Part 7 (1/2)
Hurrying forward through the forest, they left the main body behind, and soon reached the end of the defile. The woods were still dense on their left and front; but on their right lay a great marsh, covered with alder thickets and rank gra.s.s. Suddenly the air was filled with yells, and a rapid though distant fire was opened from the thickets and the forest. Scores of painted savages, stark naked, some armed with swords and some with hatchets, leaped screeching from their ambuscade, and rushed against the van. Almost at the same moment a burst of whoops and firing sounded in the defile behind. It was the ambushed three hundred supporting the onset of their countrymen in front; but they had made a fatal mistake. Deceived by the numbers of the vanguard, they supposed it to be the whole army, never suspecting that Denonville was close behind with sixteen hundred men. It was a surprise on both sides. So dense was the forest that the advancing battalions could see neither the enemy nor each other. Appalled by the din of whoops and firing, redoubled by the echoes of the narrow valley, the whole army was seized with something like a panic. Some of the officers, it is said, threw themselves on the ground in their fright. There were a few moments of intense bewilderment. The various corps became broken and confused, and moved hither and thither without knowing why. Denonville behaved with great courage. He ran, sword in hand, to where the uproar was greatest, ordered the drums to beat the charge, turned back the militia of Berthier who were trying to escape, and commanded them and all others whom he met to fire on whatever looked like an enemy. He was bravely seconded by Callieres, La Valterie, and several other officers. The Christian Iroquois fought well from the first, leaping from tree to tree, and exchanging shots and defiance with their heathen countrymen; till the Senecas, seeing themselves confronted by numbers that seemed endless, abandoned the field, after heavy loss, carrying with them many of their dead and all of their wounded. [Footnote: For authorities, see note at the end of the chapter. The account of Charlevoix is contradicted at several points by the contemporary writers.] Denonville made no attempt to pursue. He had learned the dangers of this blind warfare of the woods; and he feared that the Senecas would waylay him again in the labyrinth of bushes that lay between him and the town. ”Our troops,” he says, ”were all so overcome by the extreme heat and the long march that we were forced to remain where we were till morning. We had the pain of witnessing the usual cruelties of the Indians, who cut the dead bodies into quarters, like butchers' meat, to put into their kettles, and opened most of them while still warm to drink the blood. Our rascally Ottawas particularly distinguished themselves by these barbarities, as well as by cowardice; for they made off in the fight. We had five or six men killed on the spot, and about twenty wounded, among whom was Father Engelran, who was badly hurt by a gun-shot. Some prisoners who escaped from the Senecas tell us that they lost forty men killed outright, twenty-five of whom we saw butchered. One of the escaped prisoners saw the rest buried, and he saw also more than sixty very dangerously wounded.” [Footnote: _Denonville au Ministre_, 25 _Aout_, 1687. In his journal, written afterwards, he says that the Senecas left twenty-seven dead on the field, and carried off twenty more, besides upwards of sixty mortally wounded.]
In the morning, the troops advanced in order of battle through a marsh covered with alders and tall gra.s.s, whence they had no sooner emerged than, says Abbe Belmont, ”we began to see the famous Babylon of the Senecas, where so many crimes have been committed, so much blood spilled, and so many men burned. It was a village or town of bark, on the top of a hill. They had burned it a week before. We found nothing in it but the graveyard and the graves, full of snakes and other creatures; a great mask, with teeth and eyes of bra.s.s, and a bearskin drawn over it, with which they performed their conjurations.”
[Footnote: Belmont. A few words are added from Saint-Vallier.] The fire had also spared a number of huge receptacles of bark, still filled with the last season's corn; while the fields around were covered with the growing crop, ripening in the July sun. There were hogs, too, in great number; for the Iroquois did not share the antipathy with which Indians are apt to regard that unsavory animal, and from which certain philosophers have argued their descent from the Jews.
