Part 8 (1/2)
Big Mouth spoke haughtily, like a man who knew his power. He told the governor that he and his people were subjects neither of the French nor of the English; that they wished to be friends of both; that they held their country of the Great Spirit; and that they had never been conquered in war. He declared that the Iroquois knew the weakness of the French, and could easily exterminate them; that they had formed a plan of burning all the houses and barns of Canada, killing the cattle, setting fire to the ripe grain, and then, when the people were starving, attacking the forts; but that he, Big Mouth, had prevented its execution. He concluded by saying that he was allowed but four days to bring back the governor's reply; and that, if he were kept waiting longer, he would not answer for what might happen. [Footnote: _Declaration of the Iroquois in presence of M. de Denonville, N. Y.
Col. Docs._, IX. 384; _Relation des Evenements de la Guerre_, 30 _Oct_., 1688; Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_.] Though it appeared by some expressions in his speech that he was ready to make peace only with the French, leaving the Iroquois free to attack the Indian allies of the colony, and though, while the amba.s.sadors were at Montreal, their warriors on the river above actually killed several of the Indian converts, Denonville felt himself compelled to pretend ignorance of the outrage. [Footnote: _Callieres a Seignelay, Jan._, 1689.] A declaration of neutrality was drawn up, and Big Mouth affixed to it the figures of sundry birds and beasts as the signatures of himself and his fellow-chiefs. [Footnote: See the signatures in _N. Y.
Col. Docs._, IX. 385, 386.] He promised, too, that within a certain time deputies from the whole confederacy should come to Montreal and conclude a general peace.
The time arrived, and they did not appear. It became known, however, that a number of chiefs were coming from Onondaga to explain the delay, and to promise that the deputies should soon follow. The chiefs in fact were on their way. They reached La Famine, the scene of La Barre's meeting with Big Mouth; but here an unexpected incident arrested them, and completely changed the aspect of affairs. Among the Hurons of Michillimackinac there was a chief of high renown named Kondiaronk, or the Rat. He was in the prime of life, a redoubted warrior, and a sage counsellor. The French seem to have admired him greatly. ”He is a gallant man,” says La Hontan, ”if ever there was one;” while Charlevoix declares that he was the ablest Indian the French ever knew in America, and that he had nothing of the savage but the name and the dress. In spite of the father's eulogy, the moral condition of the Rat savored strongly of the wigwam. He had given Denonville great trouble by his constant intrigues with the Iroquois, with whom he had once made a plot for the ma.s.sacre of his neighbors, the Ottawas, under cover of a pretended treaty. [Footnote: Nicolas Perrot, 143.] The French had spared no pains to gain him; and he had at length been induced to declare for them, under a pledge from the governor that the war should never cease till the Iroquois were destroyed. During the summer, he raised a party of forty warriors, and came down the lakes in quest of Iroquois scalps. [Footnote: _Denonville a Seignelay_, 9 _Nov._, 1688. La Hontan saw the party set out, and says that there were about a hundred of them.] On the way, he stopped at Fort Frontenac to hear the news, when, to his amazement, the commandant told him that deputies from Onondaga were coming in a few days to conclude peace, and that he had better go home at once.
”It is well,” replied the Rat.
He knew that for the Hurons it was not well. He and his tribe stood fully committed to the war, and for them peace between the French and the Iroquois would be a signal of destruction, since Denonville could not or would not protect his allies. The Rat paddled off with his warriors. He had secretly learned the route of the expected deputies; and he shaped his course, not, as he had pretended, for Michillimackinac, but for La Famine, where he knew that they would land. Having reached his destination, he watched and waited four or five days, till canoes at length appeared, approaching from the direction of Onondaga. On this, the Rat and his friends hid themselves in the bushes.
The new comers were the messengers sent as precursors of the emba.s.sy.
At their head was a famous personage named Decanisora, or Tegannisorens, with whom were three other chiefs, and, it seems, a number of warriors. They had scarcely landed when the ambushed Hurons gave them a volley of bullets, killed one of the chiefs, wounded all the rest, and then, rus.h.i.+ng upon them, seized the whole party except a warrior who escaped with a broken arm. Having secured his prisoners, the Rat told them that he had acted on the suggestion of Denonville, who had informed him that an Iroquois war-party was to pa.s.s that way.
