Part 3 (1/2)
The Iroquois, or Five Nations, sometimes called Six Nations after the Tuscaroras joined them, had been a power of high importance in American international politics. In a certain sense they may be said to have held the balance between their French and English neighbors; but their relative influence had of late declined. So many of them had emigrated and joined the tribes of the Ohio, that the centre of Indian population had pa.s.sed to that region. Nevertheless, the Five Nations were still strong enough in their ancient abodes to make their alliance an object of the utmost consequence to both the European rivals. At the western end of their ”Long House,” or belt of confederated villages, Joncaire intrigued to gain them for France; while in the east he was counteracted by the young colonel of militia, William Johnson, who lived on the Mohawk, and was already well skilled in managing Indians. Johnson sometimes lost his temper; and once wrote to Governor Clinton to complain of the ”confounded wicked things the French had infused into the Indians' heads; among the rest that the English were determined, the first opportunity, to destroy them all. I a.s.sure your Excellency I had hard work to beat these and several other cursed villanous things, told them by the French, out of their heads.”[26]
[Footnote 26: _Johnson to Clinton, 28 April_, 1749.]
In former times the French had hoped to win over the Five Nations in a body, by wholesale conversion to the Faith; but the attempt had failed.
They had, however, made within their own limits an asylum for such converts as they could gain, whom they collected together at Caughnawaga, near Montreal, to the number of about three hundred warriors.[27] These could not be trusted to fight their kinsmen, but willingly made forays against the English borders. Caughnawaga, like various other Canadian missions, was divided between the Church, the army, and the fur-trade. It had a chapel, fortifications, and storehouses; two Jesuits, an officer, and three chief traders. Of these last, two were maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Desauniers; and one of the Jesuits, their friend Father Tournois, was their partner in business.
They carried on by means of the Mission Indians, and in collusion with influential persons in the colony, a trade with the Dutch at Albany, illegal, but very profitable.[28]
[Footnote 27: The estimate of a French official report, 1736, and of Sir William Johnson, 1763.]
[Footnote 28: _La Jonquiere au Ministre, 27 Fev. 1750. Ibid., 29 Oct.
1751. Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres, 1751. Notice biographique de la Jonquiere_. La Jonquifere, governor of Canada, at last broke up their contraband trade, and ordered Tournois to Quebec.]
Besides this Iroquois mission, which was chiefly composed of Mohawks and Oneidas, another was now begun farther westward, to win over the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. This was the establishment of Father Piquet, which Celoron had visited in its infancy when on his way to the Ohio, and again on his return. Piquet was a man in the prime of life, of an alert, vivacious countenance, by no means unprepossessing;[29] an enthusiastic schemer, with great executive talents; ardent, energetic, vain, self-confident, and boastful. The enterprise seems to have been of his own devising; but it found warm approval from the Government.[30] La Presentation, as he called the new mission, stood on the bank of the River Oswegatchie where it enters the St. Lawrence. Here the rapids ceased, and navigation was free to Lake Ontario. The place commanded the main river, and could bar the way to hostile war-parties or contraband traders. Rich meadows, forests, and abundance of fish and game, made it attractive to Indians, and the Oswegatchie gave access to the Iroquois towns. Piquet had chosen his site with great skill. His activity was admirable. His first stockade was burned by Indian incendiaries; but it rose quickly from its ashes, and within a year or two the mission of La Presentation had a fort of palisades flanked with blockhouses, a chapel, a storehouse, a barn, a stable, ovens, a saw-mill, broad fields of corn and beans, and three villages of Iroquois, containing, in all, forty-nine bark lodges, each holding three or four families, more or less converted to the Faith; and, as time went on, this number increased. The Governor had sent a squad of soldiers to man the fort, and five small cannon to mount upon it. The place was as safe for the new proselytes as it was convenient and agreeable. The Pennsylvanian interpreter, Conrad Weiser, was told at Onondaga, the Iroquois capital, that Piquet had made a hundred converts from that place alone; and that, ”having clothed them all in very fine clothes, laced with silver and gold, he took them down and presented them to the French Governor at Montreal, who received them very kindly, and made them large presents.”[31]
[Footnote 29: I once saw a contemporary portrait of him at the mission of Two Mountains, where he had been stationed.]
[Footnote 30: _Rouille a la Jonquiere_, 1749. The Intendant Bigot gave him money and provisions. _N.Y. Col. Docs., X_. 204.]
[Footnote 31: _Journal of Conrad Weiser,_ 1750.]
Such were some of the temporal attractions of La Presentation. The nature of the spiritual instruction bestowed by Piquet and his fellow-priests may be partly inferred from the words of a proselyte warrior, who declared with enthusiasm that he had learned from the Sulpitian missionary that the King of France was the eldest son of the wife of Jesus Christ.[32] This he of course took in a literal sense, the mystic idea of the Church as the spouse of Christ being beyond his savage comprehension. The effect was to stimulate his devotion to the Great Onontio beyond the sea, and to the lesser Onontio who represented him as Governor of Canada.
[Footnote 32: Lalande, _Notice de L'Abbe Piquet, in Lettres edifiantes_.
See also Ta.s.se in _Revue Canadienne,_ 1870, p. 9.]
Piquet was elated by his success; and early in 1752 he wrote to the Governor and Intendant: ”It is a great miracle that, in spite of envy, contradiction, and opposition from nearly all the Indian villages, I have formed in less than three years one of the most flouris.h.i.+ng missions in Canada. I find myself in a position to extend the empire of my good masters, Jesus Christ and the King, even to the extremities of this new world; and, with some little help from you, to do more than France and England have been able to do with millions of money and all their troops.”[33]
[Footnote 33: _Piquet a la Jonquiere et Bigot, 8 Fev._ 1752. See Appendix A. In spite of Piquet's self-laudation, and in spite also of the detraction of the author of the _Memoires sur le Canada,_ 1749-1760, there can be no doubt of his practical capacity and his fertility of resource. Duquesne, when governor of the colony, highly praises ”ses talents et son activite pour le service de Sa Majeste.”]
