USA > New York > Oswego County > History of Oswego County, New York, with illustrations and Biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 3
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IIISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
quois, who had been at enmity with the French for forty years, should have invited or allowed a French colony to settle among them, and the end of the proceeding is even more mysterious than its beginning. In the early spring of 1658, while the ice was running in dangerons masses down the ever-turbulent Oswego, Du Puys and all his com- panions, together with several other missionaries and colo- nists who had joined them in 1657, came hurrying in rude, newly-built bateaux towards Canada. There was uow none of the grand display which had marked their hopeful ad- vent only twenty months before; the men, with weapons ready for conflict, were watching anxiously for pursuing foes, and such good time did they make with their oars that on the 3d of April they landed at Montreal, fifteen days after they started from Onondaga.
Du Puys reported that their suspicions had been aroused by the conduct of the Iroquois, and that finally one of their converts had informed them that a plot had been laid to murder the whole colony. Too weak to fight, the French- men secretly built bateaux in the inclosed yard of the Jesuit mission, and when all was ready one of their number, who had been adopted into an Indian family, persuaded his foster-parents to make a feast in his honor, to which all the Indians of the village were invited. After the feast they went to sleep, and then the Frenchuran rejoined his comrades, and all fled io haste down the Oswego. It is a curious story. Perhaps they were afraid of massacre, and perhaps they were homesick.
The Jesuits attributed the supposed treachery of the Iroquois to the fact that since the arrival of the French they had destroyed the Erie or Cut nation, the Kahquehs, and other tribes, and that, once freed from these enemies, all their jealousy of the French at once revived.
At any rate, this was the end of French colonization (though not of missionary effort) in central New York, unless we are to trust the dubious account of a French settlement in the present town of Pompey, Onondaga county, which flourished from 1666 to 1669, and which was joined by a party of silver-seeking Spaniards from Florida, between whom and the Frenchmen quarrels arose, that were only settled by the savages slaying all of both parties.
French missions, however, were soon after re-established at Onondaga, for the Jesuits would labor for their religion under the very edge of the uplifted tomahawk, and twenty- five years after the flight of Du Puys we find the two Lambervilles fearlessly saying mass and making converts even when the old hostility between the Freueh aud Iroquois seemed on the point of breaking out into open war.
CHAPTER V.
DE LA BARRE AND GARANGULA.
The French and their Allies-Iroquois Offenses-De la Barre's Advance -Mediation Offered-Location of La Famine-A Picturesque Army -- The Council-Speech of the Governor-Reply of Garangula-A Chieftain's Sarcasm-A Worthless Treaty-Failure and Flight.
IT was not until 1684 that any new event of importance occurred on the soil of Oswego County. Doubtless the
Iroquois war-parties frequently passed over it on their way to almost certain victory ; possibly a Freuch bateau occa- sionally landed on its shore, or a French scout glided through its forests, listening every moment for the step of the vigilant. Iroquois. Certainly tne missionaries to Onondaga must have frequently passed through here, and it is certain, too, that at this time some Dutch and English traders had made their way up the Mohawk and down the Oswego into the lakes which the French had hitherto claimed as their own. For, since the events described in the last chapter, the English, in 1664, had taken possession of the Dutch terri- tory on the Hudson, their title had been confirmed by treaty in 1670, aud they, like the Dutch, had snecessfully cultivated the trade and friendship of the Five Nations.
The French governor-general of Canada was Mousicur Le Febure de la Barre, under whose government aud that of his predecessors alliances had been made with numerous Indian tribes of the far west, with whom the Canadian colonists were carrying on a most lucrative trade. The Iroquois, or at least the Senecas, in their career of conquest, made war on some of these French allies in the west, robbed some French traders whom they found carrying supplies to their enemies, and even attacked a French fort. De la Barre determined to punish the haughty confederates, or at least to appear in their country with such a force that they should be compelled to sue for peace. He informed Colonel Dongan, the English governor of New York, of his purpose, and asked him to forbid his people from selling weapons and ammunition to the Iroquois. Dongan, however, though a Catholic, had no desire to see French power extended on the south side of the great lakes. IIe protested against the movement, and probably took especial pains that his allies of the Long IIouse should be well supplied with the means of defense.