The astonished captives protested that they were envoys of peace. The Rat put on a look of amazement, then of horror and fury, and presently burst into invectives against Denonville for having made him the instrument of such atrocious perfidy. ”Go, my brothers,” he exclaimed, ”go home to your people. Though there is war between us, I give you your liberty. Onontio has made me do so black a deed that I shall never be happy again till your five tribes take a just vengeance upon him.” After giving them guns, powder, and ball, he sent them on their way, well pleased with him and filled with rage against the governor.
In accordance with Indian usage, he, however, kept one of them to be adopted, as he declared, in place of one of his followers whom he had lost in the skirmish; then, recrossing the lake, he went alone to Fort Frontenac, and, as he left the gate to rejoin his party, he said coolly, ”I have killed the peace: we shall see how the governor will get out of this business.” [Footnote: ”Il dit, J'ai tue la paix.”
Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_. ”Le Rat pa.s.sa ensuite seul a Catarakouy (_Fort Frontenac_) sans vouloir dire le tour qu'il avoit fait, dit seulement estant hors de la porte, en s'en allant, Nous verrons comme le gouverneur se tirera d'affaire.” Denonville.] Then, without loss of time, he repaired to Michillimackinac, and gave his Iroquois prisoner to the officer in command. No news of the intended peace had yet reached that distant outpost; and, though the unfortunate Iroquois told the story of his mission and his capture, the Rat declared that it was a crazy invention inspired by the fear of death, and the prisoner was immediately shot by a file of soldiers. The Rat now sent for an old Iroquois who had long been a prisoner at the Huron village, telling him with a mournful air that he was free to return to his people, and recount the cruelty of the French, who, had put their countryman to death. The liberated Iroquois faithfully acquitted himself of his mission. [1]
One incident seemed for a moment likely to rob the intriguer of the fruits of his ingenuity. The Iroquois who had escaped in the skirmish contrived to reach Fort Frontenac some time after the last visit of the Rat. He told what had happened; and, after being treated with the utmost attention, he was sent to Onondaga, charged with explanations and regrets. The Iroquois dignitaries seemed satisfied, and Denonville wrote to the minister that there was still good hope of peace. He little knew his enemy. They could dissemble and wait; but they neither believed the governor nor forgave him. His supposed treachery at La Famine, and his real treachery at Fort Frontenac, filled them with a patient but unextinguishable rage. They sent him word that they were ready to renew the negotiation; then they sent again, to say that Andros forbade them. Without doubt they used his prohibition as a pretext. Months pa.s.sed, and Denonville remained in suspense. He did not trust his Indian allies, nor did they trust him. Like the Rat and his Hurons, they dreaded the conclusion of peace, and wished the war to continue, that the French might bear the brunt of it, and stand between them and the wrath of the Iroquois. [Footnote: _Denonville au Ministre_, 9 _Nov_., 1688.]
In the direction of the Iroquois, there was a long and ominous silence. It was broken at last by the crash of a thunderbolt. On the night between the fourth and fifth of August, a violent hail-storm burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. Lawrence a little above Montreal. Concealed by the tempest and the darkness, fifteen hundred warriors landed at La Chine, and silently posted themselves about the houses of the sleeping settlers, then screeched the war-whoop, and began the most frightful ma.s.sacre in Canadian history.
The houses were burned, and men, women, and children indiscriminately butchered. In the neighborhood were three stockade forts, called Remy, Roland, and La Presentation; and they all had garrisons. There was also an encampment of two hundred regulars about three miles distant, under an officer named Subercase, then absent at Montreal on a visit to Denonville, who had lately arrived with his wife and family. At four o'clock in the morning, the troops in this encampment heard a cannon-shot from one of the forts. They were at once ordered under arms. Soon after, they saw a man running towards them, just escaped from the butchery. He told his story, and pa.s.sed on with the news to Montreal, six miles distant. Then several fugitives appeared, chased by a band of Iroquois, who gave over the pursuit at sight of the soldiers, but pillaged several houses before their eyes. The day was well advanced before Subercase arrived. He ordered the troops to march. About a hundred armed inhabitants had joined them, and they moved together towards La Chine. Here they found the houses still burning, and the bodies of their inmates strewn among them or hanging from the stakes where they had been tortured. They learned from a French surgeon, escaped from the enemy, that the Iroquois were all encamped a mile and a half farther on, behind a tract of forest.
