Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

It was in the month of October of the same year that an incident occurred that has become the basis of what may be called one of the classic tales of Canadian history, the defence of the fort at Verchères by Madeleine, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the seigneur of the place, then absent on duty at Quebec. The story is so fully and interestingly told by Parkman in his Count Frontenac and New France,[52] and is otherwise so well known, that it seems needless to repeat it here. A people may well be proud who know that the blood of such heroes and heroines as gave lustre to the early annals of Canada flows in their veins.

The conclusion to which Frontenac had come at this time was that the raising of large levies of men and organizing formal campaigns against so agile and elusive an enemy as the Iroquois was not a wise policy. He states so distinctly in a letter to Pontchartrain, dated in October 1692. Such expeditions, he says, "make great noise and do little harm"; he believes in "small detachments frequently renewed." There are some people, he continues, who think differently, and are always urging the Indians to entreat him to attempt something on a large scale. Who these are does not appear, but Frontenac says: "I put them off and endeavour to amuse them by always giving them hopes that I shall grant their desire." Possibly Callières was the moving spirit. Strange to say, it was only three months after writing thus that Frontenac gave his sanction to an expedition of the very kind that he had objected to. According to Champigny, indeed, he not only sanctioned but ordered it. The campaign in question, like that undertaken by Courcelles twenty-seven years before, was a midwinter one. The force raised consisted of six hundred and twenty-five men, comprising over three hundred of the most active young men of the country, one hundred picked soldiers, and about two hundred Indians, chiefly mission Iroquois of the Saut and the Mountain, but partly Hurons, Algonquins, and Abenaquis from Three Rivers and the neighbourhood of Quebec. The expedition started from Laprairie on the 25th January 1693, spent a night at Chambly, and then pushed on for Lake Champlain, their destination being the country of the Mohawks, for some time past their most troublesome enemies. Some hunting was done by the Indians on the way, and it was not till the 16th of February that they arrived within sight of the first of the Mohawk forts. There was another fort less than a mile distant. Both were attacked and captured simultaneously. There were only five defenders, we are told, in the first and still fewer in the second. There was a more important fort, however, about eight miles further away. This was taken by surprise at night, though not without a skirmish in which one man was killed on the French side, while some twenty or thirty of the Mohawks were slaughtered; the rest, to the number of over three hundred, two-thirds being women and children, surrendered.

Hereupon ensued a little misunderstanding between the French and their Indian allies. The former wanted the latter to kill all the male prisoners of fighting age, appealing to a promise they had made before starting that they would do so. The Indians declined, and the French did not like to do the business themselves; possibly there would have been trouble had they attempted it. The only course that remained was to make the best of their way home, taking their prisoners with them. Their movements were hastened by learning that Peter Schuyler was on their track with a party of English and Indians. Immediately following on this news came the information that peace had been declared in Europe, and that Schuyler wished to hold a parley. The French leaders placed little faith in this statement, but their Indians insisted on waiting to see what Schuyler had to say. As the savages could not be moved, it was decided to fortify a position and wait. Schuyler arrived, and fortified a position of his own not far off. Some skirmishing followed, but no parleying; and after a few days' delay the French slipped away by night. Schuyler could not pursue them effectively for want of provisions. The retreat to Canada was marked by the greatest misery and suffering. Most of the prisoners had to be abandoned. Provisions that had been stored by the way were found on their return to have been totally destroyed by water. Several members of the party died of starvation, and others became perfectly helpless. News of their desperate condition was sent by special couriers to Callières, who at once despatched one hundred and fifty men with provisions on their backs. "Never," says Champigny, "was there such distress. They were four or five days without food. About one hundred and twenty, overpowered and exhausted, remained behind till they should be somewhat restored by the provisions we sent them. Two or three died of hunger; many threw down their arms, and almost all arrived without blankets, and scarcely able to drag their feet after them." The general result might well have confirmed Frontenac in the opinion he had previously expressed of such expeditions.

