THE DISPERSION OF THE HURONS
Meanwhile at Ste Marie Ragueneau and his companions learned from Huron fugitives of the fate of their comrades; and waited, hourly expecting to be attacked. The priests were attended by about twoscore armed Frenchmen. All day and all night the anxious fathers prayed and stood on guard. In the morning three hundred Huron warriors came to their relief, bringing the welcome news that the Hurons were a.s.sembling in force to give battle to the invaders.
These Hurons were just in time to fall in with a party of Iroquois, already on the way to Ste Marie. An encounter in the woods followed. At first some of the Hurons were driven back; but straight-away others of their band rushed to the rescue; and the Iroquois in turn ran for shelter behind the shattered palisades of St Louis. The Hurons followed, and finally put the enemy to rout and remained in possession of the place.
Now followed an Indian battle of almost unparalleled ferocity. Never did Huron warriors fight better than in this conflict at the death-hour of their nation. Against the Hurons within the palisades came the Iroquois in force from St Ignace. All day long, in and about the walls of St Louis, the battle raged; and when night fell only twenty wounded and helpless Hurons remained to continue the resistance. In the gathering darkness the Iroquois rushed in and with tomahawk and knife dispatched the remnant of the band.
But the Iroquois had no mind for further fighting, and did not attack Ste Marie. They mustered their Huron captives--old men, women, and children--tied them to stakes in the cabins of St Ignace, and set fire to the village. And, after being entertained to their satisfaction by the cries of agony which arose from their victims in the blazing cabins, they made their way southward through the forests of Huronia and disappeared.
Panic reigned throughout Huronia. After burning fifteen villages, lest they should serve as a shelter for the Iroquois, the Hurons scattered far and wide. Some fled to Ste Marie, some toiled through the snows of spring to the villages of the Petuns, some fled to the Neutrals and Eries, some to the Algonquin tribes of the north and west, and some even sought adoption among the Iroquois.
Ste Marie stood alone, like a shepherd without sheep: mission villages, chapels, residences, flocks--all were gone. The work of over twenty years was destroyed. Sick at heart, Ragueneau looked about him for a new situation, a spot that might serve as a centre for his band of devoted missionaries as they toiled among the wanderers by lake and river and in the depths of the northern forest.
He first thought of Isle Ste Marie (Manitoulin Island) as the safest place for the headquarters of a new mission, but finally decided to go to Isle St Joseph (Christian Island), just off Huronia to the north. There, on the bay that indents the south-east corner of the island, he directed that land should be cleared for the building.
The work of evacuating Ste Marie began early in May, and on the 15th of the month the buildings were set on fire.
The valuables of the mission were placed in a large boat and on rafts; and, with heavy hearts, the fathers and their helpers went aboard for the journey to their new home twenty miles away.
The new Ste Marie which the Jesuits built on Isle St Joseph was in the nature of a strong fort. Its walls were of stone and cement, fourteen feet high and loopholed.
At each corner there was a protecting bastion, and the entire structure was surrounded by a deep moat. It was practically impregnable against Indian attack, for it could not be undermined, set on fire, or taken by a.s.sault.
A handful of men could hold it against a host of Iroquois.
About the sheltering walls of Ste Marie the Indians gathered, to the number of seven or eight thousand by the autumn of 1649. Here the missionaries continued the good work. The only outposts now were among the Algonquins along the sh.o.r.e of Georgian Bay, and the Petun missions of St Mathias, St Matthieu, and St Jean. But the Petuns were presently to share the fate of the Hurons; and Garnier and Chabanel, who were stationed at St Jean, were to perish as had Daniel, Brebeuf, and Lalemant.
During the autumn Ragueneau learned that a large body of Iroquois were working their way westward towards St Jean.
He sent runners to the threatened town, and ordered Chabanel to return to Ste Marie and warned Garnier to be on his guard. On the 5th of December Chabanel set out for Ste Marie with some Petun Hurons, and Garnier was left alone at St Jean. Two days later, while the warriors were out searching for their elusive foes, a band of Senecas and Mohawks swept upon the town, broke through the defences, and proceeded to butcher the inhabitants.