The soldiers killed the hogs, burned the old corn, and hacked down the new with their swords. Next they advanced to an abandoned Seneca fort on a hill half a league distant, and burned it, with all that it contained. Ten days were pa.s.sed in the work of havoc. Three neighboring villages were levelled, and all their fields laid waste.
The amount of corn destroyed was prodigious. Denonville reckons it at the absurdly exaggerated amount of twelve hundred thousand bushels.
The Senecas, laden with such of their possessions as they could carry off, had fled to their confederates in the east; and Denonville did not venture to pursue them. His men, feasting without stint on green corn and fresh pork, were sickening rapidly, and his Indian allies were deserting him. ”It is a miserable business,” he wrote, ”to command savages, who, as soon as they have knocked an enemy in the head, ask for nothing but to go home and carry with them the scalp, which they take off like a skull-cap. You cannot believe what trouble I had to keep them till the corn was cut.”
On the twenty-fourth, he withdrew, with all his army, to the fortified post at Irondequoit Bay, whence he proceeded to Niagara, in order to accomplish his favorite purpose of building a fort there. The troops were set at work, and a stockade was planted on the point of land at the eastern angle between the River Niagara and Lake Ontario, the site of the ruined fort built by La Salle nine years before. [Footnote: _Proces-verbal de la Prise de Possession de Niagara_, 31 _Juillet_, 1687. There are curious errors of date in this doc.u.ment regarding the proceedings of La Salle.] Here he left a hundred men, under the Chevalier de Troyes, and, embarking with the rest of the army, descended to Montreal.
The campaign was but half a success. Joined to the capture of the English traders on the lakes, it had, indeed, prevented the defection of the western Indians, and in some slight measure restored their respect for the French, of whom, nevertheless, one of them was heard to say that they were good for nothing but to make war on hogs and corn. As for the Senecas, they were more enraged than hurt. They could rebuild their bark villages in a few weeks; and, though they had lost their harvest, their confederates would not let them starve.
[Footnote: The statement of some later writers, that many of the Senecas died during the following winter in consequence of the loss of their corn, is extremely doubtful. Captain Duplessis, in his _Plan for the Defence of Canada_, 1690, declares that not one of them perished of hunger.] A converted Iroquois had told the governor before his departure that, if he overset a wasps' nest, he must crush the wasps, or they would sting him. Denonville left the wasps alive.
DENONVILLE'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE SENECAS.--The chief authorities on this matter are the journal of Denonville, of which there is a translation in the _Colonial Doc.u.ments of New York_, IX.; the letters of Denonville to the Minister; the _Etat Present de l'Eglise de la Colonie Francaise_, by Bishop Saint-Vallier; the _Recueil de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, tant des Anglais que des Iroquois, depuis l'annee 1682_; and the excellent account by Abbe Belmont in his chronicle called _Histoire du Canada_. To these may be added La Hontan, Tonty, Nicolas Perrot, La Potherie, and the Senecas examined before the authorities of Albany, whose statements are printed in the _Colonial Doc.u.ments_, III. These are the original sources. Charlevoix drew his account from a portion of them. It is inexact, and needs the correction of his learned annotator, Mr. Shea.
Colden, Smith, and other English writers follow La Hontan.
The researches of Mr. O. H. Marshall, of Buffalo, have left no reasonable doubt as to the scene of the battle, and the site of the neighboring town. The Seneca ambuscade was on the marsh and the hills immediately north and west of the present village of Victor; and their chief town, called Gannagaro by Denonville, was on the top of Boughton's Hill, about a mile and a quarter distant. Immense quant.i.ties of Indian remains were formerly found here, and many are found to this day. Charred corn has been turned up in abundance by the plough, showing that the place was destroyed by fire. The remains of the fort burned by the French are still plainly visible on a hill a mile and a quarter from the ancient town. A plan of it will be found in Squier's _Aboriginal Monuments of New York_. The site of the three other Seneca towns destroyed by Denonville, and called Totiakton, Gannondata, and Gannongarae, can also be identified. See Marshall, in _Collections N. Y. Hist. Soc., 2d Series_, II. Indian traditions of historical events are usually almost worthless; but the old Seneca chief Dyunehogawah, or ”John Blacksmith,” who was living a few years ago at the Tonawanda reservation, recounted to Mr. Marshall with remarkable accuracy the story of the battle as handed down from his ancestors who lived at Gannagaro, close to the scene of action.
