Immediately after, there was trouble with the Ottawas, who became turbulent and threatening, and refused to proceed. With much ado, they were persuaded to go as far as Niagara, being lured by the rash assurance of La Durantaye that three vessels were there, loaded with a present of guns for them. They carried their canoes by the cataract, launched them again, paddled to the mouth of the river, and looked for the vessels in vain. At length a solitary sail appeared on the lake. She brought no guns, but instead a letter from La Barre, telling them that peace was made, and that they might all go home. Some of them had paddled already a thousand miles, in the hope of seeing the Senecas humbled. They turned back in disgust, filled with wrath and scorn against the governor and all the French. Canada had incurred the contempt, not only of enemies, but of allies. There was danger that these tribes would repudiate the French alliance, welcome the English traders, make peace at any price with the Iroquois, and carry their beaver skins to Albany instead of Montreal.

The treaty made at La Famine was greeted with contumely through all the colony. The governor found, however, a comforter in the Jesuit Lamberville, who stood fast in the position which he had held from the beginning. He wrote to La Barre: "You deserve the title of saviour of the country for making peace at so critical a time. In the condition in which your army was, you could not have advanced into the Seneca country without utter defeat. The Senecas had double palisades, which could not have been forced without great loss. Their plan was to keep three hundred men inside, and to perpetually harass you with twelve hundred others. All the Iroquois were to collect together, and fire only at the legs of your people, so as to master them, and burn them at their leisure, and then, after having thinned their numbers by a hundred ambuscades in the woods and grass, to pursue you in your retreat even to Montreal, and spread desolation around it." [Footnote: Lamberville to La Barre, 9 Oct., 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 260.] La Barre was greatly pleased with this letter, and made use of it to justify himself to the king. His colleague, Meules, on the other hand, declared that Lamberville, anxious to make favor with the governor, had written only what La Barre wished to hear. The intendant also informs the minister that La Barre's excuses are a mere pretence; that everybody is astonished and disgusted with him; that the sickness of the troops was his own fault, because he kept them encamped on wet ground for an unconscionable length of time; that Big Mouth shamefully befooled and bullied him; that, after the council at La Famine, he lost his wits, and went off in a fright; that, since the return of the troops, the officers have openly expressed their contempt for him; and that the people would have risen against him, if he, Meules, had not taken measures to quiet them. [Footnote: Meules au Ministre, 10 Oct., 1684.] These, with many other charges, flew across the sea from the pen of the intendant.

The next ship from France brought the following letter from the king:—

MONSIEUR DE LA BARRE,—Having been informed that your years do not permit you to support the fatigues inseparable from your office of governor and lieutenant-general in Canada, I send you this letter to acquaint you that I have selected Monsieur de Denonville to serve in your place; and my intention is that, on his arrival, after resigning to him the command, with all instructions concerning it, you embark for your return to France.

Louis.

La Barre sailed for home; and the Marquis de Denonville, a pious colonel of dragoons, assumed the vacant office.

[1] Sir John Werden to Dongan, 4 Dec., 1684; N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 353. Werden was the duke's secretary.

Dongan has been charged with instigating the Iroquois to attack the French. The Jesuit Lamberville, writing from Onondaga, says, on the contrary, that he hears that the "governor of New England (New York), when the Mohawk chiefs asked him to continue the sale of powder to them, replied that it should be continued so long as they would not make war on Christians." Lamberville a La Barre, 10 Fev., 1684.

The French ambassador at London complained that Dongan excited the Iroquois to war, and Dongan denied the charge. N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 506, 509.

[2] The famous voyageur, Nicolas Perrot, agrees with the intendant. "Ils (La Barre et ses associes) s'imaginerent que silost que le Francois viendroit a paroistre, l'Irroquois luy demanderoit misericorde, quil seroit facile d'establir des magasins, construire des barques dans le lac Ontario, et que c'estoil un moyen de trouver des richesses." Memoire sur les Moeurs, Coustumes, et Religion des Sauvages, chap. xxi.

The Sulpitian, Abbe Belmont, says that the avarice of the merchants was the cause of the war; that they and La Barre wished to prevent the Iroquois from interrupting trade; and that La Barre aimed at an indemnity for the sixteen hundred livres in merchandise which the Senecas had taken from his canoes early in the year. Belmont adds that he wanted to bring them to terms without fighting.



CHAPTER VII.

1685-1687.

DENONVILLE AND DONGAN.

TROUBLES OF THE NEW GOVERNOR.—HIS CHARACTER.—ENGLISH RIVALRY.— INTRIGUES OF DONGAN.—ENGLISH CLAIMS.—A DIPLOMATIC DUEL.—OVERT ACTS.—ANGER OF DENONVILLE.—JAMES II. CHECKS DONGAN.—DENONVILLE EMBOLDENED.—STRIFE IN THE NORTH.—HUDSON'S BAY.—ATTEMPTED PACIFICATION.—ARTIFICE OF DENONVILLE.—HE PREPARES FOR WAR.

Denonville embarked at Rochelle in June, with his wife and a part of his family. Saint-Vallier, the destined bishop, was in the same vessel; and the squadron carried five hundred soldiers, of whom a hundred and fifty died of fever and scurvy on the way. Saint-Vallier speaks in glowing terms of the new governor. "He spent nearly all his time in prayer and the reading of good books. The Psalms of David were always in his hands. In all the voyage, I never saw him do any thing wrong; and there was nothing in his words or acts which did not show a solid virtue and a consummate prudence, as well in the duties of the Christian life as in the wisdom of this world." [Footnote: Saint-Vallier, Etat Present de l'Eglise, 4 (Quebec, 1856).]

When they landed, the nuns of the Hotel-Dieu were overwhelmed with the sick. "Not only our halls, but our church, our granary, our hen-yard, and every corner of the hospital where we could make room, were filled with them." [Footnote: Juchereau, Hotel-Dieu, 283.]

Much was expected of Denonville. He was to repair the mischief wrought by his predecessor, and restore the colony to peace, strength, and security. The king had stigmatized La Barre's treaty with the Iroquois as disgraceful, and expressed indignation at his abandonment of the Illinois allies. All this was now to be changed; but it was easier to give the order at Versailles than to execute it in Canada. Denonville's difficulties were great; and his means of overcoming them were small. What he most needed was more troops and more money. The Senecas, insolent and defiant, were still attacking the Illinois; the tribes of the north-west were angry, contemptuous, and disaffected; the English of New York were urging claims to the whole country south of the Great Lakes, and to a controlling share in all the western fur trade; while the English of Hudson's Bay were competing for the traffic of the northern tribes, and the English of New England were seizing upon the fisheries of Acadia, and now and then making piratical descents upon its coast. The great question lay between New York and Canada. Which of these two should gain mastery in the west?