Garnier fell with his flock. In the thick of the slaughter, while baptizing and absolving the dying, he was smitten down with three bullet wounds and his ca.s.sock torn from his body. As he lay in agony the moans of a wounded Petun near by drew his attention. Though spent with loss of blood, though his brain reeled with the weakness of approaching death, he dragged himself to his wounded red brother, gave him absolution, and then fell to the ground in a faint. On recovering from his swoon he saw another dying convert near by and strove to reach his side, but an Iroquois rushed upon him and ended his life with a tomahawk.
In a sense Chabanel was less fortunate than Garnier. On the day following the ma.s.sacre of St Jean he was hastening along the well-beaten trail towards Ste Marie, when the sound of Iroquois war-cries in the distance alarmed his guides, and all deserted him save one. This one did worse, for he slew the priest and cast his body into the Nottawasaga river. This murderer, an apostate Huron, afterwards confessed the crime, declaring that he had committed it because nothing but misfortune had befallen him ever since he and his family had embraced Christianity.
For some months after the death of Garnier and Chabanel the Jesuits maintained the mission of St Mathias among the Petuns in the Blue Hills. Here Father Adrien Greslon laboured until January 1650, and Father Leonard Garreau until the following spring. Garreau was then recalled, leaving not a missionary on the mainland in the Huron or the Petun country.
The French and Indians on Isle St Joseph, though safe from attack, were really prisoners on the island. Mohawks and Senecas remained in the forests near by, ready to pounce on any who ventured to the mainland. When winter bridged with ice the channel between the island and the main sh.o.r.e, it was necessary for the soldiers of the mission to stand incessantly on guard. And now another enemy than the Iroquois stalked among the fugitives. The fathers had abundant food for themselves and their a.s.sistants; but the Hurons, in their hurried flight, had made no provision for the winter. The famishing hordes subsisted on acorns and roots, and even greedily devoured the dead bodies of dogs and foxes. Disease joined forces with famine, and by spring fully half the Hurons at Ste Marie had perished. Some fishing and hunting parties left the island in search of food, but few returned.
It soon appeared that for the Hurons to remain on the island meant extinction. Two of the leading chiefs waited on Father Ragueneau and begged him to move the remnant of their people to Quebec, where under the sheltering walls of the fortress they might keep together as a people. It was a bitter draught for the Jesuits; but there was no other course. They made ready for the migration; and on the 10th of June (1650) the thirteen priests and four lay brothers of the mission, with their donnes, hired men, and soldiers, in all sixty French, and about three hundred Hurons, entered canoes and headed for the French River. On their way down the Ottawa they met Father Bressani, who had gone to Quebec in the previous autumn for supplies, and who now joined the retreating party. And on the 28th of July, after a journey of fifty days, all arrived safely at the capital of New France.
[Footnote: For a time the Hurons encamped in the vicinity of the Hotel-Dieu. In the spring of 1651 they moved to the island of Orleans. Five years later their settlement was raided by Mohawks and seventy-one were killed or taken prisoner. The island was abandoned and shelter sought in Quebec under the guns of Fort St Louis, and here they remained until 1668, when they removed to Beauport. In the following year they were placed at Notre-Dame-de-Foy, about four miles from Quebec. In 1673 a site affording more land was given them on the St Charles river about nine miles from the fortress. Here at Old Lorette a chapel was built for them and here they remained for twenty-four years. In 1697 they moved to New Lorette--Jeune Lorette--in the seigneury of St Michel, and at this place, by the rapids of the St Charles, four or five hundred of this once numerous tribe may still be found.]
The war-l.u.s.t of the Five Nations remained still unsatiated.
They continued to hara.s.s the Petuns, who finally fled in terror, most of them to Mackinaw Island. Still in dread of the Iroquois, they moved thence to the western end of Lake Superior; but here they came into conflict with the Sioux, and had to migrate once more. A band of them finally moved to Detroit and Sandusky, where, under the name of Wyandots, we find them figuring in history at a later period. The Iroquois then found occasion for quarrels with the Neutrals, the Eries, and the Andastes; and soon practically all the Indian tribes from the sh.o.r.es of Maine to the Mississippi and as far south as the Carolinas were under tribute to the Five Nations. Only the Algonquin tribes of Michigan and Wisconsin and the tribes of the far north had not suffered from these bloodthirsty conquerors.
