from Montreal on the 13th June 1687, the expedition, after encountering the usual perils and fatigues of the St. Lawrence route, and losing one or two men in the rapids, arrived at Fort Frontenac on the 1st July. Here news was received of a reinforcement on which the governor had not permitted himself to count. In October of the previous year orders had been sent to the commanders in the West to rally the Indians of that region for another movement against the Iroquois. As Denonville well knew, there were serious difficulties in the way. The fiasco of 1684 had left a deplorable impression on the minds of the Lake tribes, whose loyalty was being further undermined by the pleasing prospect of trade with the English. These arguments, however, did not weigh with the Illinois, the latest victims of Iroquois barbarity; and Tonty in charge at Fort St. Louis, who had been notified with the others, had little trouble in getting a couple of hundred of them to follow him to Detroit on the way to Niagara. Nicolas Perrot in like manner raised a contingent among the tribes to the west of Lake Michigan, and, passing by way of Michilimackinac, joined his efforts to those of La Durantaye who had been labouring all winter to win over the dissatisfied Hurons and Ottawas. The Hurons were at last persuaded to move; but the Ottawas still refused, and La Durantaye and the Hurons started for Detroit, the first place of rendezvous, without them. Scarcely had they left Michilimackinac when they fell in with a number of the canoes which Dongan had sent to trade in the lakes. La Durantaye at once summoned the intruders to surrender; and, as he seemed to have a formidable force with him, the summons was obeyed. The commander distributed most of the goods among his Indian followers to their great delight, and sent some barrels of rum to the Ottawas in the hope that it would incline them to follow. It is difficult to say what did influence the minds of these savages; but in a few days they set out, taking, however, a route of their own by way of the Georgian Bay and overland to what is now Toronto. Perrot and his men went to Detroit, and from that point he and the others conducted their respective commands to Niagara, arriving there just about the same time that Denonville's force reached Fort Frontenac.

The gratification of the governor on learning that this important reinforcement had arrived just in the nick of time may be imagined. He sent word to the commanders to proceed to Irondequoit Bay, the entrance to the Seneca country; and, conducting his force thither, saw the western men approaching just as he himself was about to land. Such a concentration, on the same day, of troops brought from as far east as Quebec, and from as far west as the sources of the Mississippi, was indeed remarkable. It seemed on this occasion at least as if everything was destined to go well.

Denonville had now nearly three thousand men under his command. Forming a camp and erecting temporary fortifications on the point of land which shuts in Irondequoit Bay from Lake Ontario, he left four hundred men at that place to guard supplies, and arranged his army in marching order. The van was led by La Durantaye, Du Lhut and Tonty with their coureurs de bois, about two hundred in number. On their left were the mission Indians, and on their right the Lake and other western tribes—a wild and motley gathering of, for the most part, naked savages, made hideous with paint and horns and tails. Separated from these by a short interval, the main body of the army followed, regulars and militia in alternate companies. A broad trail ran southwards to the heart of the Seneca country, but on either side was a dense bush in which enemies might well be concealed. The first day a distance of about ten miles was covered. It was mid-July, the heat was intense, the flies were outrageous, and the men were burdened with thirteen days' provisions in addition to their arms and ammunition. On the second day, as they were drawing near to the first fortified habitation of the enemy, whom they supposed to be awaiting them behind their defences, the advance guard was vigorously attacked both in front and rear by a foe as yet invisible. The Senecas had supposed that the advance guard, coureurs de bois and Indians, constituted the entire army, but learnt their error when those making the rear attack found themselves, as they soon did, between two fires.

Meantime, however, no little confusion had been caused in the ranks of the invaders; and Denonville and his principal officers had to exercise all their powers of command to prevent a panic. As soon as confidence was restored, the vigorous firing of the French and their allies put the enemy to flight. "The Canadians," says Charlevoix, "fought with their accustomed bravery; but the regular troops did themselves little credit in the whole campaign." "What can one do with such men?" wrote Denonville in a despatch to the minister. On the Canadian side five militiamen, one regular soldier and five Indians were killed, and about an equal number, according to Denonville's statement, were wounded. The Senecas left twenty-seven dead upon the field. Their wounded they succeeded in carrying off; to have abandoned them would have meant to leave them to torture at the hands of the hostile Indians. As it was, the victory was followed by horrible scenes of cannibalism, in which the Ottawas, who, in the fight had showed marked cowardice, took the principal part.

