Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

On the 18th August news came. In hot haste the officer in command at Lachine had despatched a messenger to say that Lake St. Louis to the west was covered with Iroquois canoes bearing down on the island. The terror of the inhabitants, in spite of the presence of the governor amongst them, was extreme. Orders were given to fire alarm guns to warn the inhabitants of the surrounding country; and other measures of protection were being hastily concerted, when a second messenger arrived to say that it was all a mistake. It was not the dreaded Iroquois who were close at hand, but a large body of Lake Indians who were coming to trade. Fear was at once turned into joy. The envoys sent to the upper country in May had been successful; a great danger had been averted. Perrot with his scalps and Frontenac with his vigorous and aggressive, if somewhat primitive and ruthless, war policy had turned the scale in favour of Canada. Firm alliances would now be made, and there would be a big market at Montreal.

The next day the canoes, laden with the accumulated furs of the last two or three years, shot the Lachine Rapids and landed at Montreal. There were about five hundred Indians in all, Hurons, Ottawas, Crees, Ojibways, and various other tribes, all bent on buying, selling, and negotiating. It was not the habit, however, of these savages to enter precipitately on any kind of business; and three days were allowed to elapse before they opened their great council at which, tribe by tribe, they were to lay their views before the governor. The first to speak were the Ottawas, and their talk was almost exclusively of trade. Their instinct for business was keen, and had it been possible they would probably have steered clear of politics. They had had some experience of the low prices of English goods, and were very insistent that the French should deal with them on equally favourable terms. The spokesman of the Hurons, a much weaker tribe numerically, was not so narrowly commercial in his views. He said he had come down to see his father, to listen to his voice, and to do his will. He presented three belts. By the first he prayed that the war might be prosecuted against the Iroquois as well as against the English. If not, he feared he and his father would both die. The second thanked the count for his former services to their nation. The third prayed him to take pity on the Ottawas, and give them good bargains. Such a manifestation of interest in the Ottawas was very touching; but probably the Huron orator, whose people had a certain reputation for subtlety, calculated that, if a lower tariff were made for the Ottawas, all would get the benefit of it. On the twenty-fifth of the month, the count entertained them all at a great feast. Two oxen and six large dogs furnished the meat, which was cooked with prunes. Two barrels of wine were provided to wash this down, and liberal rations of tobacco were served out to every man. Before the feasting began, the count stood up to address his guests. He assured them that he meant to prosecute the war with the Iroquois until he had brought it to a successful issue, and forced them to sue for peace. Then, when peace was made, it should be a general peace: all should be included in it, and the Iroquois themselves would again be his children. Meantime, however, they were preparing to invade the country; and the question was whether to await their arrival or go to meet them. Then ensued a remarkable performance, which might well have employed a livelier pen than that of Monseignat who gives us the account of it. Seizing a hatchet, the aged governor, war-worn but yet fiery and vigorous, began to sing the war song, walking to and fro in the most excited manner, and brandishing the hatchet over his head in true Indian fashion. The effect was electric. The old Onontio was surpassing himself. Here was a leader whose very presence banished fear. When he had sufficiently excited their admiration, and stimulated their warlike ardour, he handed the hatchet to the different chiefs in turn, and to a number of Frenchmen, who all imitated Onontio's example, vowing vengeance on the foe. Then began the feast, a function to which it is needless to say the savage guests brought ravenous appetites. In diplomacy dinners have been known to work wonders; and Frontenac was seeking the hearts of his guests through a well-recognized channel.

We have seen that the mission sent by the governor to the Iroquois towards the close of the previous year, and which returned in the following month of March, had not accomplished any satisfactory result. The count waited till navigation was open before resuming negotiations. He then determined to restore to their nation the four returned Iroquois who had formed his first embassy, and to make them the bearers of belts which he hoped would speak strongly in favour of peace. With these Indians he sent a French gentleman, the Chevalier d'Eau. He tendered the mission in the first place to the gay and dashing Baron La Hontan; but that young man, who was well versed in the classics, was afraid of the Iroquois even when carrying gifts to them; and, with marked discretion, declined the honour. The Chevalier d'Eau had no reason to congratulate himself on having accepted it. He made his appearance amongst the Iroquois at a most unfavourable moment. The affair at Schenectady was fresh in their recollection; and though their own people had, through motives of policy, been spared on that occasion, they were under a strong pledge to the English to assist in revenging the slaughter. A couple of Frenchmen who accompanied the chevalier were burnt; he himself was soundly thrashed and handed over as a prisoner to the English; the messages of the belts were disregarded. No news of the fate of the envoy had reached Frontenac up to the time of the gathering of the western Indians at Montreal; but after their departure the facts concerning them were obtained from some Iroquois prisoners at Fort Frontenac. The one great gain of the year had been the winning over of the Lake tribes, a result which at once assured the safety of the French traders and missionaries in the West, and prevented that isolation of the colony which would have followed had an alliance been struck between those tribes and the Iroquois.