The Huron mission was ended. For a quarter of a century the Jesuits had struggled to build up a spiritual empire among the heathen of North America, but, to all appearances, they had struggled in vain. In all twenty-five fathers had toiled in Huronia. Of these, as we have seen, four had been murdered by the Iroquois and one by an apostate Huron. Nor was this the whole story of martyrdom. Six years after the dispersion Leonard Garreau was to die by an Iroquois bullet while journeying up the Lake of Two Mountains on his way to the Algonquin missions of the west. Another of the fathers, Rene Menard, while following a party of Algonquins to the wilds of Wisconsin, lost his way in the forest and perished from exposure or starvation; and Anne de Noue, Brebeuf"s earliest comrade in Huronia, in an effort to bring a.s.sistance to a party of French soldiers storm-bound on Lake St Peter, was frozen to death. But misfortune did not cool the zeal of the Jesuits. Into the depths of the forest they went with their wandering flocks, and raised the Cross by lake and stream as far west as the Mississippi and as far north as Hudson Bay. Already they had found their way into the Long Houses of the Iroquois.
CHAPTER VIII
THE IROQUOIS MISSION
While labouring among the Hurons the Jesuits had their minds on the Iroquois. It was, they thought, within their sphere of duty even to tame these human tigers. They well knew that such an attempt would involve dangers vastly greater than those encountered in Huronia; but the greater the danger and suffering the greater the glory. And yet for a time it seemed impossible to make a beginning of missionary work among the Iroquois. As we have seen, Champlain had made them the uncompromising enemies of the French, and since then all Frenchmen stood in constant peril of their lives from marauding bands in ambush near every settlement and along the highways of travel. Thus nearly twenty years pa.s.sed after the arrival of the Jesuits in Canada before an opening came for winning a way to the hearts of these ruthless destroyers.
It came at last, fraught with tragedy. From 1636 to 1642 Father Isaac Jogues had been engaged in missionary work in Huronia. He was a man of saintly character, delicate, refined, scholarly; yet he had borne hardships among the Petuns enough to break the spirit of any man. He had toiled, too, among the Algonquin tribes, and at one time had preached to a gathering of two thousand at Sault Ste Marie. In 1642 he was chosen to bring much-needed supplies to Huronia--a dangerous task, as in that year large bodies of Iroquois were on the war-path. And in August he was ascending Lake St Peter with thirty-six Hurons and three Frenchmen in twelve canoes. His French companions were a labourer and two donnes--Rene Goupil, who, having had some hospital experience, was going to Ste Marie as a surgeon, and Guillaume Couture, a man of devotion, energy, and courage. The canoes bearing the party were threading the cl.u.s.tered islands at the western end of Lake St Peter, and had reached a spot where the thickly wooded sh.o.r.es were almost hidden from view by tall reeds that swayed in the summer wind, when suddenly out of the reeds darted a number of Iroquois warriors in canoes. The surprise was complete; three of the Hurons were killed on the spot, and Jogues, Goupil, and Couture, and twenty-two Hurons were taken prisoner. The raiders then plundered the canoes and set out southward, up the Richelieu, with their prisoners. At every stopping-place on the way Jogues and the donnes were brutally tortured; finally, in the Mohawk country they were dragged through the three chief towns of the nation, held up to ridicule, beaten with clubs, their fingers broken or lopped off, and their bodies burned with red-hot coals. Couture had slain a Mohawk warrior during the attack on Lake St Peter; but his courageous bearing so impressed the savages that one of them adopted him in place of a dead relative, and he thus escaped death. Goupil, after several months among the Mohawks, was brutally murdered. But Jogues"s life was providentially preserved, and during nearly a year, a year of intense suffering, he went among his persecutors glorying in the opportunity of preaching the Gospel under these hard conditions.
At length a fishing and trading party of Mohawks took him to the Dutch settlement at Fort Orange (Albany).
Already the Dutch authorities had tried in vain to gain his release. They now took advantage of his presence among them, generously braving the wrath of his tyrant masters, and aided him to escape. He found shelter on a Dutch vessel and finally succeeded in reaching France.
The story of his capture had arrived before him, and his brothers in France welcomed him as a saint and martyr, as one miraculously s.n.a.t.c.hed from the jaws of death. But he had no thought of remaining to enjoy the cloistered quiet and peace of a college in France; back to the hardships and dangers of North America his unconquerable spirit demanded that he should go. According to the rules of the Church he could not administer the sacraments with his mutilated hands; but, having obtained a special dispensation from the Pope, he once more fearlessly crossed the ocean, in search of the crown of martyrdom.