The letter from which this is taken was written to urge upon the Government a scheme in which the zealous priest could see nothing impracticable. He proposed to raise a war-party of thirty-eight hundred Indians, eighteen hundred of whom were to be drawn from the Canadian missions, the Five Nations, and the tribes of the Ohio, while the remaining two thousand were to be furnished by the Flatheads, or Choctaws, who were at the same time to be supplied with missionaries.
The united force was first to drive the English from the Ohio, and next attack the Dog Tribe, or Cherokees, who lived near the borders of Virginia, with the people of which they were on friendly terms. ”If,”
says Piquet, ”the English of Virginia give any help to this last-named tribe,--which will not fail to happen,--they [_the war-party_] will do their utmost against them, through a grudge they bear them by reason of some old quarrels.” In other words, the missionary hopes to set a host of savages to butchering English settlers in time of peace![34] His wild project never took effect, though the Governor, he says, at first approved it.
[Footnote 34: Appendix A.]
In the preceding year the ”Apostle of the Iroquois,” as he was called, made a journey to muster recruits for his mission, and kept a copious diary on the way. By accompanying him, one gets a clear view of an important part of the region in dispute between the rival nations. Six Canadians paddled him up the St. Lawrence, and five Indian converts followed in another canoe. Emerging from among the Thousand Islands, they stopped at Fort Frontenac, where Kingston now stands. Once the place was a great resort of Indians; now none were here, for the English post of Oswego, on the other side of the lake, had greater attractions.
Piquet and his company found the pork and bacon very bad, and he complains that ”there was not brandy enough in the fort to wash a wound.” They crossed to a neighboring island, where they were soon visited by the chaplain of the fort, the storekeeper, his wife, and three young ladies, glad of an excursion to relieve the monotony of the garrison. ”My hunters,” says Piquet, ”had supplied me with means of giving them a pretty good entertainment. We drank, with all our hearts, the health of the authorities, temporal and ecclesiastical, to the sound of our musketry, which was very well fired, and delighted the islanders.” These islanders were a band of Indians who lived here.
Piquet gave them a feast, then discoursed of religion, and at last persuaded them to remove to the new mission.
During eight days he and his party coasted the northern sh.o.r.e of Lake Ontario, with various incidents, such as an encounter between his dog Cerberus and a wolf, to the disadvantage of the latter, and the meeting with ”a very fine negro of twenty-two years, a fugitive from Virginia.”
On the twenty-sixth of June they reached the new fort of Toronto, which offered a striking contrast to their last stopping-place. ”The wine here is of the best; there is nothing wanting in this fort; everything is abundant, fine, and good.” There was reason for this. The Northern Indians were flocking with their beaver-skins to the English of Oswego; and in April, 1749, an officer named Portneuf had been sent with soldiers and workmen to build a stockaded trading-house at Toronto, in order to intercept them,--not by force, which would have been ruinous to French interests, but by a tempting supply of goods and brandy.[35]
Thus the fort was kept well stocked, and with excellent effect. Piquet found here a band of Mississagas, who would otherwise, no doubt, have carried their furs to the English. He was strongly impelled to persuade them to migrate to La Presentation; but the Governor had told him to confine his efforts to other tribes; and lest, he says, the ardor of his zeal should betray him to disobedience, he reimbarked, and encamped six leagues from temptation.
[Footnote 35: On Toronto, _La Jonquiere et Bigot au Ministre, 1749. La Jonquiere au Ministre, 30 Aout, 1750. N.Y. Col. Docs. X_. 201, 246.]
Two days more brought him to Niagara, where he was warmly received by the commandant, the chaplain, and the storekeeper,--the triumvirate who ruled these forest outposts, and stood respectively for then: three vital principles, war, religion, and trade. Here Piquet said ma.s.s; and after resting a day, set out for the trading-house at the portage of the cataract, recently built, like Toronto, to stop the Indians on their way to Oswego.[36] Here he found Joncaire, and here also was encamped a large band of Senecas; though, being all drunk, men, women, and children, they were in no condition to receive the Faith, or appreciate the temporal advantages that attended it. On the next morning, finding them partially sober, he invited them to remove to La Presentation; ”but as they had still something left in their bottles, I could get no answer till the following day.” ”I pa.s.s in silence,” pursues the missionary, ”an infinity of talks on this occasion. Monsieur de Joncaire forgot nothing that could help me, and behaved like a great servant of G.o.d and the King. My recruits increased every moment. I went to say my breviary while my Indians and the Senecas, without loss of time, a.s.sembled to hold a council with Monsieur de Joncaire.” The result of the council was an entreaty to the missionary not to stop at Oswego, lest evil should befall him at the hands of the English. He promised to do as they wished, and presently set out on his return to Fort Niagara, attended by Joncaire and a troop of his new followers. The journey was a triumphal progress. ”Whenever was pa.s.sed a camp or a wigwam, the Indians saluted me by firing their guns, which happened so often that I thought all the trees along the way were charged with gunpowder; and when we reached the fort, Monsieur de Becancour received us with great ceremony and the firing of cannon, by which my savages were infinitely flattered.”
[Footnote 36: _La Jonquiere au Ministre, 23 Fev. 1750. Ibid., 6 Oct_.