Part 7 (2/2)
He instantly a.s.sumed a warlike att.i.tude; and, in the next spring, wrote to the Earl of Sunderland that he had been at Albany all winter, with four hundred infantry, fifty hors.e.m.e.n, and eight hundred Indians.
This was not without cause, for a report had come from Canada that the French were about to march on Albany to destroy it. ”And now, my Lord,” continues Dongan, ”we must build forts in ye countrey upon ye great Lakes, as ye French doe, otherwise we lose ye Countrey, ye Bever trade, and our Indians.” [Footnote: _Dongan to Sunderland, Feb.,_ 1688, _N.Y. Col. Docs.,_ III. 510.] Denonville, meanwhile, had begun to yield, and promised to send back McGregory and the men captured with him. [Footnote: _Denonville a Dongan_, 2 _Oct._, 1687. McGregory soon arrived, and Dongan sent him back to Canada as an emissary with a civil message to Denonville. _Dongan to Denonville,_ 10 _Nov._, 1687.]
Dongan, not satisfied, insisted on payment for all the captured merchandise, and on the immediate demolition of Fort Niagara. He added another demand, which must have been singularly galling to his rival.
It was to the effect that the Iroquois prisoners seized at Fort Frontenac, and sent to the galleys in France, should be surrendered as British subjects to the English amba.s.sador at Paris or the secretary of state in London. [Footnote: _Dongan to Denonville,_ 31 _Oct._, 1687; _Dongan's First Demand of the French Agents, N. Y. Col. Docs.,_ III. 515, 520.]
Denonville was sorely perplexed. He was hard pressed, and eager for peace with the Iroquois at any price; but Dongan was using every means to prevent their treating of peace with the French governor until he had complied with all the English demands. In this extremity, Denonville sent Father Vaillant to Albany, in the hope of bringing his intractable rival to conditions less humiliating. The Jesuit played his part with ability, and proved more than a match for his adversary in dialectics; but Dongan held fast to all his demands. Vaillant tried to temporize, and asked for a truce, with a view to a final settlement by reference to the two kings. [Footnote: The papers of this discussion will be found in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III.] Dongan referred the question to a meeting of Iroquois chiefs, who declared in reply that they would make neither peace nor truce till Fort Niagara was demolished and all the prisoners restored. Dongan, well pleased, commended their spirit, and a.s.sured them that King James, ”who is the greatest man the sunn s.h.i.+nes uppon, and never told a ly in his life, has given you his Royall word to protect you.” [Footnote: _Dongan's Reply to the Five Nations, Ibid_., III. 535.] Vaillant returned from his bootless errand; and a stormy correspondence followed between the two governors. Dongan renewed his demands, then protested his wish for peace, extolled King James for his pious zeal, and declared that he was sending over missionaries of his own to convert the Iroquois.
[Footnote: _Dongan to Denonville_, 17 _Feb_., 1688, _Ibid_., III.
519.] What Denonville wanted was not their conversion by Englishmen, but their conversion by Frenchmen, and the presence in their towns of those most useful political agents, the Jesuits. [Footnote: ”II y a une necessite indispensable pour les interais de la Religion et de la Colonie de restablir les missionaires Jesuites dans tous les villages Iroquois: si vous ne trouves moyen de faire retourner ces Peres dans leurs anciennes missions, vous deves en attendre beaucoup de malheur pour cette Colonie; car je dois vous dire que jusqu'icy c'est leur habilite qui a soutenu les affaires du pays par leur scavoir-faire a gouverner les esprits de ces barbares, qui ne sont Sauvages que de nom.” _Denonville, Memoire adresse au Ministre_, 9 _Nov_., 1688.] He replied angrily, charging Dongan with preventing the conversion of the Iroquois by driving off the French missionaries, and accusing him, farther, of instigating the tribes of New York to attack Canada.
[Footnote: _Denonville a Dongan_, 24 _Avril_, 1688; _Ibid._, 12 _Mai_, 1688. Whether the charge is true is questionable. Dongan had just written that, if the Iroquois did harm to the French, he was ordered to offer satisfaction, and had already done so.] Suddenly there was a change in the temper of his letters. He wrote to his rival in terms of studied civility; declared that he wished he could meet him, and consult with him on the best means of advancing the cause of true religion; begged that he would not refuse him his friends.h.i.+p; and thanked him in warm terms for befriending some French prisoners whom he had saved from the Iroquois, and treated with great kindness.
[Footnote: _Denonville a Dongan,_ 18 _Juin_, 1688; _Ibid._, 5 _Juillet_, 1688; _Ibid._, 20 _Aug._, 1088. ”Je n'ai donc qu'a vous a.s.seurer que toute la Colonie a une tres-parfaite reconnoissance des bons offices que ces pauvres malheureux ont recu de vous et de vos peuples.”]