The next missionary to reach the Iroquois country was Father Joseph Bressani, an Italian priest who had been attracted to the Canadian mission-field through reading the Relations of the missionaries to Huronia. On April 27, 1644, with six Hurons and a French boy twelve years old, he set out from Three Rivers. It was thought that the Iroquois would not yet have reached the St Lawrence at this early time of the year; but this was an error, as the sequel proved. A party of twenty-seven warriors in ambush surprised Bressani and his fellow-travellers, slew several of the Hurons, and carried the rest with Bressani and the French boy to the Mohawk towns. Bressani they put to torture even more severe than that which Jogues had endured; not sparing the young lad, who manfully faced his tormentors till death freed him. Bressani escaped death only because an old squaw adopted him; but so mangled were his hands, so burned and broken was his body, that she deemed her slave of little value and sent him with her son to Fort Orange to be sold. The Dutch acted generously; paid a liberal ransom; and gave Bressani pa.s.sage on a Dutch vessel, which landed him at La Roch.e.l.le on November 15, 1644. But, like Jogues, his one thought was to return to New France; and in the following year we find him in Huronia, his mutilated hands, torn and broken by the enemies of the Hurons, mute but efficacious witnesses of his courage.
For a time the hopes of the Jesuits for a mission among the Iroquois were damped by the experiences of Jogues and Bressani. But in 1645 an incident took place that opened the way for an attempt to carry the Gospel to this savage people. A band of Algonquins captured several Mohawks and brought them to Sillery. The captives fully expected to be tortured and burned; but the Jesuits at Quebec and the governor, Montmagny, were desirous of winning the goodwill of the Iroquois. They persuaded the Algonquins to free the prisoners, then treated them kindly, and sent one of them home on the understanding that he would try to make peace between his people and the French and their allies. On the advice of Guillaume Couture, who was still among the Mohawks and was much esteemed and trusted by them, the Mohawks sent amba.s.sadors to Three Rivers to consult with the governor. The result was a temporary peace; the Mohawks agreed to bury the hatchet; and early in the following spring (1646) Montmagny decided to send to them a special messenger who might make the peace permanent and set up among them a mission.
Isaac Jogues, having returned to Canada after his brief rest in France, was now stationed at Ville Marie. His knowledge of the Mohawk language and character made him the most fitting person to send as envoy to the Mohawks, in the twofold capacity of diplomat and missionary. At first, as his sufferings rose before his mind, he shrank from the task, but only for a moment. He would go fearlessly to these people, though they lived in his memory only by the tortures they had inflicted on him. He set out; and on arriving at the Mohawk towns he found the savages friendly. Everywhere the Mohawks bade him welcome. They listened attentively to the message from the governor, and accepted the wampum belts and gifts which he bore.
Apparently the Mohawks were eager for the amity of the French. To both Jogues and Couture it seemed that at last the time was ripe for an Iroquois mission--the Mission of the Martyrs. Before saying farewell to the Mohawks Jogues left with his hosts, as a pledge that he would return, a locked box; and by the end of June he was back in Quebec to report the success of his journey. He then prepared to redeem his pledge to the Mohawks. He left Quebec towards the end of August, with a lay brother named Lalande and some Hurons. He had forebodings of death, for on the eve of the journey he wrote to a friend in France: Ibo et non redibo, I shall go and shall not return. Arrived at the Richelieu, he was told by some friendly Indians that the att.i.tude of the Mohawks had changed. They were in arms, and were once more breathing vengeance against the French and their allies. At this Jogues"s Huron companions deserted him, but he and Lalande pressed on to their destination. The alarm was only too well founded. The Mohawks at once crowded round them, scowling and threatening. They stripped Jogues and his comrade of their clothing, beat them, and repeated the tortures which Jogues had suffered four years before.
The innocent cause of this outbreak of Mohawk fury was the box which Jogues had left behind him. From this box, as the ignorant savages thought, had come the drought and a plague of gra.s.shoppers, which had destroyed the crops, and also the pest which was now raging in the Mohawk towns. Some Huron captives among the Mohawks, no doubt to win favour with their masters, had maligned Jogues, proclaiming him a sorcerer who had previously brought disaster to the Hurons, and had now come to destroy the Mohawks. Undoubtedly, they declared, it was from the box that had come all the ills which had befallen them. Jogues protested his innocence; but as well might he have tried to reason with a pack of wolves. They demanded his death, and the inevitable blow soon fell.