This engagement, which has been localized as having occurred near the village of Victor, some fifteen miles south-east of the city of Rochester, N. Y., was the only one of the campaign. Not meeting again with the enemy, the army spent some days in burning the Seneca habitations, in which large quantities of grain were stored, and in destroying the standing crops. When this had been accomplished, they retraced their steps to their fortified camp on the lake shore. Already the army was getting into bad shape; the Indians were deserting and the French were falling sick through eating too abundantly of green corn and fresh pork; the latter article of diet being furnished by herds of swine kept by the Senecas. Despatching the sick in bateaux to Fort Frontenac, Denonville conducted the rest of his troops to Niagara in order to carry out the long-cherished design, which, in his correspondence with Dongan, he had disavowed, of erecting a fort at that point. This only occupied a few days; and on the 3rd August he was able to set out on the return journey, after detaching one hundred men to garrison the fort, which he placed under the command of M. de Troyes. Proceeding further up the lake to a point where it narrows, he crossed over to the north shore, and so made his way to Fort Frontenac, and thence to Montreal, where he arrived on the 13th of the month. The campaign, as Parkman observes, was but half a success; it certainly fell short of being what Abbé Gosselin calls it, "une victoire éclatante." The Senecas had been put to flight; and their dwellings had been destroyed, together with their stores of food; but their loss in men was not serious, and they could rely on the neighbouring Cayugas and Onondagas to tide them over a season of distress. Denonville writes, indeed, that they were succoured by the English. At the same time the injury they had received sank deep into minds not prone to forgive.

An incident which happened before the expedition set out from Fort Frontenac tended greatly to aggravate the situation. It had been intimated to Denonville in a despatch from the French government that the king desired to have some captured Iroquois sent over to France for service in the galleys, as it was understood that they were muscular fellows, well fitted for such work. Champigny, who left Montreal with Denonville, went ahead of the expedition with a few light canoes, in order to make arrangements for its reception at Fort Frontenac. Finding at that place a number of Iroquois, chiefly Onondagas, who, relying on Denonville's professions of peace, had come thither for trade or conference, and being anxious to show his zeal for his royal master, he did not hesitate to make them prisoners. The savages had their wives and children with them, a sure sign that they had come with friendly intent. This circumstance did not weigh with the intendant, nor was he influenced by the tears and entreaties of the families of the captured men. He doubtless thought that the formidable force which the governor was leading would strike such terror into the hearts of the Iroquois nation as to put anything in the way of reprisals quite out of the question: in any case there was advantage for himself in obeying the mandate of the king. What kind of a service it was for which the unfortunate captives were destined may be learnt from a description given by a careful French writer: "Chained in gangs of six, with no clothing save a loose short jacket, devoured by itch and vermin, shoeless and stockingless, the galley slaves toiled for ten hours consecutively at a rate of exertion which one would hardly have believed a man could endure for one hour. They were indeed in luck when they were not made to work twenty-four hours consecutively, with nothing to sustain their strength but a biscuit steeped in wine, which was put into their mouths, so that they should not have to stop rowing. If their galley began to lose ground the petty officers would rain curses on their heads and blows on their backs. Many a time, when the pace was being forced under a blazing Mediterranean sun, some poor wretch would sink down dead on his bench. In such a case his companions would pass on his body, throw it overboard, and that was all."[28]