This change was due to despatches from Versailles, in which Denonville was informed that the matters in dispute would soon be amicably settled by the commissioners; that he was to keep on good terms with the English commanders, and, what pleased him still more, that the king of England was about to recall Dongan. [Footnote: _Memoire pour servir d'Instruction au Sr. Marquis de Denonville_, 8 _Mars_, 1688; _Le Roy a Denonville, meme date_; _Seignelay a Denonville, meme date._ Louis XIV. had demanded Dongan's recall. How far this had influenced the action of James II. it is difficult to say.] In fact, James II.
had resolved on remodelling his American colonies. New York, New Jersey, and New England had been formed into one government under Sir Edmund Andros; and Dongan was summoned home, where a regiment was given him, with the rank of major-general of artillery. Denonville says that, in his efforts to extend English trade to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, his late rival had been influenced by motives of personal gain. Be this as it may, he was a bold and vigorous defender of the claims of the British crown.
Sir Edmund Andros now reigned over New York; and, by the terms of his commission, his rule stretched westward to the Pacific. The usual official courtesies pa.s.sed between him and Denonville; but Andros renewed all the demands of his predecessor, claimed the Iroquois as subjects, and forbade the French to attack them. [Footnote: _Andros to Denonville_, 21 _Aug._, 1688; _Ibid._, 29 _Sept._, 1688.] The new governor was worse than the old. Denonville wrote to the minister: ”I send you copies of his letters, by which you will see that the spirit of Dongan has entered into the heart of his successor, who may be less pa.s.sionate and less interested, but who is, to say the least, quite as much opposed to us, and perhaps more dangerous by his suppleness and smoothness than the other was by his violence. What he has just done among the Iroquois, whom he pretends to be under his government, and whom he prevents from coming to meet me, is a certain proof that neither he nor the other English governors, nor their people, will refrain from doing this colony all the harm they can.” [Footnote: _Memoire de l'Estat Present des Affaires de ce Pays depuis le 10me Aoust, 1688, jusq'au dernier Octobre de la mesme annee_. He declares that the English are always ”itching for the western trade,” that their favorite plan is to establish a post on the Ohio, and that they have made the attempt three times already.]
While these things were pa.s.sing, the state of Canada was deplorable, and the position of its governor as mortifying as it was painful. He thought with good reason that the maintenance of the new fort at Niagara was of great importance to the colony, and he had repeatedly refused the demands of Dongan and the Iroquois for its demolition. But a power greater than sachems and governors presently intervened. The provisions left at Niagara, though abundant, were atrociously bad.
Scurvy and other malignant diseases soon broke out among the soldiers.
The Senecas prowled about the place, and no man dared venture out for hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, or firewood. [Footnote: Denonville, _Memoire du_ 10 _Aoust_, 1688.] The fort was first a prison, then a hospital, then a charnel-house, till before spring the garrison of a hundred men was reduced to ten or twelve. In this condition, they were found towards the end of April by a large war-party of friendly Miamis, who entered the place and held it till a French detachment at length arrived for its relief. [Footnote: _Recueil de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada depuis l'annee_ 1682. The writer was an officer of the detachment, and describes what he saw. Compare La Potherie, II. 210; and La Hontan, I.
131 (1709).] The garrison of Fort Frontenac had suffered from the same causes, though not to the same degree. Denonville feared that he should be forced to abandon them both. The way was so long and so dangerous, and the governor had grown of late so cautious, that he dreaded the risk of maintaining such remote communications. On second thought, he resolved to keep Frontenac and sacrifice Niagara. He promised Dongan that he would demolish it, and he kept his word.
[Footnote: _Denonville a Dongan_, 20 _Aoust_, 1688; _Proces-verbal of the Condition of Fort Niagara_, 1688; _N. Y. Col. Docs._, IX. 380. The palisades were torn down by Denonville's order on the 15th of September. The rude dwellings and storehouses which they enclosed, together with a large wooden cross, were left standing. The commandant De Troyes had died, and, Captain Desbergeres had been sent to succeed him.]
He was forced to another and a deeper humiliation. At the imperious demand of Dongan and the Iroquois, he begged the king to send back the prisoners entrapped at Fort Frontenac, and he wrote to the minister: ”Be pleased, Monseigneur, to remember that I had the honor to tell you that, in order to attain the peace necessary to the country, I was obliged to promise that I would beg you to send back to us the prisoners I sent you last year. I know you gave orders that they should be well treated, but I am informed that, though they were well enough treated at first, your orders were not afterwards executed with the same fidelity. If ill treatment has caused them all to die,--for they are people who easily fall into dejection, and who die of it,--and if none of them come back, I do not know at all whether we can persuade these barbarians not to attack us again.” [Footnote: Denonville, _Memoire de_ 10 _Aoust_, 1688.]
What had brought the marquis to this pa.s.s? Famine, dest.i.tution, disease, and the Iroquois were making Canada their prey. The fur trade had been stopped for two years; and the people, bereft of their only means of subsistence, could contribute nothing to their own defence.