On the 18th of October, as he sat wounded and bruised and starving in a wigwam, a chief approached and bade him come to a feast. He knew what the invitation meant; it was a feast of death; but he calmly rose, his spirit steeled for the worst. His guide entered a wigwam and ordered him to follow; and, as he bent his head to enter, a savage concealed by the door cleft his skull with a tomahawk. On the following day Lalande shared a similar fate. Their heads were chopped off and placed on the palisades of the town, and their bodies thrown into the Mohawk river. The Mission of the Martyrs was at an end for the time being.
Ten years were to pa.s.s before missionary work was renewed among the Iroquois--ten years of disaster to the Jesuits and to the colony. In these years, as we have already seen, the Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals were destroyed or scattered, and the French and Indian settlements along the St Lawrence were continually in danger. There was no safety outside the fortified posts, and agriculture and trade were at a standstill. The year 1653 was particularly disastrous; a horde of Mohawks were abroad, hammering at the palisades of every settlement and spreading terror even in the strongly guarded towns of Ville Marie, Three Rivers, and Quebec. But light broke when all seemed darkest. The western Iroquois--the Oneidas, Onondagas, and Senecas--were at war with the Eries. While thus engaged it seemed to them good policy to make peace with the French, and they dispatched an emba.s.sy to Ville Marie to open negotiations. The Mohawks, too, fearing that their western kinsmen might gain some advantage over them, sent messengers to New France. A grand council was held at Quebec. But even while making peace the Iroquois were intent on war. They desired nothing short of the utter extermination of the Huron nation, and viewed with jealousy the Huron settlement under the wing of the French on the island of Orleans. Both Onondagas and Mohawks plotted to destroy this community. The proposed peace was merely a ruse to open a way to attack the Hurons in order to kill them or to adopt them into the Five Nations, which, on account of losses in war, needed recruits. The Mohawks requested that the Hurons be removed to the Mohawk villages; the Onondagas stipulated for a French colony in their country, in the hope that the Hurons would be attracted to such a settlement, and that then both French and Hurons would be in their power. The governor of New France, now Jean de Lauzon, a weak old man who thought more of the profits of the fur trade and of land-grants for himself and his family than of the welfare of the colony, knew not how to act. A negative answer he dared not give; and he equally feared the effect of a definite promise. On the one hand was the certainty that war would break out again in all its fury; on the other the equal certainty that the fate which had befallen the Hurons in Huronia would almost inevitably overtake the poor remnant of Christian Hurons whom it was his duty to protect.
The Jesuits, however, were anxious to labour among the Iroquois, and at their request the governor adopted a temporizing policy. Before giving a final reply it was deemed wise to send an amba.s.sador to the Five Nations to spy out the land and confirm the peace. This dangerous task was a.s.signed to the veteran missionary Father Simon Le Moyne. In the spring of 1654 Le Moyne visited the Onondagas. His diplomacy and eloquence succeeded with them, but the Mohawks still continued their raids on the settlements. Nevertheless in 1655 the Mohawks again sent messengers to Quebec professing friendship. Le Moyne once more took up the task of diplomat and journeyed to the Mohawk country in the hope of making a binding treaty with the fiercest and most inveterate foes of New France.
In this same year a large deputation of Onondagas arrived at Quebec. They wished the French to take immediate action and establish a mission and colony in their midst. Once more their sincerity seemed doubtful; and Fathers Chaumonot and Dablon were dispatched to Onondaga to ascertain the temper and disposition of the Indians there. After spending the winter of 1655-56 in the country, where they had conferences in the great council-house of the Five Nations with representatives of all the tribes, the two fathers believed that the time was ripe for a mission. A colony, too, in their judgment, would be advisable; it would serve at once as a centre of civilization for the Iroquois and a barrier against the Dutch and English of New York, who hitherto had monopolized the trade of the Iroquois.
In the spring of 1656 Dablon returned to Quebec to advise the governor to accept the terms of the Onondagas, while Chaumonot remained at Onondaga to watch over his new flock both as missionary and as political agent.