During the spring of 1684, one of De la Barre's officers, the Sieur d'Orvilliers, carefully reconnoitred the southern shore of Lake Ontario, and especially the country of the Senecas, for it was that powerful and ferocious tribe whom the governor was most particularly desirous to punish. On the 9th of August De la Barre reached Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, where his forces were concentrated. Meanwhile, the younger of the Lamberville brothers, the Jesuit mission- aries among the Onondagas, came to say that the Cuyugas, Onondugas, and Oneidas offered themselves as mediators between the offending Senecus and the French. Considering the close union between the tribes, it was very much as if Massachusetts and Connecticut should offer themselves as mediators between New York and a foreign power. De la Barre, however, seems to have had little stomach for the undertaking which he had begun, and sent back Lamberville with a message that he preferred the proposed mediation to war. Still, he was determined to make a strong demonstra- tion, to impress the Iroquois with a sense of French power, and to attack them if the negotiations should fail. On the 21st of August he sent off the greater part of his force from Fort Frontenac to a point called La Famine, at the mouth of La Famine river, on the eastern end of Lake On- tario, and on the 27th set forth himself with the remainder. After a tempestuous voyage of two days they landed at La Famine.
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HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
The location of this place with the desolate name has usually been given as Black River bay, in Jefferson county, and the name of " Hungry bay" has been applied collectively to the three bodies of water (Chaumont bay, Black River bay, and Henderson bay) at the mouth of the Black river, by the Americans, apparently in perpetuation of the old French name of " La Famine," supposed to have pertained to them. An examination of the old French accounts (or translations), however, will satisfy any one that La Famine was far south of Black River bay. La Barre himself said that La Famine was only four leagues from Onondaga. This must have been a miscalculation in any case, but not half so gross if we suppose La Famine at the mouth of Salmon river as if we locate it at Black River bay. But what proves beyond doubt that La Famine was not at Black River bay, and was not far from the mouth of Salmon river, is the record of Count Frontenac's expedition against the Onondagas in 1696. His flotilla set out from Fort Frontenac (now Kings- ton), and on the first day went to Isle aux Chevreuils, or Deer island (now called Grenadier island). The next day it advanced to a place " within three leagues of Riviere de la Famine," and on the third proceeded to the mouth of Oswego river. But Deer (or Grenadier) island is itself close to Black River bay, while it is plain from the account that more than a day's journey with boats lay between it and La Famine.
Finally, Pouchot, an eminent French engineer, who took part in the capture of Oswego in 1756, and who was en- gaged professionally on the shores of Lake Ontario for sev- eral years, has left a minute description of those shores in his memoirs. That description follows the shore eastward from Oswego, and mentions two streams which could be entered with bateaux, but did not extend far into the country (probably Catfish and Salmon creeks). It next says, "The Rivière a la Famine, in Indian Keyouanonague, enters very far into the interior, and goes quite near to the portage of the height of land." No stream in that vicinity but Salmon river answers to that description, and Pouchot's further mention of Sandy creek and other streams to the north ward fixes the identity of Salmon river and La Famine beyond all reasonable doubt.
To return to Monsieur Febure de la Barre. As his army was the first large force of whites that ever appeared in Oswego County, nay, anywhere on the great lakes of North America, it is worthy of especial attention. It was one of those motley assemblages, of which so many were afterwards seen in this country, under both French and English com- manders, aud in which regular European soldiers, provincial militia, hunters, trappers, and painted Indian warriors were all joined in the most picturesque if not the most effective unity.
On the shores of Salmon river were to be seen two companies of " king's troops," gayly dressed, carefully dis- ciplined, and trained to victory in the armies of Louis le Grand. Then there were some five hundred Canadian militia, motley in costume and irregular in tactics, but accustomed to the use of arms, and not to be snecred at in a combat in the forest. That amphibious being, the Canadian voyageur, had already begun the life of adven- ture for which he has been celebrated during two centuries,
and numbers of his species were to be seen amid the fifteen bateaux and two hundred canoes which floated on the placid bosom of the bay. Besides all these there were some three hundred friendly Indians, part of them being de- nominated Christians, who had adopted to some extent the customs and dress of Europeans, and part of them being fierce pagans of the wilderness, terrible in war-paint and plume, who cared for nothing of European origin except the musket and the brandy-bottle.