Subercase, whose force had been strengthened by troops from the forts, resolved to attack them; and, had he been allowed to do so, he would probably have punished them severely, for most of them were helplessly drunk with brandy taken from the houses of the traders. Sword in hand, at the head of his men, the daring officer entered the forest; but, at that moment, a voice from the rear commanded a halt. It was that of the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, just come from Montreal, with positive orders from Denonville to run no risks and stand solely on the defensive. Subercase was furious. High words pa.s.sed between him and Vaudreuil, but he was forced to obey.
The troops were led back to Fort Roland, where about five hundred regulars and militia were now collected under command of Vaudreuil. On the next day, eighty men from Fort Remy attempted to join them; but the Iroquois had slept off the effect of their orgies, and were again on the alert. The unfortunate detachment was set upon by a host of savages, and cut to pieces in full sight of Fort Roland. All were killed or captured, except Le Moyne de Longueuil, and a few others, who escaped within the gate of Fort Remy. [Footnote: _Recueil de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada depuis l'annee_ 1682; _Observations on the State of Affairs in Canada_, 1689, _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 431; Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_; _Frontenac au Ministre_, 15 _Nov_., 1689. This detachment was commanded by Lieutenant de la Rabeyre, and consisted of fifty French and thirty Indian converts.]
Montreal was wild with terror. It had been fortified with palisades since the war began; but, though there were troops in the town under the governor himself, the people were in mortal dread. No attack was made either on the town or on any of the forts, and such of the inhabitants as could reach them were safe; while the Iroquois held undisputed possession of the open country, burned all the houses and barns over an extent of nine miles, and roamed in small parties, pillaging and scalping, over more than twenty miles. There is no mention of their having encountered opposition; nor do they seem to have met with any loss but that of some warriors killed in the attack on the detachment from Fort Remy, and that of three drunken stragglers who were caught and thrown into a cellar in Fort La Presentation. When they came to their senses, they defied their captors, and fought with such ferocity that it was necessary to shoot them. Charlevoix says that the invaders remained in the neighborhood of Montreal till the middle of October, or more than two months; but this seems incredible, since troops and militia enough to drive them all into the St.
Lawrence might easily have been collected in less than a week. It is certain, however, that their stay was strangely long. Troops and inhabitants seem to have been paralyzed with fear.
At length, most of them took to their canoes, and recrossed Lake St.
Louis in a body, giving ninety yells to show that they had ninety prisoners in their clutches. This was not all; for the whole number carried off was more than a hundred and twenty, besides about two hundred who had the good fortune to be killed on the spot. As the Iroquois pa.s.sed the forts, they shouted, ”Onontio, you deceived us, and now we have deceived you.” Towards evening, they encamped on the farther side of the lake, and began to torture and devour their prisoners. On that miserable night, stupefied and speechless groups stood gazing from the strand of La Chine at the lights that gleamed along the distant sh.o.r.e of Chateaugay, where their friends, wives, parents, or children agonized in the fires of the Iroquois, and scenes were enacted of indescribable and nameless horror. The greater part of the prisoners were, however, reserved to be distributed among the towns of the confederacy, and there tortured for the diversion of the inhabitants. While some of the invaders went home to celebrate their triumph, others roamed in small parties through all the upper parts of the colony, spreading universal terror. [2]
Canada lay bewildered and benumbed under the shock of this calamity; but the cup of her misery was not full. There was revolution in England. James II., the friend and ally of France, had been driven from his kingdom, and William of Orange had seized his vacant throne.
Soon there came news of war between the two crowns. The Iroquois alone had brought the colony to the brink of ruin; and now they would be supported by the neighboring British colonies, rich, strong, and populous, compared to impoverished and depleted Canada.
A letter of recall for Denonville was already on its way. [Footnote: _Le Roy a Denonville_, 31 _Mai_, 1689.] His successor arrived in October, and the marquis sailed for France. He was a good soldier in a regular war, and a subordinate command; and he had some of the qualities of a good governor, while lacking others quite as essential.
