In 1664 the English dispossessed the Dutch of their Nova Belgia, and turned it into New York; and began to trade actively with the Indian nations for their furs. The French, who had hoped to monopolise this trade, which they had found very profitable, by exterminating the Iroquois, and throwing the whole hunting business into the hands of tribes in their alliance, now saw the impolicy of having vainly attacked so powerful a race as that of the Iroquois, or Five Nations. They now used every means to reconcile them, and win them over. They sent Jesuit missionaries, who lived in the simplest manner amongst them, and with their powers of insinuation and persuasion laboured to give them favourable ideas of their nation. But the English were as zealous in their endeavours, and, as might naturally be expected, succeeded in engrossing all the fur trade with the Iroquois, who had received so many injuries from the French.[26] Irritated by this circumstance, the French again determined on the ferocious scheme of exterminating the Iroquois. Nursing this horrible resolve, they waited their opportunity, and put upon themselves a desperate restraint, till they should have collected a force in the colony equal to the entire annihilation of the Iroquois people. This time seemed to have arrived in 1687, when, under Denonville, they had a population of 11,249 persons, one third of whom were capable of bearing arms. Having a disposable force of near 4,000 people, they were secure in their own mind of the accomplishment of their object; but, to make assurance doubly sure, they hit upon one of those schemes that have been so much applauded through all Christian Europe, under the name of “happy devices,”—“profound strokes of policy,”—“chefs d’œuvres of statesmanship,”—that is, in plain terms, plans of the most wretched deceit, generally for the compassing of some piece of diabolical butchery or oppression. The “happy device,” in this instance, was to profess a desire for peace and alliance, in order to get the most able Indian chiefs into their power before they struck the decisive blow. There was a Jesuit missionary residing amongst the Iroquois—the worthy Lamberville. This good man, like his brethren in the South, whose glorious labours and melancholy fate we have already traced, had won the confidence of the Iroquois by his unaffected piety, his constant kindness, and his skill in healing their differences and their bodily ailments. They looked upon him as a father and a friend. The French, on their part, regarded this as a fortunate circumstance,—not as one might have imagined, because it gave them a powerful means of reconciliation and alliance with this people, but because it gave them a means of effecting their murderous scheme. They assured Lamberville that they were anxious to effect a lasting peace with the Iroquois, for which purpose they begged him to prevail on them to send their principal chiefs to meet them in conference. He found no difficulty in doing this, such was their faith in him. The chiefs appeared, and were immediately clapped in irons, embarked at Quebec, and sent to the galleys!
I suppose there are yet men calling themselves Christians, and priding themselves on the depth of their policy, that will exclaim—“Oh, capital!—what a happy device!” But who that has a head or a heart worthy of a man will not mark with admiration the conduct of the Iroquois on this occasion. As soon as the news of this abominable treachery reached the nation, it rose as one man, to revenge the insult and to prevent the success of that scheme which now became too apparent. In the first place they sent for Lamberville, who had been the instrument of their betrayal, and—put him to death! No, they did not put him to death. That was what the Christians would have done, without any inquiry or any listening to his defence. The savage Iroquois thus addressed him—“We are authorised by every motive to treat you as an enemy; but we cannot resolve to do it. Your heart has had no share in the insult that has been put upon us; and it would be unjust to punish you for a crime you detest still more than ourselves. But you must leave us. Our rash young men might consider you in the light of a traitor, who delivered up the chiefs of our nation to shameful slavery.” These savages, whom Europeans have always termed Barbarians, gave the Missionary guides, who conducted him to a place of safety, and then flew to arms.[27]
The wretched Denonville and his politic people soon found themselves in a situation which they richly merited. They had a numerous and warlike nation thus driven to the highest pitch of irritation, surrounding them in the woods. On the borders of the lakes, or in the open country, the French could and did carry devastation amongst the Iroquois; but on the other hand the Indians, continually sallying from the forests, laid waste the French settlements, destroyed the crops of the planters, and drove them from their fields. The French became heartily sick of the war they had thus wickedly raised, and were on the point of putting an end to it when one of their own Indian allies, a Huron, called by the English authors Adario, but by the French Le Rat, one of the bravest and most intelligent chiefs that ever ranged the wilds of America, prevented it by a stratagem as cunning, and more successful, than their own. He delivered an Iroquois prisoner with some story of an aggravated nature to the French commandant of the fort of Machillimakinac, who, not aware of Denonville being in treaty with the Iroquois, put him to death, and thus roused again all the ancient flame.