De la Barre does not seem to have been a man of much energy, and on his arrival at La Famine, on the 29th of August, he was appalled to find many of his men sick with tertian fever, though it does not seem as if a very great number could have been taken down after their leaving Frontenac only seven days before. He immediately sent a messenger, a " Christian savage," to Monsieur Le Moine (not the missionary), at " Onontague," to hasten the move- ments of the mediatorial ambassadors. On the 3d of Sep- tember, Le Moine arrived with nine Onondaga chiefs, three Oneidas, and two Cayugas, not a single Seneca being present except " Tegan Court," who had come with the French from Montreal.
The day after their arrival was devoted to feasting, and on the 5th of September a council was held. As in all councils, a good deal of time was necessarily consumed in complimentary remarks, smoking the pipe, etc .; but at length De la Barre made a speech to the assembled chiefs, seated on the ground in a semicircle before him. It was menacing in its character, in accordance with the governor's purpose of overawing the Five Nations. He demanded satisfaction for the misconduct of the Senecas, saying that in case of refusal or of further misconduct he should declare war. He accused the Five Nations of taking the English into the lakes belonging to the French king, and among nations that were his children, to destroy the trade of his subjects.
" If the like shall happen again," said the governor, " I shall declare war."
He proceeded to charge the Iroquois with having made barbarous incursions on the Indian allies of the French, in which they had slain many and taken many others prisoners, and he concluded this accusation in the same manner as the others :
" If the Five Nations do not give liberty to those cap- tives, I shall declare war."
Then he took his seat in the arm-chair which had been brought from Quebec, as was thought befitted the dignity of the representative of Louis the Fourteenth, and the spokes- man of the Iroquois arose to his feet. He was an Onon- daga chief, widely celebrated under the name of Garangula, but whom the French called " Grande Goule" (Big Throat), either by a modification of his Indian name, or in allusion to a natural characteristic. While De la Barre had been speaking Garangula had kept his eyes fixed on his pipe, with that stolid gravity of demeanor underneath which the Indian ever conceals his emotions in the presence of his foes. But now he arose, and, withi due respect to Iroquois forms, walked gravely five or six times around the circle ere he halted in front of the governor-general. Then he delivered a speech which for keenness of sarcasnı and bold-
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HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
ness of defiance it will be hard to equal in the annals of oratory, whether civilized or savage.
As a rule, the writer is very much averse to the practice of many local historians of copying numerous Indian speeches, which are usually very long, very monotonous, and only to be distinguished from extremely dull sermons by the circumstance that every paragraph begins with " Brothers," instead of " My beloved brethren." But the reply of Garangula to Monsieur de la Barre is a brilliant exception, and surpasses any other aboriginal production we have read, except, perhaps, the speech attributed to Logan.
Before transcribing the remarks of Garangula, it may be worth while to explain why he, as well as all the rest of the Iroquois, always called the governor of Canada " Yon- nondio," and the governor of New York "Corlear," no matter what might be their real names. One of the earliest French governors was Monsieur de Montmagny. The Iro- quois inquired the meaning of his name, and were told that it originally meant "great mountain." They translated this into their own language, " Yonnondio," and that term was ever after applied by them to the governors of New France.
Arent Van Curler, or " Corlear," was the agent of Kil- iaen Van Rensselaer, the first patroon of Rensselaerswyck, and managed that grand estate, comprising nearly the present counties of Rensselaer and Albany, while his principal remained at home in Holland. In this capacity Van Curler endeared himself to the Iroquois who came to trade with him, and as he was the greatest man with whom they were acquainted, they applied his name to all the sub- sequent governors of New York, though he himself was not a governor.
At first Garangula spoke with studied politeness, but after a few sentences he broke out in the bitterest sareasm :
" Yonnondio, you must have believed, when you left Quebee, that the sun had burnt up all the forests which render our country inaccessible to the French, or that the lakes had so far overflowed their banks that they had sur- rounded our castles, and that it was impossible for us to get out of them. Yes, Younondio, surely you must have dreamed so, and your curiosity to see so great a wonder has brought you so far.