Denonville, like Frontenac, was a man of the army and the court. As a soldier, he had the experience of thirty years of service; and he was in high repute, not only for piety, but for probity and honor. He was devoted to the Jesuits, an ardent servant of the king, a lover of authority, filled with the instinct of subordination and order, and, in short, a type of the ideas, religious, political, and social, then dominant in France. He was greatly distressed at the disturbed condition of the colony; while the state of the settlements, scattered in broken lines for two or three hundred miles along the St. Lawrence, seemed to him an invitation to destruction. "If we have a war," he wrote, "nothing can save the country but a miracle of God."

Nothing was more likely than war. Intrigues were on foot between the Senecas and the tribes of the lakes, which threatened to render the appeal to arms a necessity to the French. Some of the Hurons of Michillimackinac were bent on allying themselves with the English. "They like the manners of the French," wrote Denonville; "but they like the cheap goods of the English better." The Senecas, in collusion with several Huron chiefs, had captured a considerable number of that tribe and of the Ottawas. The scheme was that these prisoners should be released, on condition that the lake tribes should join the Senecas and repudiate their alliance with the French. [Footnote: Denonville au Ministre, 12 Juin, 1686.] The governor of New York favored this intrigue to the utmost.

Denonville was quick to see that the peril of the colony rose, not from the Iroquois alone, but from the English of New York, who prompted them. Dongan understood the situation. He saw that the French aimed at mastering the whole interior of the continent. They had established themselves in the valley of the Illinois, had built a fort on the lower Mississippi, and were striving to entrench themselves at its mouth. They occupied the Great Lakes—and it was already evident that, as soon as their resources should permit, they would seize the avenues of communication throughout the west. In short, the grand scheme of French colonization had begun to declare itself. Dongan entered the lists against them. If his policy should prevail, New France would dwindle to a feeble province on the St. Lawrence: if the French policy should prevail, the English colonies would remain a narrow strip along the sea. Dongan's cause was that of all these colonies; but they all stood aloof, and left him to wage the strife alone. Canada was matched against New York, or rather against the governor of New York. The population of the English colony was larger than that of its rival; but, except the fur traders, few of the settlers cared much for the questions at issue. [Footnote: New York had about 18,000 inhabitants (Brodhead, Hist. N. Y., II. 458). Canada, by the census of 1685, had 12,263.] Dongan's chief difficulty, however, rose from the relations of the French and English kings. Louis XIV. gave Denonville an unhesitating support. James II., on the other hand, was for a time cautious to timidity. The two monarchs were closely united. Both hated constitutional liberty, and both held the same principles of supremacy in church and state; but Louis was triumphant and powerful, while James, in conflict with his subjects, was in constant need of his great ally, and dared not offend him.

The royal instructions to Denonville enjoined him to humble the Iroquois, sustain the allies of the colony, oppose the schemes of Dongan, and treat him as an enemy, if he encroached on French territory. At the same time, the French ambassador at the English court was directed to demand from James II. precise orders to the governor of New York for a complete change of conduct in regard to Canada and the Iroquois. [Footnote: Seignelay to Barillon, French Ambassador at London, in N. Y. Col. Docs., LX. 269.] But Dongan, like the French governors, was not easily controlled. In the absence of money and troops, he intrigued busily with his Indian neighbors. "The artifices of the English," wrote Denonville, "have reached such a point that it would be better if they attacked us openly and burned our settlements, instead of instigating the Iroquois against us for our destruction. I know beyond a particle of doubt that M. Dongan caused all the five Iroquois nations to be assembled last spring at Orange (Albany), in order to excite them against us, by telling them publicly that I meant to declare war against them." He says, further, that Dongan supplies them with arms and ammunition, incites them to attack the colony, and urges them to deliver Lamberville, the priest at Onondaga, into his hands. "He has sent people, at the same time, to our Montreal Indians to entice them over to him, promising them missionaries to instruct them, and assuring them that he would prevent the introduction of brandy into their villages. All these intrigues have given me not a little trouble throughout the summer. M. Dongan has written to me, and I have answered him as a man may do who wishes to dissimulate and does not feel strong enough to get angry." [Footnote: Denonville a Seigneloy, 8 Nov., 1686.]

Denonville, accordingly, while biding his time, made use of counter intrigues, and, by means of the useful Lamberville, freely distributed secret or "underground" presents among the Iroquois chiefs; while the Jesuit Engelran was busy at Michillimackinac in adroit and vigorous efforts to prevent the alienation of the Hurons, Ottawas, and other lake tribes. The task was difficult; and, filled with anxiety, the father came down to Montreal to see the governor, "and communicate to me," writes Denonville, "the deplorable state of affairs with our allies, whom we can no longer trust, owing to the discredit into which we have fallen among them, and from which we cannot recover, except by gaining some considerable advantage over the Iroquois; who, as I have had the honor to inform you, have labored incessantly since last autumn to rob us of all our allies, by using every means to make treaties with them independently of us. You may be assured, Monseigneur, that the English are the chief cause of the arrogance and insolence of the Iroquois, adroitly using them to extend the limits of their dominion and uniting with them as one nation, insomuch that the English claims include no less than the Lakes Ontario and Erie, the region of Saginaw (Michigan), the country of the Hurons, and all the country in the direction of the Mississippi." [Footnote: Denonville a Seignelay, 12 Juin, 1686.]

The most pressing danger was the defection of the lake tribes. "In spite of the king's edicts," pursues Denonville, "the coureurs de bois have carried a hundred barrels of brandy to Michillimackinac in a single year; and their libertinism and debauchery have gone to such an extremity that it is a wonder the Indians have not massacred them all to save themselves from their violence and recover their wives and daughters from them. This, Monseigneur, joined to our failure in the last war, has drawn upon us such contempt among all the tribes that there is but one way to regain our credit, which is to humble the Iroquois by our unaided strength, without asking the help of our Indian allies." [Footnote: Ibid.] And he begs hard for a strong reinforcement of troops.