An expedition, the entire expense of which fell on the Jesuits, was at once fitted out. The town major of Quebec, Zachary du Puys, took military command of the party, which consisted of ten soldiers, thirty or forty white labourers, four Jesuit fathers--Menard, Le Mercier, Dablon, and Fremin--two lay brothers, and a number of Hurons, Senecas, and Onondagas. On the 17th of May the colonists left Quebec in two large boats and twelve canoes. They began their journey with forebodings as to their fate, for the Mohawks were once more haunting the St Lawrence. Scarcely had Du Puys and his men pa.s.sed out of sight of Quebec when they were attacked. The Mohawks, however, pretended that they had supposed the party to be Hurons, expressed regret for the attack, and allowed the expedition to proceed. At Montreal the boats were discarded in favour of canoes for the difficult navigation of the upper St Lawrence. Save for Le Moyne, Chaumonot, and Dablon, these colonists were the first whites to ascend the St Lawrence between Montreal and Lake Ontario; the first to toil up against the current of those swift waters and to portage past the turbulent rapids; the first to view the varied beauty of the lordly river, its broad stretches of sparkling blue waters, its fairyland mazes of islands, and its great forests rising everywhere from the sh.o.r.e to the horizon. At length they reached Lake Ontario and skirted its southern sh.o.r.e until they entered the Oswego river. Ascending this river they were met by Chaumonot and an Onondaga delegation. On Lake Onondaga the canoes formed four abreast behind the canoe of the leader, from which streamed a white silk flag with the name Jesus woven on it in letters of gold. Then, with measured stroke of paddle and song of praise, the flotilla swept ash.o.r.e to the site which Chaumonot had chosen for the headquarters of the colony. Here, from the crest of a low hill, commanding a beautiful view of one of the most picturesque of inland lakes, they cleared the trees and erected a commodious and substantial house, with smaller buildings about it, all enclosed in the usual palisade.
The Jesuits announced that they had come not as traders but as "messengers of G.o.d," seeking no profit; and they began work under most favourable conditions. Owing to Chaumonot"s exertions the Onondagas seemed genuinely friendly. The fathers, too, found in every village many adopted Hurons, from their old missions in Huronia, who still professed Christianity. Indeed, one whole village was composed largely of Hurons and Petuns. The mission was not confined to the Onondagas; the Cayugas, Senecas, and Oneidas were included; and the new field seemed rich in promise.
But it soon became evident that the fickle Iroquois were not to be trusted. The Mohawks continued their raids on the Hurons at Quebec and carried off captives from under the very walls of Fort St Louis. Learning of this, the Onondagas sent an expedition to Quebec to demand that some Hurons should be given to them also, and the weak administrator of the colony, Charles de Lauzon-Charny, being too cowardly to resist, complied with this demand.
On the way back to Onondaga the Indians slew some of the captives. On arriving at home they tortured and burned others, among them women and helpless children. The colonists at Onondaga frequently witnessed such scenes, but they were powerless to interfere. Presently they learned that it was with evil intentions that they had been invited to Onondaga. A statement made to one of the missionaries by a dying convert served only to confirm the rumour already current, namely, that the death of the colonists had been decreed from the first, and that the Jesuits were to meet the fate which had befallen Jogues and their brothers in Huronia.
Prompt action was necessary. Orders were sent to the missionaries in the outlying points to return to headquarters, and towards the end of March the colonists, fifty-three in all, were behind the palisades of their houses on Lake Onondaga. But they had slight chance of escape, for they had not canoes enough to carry more than half the party. Moreover, they were closely watched: Onondaga warriors had pitched their wigwams about the palisades and several had stationed themselves immediately in front of the gate. The greatest need of the French, however, being adequate means of transportation, they addressed themselves to this problem. In the princ.i.p.al dwelling was a large garret, and here they built two strong boats, each capable of bearing fifteen men. But the difficulty still remained of getting these boats to the lake without the knowledge of the savages.
Among the colonists was a young man, Pierre Esprit Radisson, who three years before had been a prisoner among the Iroquois and who was afterwards to figure prominently in the history of the Canadian wilderness.
He was unscrupulous but resourceful; and on this occasion his talents came into good use. He knew the Indians well and he knew that they could not resist a feast, especially a feast of a semi-religious character. He persuaded a young man of the mission to feign illness and to invite the Onondagas to aid in his cure by attending a festin a manger tout--a feast where everything must be eaten.