" Now you are undeceived, since that I and the warriors here present are come to assure you that the Senecas, Ca- yugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks are yet alive. I thank you in their name for bringing back into the country the ealumet which your predecessor received from their hands. It was happy for you that you left under- ground that murdering hatehet that has so often been dyed in the blood of the French.
" Hear, Yonnondio ; I do not sleep, I have my eyes wide open, and the sun which enlightens me shows me a great captain at the head of a company of soldiers, who speaks as if he were dreaming. He says that he only came to the great lake to smoke the calumet with the Onondugas. But Garangula sees the contrary ; he sees that it was to knock them on the head if sickness had not weakened the arms of the French.
" I see Yonnondio raving in a camp of sick men, whose
lives the Great Spirit has saved by inflicting this sickness upon them.
" Hear, Yonnondio ; our women had taken their clubs, our children and old men had carried their bows and arrows into the heart of your earup, if our warriors had not dis- armed them and kept them back when your messenger, Obguesse (Le Moine), came to our castles."
He proeceded to justify all that the Iroquois had done, of which De la Barre complained, deelaring that they had good cause to attack the western Indians, that they had only assailed those French who carried arins to their ene- mies, that they had a perfect right to take the English to trade in the interior, that the lakes did not belong to the French king, but to the Five Nations, and closing with the eloquent declaration, " We are born free; we depend on neither Yonnondio nor Corlear."
It must be confessed that, for a " mediator," the tone of Garangula was sufficiently belligerent, but the startled gov- ernor was in no condition to resent it. A considerable number of his men were actually siek ; he had made very poor provision, according to his own account, for supplying his army, and, above all, he had not the energy of character which forees suceess from adverse eireumstances. Garan- gula was master of the situation. De la Barre made what he called a treaty with the ambassadors, which did not even contain promises of good behavior on the part of the Iro- quois, while the governor himself actually promised to leave the country the next day. It was a complete diplomatie victory for Garangula and his associate ambassadors. They could well afford to give a feast to the French officers, as they did that evening, at which the discomfited invaders consoled themselves as best they might with the delicacies of forest and stream for the insolence of the savages and the weakness of their commander.
Long before the early summer dawn of the following morning, while the chiefs were still asleep, De la Barre was astir, superintending the removal of the sick to the boats, so that his sharp-eyed visitors might see as little of his weakness as possible. As soon as daylight came the whole army embarked in their bateaux and canoes and left as quickly as possible the seene of their disgrace. So earn- estly did they bend to the oars that at nightfall they reached Fort Frontenae, whenee they soon after returned to Montreal and Quebec.
Yet the whole force of the confederacy which had thus bidden defiance to the power of " Le Grand Monarque," Louis the Fourteenth, was not supposed much to exceed two thousand warriors. Wentworth Greenhalph, an Eng- lishman, who, seven years before, had visited all the Five Nations, making very minute observations, even to counting the houses of the Indians, reported the Mohawks as having three hundred warriors, the Oneidas two hundred, the Onondagas three hundred and fifty, the Cuyugas three hundred, and the Senecas a thousand.
Yet, even amid the contempt heaped on the military power of France, so adroitly had the Jesuits worked on the feelings of the Indians that the chiefs made a special re- quest that the mission should not be removed from Onon- daga, to which, of course, a ready assent was given by De la Barre.
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HISTORY OF OSWEGO COUNTY, NEW YORK.
CHAPTER VI. COUNT FRONTENAC'S EXPEDITION.
De Neuville's Attack-Iroquois Revenge-French Distress - De Frontenac appointed Governor-His Appearance on the Oswego -Advance of his Army - Overland hy Canoe - The Indian's Warning-Harrying the Enemy-The Return-A Relic of the Expedition.