The Ottawa River had been so infested by Iroquois war parties for the last three years that it had been impossible for the Indians or coureurs de bois to use it as a channel of commerce, and the trade of the country was consequently at a standstill. The financial situation was indeed so gloomy that Frontenac, whose courage never failed him in a crisis, determined to try heroic measures of relief. He accordingly despatched M. d'Argenteuil with eighteen Canadians in four canoes to convey his orders to M. de Louvigny, commanding at Michilimackinac, to send down as large a party as he could of French and Indians with all the skins they could convey. The mission was a perilous one, and the men who engaged in it had to be well paid. With M. d'Argenteuil was sent another detachment of twenty men under M. de Lavaltrie to accompany him over what was considered the most dangerous part of the route. It does not appear at what point Argenteuil and Lavaltrie parted. The former reached his destination safely; the latter, on his return, was attacked by a party of Iroquois near the head of the Island of Montreal and killed with three of his men. This was not encouraging for the safe arrival of the men from the West. What was almost unhoped for, however, happened; and, to the immense joy and relief of the inhabitants, a flotilla of nearly two hundred canoes laden with goods arrived on the 4th August (1693) at Montreal. Frontenac heard the news at Quebec on the 17th. Three days later he set out for Montreal, arriving on the 28th. Seldom, if ever, had Montreal seen so much gaiety and good spirits; and, if we may trust the official narrative of events, profuse and unbounded were the expressions of praise and gratitude directed towards the head of the Canadian state, the brave old governor, who in the darkest days had never lost heart, nor allowed others to lose heart if he could help it, and whose prowess and resource the enemy was again being taught to respect.

That one at least of the Iroquois nations was prepared for peace was shown by the arrival at Montreal, in the month of June of this year, of an Oneida chief, bringing with him a French captive named Damour, whom he wished to exchange for a relative of his own in captivity at the Saut. The main object of his visit, however, was evidently to talk about peace. He was accordingly sent on to Quebec, where he had an interview with the governor. He stated that the most influential of the Oneida cabins were anxious for peace, and that the other nations were aware that he had come to speak about it. Frontenac's answer was very firm. If the nations wanted peace, he said, let them send duly authorized delegates, and he would treat with them. The present chance was, perhaps, the last they would have; and, if they did not seize it, he would prosecute the war against them till they were exterminated. The Oneida, Tareha by name, departed with this answer. In the month of October he returned. He and his own people were still anxious for peace, but the other nations wanted to have the negotiations carried on at Orange. To this the count vehemently refused to assent. Meantime several vessels had arrived from France with reinforcements and large supplies of war material. M. d'Iberville also returned about the same time from Hudson's Bay, bringing with him a couple of English trading ships that he had picked up on the way, one being laden with a cargo of tobacco from Virginia. The crops throughout the country were this year very good, and, owing to the diminished activity of the enemy, had been saved almost entire.

Following on the arrival of the western Indians, M. de Tonty, with a large body of coureurs de bois, had come down from the Illinois and lake country to discuss questions of trade and defence and receive the governor's orders for their future movements. After being well entertained and receiving all necessary instructions, they departed laden with fresh supplies and equipments, as well as with presents for the tribes amongst whom they were stationed. While New France was thus strengthened in its distant outposts its home defences had not been neglected. Extensive improvements had been made in the fortifications of Quebec, according to plans prepared by the celebrated French engineer Vauban, and carried out under the superintendence of M. de Beaucour, the officer already mentioned as having conducted a winter expedition against the Iroquois. A new and very strong palisade had been erected around Three Rivers; and the forts at Sorel and Chambly, virtually outposts of Montreal, had been greatly strengthened. Taking everything into account, there was much to justify a more confident and hopeful feeling throughout the country.