Without doubt, Denonville was right in thinking that the chastising of the Iroquois, or at least the Senecas, the head and front of mischief, was a matter of the last necessity. A crushing blow dealt against them would restore French prestige, paralyze English intrigue, save the Illinois from destruction, and confirm the wavering allies of Canada. Meanwhile, matters grew from bad to worse. In the north and in the west, there was scarcely a tribe in the French interest which was not either attacked by the Senecas or cajoled by them into alliances hostile to the colony. "We may set down Canada as lost," again writes Denonville, "if we do not make war next year; and yet, in our present disordered state, war is the most dangerous thing in the world. Nothing can save us but the sending out of troops and the building of forts and blockhouses. Yet I dare not begin to build them; for, if I do, it will bring down all the Iroquois upon us before we are in a condition to fight them."

Nevertheless, he made what preparations he could, begging all the while for more soldiers, and carrying on at the same time a correspondence with his rival, Dongan. At first, it was courteous on both sides; but it soon grew pungent, and at last acrid. Denonville wrote to announce his arrival, and Dongan replied in French: "Sir, I have had the honor of receiving your letter, and greatly rejoice at having so good a neighbor, whose reputation is so widely spread that it has anticipated your arrival. I have a very high respect for the king of France, of whose bread I have eaten so much that I feel under an obligation to prevent whatever can give the least umbrage to our masters. M. de la Barre is a very worthy gentleman, but he has not written to me in a civil and befitting style." [Footnote: Dongan to Denonville, 13 Oct., 1685, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX, 292.]

Denonville replied with many compliments: "I know not what reason you may have had to be dissatisfied with M. de la Barre; but I know very well that I should reproach myself all my life if I could fail to render to you all the civility and attention due to a person of so great rank and merit. In regard to the affair in which M. de la Barre interfered, as you write me, I presume you refer to his quarrel with the Senecas. As to that, Monsieur, I believe you understand the character of that nation well enough to perceive that it is not easy to live in friendship with a people, who have neither religion, nor honor, nor subordination. The king, my master, entertains affection and friendship for this country solely through zeal for the establishment of religion here, and the support and protection of the missionaries whose ardor in preaching the faith leads them to expose themselves to the brutalities and persecutions of the most ferocious of tribes. You know better than I what fatigues and torments they have suffered for the sake of Jesus Christ. I know your heart is penetrated with the glory of that name which makes Hell tremble, and at the mention of which all the powers of Heaven fall prostrate. Shall we be so unhappy as to refuse them our master's protection? You are a man of rank and abounding in merit. You love our holy religion. Can we not then come to an understanding to sustain our missionaries by keeping those fierce tribes in respect and fear?" [Footnote: Denonville to Dongan, 5 Juin, 1686, N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 456.]

This specious appeal for maintaining French Jesuits on English territory, or what was claimed as such, was lost on Dongan, Catholic as he was. He regarded them as dangerous political enemies, and did his best to expel them, and put English priests in their place. Another of his plans was to build a fort at Niagara, to exclude the French from Lake Erie. Denonville entertained the same purpose, in order to exclude the English; and he watched eagerly the moment to execute it. A rumor of the scheme was brought to Dongan by one of the French coureurs de bois, who often deserted to Albany, where they were welcomed and encouraged. The English governor was exceedingly wroth. He had written before in French out of complaisance. He now dispensed with ceremony, and wrote in his own peculiar English: "I am informed that you intend to build a fort at Ohniagero (Niagara) on this side of the lake, within my Master's territoryes without question. I cannot beleev that a person that has your reputation in the world would follow the steps of Monsr. Labarr, and be ill advized by some interested persons in your Governt. to make disturbance between our Masters subjects in those parts of the world for a little pelttree (peltry). I hear one of the Fathers (the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville) is gone to you, and th'other that stayed (Jacques de Lamberville) I have sent for him here lest the Indians should insult over him, tho' it's a thousand pittys that those that have made such progress in the service of God should be disturbed, and that by the fault of those that laid the foundation of Christianity amongst these barbarous people; setting apart the station I am in, I am as much Monsr. Des Novilles (Denonville's) humble servant as any friend he has, and will ommit no opportunity of manifesting the same. Sir, your humble servant, Thomas Dongan." [Footnote: Dongan to Denonville, 22 May, 1686, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 455.]

Denonville in reply denied that he meant to build a fort at Niagara, and warned Dongan not to believe the stories told him by French deserters. "In order," he wrote, "that we may live on a good understanding, it would be well that a gentleman of your character should not give protection to all the rogues, vagabonds, and thieves who desert us and seek refuge with you, and who, to gain your favor, think they cannot do better than tell nonsensical stories about us, which they will continue to do so long as you listen to them." [Footnote: Denonville a Dongan, 20 Juin, 1686.] The rest of the letter was in terms of civility, to which Dongan returned: "Beleive me it is much joy to have soe good a neighbour of soe excellent qualifications and temper, and of a humour altogether differing from Monsieur de la Barre, your predecessor, who was so furious and hasty and very much addicted to great words, as if I had bin to have bin frighted by them. For my part, I shall take all immaginable care that the Fathers who preach the Holy Gospell to those Indians over whom I have power bee not in the least ill treated, and upon that very accompt have sent for one of each nation to come to me, and then those beastly crimes you reproove shall be checked severely, and all my endevours used to surpress their filthy drunkennesse, disorders, debauches, warring, and quarrels, and whatsoever doth obstruct the growth and enlargement of the Christian faith amongst those people." He then, in reply to an application of Denonville, promised to give up "runawayes." [Footnote: Dongan to Denonville, 26 July, 1686, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 460.]

Promise was not followed by performance; and he still favored to the utmost the truant Frenchmen who made Albany their resort, and often brought with them most valuable information. This drew an angry letter from Denonville. "You were so good, Monsieur, as to tell me that you would give up all the deserters who have fled to you to escape chastisement for their knavery. As most of them are bankrupts and thieves, I hope that they will give you reason to repent having harbored them, and that your merchants who employ them will be punished for trusting such rascals." [Footnote: Denonville a Dongan, 1 Oct., 1686.] To the great wrath of the French governor, Dongan persisted in warning the Iroquois that he meant to attack them. "You proposed, Monsieur," writes Denonville, "to submit every thing to the decision of our masters. Nevertheless, your emissary to the Onondagas told all the Five Nations in your name to pillage and make war on us." Next, he berates his rival for furnishing the Indians with rum. "Think you that religion will make any progress, while your traders supply the savages in abundance with the liquor which, as you ought to know, converts them into demons and their lodges into counterparts of Hell?"