THE failure of Monsieur de la Barre was received with much disgust by his government, and the next year after it occurred he was removed from his office, and the Marquis de Nouville appointed governor-general of New France. IIc determined to chastise the contumacious Senecas, and in 1687 he crossed Lake Ontario with a large force (that is, large for that time and locality) and landed on the shore of Irondequoit bay. He marched against the Seneca towns, then situated a short distance southeastward from that bay, and, after a battle in which the French seem to have suf- fered as much as the Indians, he succeeded in burning their principal villages. But the Senecas themselves all retired into the forest, and in the then primitive condition of their agriculture and architecture they suffered very little danger. It was about this time that the elder Lamberville, then the only Jesuit missionary to the Iroquois, was withdrawn from his post among the Onondagas.
All the Iroquois tribes made common cause with their injured brethren, and the very next year twelve hundred of their warriors set forth against the Canadian settlements, doubtless passing along the usual route down the Oswego, and then coasting along the east end of the lake and down the St. Lawrence. They ravaged the island of Montreal, even to the very gates of the city, and had they possessed the means of reducing fortified places, would perhaps have put an end to French power in North America. As it was, the French were compelled to abandon Forts Frontenac and Niagara, and it seemed as if the Iroquois were about to be- come undisputed masters of the whole lake country.
The same year the second English revolution placed William, Prince of Orange, on the throne of James the Second, and the war with France, which immediately fol- lowed, set at work all the tomahawks and scalping-knives on the American frontiers. Both the English and French colonial governments habitually urged their respective Indian allies to send scalping-parties against the settlements of their rivals. But the Canadian Indians were, as a rule, no match for the Iroquois, and the French government found it necessary to take strong measures to defend their infant colony. In 1689 the Count de Frontenac was sent over as governor of New France,-an aged but most energetic noble- man, formerly minister for the colonies, whose name had been given to the fort at the outlet of Lake Ontario, and was even borne for a time by the great lake itself. Under that vigorous but cruel leader the French fortunes began to improve. After several years of mutual slaughter the old peer determined to strike a blow in person at the centre of Iroquois power, the great council-fire of the Onondagas.
On the 28th day of July, 1696, a well-appointed little army, bearing the banners of France, and led by the vet- eran Count de Frontenac, appeared in bateaux and canoes at the mouth of the Oswego river, then called by the
French the Onnontagué, or Onondaga. Encamping there for the night, the next day they proceeded slowly and cautiously up the foaming river.
On either side of the stream fifty scouts, Frenchmen and Indians, advanced in open order through the forest, ever alert for ambushed Iroquois. Four battalions of reg- ular troops, of two hundred men each, formed the élite of the invading force. These and one battalion of militia, numbering nearly three hundred, under Frontenac himself and the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, ascended close along the western shore, ready to spring to land at amy moment when the scouts should report the presence of a foe. Three more battalions of militia of similar strength and nearly five hundred savages, under Messieurs de Callieres and de Ra- mezay, in like manner advanced up the eastern side of the stream. These savages consisted of Hurons, Abenakis, Ottawas, and other tribes in alliance with the French, who were eager, with the assistance of French arms, to wrcak vengeance on the hated Iroquois for the many chastise-' ments they had received from them. So hard was the task of working against the current, and so great the caution observed, that at night the army had advanced hardly half- way to the falls of the Oswego.
The next day, however, they arrived there and began the portage. The soldiers and Indians in each bateau or canoe sprang ashore, lifted it on their shoulders, and con- veyed it around the falls. But when the Count de Fron- tenac was about to disembark, expecting to go on foot like the rest, fifty savages seized his canoe, and with him seated in it bore it to the smooth water above, making the forest re-echo with their songs and yells. The fierce old noble- man, then seventy-four years of age, was a great favorite with the northern Indians, whom he had aroused to the fiercest hostility against the English and Iroquois, giving them the hatchet with his own hands, and dancing the war-dance with their chiefs to stimulate their savage ardor.
Some of the battalions did not pass the portage till the next day, when an advance of ten miles was made. Near Three Rivers point they found a rude representation of the army, made on bark, doubtless left by some of the Iroquois as a warning to others, and accompanied by two bundles of rushes to signify the great number of the in- vaders. Some of the Frenchmen had the curiosity to count the rushes, which numbered fourteen hundred and thirty- four, and supposed that the Onondagas meant to indicate that as the precise number of Frontenac's army. But no Indian could count a tenth part so many ; the rushes merely showed that there was a great force coming.
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