Meantime Frontenac's trusty allies, the Abenaquis, incited by the governor of Acadia and their missionary priests, and led by M. de Portneuf, a brother of M. de Villebon, had been fighting Canada's battles on the New England frontier. In February 1692 a band of between two and three hundred fell on the small frontier settlement of York, situated on the Maine coast, not far from the New Hampshire border, and killed, according to the French accounts, about a hundred persons, chiefly women and children, taking at the same time about eighty captives. New England authorities place the number of killed at forty-eight, and that of the captives at seventy-three. Amongst the slain was the minister of the parish, Dummer by name, a graduate of Harvard, and a man greatly respected. His gown was carried off, and one of the Indians afterwards, arraying himself in it, preached a mock sermon to his companions. As soon as spring opened a body of the warriors proceeded to carry the good news to Villebon, who had established himself in a fort at a place called Naxouat, on the river St. John, near the site of the present town of Fredericton, Port Royal, as he thought, being too open to attack. Villebon received them right royally. Speeches, drinking, and feasting were the order of the day, and presents were distributed with calculated generosity. They had done nobly, but there was more work of the same kind to be done. Their next venture, however, was not equally successful. The settlement of Wells was but a short distance from York, and thither they bent their steps in the early summer. Some of the houses at Wells were fortified; one in particular was defended by fifteen men under a militia captain named Convers. Fourteen more men with supplies arrived in two sloops on the 9th June, the very day on which the enemy made their appearance. The fourteen men managed to get into the fort, and the sloops, which were stranded in the bay by the ebbing tide, were left with no defenders save their crews. An unfortunate man named Diamond was captured in an attempt to pass from the fort to the sloops. The latter were first attacked, but the crew were well armed and shot two or three of the assailants, who then desisted. Turning their attention to the fort they fired some futile shots, and did not a little shouting and threatening. Enraged at their want of success, they wreaked their fury on their unfortunate captive, whom they mutilated horribly before putting him to death. Then, after butchering all the cattle they could see, and burning some empty houses, they departed. Some went to Naxouat to see Villebon, who mentions in his journal that he "gave them a prisoner to burn, and that it would be impossible to add anything to the tortures they made him endure." Such was the frontier warfare of the time, and such were the men who incited it and sanctioned its worst excesses.

The hostility of the Abenaquis to the English was largely a cultivated one. The French could not afford to let it die out, and the influence of the missionaries was exerted in the same direction. Left to themselves, these savages, who, like their western brethren, wanted English goods, which were still cheaper at Boston than at Albany, would doubtless have come to terms with their English neighbours. Two circumstances at this time were inclining them to a change of policy. One was their ill success at Wells, and the second the fact that Phipps, who had returned from England in May 1692 with a commission as governor of Massachusetts, had proceeded, in the summer of that year, to rebuild and render much stronger than before the fort at Pemaquid, opposite Pentagouet, which had been destroyed in 1689, and also to erect another at the falls of the Saco. The one at Pemaquid had scarcely been completed before two French vessels under the command of Iberville were sent against it by Frontenac; and why they did not capture it has never been satisfactorily explained. True, the government of Massachusetts had received word of the approach of the enemy, and had sent an armed vessel for its protection; but the advantage was still greatly on the side of the French, who were under the command, moreover, of a man noted both for daring and for capacity. Whatever the reason, the French vessels sailed away without accomplishing anything. In August of the following year, both forts being garrisoned and equipped, most of the chiefs, including Madocawando, father-in-law of the famous Saint-Castin,[53] recognizing how seriously their own position had been weakened by the establishment of these outposts, negotiated a peace on behalf of their respective tribes. The French leaders, lay and clerical, alarmed at this abandonment of their cause, set to work at once to repair the mischief. Certain of the tribes were still disposed for war; and the final result of prolonged debate and a profuse distribution of presents, together with skilfully contrived appeals to the mutual jealousy of the different chieftains, was that the peace was repudiated by those who had signed it, and that all alike declared for hostilities.

This was in the month of June 1694. In July a force of over two hundred Indians, accompanied by two missionaries, and conducted by Villieu, successor to M. de Portneuf, who had been removed for peculation, attacked by night the settlement of Oyster River, now Durham, some twelve miles north-west of the present town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and murdered one hundred and four persons, chiefly women and children. A few days later a similar descent was made on the settlements near Groton, fifty or sixty miles inland, where some forty persons were killed. Then pushing on to Quebec, Villieu gratified Count Frontenac by the exhibition of thirteen English scalps. More could have been had, but these sufficed as samples. The scalps of many of the slain would have been too pitifully small to add much grace to a warrior's belt. Villebon himself says in his journal that "the slaughter did not stop even at infants in the cradle."

These deeds were wrought, in part at least, by men who, a short time before, had signed a peace with the English. Phipps, who had proclaimed the peace through the settlements, felt a measure of responsibility for having, to that extent, induced a false sense of security among the inhabitants. He repaired to Pemaquid, and sent messengers to invite delegates of the tribes to meet him there. A number came. He reproached them for their bad faith, and secured from them expressions of regret and promises to keep the peace in future. It was in vain, however; his work was quickly undone by the same influences which had been active before in the perpetuation of strife.