"Certainly," retorts Dongan, "our Rum doth as little hurt as your Brandy, and, in the opinion of Christians, is much more wholesome." [Footnote: Dongan to Denonville, 1 Dec., 1686, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 462.]

Each tried incessantly to out-general the other. Denonville, steadfast in his plan of controlling the passes of the western country, had projected forts, not only at Niagara, but also at Toronto, on Lake Erie, and on the Strait of Detroit. He thought that a time had come when he could, without rashness, secure this last important passage; and he sent an order to Du Lhut, who was then at Michillimackinac, to occupy it with fifty coureurs de bois. [Footnote: Denonville a Du Lhut, 6 Juin, 1686.] That enterprising chief accordingly repaired to Detroit, and built a stockade at the outlet of Lake Huron on the western side of the strait. It was not a moment too soon. The year before, Dongan had sent a party of armed traders in eleven canoes, commanded by Johannes Rooseboom, a Dutchman of Albany, to carry English goods to the upper lakes. They traded successfully, winning golden opinions from the Indians, who begged them to come every year; and, though Denonville sent an officer to stop them at Niagara, they returned in triumph, after an absence of three months. [Footnote: Brodhead, Hist. of New York, II. 429; Denonville au Ministre, 8 Mai, 1686.] A larger expedition was organized in the autumn of 1686. Rooseboom again set out for the lakes with twenty or more canoes. He was to winter among the Senecas, and wait the arrival of Major McGregory, a Scotch officer, who was to leave Albany in the spring with fifty men, take command of the united parties, and advance to Lake Huron, accompanied by a band of Iroquois, to form a general treaty of trade and alliance with the tribes claimed by France as her subjects. [Footnote: Brodhead, Hist. of New York, II. 443; Commission of McGregory, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 318.]

Denonville was beside himself at the news. He had already urged upon Louis XIV. the policy of buying the colony of New York, which he thought might easily be done, and which, as he said, "would make us masters of the Iroquois without a war." This time he wrote in a less pacific mood: "I have a mind to go straight to Albany, storm their fort, and burn every thing." [Footnote: Denonville au Ministre, 16 Nov., 1686.] And he begged for soldiers more earnestly than ever. "Things grow worse and worse. The English stir up the Iroquois against us, and send parties to Michillimackinac to rob us of our trade. It would be better to declare war against them than to perish by their intrigues." [Footnote: Ibid., 15 Oct., 1686.]

He complained bitterly to Dongan, and Dongan replied: "I beleeve it is as lawfull for the English as the French to trade amongst the remotest Indians. I desire you to send me word who it was that pretended to have my orders for the Indians to plunder and fight you. That is as false as 'tis true that God is in heaven. I have desired you to send for the deserters. I know not who they are but had rather such Rascalls and Bankrouts, as you call them, were amongst their own countrymen." [Footnote: Dongan to Denonville, 1 Dec., 1686; Ibid., 20 June, 1687, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 462, 465.]

He had, nevertheless, turned them to good account; for, as the English knew nothing of western geography, they employed these French bush-rangers to guide their trading parties. Denonville sent orders to Du Lhut to shoot as many of them as he could catch.

Dongan presently received despatches from the English court, which showed him the necessity of caution; and, when next he wrote to his rival, it was with a chastened pen: "I hope your Excellency will be so kinde as not desire or seeke any correspondence with our Indians of this side of the Great lake (Ontario): if they doe amisse to any of your Governmt. and you make it known to me, you shall have all justice done." He complained mildly that the Jesuits were luring their Iroquois converts to Canada; "and you must pardon me if I tell you that is not the right way to keepe fair correspondence. I am daily expecting Religious men from England, which I intend to put amongst those five nations. I desire you would order Monsr. de Lamberville that soe long as he stayes amongst those people he would meddle only with the affairs belonging to his function. Sir, I send you some Oranges, hearing that they are a rarity in your partes." [Footnote: Dongan to Denonville, 20 Juin, 1687, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 465.]

"Monsieur," replies Denonville, "I thank you for your oranges. It is a great pity that they were all rotten."

The French governor, unlike his rival, felt strong in the support of his king, who had responded amply to his appeals for aid; and the temper of his letters answered to his improved position. "I was led, Monsieur, to believe, by your civil language in the letter you took the trouble to write me on my arrival, that we should live in the greatest harmony in the world; but the result has plainly shown that your intentions did not at all answer to your fine words." And he upbraids him without measure for his various misdeeds: "Take my word for it. Let us devote ourselves to the accomplishment of our masters' will; let us seek, as they do, to serve and promote religion; let us live together in harmony, as they desire. I repeat and protest, Monsieur, that it rests with you alone; but do not imagine that I am a man to suffer others to play tricks on me. I willingly believe that you have not ordered the Iroquois to plunder our Frenchmen; but, whilst I have the honor to write to you, you know that Salvaye, Gedeon Petit, and many other rogues and bankrupts like them, are with you, and boast of sharing your table. I should not be surprised that you tolerate them in your country; but I am astonished that you should promise me not to tolerate them, that you so promise me again, and that you perform nothing of what you promise. Trust me, Monsieur, make no promise that you are not willing to keep." [Footnote: Denonville a Dongan, 21 Aug., 1687; Ibid., no date (1687).]

Denonville, vexed and perturbed by his long strife with Dongan and the Iroquois, presently found a moment of comfort in tidings that reached him from the north. Here, as in the west, there was violent rivalry between the subjects of the two crowns. With the help of two French renegades, named Radisson and Groseilliers, the English Company of Hudson's Bay, then in its infancy, had established a post near the mouth of Nelson River, on the western shore of that dreary inland sea. The company had also three other posts, called Fort Albany, Fort Hayes, and Fort Rupert, at the southern end of the bay. A rival French company had been formed in Canada, under the name of the Company of the North; and it resolved on an effort to expel its English competitors. Though it was a time of profound peace between the two kings, Denonville warmly espoused the plan; and, in the early spring of 1686, he sent the Chevalier de Troyes from Montreal, with eighty or more Canadians, to execute it. [Footnote: The Compagnie du Nord had a grant of the trade of Hudson's Bay from Louis XIV. The bay was discovered by the English, under Hudson; but the French had carried on some trade there before the establishment of Fort Nelson. Denonville's commission to Troyes merely directs him to build forts, and "se saisir des voleurs coureurs de bois et autres que nous savons avoir pris et arrete plusieurs de nos Francois commercants avec les sauvages."] With Troyes went Iberville, Sainte-Helene, and Maricourt, three of the sons of Charles Le Moyne; and the Jesuit Silvy joined the party as chaplain.