Above Three Rivers, the whole population was imprisoned in stockade forts hastily built in every seigniory. [Footnote: In the Depot des Cartes de la Marine, there is a contemporary ma.n.u.script map, on which all these forts are laid down.] Here they were safe, provided that they never ventured out; but their fields were left untilled, and the governor was already compelled to feed many of them at the expense of the king. The Iroquois roamed among the deserted settlements or prowled like lynxes about the forts, waylaying convoys and killing or capturing stragglers. Their war-parties were usually small; but their movements were so mysterious and their attacks so sudden, that they spread a universal panic through the upper half of the colony. They were the wasps which Denonville had failed to kill. ”We should succ.u.mb,” wrote the distressed governor, ”if our cause were not the cause of G.o.d. Your Majesty's zeal for religion, and the great things you have done for the destruction of heresy, encourage me to hope that you will be the bulwark of the Faith in the new world as you are in the old. I cannot give you a truer idea of the war we have to wage with the Iroquois than by comparing them to a great number of wolves or other ferocious beasts, issuing out of a vast forest to ravage the neighboring settlements. The people gather to hunt them down; but n.o.body can find their lair, for they are always in motion. An abler man than I would be greatly at a loss to manage the affairs of this country. It is for the interest of the colony to have peace at any cost whatever. For the glory of the king and the good of religion, we should be glad to have it an advantageous one; and so it would have been, but for the malice of the English and the protection they have given our enemies.” [Footnote: _Denonville au Roy_, 1688; _Ibid._, _Memoire du_ 10 _Aoust_, 1688; _Ibid._, _Memoire du_ 9 _Nov._, 1688.]
And yet he had, one would think, a reasonable force at his disposal.
His thirty-two companies of regulars were reduced by this time to about fourteen hundred men, but he had also three or four hundred Indian converts, besides the militia of the colony, of whom he had stationed a large body under Vaudreuil at the head of the Island of Montreal. All told, they were several times more numerous than the agile warriors who held the colony in terror. He asked for eight hundred more regulars. The king sent him three hundred. Affairs grew worse, and he grew desperate. Rightly judging that the best means of defence was to take the offensive, he conceived the plan of a double attack on the Iroquois, one army to a.s.sail the Onondagas and Cayugas, another the Mohawks and Oneidas. [Footnote: _Plan for the Termination of the Iroquois War_, _N. Y. Col. Docs._, IX. 375.] Since to reach the Mohawks as he proposed, by the way of Lake Champlain, he must pa.s.s through territory indisputably British, the attempt would be a flagrant violation of the treaty of neutrality. Nevertheless, he implored the king to send him four thousand soldiers to accomplish it.
[Footnote: Denonville, _Memoire du_ 8 _Aout_, 1688.] His fast friend, the bishop, warmly seconded his appeal. ”The glory of G.o.d is involved,” wrote the head of the church, ”for the Iroquois are the only tribe who oppose the progress of the gospel. The glory of the king is involved, for they are the only tribe who refuse to recognize his grandeur and his might. They hold the French in the deepest contempt; and, unless they are completely humbled within two years, his Majesty will have no colony left in Canada.” [Footnote: Saint-Vallier, _Memoire sur les Affaires du Canada pour Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignelay_.] And the prelate proceeds to tell the minister how, in his opinion, the war ought to be conducted. The appeal was vain. ”His Majesty agrees with you,” wrote Seignelay, ”that three or four thousand men would be the best means of making peace, but he cannot spare them now. If the enemy breaks out again, raise the inhabitants, and fight as well as you can till his Majesty is prepared to send you troops.” [Footnote: _Memoire du Ministre adresse a Denonville_, 1 _Mai_, 1680.]
A hope had dawned on the governor. He had been more active of late in negotiating than in fighting, and his diplomacy had prospered more than his arms. It may be remembered that some of the Iroquois entrapped at Fort Frontenac had been given to their Christian relatives in the mission villages. Here they had since remained.
Denonville thought that he might use them as messengers to their heathen countrymen, and he sent one or more of them to Onondaga with gifts and overtures of peace. That shrewd old politician, Big Mouth, was still strong in influence at the Iroquois capital, and his name was great to the farthest bounds of the confederacy. He knew by personal experience the advantages of a neutral position between the rival European powers, from both of whom he received gifts and attentions; and he saw that what was good for him was good for the confederacy, since, if it gave itself to neither party, both would court its alliance. In his opinion, it had now leaned long enough towards the English; and a change of att.i.tude had become expedient.
Therefore, as Denonville promised the return of the prisoners, and was plainly ready to make other concessions, Big Mouth, setting at naught the prohibitions of Andros, consented to a conference with the French.
He set out at his leisure for Montreal, with six Onondaga, Cayuga, and Oneida chiefs; and, as no diplomatist ever understood better the advantage of negotiating at the head of an imposing force, a body of Iroquois warriors, to the number, it is said, of twelve hundred, set out before him, and silently took path to Canada.
The amba.s.sadors paddled across the lake and presented themselves before the commandant of Fort Frontenac, who received them with distinction, and ordered Lieutenant Perelle to escort them to Montreal. Scarcely had the officer conducted his august charge five leagues on their way, when, to his amazement, he found himself in the midst of six hundred Iroquois warriors, who amused themselves for a time with his terror, and then accompanied him as far as Lake St.
Francis, where he found another body of savages nearly equal in number. Here the warriors halted, and the amba.s.sadors with their escort gravely pursued their way to meet Denonville at Montreal.
[Footnote: _Relation des Evenements de la Guerre_, 30 _Oct_., 1688.]
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