CHAPTER X

FRONTENAC DEFENDER OF CANADA

In planning his attacks on the English colonies it does not appear that Frontenac took specially into account the political disorganization existing amongst them at the time, or built his hopes of success to any extent on that circumstance. It is nevertheless true that, if his object had been to strike at a moment of unpreparedness and weakness, he could not have timed his operations better. The rule of James II and his agents had been borne with no little reluctance by his subjects in North America, and particularly by those of New England, and when news came of his expulsion from the throne, his flight from England, and the arrival and coronation of the Prince of Orange and his wife (daughter of James II) as king and queen, there was at once a popular movement both at Boston and at New York to seize the government, and hold it subject to the orders of the new sovereigns. Sir Edmund Andros was governor of New England at the time, with authority over the province of New York, Boston being the chief seat of government, and the governor being represented at New York by a lieutenant-governor, one Francis Nicholson. Andros had been appointed governor of New York, by James, then Duke of York, to whom the province had been patented in 1674, and had held the office till 1681, when he was replaced by Colonel Dongan of epistolary fame. His recall was consequent upon complaints that had been made by the colonists of various arbitrary acts on his part; but on his arrival in England he managed to defend himself successfully, and in 1686, James being now on the throne, he was sent out again with the larger jurisdiction we have mentioned.

Religious passions in those days ran high; and Andros, who was a strong churchman, soon found himself on worse terms with the puritanical population of Boston than he had been with the more heterogeneous and less rigid inhabitants of New York. The circumstances of the time, it must be confessed, were such as to excuse a somewhat sensitive condition of public feeling. Two years before the arrival of Andros, the Court of Chancery of England had declared null and void the charter granted to the colony of Massachusetts in the year 1629, which, from that date onwards, had been the basis, not only of all government, but of all land grants, transfers of property, and popular liberties generally. A provisional government, under one Joseph Dudley had succeeded. Then had come Andros, commissioned by a king who was far from commanding the unlimited confidence of his subjects at home, and who was looked upon with at least equal distrust by the ultra-Protestants of his American dominions. How long they were going to be deprived of legally guaranteed liberties there was no knowing, nor what the intentions of James II might be in regard to their beloved commonwealth. They did not think it impossible he might wish to hand them over to his close ally the King of France; and in Andros they feared they saw only too meet an instrument for stratagems and spoils. The instructions given to him as governor contained a special injunction to favour by all means in his power the rites and doctrines of the Church of England; and the colonists, with the exception of a small minority, were maddened to see public taxes applied to this hateful object. As the Indians were giving trouble, the governor made a campaign against them in the summer of 1688, which was not very successful; hence more odium gathered on his head. Having failed in his measures of offence he thought he would at least provide for defence, and garrisoned the forts on the frontier with six hundred men, chiefly militia. More discontent: the garrisons served unwillingly, and the people at home professed to believe that such measures were unnecessary. A small detachment of soldiers had come out with Andros. Their conduct, according to contemporary accounts, was most unedifying and in shocking contrast to the unrelenting rigour and formality of colonial piety. It is not surprising therefore that, when, in April 1689, news was brought that James II, whose commission Andros bore, was no longer king, but that the leader of European Protestantism reigned in his stead, there should have been an instant uprising of the populace against his representative. Andros was seized and imprisoned with fifty of his followers. "For seven weeks," says a contemporary writer, "there was not so much as the face of any government." A vessel having arrived towards the end of May with instructions to proclaim William and Mary, certain of the members of the former General Council assumed to act, and one of their number, the aged Simon Bradstreet, was named as governor.

It did not take long for the news to travel from Boston to New York. The condition of things there was different; public opinion was not in the same state of exasperation as at Boston; still Andros was of old unpopular, and after a little hesitation, a movement was organized, headed by one Jacob Leisler, to take the government out of the hands of the lieutenant-governor, Nicholson. Like his superior officer at Boston, the latter was obliged to submit; and Leisler, most unhappily for himself and his family, assumed, with the support of a committee of citizens, the control of affairs. Thus, both in New England and in New York, there supervened a period of divided councils and enfeebled administration, and this at the precise moment when the colonies were about to encounter new perils. The provisional government of New England, in blind opposition to the policy of Sir Edmund Andros, withdrew or greatly reduced the garrisons he had wisely established along the frontier. If Leisler could have got his authority recognized at Albany he would have sent forces for the defence of the northern part of the province. There was a party there in his favour; but the magistrates, though quite ready to pay allegiance to William and Mary, thought Leisler's credentials of too dubious a character to justify their negotiating with him. Between divided responsibility and irresponsibility, the difference is not great. News had been received that the French were meditating mischief, but no proper precautionary measures were taken. To this condition of unpreparedness the horrible disaster of Schenectady may be distinctly attributed, and probably those at Salmon Falls and Casco Bay as well.

Even after the mischief was done, it was extremely difficult to secure any harmonious or well-directed action. A strong appeal was sent by the magistrates of Albany to the governor and council of Massachusetts, representing their own deplorable condition of weakness, and asking that New England should undertake the serious enterprise of invading Canada by water. That was a matter for grave consideration, and one, the authorities of Massachusetts thought, in which, if they attempted it at all, they should have the assistance of the Mother Country. They despatched a vessel in April to England with a request for help; but meantime, spurred by their own wrongs and sufferings, they determined to take an easier revenge on the French by invading Acadia. Early in the month of May 1690 the different New England colonies sent delegates to a congress held at New York for the purpose of deciding on a military policy. The conclusion come to was that there should be both a land and a sea expedition, the first directed against Montreal, the second against Quebec. To the former New York was to contribute four hundred men and the New England colonies jointly three hundred and fifty-five. The Iroquois, it was expected, would add a powerful contingent. The naval expedition, it was proposed, should be provided entirely by the New England colonies. The Massachusetts delegates hesitated to commit themselves to so extensive and costly a scheme, but finally agreed to undertake it, relying on assistance from the Mother Country, which, in existing circumstances, they hardly thought could be refused. Meantime the expedition against Acadia could be pushed forward.