They ascended the Ottawa, and thence, from stream to stream and lake to lake, toiled painfully towards their goal. At length, they neared Fort Hayes. It was a stockade with four bastions, mounted with cannon. There was a strong blockhouse within, in which the sixteen occupants of the place were lodged, unsuspicious of danger. Troyes approached at night. Iberville and Sainte-Helene with a few followers climbed the palisade on one side, while the rest of the party burst the main gate with a sort of battering ram, and rushed in, yelling the war-whoop. In a moment, the door of the blockhouse was dashed open, and its astonished inmates captured in their shirts.

The victors now embarked for Fort Rupert, distant forty leagues along the shore. In construction, it resembled Fort Hayes. The fifteen traders who held the place were all asleep at night in their blockhouse, when the Canadians burst the gate of the stockade and swarmed into the area. One of them mounted by a ladder to the roof of the building, and dropped lighted hand-grenades down the chimney, which, exploding among the occupants, told them unmistakably that something was wrong. At the same time, the assailants fired briskly on them through the loopholes, and, placing a petard under the walls, threatened to blow them into the air. Five, including a woman, were killed or wounded; and the rest cried for quarter. Meanwhile, Iberville with another party attacked a vessel anchored near the fort, and, climbing silently over her side, found the man on the watch asleep in his blanket. He sprang up and made fight, but they killed him, then stamped on the deck to rouse those below, sabred two of them as they came up the hatchway, and captured the rest. Among them was Bridger, governor for the company of all its stations on the bay.

They next turned their attention to Fort Albany, thirty leagues from Fort Hayes, in a direction opposite to that of Fort Rupert. Here there were about thirty men, under Henry Sargent, an agent of the company. Surprise was this time impossible; for news of their proceedings had gone before them, and Sargent, though no soldier, stood on his defence. The Canadians arrived, some in canoes, some in the captured vessel, bringing ten captured pieces of cannon, which they planted in battery on a neighboring hill, well covered by intrenchments from the English shot. Here they presently opened fire; and, in an hour, the stockade with the houses that it enclosed was completely riddled. The English took shelter in a cellar, nor was it till the fire slackened that they ventured out to show a white flag and ask for a parley. Troyes and Sargent had an interview. The Englishman regaled his conqueror with a bottle of Spanish wine; and, after drinking the health of King Louis and King James, they settled the terms of capitulation. The prisoners were sent home in an English vessel which soon after arrived; and Maricourt remained to command at the bay, while Troyes returned to report his success to Denonville. [1]

This buccaneer exploit exasperated the English public, and it became doubly apparent that the state of affairs in America could not be allowed to continue. A conference had been arranged between the two powers, even before the news came from Hudson's Bay; and Count d'Avaux appeared at London as special envoy of Louis XIV. to settle the questions at issue. A treaty of neutrality was signed at Whitehall, and commissioners were appointed on both sides. [Footnote: Traite de Neutralite pour l'Amerique, conclu a Londres le 16 Nov., 1686, in Memoires des Commissaires, II. 86.] Pending the discussion, each party was to refrain from acts of hostility or encroachment; and, said the declaration of the commissioners, "to the end the said agreement may have the better effect, we do likewise agree that the said serene kings shall immediately send necessary orders in that behalf to their respective governors in America." [Footnote: Instrument for preventing Acts of Hostility in America in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 505.] Dongan accordingly was directed to keep a friendly correspondence with his rival, and take good care to give him no cause of complaint. [Footnote: Order to Gov. Dongan, 22 Jan., 1687, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 504.]

It was this missive which had dashed the ardor of the English governor, and softened his epistolary style. More than four months after, Louis XIV. sent corresponding instructions to Denonville; [Footnote: Louis XIV. a Denonville, 17 Juin, 1687. At the end of March, the king had written that "he did not think it expedient to make any attack on the English."] but, meantime, he had sent him troops, money, and munitions in abundance, and ordered him to attack the Iroquois towns. Whether such a step was consistent with the recent treaty of neutrality may well be doubted; for, though James II. had not yet formally claimed the Iroquois as British subjects, his representative had done so for years with his tacit approval, and out of this claim had risen the principal differences which it was the object of the treaty to settle.

Eight hundred regulars were already in the colony, and eight hundred more were sent in the spring, with a hundred and sixty-eight thousand livres in money and supplies. [Footnote: Abstract of Letters, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 314. This answers exactly to the statement of the Memoire adresse au Regent, which places the number of troops in Canada at this time at thirty-two companies of fifty men each.] Denonville was prepared to strike. He had pushed his preparations actively, yet with extreme secrecy; for he meant to fall on the Senecas unawares, and shatter at a blow the mainspring of English intrigue. Harmony reigned among the chiefs of the colony, military, civil, and religious. The intendant Meules had been recalled on the complaints of the governor, who had quarrelled with him; and a new intendant, Champigny, had been sent in his place. He was as pious as Denonville himself, and, like him, was in perfect accord with the bishop and the Jesuits. All wrought together to promote the new crusade.

It was not yet time to preach it, or at least Denonville thought so. He dissembled his purpose to the last moment, even with his best friends. Of all the Jesuits among the Iroquois, the two brothers Lamberville had alone held their post. Denonville, in order to deceive the enemy, had directed these priests to urge the Iroquois chiefs to meet him in council at Fort Frontenac, whither, as he pretended, he was about to go with an escort of troops, for the purpose of conferring with them. The two brothers received no hint whatever of his real intention, and tried in good faith to accomplish his wishes; but the Iroquois were distrustful, and hesitated to comply. On this, the elder Lamberville sent the younger with letters to Denonville to explain the position of affairs, saying at the same time that he himself would not leave Onondaga except to accompany the chiefs to the proposed council. "The poor father," wrote the governor, "knows nothing of our designs. I am sorry to see him exposed to danger; but, should I recall him, his withdrawal would certainly betray our plans to the Iroquois." This unpardonable reticence placed the Jesuit in extreme peril; for the moment the Iroquois discovered the intended treachery they would probably burn him as its instrument. No man in Canada had done so much as the elder Lamberville to counteract the influence of England and serve the interests of France, and in return the governor exposed him recklessly to the most terrible of deaths. [Footnote: Denonville au Ministre, 9 Nov., 1686; Ibid., 8 Juin, 1687. Denonville at last seems to have been seized with some compunction, and writes: "Tout cela me fait craindre que le pauvre pere n'ayt de la peine a se retirer d'entre les mains de ces barbares ce qui m'inquiete fort." Dongan, though regarding the Jesuit as an insidious enemy, had treated him much better, and protected him on several occasions, for which he received the emphatic thanks of Dablon, superior of the missions. Dablon to Dongan (1685?), in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 454.]