Gannagaro was the Canagorah of Wentworth Greenalgh's Journal. The old Seneca, on being shown a map of the locality, placed his finger on the spot where the fight took place, and which Avas long known to the Senecas by the name of DyaG.o.diyu, or ”The Place of a Battle.” It answers in the most perfect manner to the French contemporary descriptions.
[1] The authorities for the above are Denonville, Champigny, Abbe Belmont, Bishop Saint-Vallier, and the author of _Recueil de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, etc., depuis l'annee_ 1682.
Belmont, who accompanied the expedition, speaks of the affair with indignation, which was shared by many French officers. The bishop, on the other hand, mentions the success of the stratagem as a reward accorded by Heaven to the piety of Denonville. _Etat Present de l'Eglise_, 91, 92 (reprint, 1856).
Denonville's account, which is sufficiently explicit, is contained in the long journal of the expedition which he sent to the court, and in several letters to the minister. Both Belmont and the author of the _Recueil_ speak of the prisoners as having been ”pris par l'appat d'un festin.”
Mr. Shea, usually so exact, has been led into some error by confounding the different acts of this affair. By Denonville's official journal, it appears that, on the 19th June, Perre, by his order, captured several Indians on the St. Lawrence; that, on the 25th June, the governor, then at Rapide Plat on his way up the river, received a letter from Champigny, informing him that he had seized all the Iroquois near Fort Frontenac; and that, on the 3d July, Perre, whom Denonville had sent several days before to attack Ganneious, arrived with his prisoners.
[2] I have ventured to give this story on the sole authority of Charlevoix, for the contemporary writers are silent concerning it. Mr.
Shea thinks that it involves a contradiction of date; but this is entirely due to confounding the capture of prisoners by Perre at Ganneious on July 3d with the capture by Champigny at Fort Frontenac about June 20th. Lamberville reached Denonville's camp, one day's journey from the fort, on the evening of the 29th. (_Journal of Denonville_.) This would give four and a half days for news of the treachery to reach Onondaga, and four and a half days for the Jesuit to rejoin his countrymen.
Charlevoix, with his usual carelessness, says that the Jesuit Milet had also been used to lure the Iroquois into the snare, and that he was soon after captured by the Oneidas, and delivered by an Indian matron. Milet's captivity did not take place till 1689-90.
CHAPTER IX.
1687-1689.
THE IROQUOIS INVASION.
ALTERCATIONS.--ATt.i.tUDE OF DONGAN.--MARTIAL PREPARATION.--PERPLEXITY OF DENONVILLE.--ANGRY CORRESPONDENCE.--RECALL OF DONGAN.--SIR EDMUND ANDROS.--HUMILIATION OF DENONVILLE.--DISTRESS OF CANADA.--APPEALS FOR HELP.--IROQUOIS DIPLOMACY.--A HURON MACCHIAVEL.--THE CATASTROPHE.-- FEROCITY OF THE VICTORS.--WAR WITH ENGLAND.--RECALL OF DENONVILLE.