In this war, such were the barbarities of the French and their Indian allies, that they roused a spirit of revenge that soon brought the most cruel evils upon themselves. They laid waste the villages of the Five Nations with fire. Near Cadarakui Fort, they surprised and put to death the inhabitants of two villages who had settled there at their own invitation, and on their faith, but whom they now feared might act as spies against them. Many of these people were given up to a body of the Canadian Indians, called Praying or Christian Indians, to be tormented at the stake. In another village finding only two old men, they were cut to pieces, and put into the war kettle for the Praying Indians to feast on.[28] To revenge these unheard of abominations, the Five Nations carried a war of retaliation into Canada. They came suddenly in July of the next year, 1688, upon Montreal, 1200 strong, while Denonville and his lady were there; burnt and laid waste all the plantations round it, and made a terrible massacre of men, women, and children. Above a thousand French are said to have been killed on this occasion, and twenty-six taken, most of whom were burnt alive. In the autumn they returned, and carried fire and tomahawk through the island; and had they known how to take fortified places would have driven the French entirely out of Canada. As it was, they reduced them to the most frightful state of distress.
To such a pitch of fury did the French rise against the Five Nations through the sufferings which they received at their hands, that they now seemed to have lost the very natures of men. It is to the eternal disgrace of both French and English that they instigated and bribed the Indians to massacre and scalp their enemies—but it seems to be the peculiar infamy of the French to have imitated the Indians in their most barbarous customs, and have even prided themselves on displaying a higher refinement in cruelty than the savages themselves. The New Englanders, indeed, are distinctly stated by Douglass, to have handed over their Indian prisoners to be tormented by their Naraganset allies, but with the French this savage practice seems to have been frequent. I have just noticed a few instances of such inhuman conduct; but the old governor, Frontenac, stands pre-eminent above all his nation for such deeds. From 1691 to 1695, nothing was more common than for his Indian prisoners to be given up to his Indian allies to be tormented. One of the most horrible of these scenes on record was perpetrated under his own eye at Montreal in 1691. The intendant’s lady, the Jesuits, and many influential people used all possible intreaties to save the prisoner from such a death, but in vain. He was given up to the Christian Indians of Loretto, and tormented in such a manner as none but a fiend could tolerate.[29] There was only one step beyond this, and that was for the French to enact the torturers themselves. That step was reached in 1695, at Machilimakinak Fort; and whoever has not strong nerves had better pass the following relation, which yet seems requisite to be given if we are to understand the full extent of the inflictions the American Indians have received from Europeans.
The successes of the Iroquois had driven the French to madness—and the prisoner was an Iroquois. “The prisoner being made fast to a stake, so as to have room to move round it, a Frenchman began the horrid tragedy by broiling the flesh of the prisoner’s legs, from his toes to his knees, with the red-hot barrel of a gun. His example was followed by an Utawawa, and they relieved one another as they grew tired. The prisoner all this while continued his death-song, till they clapped a red-hot frying-pan on his buttocks, when he cried out ‘Fire is strong, and too powerful.’ Then all their Indians mocked him as wanting courage and resolution. ‘You,’ they said, ‘a soldier and a captain, as you say, and afraid of fire:—you are not a man.’”
They continued their torments for two hours without ceasing. An Utawawa, being desirous to outdo the French in their refined cruelty, split a furrow from the prisoner’s shoulder to his garter, and, filling it with gunpowder, set fire to it. This gave him exquisite pain, and raised excessive laughter in his tormentors. When they found his throat so much parched that he was no longer able to gratify their ears with his howling, they gave him water to enable him to continue their pleasure longer. But, at last, his strength failing, an Utawawa flayed off his scalp, and threw burning coals on his skull. Then they untied him, and bid him run for his life. He began to run, tumbling like a drunken man. They shut up the way to the east; and made him run westward, the way, as they think, to the country of miserable souls. He had still force left to throw stones, till they put an end to his misery by knocking him on the head with one. After this, every one cut a slice from his body, to conclude the tragedy with a feast.[30]
Such is the condition to which the practice of injustice and cruelty can reduce men calling themselves civilized. We need not pursue further the history of the French in Canada, which consists only in bickerings with the English and butchery of the Indians. Having, therefore, given this specimen of their treatment of the natives in their colonies, or in the vicinity of them, we will dismiss them with an incident illustrative of their policy, which occurred in Louisiana.