He had more activity than vigor, more personal bravery than firmness, and more clearness of perception than executive power. He filled his despatches with excellent recommendations, but was not the man to carry them into effect. He was sensitive, fastidious, critical, and conventional, and plumed himself on his honor, which was not always able to bear a strain; though as regards illegal trade, the besetting sin of Canadian governors, his hands were undoubtedly clean. [3] It is said that he had an instinctive antipathy for Indians, such as some persons have for certain animals; and the _coureurs de bois_, and other lawless cla.s.ses of the Canadian population, appeared to please him no better. Their license and insubordination distressed him, and he constantly complained of them to the king. For the Church and its hierarchy his devotion was unbounded; and his government was a season of unwonted suns.h.i.+ne for the ecclesiastics, like the balmy days of the Indian summer amid the gusts of November. They exhausted themselves in eulogies of his piety; and, in proof of its depth and solidity, Mother Juchereau tells us that he did not regard station and rank as very useful aids to salvation. While other governors complained of too many priests, Denonville begged for more. All was harmony between him and Bishop Saint-Vallier; and the prelate was constantly his friend, even to the point of justifying his worst act, the treacherous seizure of the Iroquois neutrals. [Footnote: Saint-Vallier, _Etat Present_, 91, 92 (Quebec, 1856).] When he left Canada, the only mourner besides the churchmen was his colleague, the intendant Champigny; for the two chiefs of the colony, joined in a common union with the Jesuits, lived together in unexampled concord. On his arrival at court, the good offices of his clerical allies gained for him the highly honorable post of governor of the royal children, the young Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri.
[1] La Hontan, I. 180 (1709). Most of the details of the story are drawn from this writer, whose statement I have compared with that of Denonville, in his letter dated Nov. 9, 1688; of Callieres, Jan., 1689; of the _Abstract of Letters from Canada_, in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 393; and of the writer of _Relation des Evenements de la Guerre_, 8 _Oct._, 1688. Belmont notices the affair with his usual conciseness.
La Hontan's account is sustained by the others in most, though not in all of its essential points. He calls the Huron chief _Adario, ou le Rat_. He is elsewhere mentioned as Kondiarouk, Kondiaront, Souoias, and Souaiti. La Hontan says that the scene of the treachery was one of the rapids of the St. Lawrence, but more authentic accounts place it at La Famine.
[2] The best account of the descent of the Iroquois at La Chine is that of the _Recueil de ce qui s'est pa.s.se en Canada_, 1682-1712. The writer was an officer under Subercase, and was on the spot. Belmont, superior of the mission of Montreal, also gives a trustworthy account in his _Histoire du Canada_. Compare La Hontan, I. 193 (1709), and La Potherie, II. 229. Farther particulars are given in the letters of Callieres, 8 Nov.; Champigny, 16 Nov.; and Frontenac, 15 Nov.
Frontenac, after visiting the scene of the catastrophe a few weeks after it occurred, writes: ”Ils (_les Iroquois_) avoient brusle plus de trois lieues de pays, saccage toutes les maisons jusqu'aux portes de la ville, enleve plus de six vingt personnes, tant hommes, femmes, qu'enfants, apres avoir ma.s.sacre plus de deux cents dont ils avoient ca.s.se la teste aux uns, brusle, rosty, et mange les autres, ouvert le ventre des femmes grosses pour en arracher les enfants, et fait des cruautez inouies et sans exemple.” The details given by Belmont, and by the author of _Histoire de l'Eau de Vie en Canada_, are no less revolting. The last-mentioned writer thinks that the ma.s.sacre was a judgment of G.o.d upon the sale of brandy at La Chine.
Some Canadian writers have charged the English with instigating the ma.s.sacre. I find nothing in contemporary doc.u.ments to support the accusation. Denonville wrote to the minister, after the Rat's treachery came to light, that Andros had forbidden the Iroquois to attack the colony. Immediately after the attack at La Chine, the Iroquois sachems, in a conference with the agents of New England, declared that ”we did not make war on the French at the persuasion of our brethren at Albany; for we did not so much as acquaint them of our intention till fourteen days after our army had begun their march.”
_Report of Conference_ in Colden, 103.
[3] ”I shall only add one article, on which possibly you will find it strange that I have said nothing; namely, whether the governor carries on any trade. I shall answer, no; but my Lady the Governess (_Madame la Gouvernante_), who is disposed not to neglect any opportunity for making a profit, had a room, not to say a shop, full of goods, till the close of last winter, in the chateau of Quebec, and found means afterwards to make a lottery to get rid of the rubbish that remained, which produced her more than her good merchandise.” _Relation of the State of Affairs in Canada_, 1688, in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., IX. 388.
This paper was written at Quebec.