In spite of all his pains, it was whispered abroad that there was to be war; and the rumor was brought to the ears of Dongan by some of the Canadian deserters. He lost no time in warning the Iroquois, and their deputies came to beg his help. Danger humbled them for the moment; and they not only recognized King James as their sovereign, but consented at last to call his representative Father Corlaer instead of Brother. Their father, however, dared not promise them soldiers; though, in spite of the recent treaty, he caused gunpowder and lead to be given them, and urged them to recall the powerful war-parties which they had lately sent against the Illinois. [Footnote: Colden, 97 (1727), Denonville au Ministre, 8 Juin, 1687.]

Denonville at length broke silence, and ordered the militia to muster. They grumbled and hesitated, for they remembered the failures of La Barre. The governor issued a proclamation, and the bishop a pastoral mandate. There were sermons, prayers, and exhortations in all the churches. A revulsion of popular feeling followed; and the people, says Denonville, "made ready for the march with extraordinary animation." The church showered blessings on them as they went, and daily masses were ordained for the downfall of the foes of Heaven and of France. [Footnote: Saint-Vallier, Etat Present. Even to the moment of marching, Denonville pretended that he meant only to hold a peace council at Fort Frontenac. "J'ai toujours publie que je n'allois qu'a l'assemblee generale projetee a Cataracouy (Fort Frontenac), J'ai toujours tenu ce discours jusqu'au temps de la marche." Denonville au Ministre, 8 Juin, 1687.]

[1] On the capture of the forts at Hudson's Bay, see La Potherie, I. 147-163; the letter of Father Silvy, chaplain of the expedition, in Saint-Vallier, Etat Present, 43; and Oldmixon, British Empire in America, I. 561-564 (ed. 1741). An account of the preceding events will be found in La Potherie and Oldmixon; in Jeremie, Relation de la Baie de Hudson; and in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 796-802. Various embellishments have been added to the original narratives by recent writers, such as an imaginary hand-to-hand fight of Iberville and several Englishmen in the blockhouse of Fort Hayes.



CHAPTER VIII.

1687.

DENONVILLE AND THE SENECAS.

TREACHERY OF DENONVILLE.—IROQUOIS GENEROSITY.—THE INVADING ARMY.—THE WESTERN ALLIES.—PLUNDER OF ENGLISH TRADERS.—ARRIVAL OF THE ALLIES.—SCENE AT THE FRENCH CAMP.—MARCH OF DENONVILLE.— AMBUSCADE.—BATTLE.—VICTORY.—THE SENECA BABYLON.—IMPERFECT SUCCESS.

A host of flat-boats filled with soldiers, and a host of Indian canoes, struggled against the rapids of the St. Lawrence, and slowly made their way to Fort Frontenac. Among the troops was La Hontan. When on his arrival he entered the gate of the fort, he saw a strange sight. A row of posts was planted across the area within, and to each post an Iroquois was tied by the neck, hands, and feet, "in such a way," says the indignant witness, "that he could neither sleep nor drive off the mosquitoes." A number of Indians attached to the expedition, all of whom were Christian converts from the mission villages, were amusing themselves by burning the fingers of these unfortunates in the bowls of their pipes, while the sufferers sang their death songs. La Hontan recognized one of them who, during his campaign with La Barre, had often feasted him in his wigwam; and the sight so exasperated the young officer that he could scarcely refrain from thrashing the tormentors with his walking stick. [Footnote: La Hontan, I. 93-95 (1709).]

Though the prisoners were Iroquois, they were not those against whom the expedition was directed; nor had they, so far as appears, ever given the French any cause of complaint. They belonged to two neutral villages, called Kente and Ganneious, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, forming a sort of colony, where the Sulpitians of Montreal had established a mission. [Footnote: Ganneious or Ganeyout was on an arm of the lake a little west of the present town of Fredericksburg. Kente or Quinte was on Quinte Bay.] They hunted and fished for the garrison of the fort, and had been on excellent terms with it. Denonville, however, feared that they would report his movements to their relations across the lake; but this was not his chief motive for seizing them. Like La Barre before him, he had received orders from the court that, as the Iroquois were robust and strong, he should capture as many of them as possible, and send them to France as galley slaves. [Footnote: Le Roy a La Barre, 21 Juillet, 1684; Le Roy a Denonville et Champigny, 30 Mars, 1687.] The order, without doubt, referred to prisoners taken in war; but Denonville, aware that the hostile Iroquois were not easily caught, resolved to entrap their unsuspecting relatives.

The intendant Champigny accordingly proceeded to the fort in advance of the troops, and invited the neighboring Iroquois to a feast. They came to the number of thirty men and about ninety women and children, whereupon they were surrounded and captured by the intendant's escort and the two hundred men of the garrison. The inhabitants of the village of Ganneious were not present; and one Perre, with a strong party of Canadians and Christian Indians, went to secure them. He acquitted himself of his errand with great address, and returned with eighteen warriors and about sixty women and children. Champigny's exertions did not end here. Learning that a party of Iroquois were peaceably fishing on an island in the St. Lawrence, he offered them also the hospitalities of Fort Frontenac; but they were too wary to be entrapped. Four or five Iroquois were however caught by the troops on their way up the river. They were in two or more parties, and they all had with them their women and children, which was never the case with Iroquois on the war-path. Hence the assertion of Denonville, that they came with hostile designs, is very improbable. As for the last six months he had constantly urged them, by the lips of Lamberville, to visit him and smoke the pipe of peace, it is not unreasonable to suppose that these Indian families were on their way to the colony in consequence of his invitations. Among them were the son and brother of Big Mouth, who of late had been an advocate of peace; and, in order not to alienate him, these two were eventually set free. The other warriors were tied like the rest to stakes at the fort.