When Dongan heard that the French had invaded the Senecas, seized English traders on the lakes, and built a fort at Niagara, his wrath was kindled anew. He sent to the Iroquois, and summoned them to meet him at Albany; told the a.s.sembled chiefs that the late calamity had fallen upon them because they had held councils with the French without asking his leave; forbade them to do so again, and informed them that, as subjects of King James, they must make no treaty, except by the consent of his representative, the governor of New York. He declared that the Ottawas and other remote tribes were also British subjects; that the Iroquois should unite with them, to expel the French from the west; and that all alike should bring down their beaver skins to the English at Albany. Moreover, he enjoined them to receive no more French Jesuits into their towns, and to call home their countrymen whom these fathers had converted and enticed to Canada. ”Obey my commands,” added the governor, ”for that is the only way to eat well and sleep well, without fear or disturbance.” The Iroquois, who wanted his help, seemed to a.s.sent to all he said. ”We will fight the French,” exclaimed their orator, ”as long as we have a man left.” [Footnote: _Dongan's Propositions to the Five Nations; Answer of the Five Nations, N. Y. Col. Docs_., III. 438, 441.]
At the same time, Dongan wrote to Denonville demanding the immediate surrender of the Dutch and English captured on the lakes. Denonville angrily replied that he would keep the prisoners, since Dongan had broken the treaty of neutrality by ”giving aid and comfort to the savages.” The English governor, in return, upbraided his correspondent for invading British territory. ”I will endevour to protect his Majesty's subjects here from your unjust invasions, till I hear from the King, my Master, who is the greatest and most glorious Monarch that ever set on a Throne, and would do as much to propagate the Christian faith as any prince that lives. He did not send me here to suffer you to give laws to his subjects. I hope, notwithstanding all your trained souldiers and greate Officers come from Europe, that our masters at home will suffer us to do ourselves justice on you for the injuries and spoyle you have committed on us; and I a.s.sure you, Sir, if my Master gives leave, I will be as soon at Quebeck as you shall be att Albany. What you alleage concerning my a.s.sisting the Sinnakees (_Senecas_) with arms and ammunition to warr against you was never given by mee untill the sixt of August last, when understanding of your unjust proceedings in invading the King my Master's territorys in a hostill manner, I then gave them powder, lead, and armes, and united the five nations together to defend that part of our King's dominions from your jnjurious invasion. And as for offering them men, in that you doe me wrong, our men being all buisy then at their harvest, and I leave itt to your judgment whether there was any occasion when only foure hundred of them engaged with your whole army. I advise you to send home all the Christian and Indian prisoners the King of England's subjects you unjustly do deteine. This is what I have thought fitt to answer to your reflecting and provoking letter.” [Footnote: _Dongan to Denonville, 9 Sept._, 1687, in _N. Y. Col. Docs.,_ III. 472.]
As for the French claims to the Iroquois country and the upper lakes, he turned them to ridicule. They were founded, in part, on the missions established there by the Jesuits. ”The King of China,”
observes Dongan, ”never goes anywhere without two Jessuits with him. I wonder you make not the like pretence to that Kingdome.” He speaks with equal irony of the claim based on discovery: ”Pardon me if I say itt is a mistake, except you will affirme that a few loose fellowes rambling amongst Indians to keep themselves from starving gives the French a right to the Countrey.” And of the claim based on geographical divisions: ”Your reason is that some rivers or rivoletts of this country run out into the great river of Canada. O just G.o.d!
what new, farr-fetched, and unheard-of pretence is this for a t.i.tle to a country. The French King may have as good a pretence to all those Countrys that drink clarett and Brandy.” _Dongan's Fourth Paper to the French Agents, N. Y. Col. Docs_., III. 528. In spite of his sarcasms, it is clear that the claim of prior discovery and occupation was on the side of the French.
The dispute now a.s.sumed a new phase. James II. at length consented to own the Iroquois as his subjects, ordering Dongan to protect them, and repel the French by force of arms, should they attack them again.
[Footnote: _Warrant, authorizing Governor Dongan to protect the Five Nations_, 10 _Nov_., 1687, _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III. 503.] At the same time, conferences were opened at London between the French amba.s.sador and the English commissioners appointed to settle the questions at issue. Both disputants claimed the Iroquois as subjects, and the contest wore an aspect more serious than before.
The royal declaration was a great relief to Dongan. Thus far he had acted at his own risk; now he was sustained by the orders of his king.