When the French settled themselves in that country, they found, amongst the neighbouring tribes, the Natchez the most conspicuous. Their country extended from the Mississippi to the Appalachian mountains. It had a delightful climate, and was a beautiful region, well watered, most agreeably enlivened with hills, fine woods, and rich open prairies. Numbers of the French flocked over into this delicious country, and it was believed that it would form the centre of the great colony they hoped to found in that part of America. If the Natchez were such a people as Chateaubriand has pictured them, they must have been a noble race indeed. They were, like the Peruvians, worshippers of the sun, and had vast temples erected to their god. They received the French as the natives of most discovered countries have received the Europeans, with the utmost kindness. They even assisted them in forming their new plantations amongst them, and the most cordial and advantageous friendship appeared to have grown between the two nations. Such friendship, however, could not possibly exist between the common run of Europeans and Indians. The Europeans did not go so far from home for friendship; they went for dominion. Accordingly, the French soon threw off the mask of friendship, and treated their hosts as slaves. They seized on whatever they pleased, dictated their will to the Natchez, as their masters, and drove them from their cultivated fields, and inhabited them themselves. The deceived and indignant people did all in their power to stop these aggressions. They reasoned, implored, and entreated, but in vain. Finding this utterly useless, they entered into a scheme to rid themselves of their oppressors, and engaged all the neighbouring nations to aid in the design. A secret and universal league was established amongst the Indian nations wherever the French had any settlements. They were all to be massacred on a certain day. To apprise all the different nations of the exact day, the Natchez sent to every one of them a little bundle of bits of wood, each containing the same number, and that number being the number of the days that were to precede the day of general doom. The Indians were instructed to burn in each town one of these pieces of wood every day, and on the day that they burnt the last they were simultaneously to fall on the French, and leave not one alive. As usual, the success of the conspiracy was defeated by the compassion of an individual. The wife, or mother, of the great chief of the Natchez had a son by a Frenchman, and from this son she learned the secret of the plot. She warned the French commandant of the circumstance, but he treated her warning with indifference. Finding, therefore, that she could not succeed in putting the French on their guard against a people they had now come to despise, she resolved that, if she could not avert the fate of the whole, she would at least afford a chance of safety to a part. The bits of wood were deposited in the temple of the sun, and her rank gave her access to the temple. She abstracted a number of the bits of wood, and thus precipitated the day of rising in that province. The Natchez, on the burning of the last piece, fell on the French, and, out of two hundred and twenty-two French, massacred two hundred,—men, women, and children. The remainder were women, whom they retained as prisoners.
The Natchez, having accomplished this destruction, were astonished to find that not one of their allies had stirred; and the allies were equally astonished at the rising of the Natchez, whilst they had yet several pieces of wood remaining. The French, however, in the other parts of the country, were saved; fresh reinforcements arrived from Europe, and the unfortunate Natchez felt all the fury of their vengeance. Part were put to the sword; great numbers were caught and sent to St. Domingo, as slaves; the rest fled for safety into the country of the Chickasaws. The Chickasaws were called upon to give them up; but they had more sense of honour and humanity than Europeans,—they indignantly refused; and, when the French marched into their territories, to compel them by force, bravely attacked and repelled them, with repeated loss. As in Canada, Madagascar, India, and other places, the French reaped no permanent advantage from their treachery and cruelties, as the other European nations did. Louisiana was eventually ceded, in 1762, to the Spaniards, just as the French families, from Nova Scotia, Canada, St. Vincent, Granada, and other colonies won by the English, were flocking into it as a place of refuge. They had all the odium and the crime of aboriginal oppression, and left the earth so basely obtained, to the enjoyment of others no better than themselves.