The whole number of prisoners thus secured was fifty-one, sustained by such food as their wives were able to get for them. Of more than a hundred and fifty women and children captured with them, many died at the fort, partly from excitement and distress, and partly from a pestilential disease. The survivors were all baptized, and then distributed among the mission villages in the colony. The men were sent to Quebec, where some of them were given up to their Christian relatives in the missions who had claimed them, and whom it was not expedient to offend; and the rest, after being baptized, were sent to France, to share with convicts and Huguenots the horrible slavery of the royal galleys. [1]

Before reaching Fort Frontenac, Denonville, to his great relief, was joined by Lamberville, delivered from the peril to which the governor had exposed him. He owed his life to an act of magnanimity on the part of the Iroquois, which does them signal honor. One of the prisoners at Fort Frontenac had contrived to escape, and, leaping sixteen feet to the ground from the window of a blockhouse, crossed the lake, and gave the alarm to his countrymen. Apparently, it was from him that the Onondagas learned that the invitations of Onontio were a snare; that he had entrapped their relatives, and was about to fall on their Seneca brethren with all the force of Canada. The Jesuit, whom they trusted and esteemed, but who had been used as an instrument to beguile them, was summoned before a council of the chiefs. They were in a fury at the news; and Lamberville, as much astonished by it as they, expected instant death, when one of them is said to have addressed him to the following effect: "We know you too well to believe that you meant to betray us. We think that you have been deceived as well as we; and we are not unjust enough to punish you for the crime of others. But you are not safe here. When once our young men have sung the warsong, they will listen to nothing but their fury; and we shall not be able to save you." They gave him guides, and sent him by secret paths to meet the advancing army. [2]

Again the fields about Fort Frontenac were covered with tents, camp-sheds, and wigwams. Regulars, militia, and Indians, there were about two thousand men; and, besides these, eight hundred regulars just arrived from France had been left at Montreal to protect the settlers. [Footnote: Denonville. Champigny says 832 regulars, 930 militia, and 300 Indians. This was when the army left Montreal. More Indians afterwards joined it. Belmont says 1,800 French and Canadians and about 300 Indians.] Fortune thus far had smiled on the enterprise, and she now gave Denonville a fresh proof of her favor. On the very day of his arrival, a canoe came from Niagara with news that a large body of allies from the west had reached that place three days before, and were waiting his commands. It was more than he had dared to hope. In the preceding autumn, he had ordered Tonty, commanding at the Illinois, and La Durantaye, commanding at Michillimackinac, to muster as many coureurs de bois and Indians as possible, and join him early in July at Niagara. The distances were vast, and the difficulties incalculable. In the eyes of the pious governor, their timely arrival was a manifest sign of the favor of Heaven. At Fort St. Louis, of the Illinois, Tonty had mustered sixteen Frenchmen and about two hundred Indians, whom he led across the country to Detroit; and here he found Du Lhut, La Foret, and La Durantaye, with a large body of French and Indians from the upper lakes. [Footnote: Tonty, Memoire in Margry, Relations Inedites.] It had been the work of the whole winter to induce these savages to move. Presents, persuasion, and promises had not been spared—and while La Durantaye, aided by the Jesuit Engelran, labored to gain over the tribes of Michillimackinac, the indefatigable Nicolas Perrot was at work among those of the Mississippi and Lake Michigan. They were of a race unsteady as aspens and fierce as wild-cats, full of mutual jealousies, without rulers, and without laws; for each was a law to himself. It was difficult to persuade them, and, when persuaded, scarcely possible to keep them so. Perrot, however, induced some of them to follow him to Michillimackinac, where many hundreds of Algonquin savages were presently gathered: a perilous crew, who changed their minds every day, and whose dancing, singing, and yelping might turn at any moment into war-whoops against each other or against their hosts, the French. The Hurons showed more stability; and La Durantaye was reasonably sure that some of them would follow him to the war, though it was clear that others were bent on allying themselves with the Senecas and the English. As for the Pottawatamies, Sacs, Ojibwas, Ottawas, and other Algonquin hordes, no man could foresee what they would do. [Footnote: The name of Ottawas, here used specifically, was often employed by the French as a generic term for the Algonquin tribes of the Great Lakes.] Suddenly a canoe arrived with news that a party of English traders was approaching. It will be remembered that two bands of Dutch and English, under Rooseboom and McGregory, had prepared to set out together for Michillimackinac, armed with commissions from Dongan. They had rashly changed their plan, and parted company. Rooseboom took the lead, and McGregory followed some time after. Their hope was that, on reaching Michillimackinac, the Indians of the place, attracted by their cheap goods and their abundant supplies of rum, would declare for them and drive off the French; and this would probably have happened, but for the prompt action of La Durantaye. The canoes of Rooseboom, bearing twenty-nine whites and five Mohawks and Mohicans, were not far distant, when, amid a prodigious hubbub, the French commander embarked to meet him with a hundred and twenty coureurs de bois. [Footnote: Attestation of N. Harmentse and others of Rooseboom's party. N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 436. La Potherie says, three hundred.] Behind them followed a swarm of Indian canoes, whose occupants scarcely knew which side to take, but for the most part inclined to the English. Rooseboom and his men, however, naturally thought that they came to support the French; and, when La Durantaye bore down upon them with threats of instant death if they made the least resistance, they surrendered at once. The captors carried them in triumph to Michillimackinac, and gave their goods to the delighted Indians.

"It is certain," wrote Denonville; "that, if the English had not been stopped and pillaged, the Hurons and Ottawas would have revolted and cut the throats of all our Frenchmen." [Footnote: Denonville au Ministre, 25 Aout, 1687.] As it was, La Durantaye's exploit produced a revulsion of feeling, and many of the Indians consented to follow him. He lost no time in leading them down the lake to join Du Lhut at Detroit; and, when Tonty arrived, they all paddled for Niagara. On the way, they met McGregory with a party about equal to that of Rooseboom. He had with him a considerable number of Ottawa and Huron prisoners whom the Iroquois had captured, and whom he meant to return to their countrymen as a means of concluding the long projected triple alliance between the English, the Iroquois, and the tribes of the lakes. This bold scheme was now completely crushed. All the English were captured and carried to Niagara, whence they and their luckless precursors were sent prisoners to Quebec.