The total number of Indians sent home to France to be consigned to this fate was thirty-five. They were at Fort Frontenac as captives, bound helplessly to posts when Denonville's army passed through, and an eye-witness, the Baron La Hontan, tells how he saw the mission Indians torturing the poor creatures by burning their fingers in the bowls of their pipes. He tried to interfere, but was censured for doing so, and put under arrest. The leaders, doubtless, thought they could not afford to put their Indian allies out of humour by interfering with their amusements.[29] The wrong done in this matter seems to have created a far more bitter feeling in the minds of the Iroquois than the open war on the Senecas. The Oneidas retaliated by torturing a Jesuit father named Millet, and would in the end have put him to death if an Indian woman had not interceded for him and adopted him as her son. The temper of the savages generally, in spite of the campaign, was far from being a submissive one; and Denonville himself within a month of his return to Quebec came to the conclusion that another punitive expedition would be necessary before a solid peace could be obtained. He therefore wrote home asking that eight hundred additional troops should be supplied to him, observing that his Indian allies were not to be depended on, and that the Canadians were not at all zealous for military service. His opinion was that he should have a force of not less than three or four thousand men at his disposal for two years. The French government did not agree with him on this point. The troops could not be spared, and the king thought that it ought to be possible to arrange matters by negotiation. There were those, indeed, in Canada who thought the whole war had been unnecessary; certainly, for some time before the Senecas were attacked, they were not acting on the aggressive. The Iroquois tribes generally had been impressed by the fact that the military forces of the colony had been considerably augmented; and the character of the governor himself, who seemed to possess much more firmness and resolution than his immediate predecessor, had more or less influenced them in favour of peace. Had Denonville made the most of these advantages, and shown in addition a disposition to act with good faith, it is altogether probable a satisfactory peace could have been arranged without resort to war.

However, the mischief had been done. All the Iroquois tribes had been angered, and the hives were ominously buzzing. Acts of reprisal became frequent. Even the immediate neighbourhood of Fort Frontenac was not secure, for during the following winter a woman and three soldiers were carried off within gunshot of its walls. The Onondagas who effected these captures stated expressly that they were made in retaliation for those so treacherously made by Champigny. The captives were not put to death, but were held as hostages, which gave them an opportunity of appealing to Dongan. That worthy was not at all sorry that his rival had got himself into trouble; and answered the appeal by saying that he could not do anything for them till Fort Niagara, unjustly planted by their governor on English territory, had been evacuated. On the last day of the year Denonville sent to Albany an able negotiator in the person of Father Vaillant, Jesuit, but with no satisfactory result. The only terms on which Dongan would consent to use his influence in favour of peace were that the prisoners sent to France for the galleys should be restored; that the mission Indians at Laprairie and the Montreal Mountain should be sent back to the Iroquois country to which they originally belonged; that Forts Niagara and Frontenac should be razed; and that the goods captured by the French from English traders on the Upper Lakes should be restored. Scarcely had Vaillant left Albany on his return when Dongan summoned representatives of the tribes, and, acquainting them with the terms he had demanded, asked for their ratification, which was readily granted. He told the chiefs not to bury the hatchet, but simply to lay it in the grass where they could get it if it was wanted, and meantime to post themselves along the lines of communication to the French country.

The advice was promptly taken. Some bands operated along the St. Lawrence, others along the Richelieu. Early in the season of 1688 a convoy had been sent to revictual Forts Frontenac and Niagara. It passed up the river safely, but on its return it was attacked, though greatly superior in force, by a party of twenty-five or thirty Indians, who killed eight men, and took one prisoner. Other raids more or less destructive were made at Chambly, St. Ours, Contrecoeur, and even as far east as Rivière du Loup. In the face of these attacks a sort of lethargy seemed to have seized upon the colonists, making them slow to defend themselves even when the conditions were in their favour. In other respects also the state of affairs was one of great depression. The war had been costly and burdensome; and, owing to the withdrawal of so many men from the work of the fields, agriculture had greatly suffered. The pillaging carried on by scattered bands of Iroquois made matters still worse. Beggars began to be numerous in the streets of Quebec and Montreal. It is interesting to note that mendicity was not looked upon with favour in those days, and that praiseworthy attempts were made to regulate it and restrain it within the narrowest possible limits. Charitable ladies undertook to inquire into cases of ostensible want so as to distinguish those which merited relief from others which might proceed from idleness or misconduct. M. de Saint Vallier, who had returned to France in the autumn of 1687, came back as bishop in August of the following year. He brought with him two hundred copies of his work on The Present State of the Church in Canada, written by him after his arrival in France, and published at Paris in March 1688, in which, as already seen, a glowing tribute was paid to the piety of the Canadian people. Instead, however, of distributing this work in the country, as he had doubtless intended, he virtually suppressed it; and, in almost his first episcopal utterances, told the people that the troubles and distresses from which they were suffering were the result of their lukewarmness in religious matters. The statement was not received in the most submissive spirit. There were some who said that the mundane causes of the sad plight in which the country found itself were only too apparent, and that it was not necessary to look further.[30]