To sanction this no doubt went much against the grain of the Jesuits, who had been upbraiding the Indians for their superst.i.tion and gluttony; but in this case the end seemed a.s.suredly to justify the means. The Onondagas attended the banquet. In huge iron pots slung over fires outside the gate of the palisades the French boiled an immense quant.i.ty of venison, game, fish, and corn. They had brought with them to the colony a number of hogs, and these they slew to add to the feast. The Indians squatted about the kettles, from which the soldiers, employees, and fathers ladled the food; as fast as a warrior"s dish was emptied it was refilled; and when a reveller signified that he had eaten enough, the pretended invalid cried out: "Would you have me die?" and once more the gorged Onondaga fell to. To add to the entertainment, some of the Frenchmen, who had brought violins to the wilderness, fiddled with might and main. At length the gluttony began to take the desired effect: one after another the Onondagas dropped to sleep to the soothing music of the violins. Then, when brute slumber had sealed the eyes of all, the colonists roused themselves for flight. Some one, probably Radisson, suggested that they were fifty-three wide-awake Frenchmen to one hundred sleeping savages, and that it would be easy to brain their enemies as they slept; but the Jesuits would not sanction such a course. The Frenchmen threw open the gate, and carried the boats from the garret to the lakeside. They put up effigies of soldiers at conspicuous points within the enclosure, barred and locked the gate, and launched the vessels. They had swept across the lake and were well down the Oswego before day had dawned and the Indians had awakened from their heavy slumber.
When the Onondagas recovered consciousness they were surprised at the deathlike stillness. They peered through the palisades; and, seeing the effigies of the soldiers, believed that their intended victims were within. But no sounds except the clucking and crowing of some fowls fell on their ears. They became suspicious and hammered at the gate; and, when there was no answer, broke it down in fury, only to find the place deserted. An examination of the sh.o.r.e showed that heavy boats had been launched a few hours before. Believing that the powerful G.o.d of the white man was in league with the colonists, and had supplied them with these boats, the savages made no attempt to follow the fugitives, who, after sustaining the loss of three men in the rapids of the St Lawrence, reached Quebec on the 23rd of April.
For another decade no further effort was to be made to civilize and christianize the Iroquois. During this period, however, a radical and much-needed change took place in the government of New France. Hitherto chartered companies had been in control, and their aim had been trade, not colonization. Until 1663 Canada remained a trading station and a mission rather than a true colony.
But in this year the king, Louis XIV, cancelled the charter of the Hundred a.s.sociates, proclaimed the colony under royal government, and sent out strong men from the motherland to govern the country.
It was not long before the Iroquois began to feel the resistance of new forces in the settlements along the St Lawrence; and in 1665, when a strong regiment of veterans, the Carignan-Salieres, under the Marquis de Tracy, landed in New France, the Iroquois who had been smiting the settlements slunk away to their fortified towns. In January 1666 Courcelle, the governor, invaded the Mohawk country; and though his expedition was a failure, it served as a warning to the Five Nations. In May Senecas and Mohawks came to Quebec to treat for peace. They a.s.sumed their ancient haughty air; but Tracy was in no mood for this. He sentenced to death a Mohawk who had the boldness to boast of having tomahawked a Frenchman, and dismissed the amba.s.sadors with angry words. The Indians, discomfited, returned to their strongholds. At their heels followed Tracy and Courcelle with thirteen hundred men. At the approach of this army the Mohawks deserted their villages and escaped death. But the French set fire to the villages and desolated the Mohawk country.
In the spring of 1667 the Mohawks came to Quebec humbly begging that missionaries, blacksmiths, and surgeons should be sent to live among them. The other tribes of the Five Nations followed their example. Once more the Jesuits went to the Iroquois and established missions among the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, and Senecas.
For twenty years the devoted fathers laboured in this hard field. During the administrations of the governors Courcelle and Frontenac the Iroquois remained peaceable, but they became restless after the removal of Frontenac in 1682. The succeeding governors, La Barre and Denonville, proved weak rulers, and the Mohawks began once more to send war-parties against the settlements. At length, in 1687, open war broke out. The missionaries, however, had been withdrawn from the Iroquois country, just in time to escape the fury of the savages.
Not in vain did the Jesuits labour among the Five Nations.
They made numerous converts, and persuaded many of them to move to Canada. Communities of Christian Iroquois and Hurons who had been adopted by the Five Nations settled near the Bay of Quinte, at La Montagne on the island of Montreal, and at Caughnawaga by the rapids of Lachine.
The large settlements of "praying Indians" still living at Caughnawaga and at St Regis, near Cornwall, are descendants of these Indians.