La Durantaye and his companions, with a hundred and eighty coureurs de bois and four hundred Indians, waited impatiently at Niagara for orders from the governor. A canoe despatched in haste from Fort Frontenac soon appeared; and they were directed to repair at once to the rendezvous at Irondequoit Bay, on the borders of the Seneca country. [Footnote: The above is drawn from papers in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 436, IX. 324, 336, 346, 405; Saint-Vallier, Etat Present, 92; Denonville, Journal; Belmont, Histoire du Canada; La Potherie, II. chap. xvi; La Hontan. I. 96. Colden's account is confused and incorrect.]

Denonville was already on his way thither. On the fourth of July, he had embarked at Fort Frontenac with four hundred bateaux and canoes, crossed the foot of Lake Ontario, and moved westward along the southern shore. The weather was rough, and six days passed before he descried the low headlands of Irondequoit Bay. Far off on the glimmering water, he saw a multitude of canoes advancing to meet him. It was the flotilla of La Durantaye. Good management and good luck had so disposed it that the allied bands, concentring from points more than a thousand miles distant, reached the rendezvous on the same day. This was not all. The Ottawas of Michillimackinac, who refused to follow La Durantaye, had changed their minds the next morning, embarked in a body, paddled up the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, crossed to Toronto, and joined the allies at Niagara. White and red, Denonville now had nearly three thousand men under his command. [Footnote: Recueil de ce qui s'est passe en Canada depuis 1682; Captain Duplessis's Plan for the Defence of Canada, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 447.] All were gathered on the low point of land that separates Irondequoit Bay from Lake Ontario. "Never," says an eye-witness, "had Canada seen such a sight; and never, perhaps, will she see such a sight again. Here was the camp of the regulars from France, with the general's head-quarters; the camp of the four battalions of Canadian militia, commanded by the noblesse of the country; the camp of the Christian Indians; and, farther on, a swarm of savages of every nation. Their features were different, and so were their manners, their weapons, their decorations, and their dances. They sang and whooped and harangued in every accent and tongue. Most of them wore nothing but horns on their heads, and the tails of beasts behind their backs. Their faces were painted red or green, with black or white spots; their ears and noses were hung with ornaments of iron; and their naked bodies were daubed with figures of various sorts of animals." [Footnote: The first part of the extract is from Belmont; the second, from Saint-Vallier.]

These were the allies from the upper lakes. The enemy, meanwhile, had taken alarm. Just after the army arrived, three Seneca scouts called from the edge of the woods, and demanded what they meant to do. "To fight you, you blockheads," answered a Mohawk Christian attached to the French. A volley of bullets was fired at the scouts; but they escaped, and carried the news to their villages. [Footnote: Information received from several Indians, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 444.] Many of the best warriors were absent. Those that remained, four hundred or four hundred and fifty by their own accounts, and eight hundred by that of the French, mustered in haste; and, though many of them were mere boys, they sent off the women and children, hid their most valued possessions, burned their chief town, and prepared to meet the invaders.

On the twelfth, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Denonville began his march, leaving four hundred men in a hastily built fort to guard the bateaux and canoes. Troops, officers, and Indians, all carried their provisions at their backs. Some of the Christian Mohawks guided them; but guides were scarcely needed, for a broad Indian trail led from the bay to the great Seneca town, twenty-two miles southward. They marched three leagues through the open forests of oak, and encamped for the night. In the morning, the heat was intense. The men gasped in the dead and sultry air of the woods, or grew faint in the pitiless sun, as they waded waist-deep through the rank grass of the narrow intervales. They passed safely through two dangerous defiles, and, about two in the afternoon, began to enter a third. Dense forests covered the hills on either hand. La Durantaye with Tonty and his cousin Du Lhut led the advance, nor could all Canada have supplied three men better for the work. Each led his band of coureurs de bois, white Indians, without discipline, and scarcely capable of it, but brave and accustomed to the woods. On their left were the Iroquois converts from the missions of Saut St. Louis and the Mountain of Montreal, fighting under the influence of their ghostly prompters against their own countrymen. On the right were the pagan Indians from the west. The woods were full of these painted spectres, grotesquely horrible in horns and tail; and among them flitted the black robe of Father Engelran, the Jesuit of Michillimackinac. Nicolas Perrot and two other bush-ranging Frenchmen were assigned to command them, but in fact they obeyed no man. These formed the vanguard, eight or nine hundred in all, under an excellent officer, Callieres, governor of Montreal. Behind came the main body under Denonville, each of the four battalions of regulars alternating with a battalion of Canadians. Some of the regulars wore light armor, while the Canadians were in plain attire of coarse cloth or buckskin. Denonville, oppressed by the heat, marched in his shirt. "It is a rough life," wrote the marquis, "to tramp afoot through the woods, carrying one's own provisions in a haversack, devoured by mosquitoes, and faring no better than a mere soldier." [Footnote: Denonville au Ministre, 8 Juin, 1687.] With him was the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, who had just arrived from France in command of the eight hundred men left to guard the colony, and who, eager to take part in the campaign, had pushed forward alone to join the army. Here, too, were the Canadian seigniors at the head of their vassals, Berthier, La Valterie, Granville, Longueuil, and many more. A guard of rangers and Indians brought up the rear.

Scouts thrown out in front ran back with the report that they had reached the Seneca clearings, and had seen no more dangerous enemy than three or four women in the cornfields. This was a device of the Senecas to cheat the French into the belief that the inhabitants were still in the town. It had the desired effect. The vanguard pushed rapidly forward, hoping to surprise the place, and ignorant that, behind the ridge of thick forests on their right, among a tangled growth of beech-trees in the gorge of a brook, three hundred ambushed warriors lay biding their time.

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 grass. 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 grass, 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 brass, 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 passed 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 document 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 Documents 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 passe 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 Documents, 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 quantities 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 Dyagodiyu, 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 passe 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.—ATTITUDE 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 assembled 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 assent 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 assure 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 assisting 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 God! what new, farr-fetched, and unheard-of pretence is this for a title 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 assumed 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 ambassador 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. He instantly assumed a warlike attitude; and, in the next spring, wrote to the Earl of Sunderland that he had been at Albany all winter, with four hundred infantry, fifty horsemen, 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 ambassador 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 assured them that King James, "who is the greatest man the sunn shines 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 friendship; 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 asseurer 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 passed 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 passionate 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 passing, 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, fishing, 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 passe 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.]