USA > New York > Saratoga County > History of Saratoga County, New York : with historical notes on its various towns > Part 7
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In the spring, while the snows were melt- ing, some children told him where the body of poor Goupil was lying, farther down the stream. The Indians, and not the torrent, had taken it away. He found the bones scattered around and stripped by the foxes and birds. He ten- derly gathered them and hid them in a hollow tree, in the hope he might some day be able to lay them in consecrated ground.
Late in the autumn after his arrival he was ordered to go with a party of braves on their annual deer-hunt. All the game they took they offered to their god, Ar-esk-oui, and ate it in his honor. Jogues came near starving in the midst of plenty, for he would not taste the food offered to what he believed to be a demon. In a lonely spot in the forest he cut the bark, in the form of a cross, from the trunk of a large tree. There, half-clad in shaggy furs, in the chill wintry air, he knelt upon the frozen ground in prayer. He was a living martyr to the faith before whose emblem he bowed in adoration - a faith in which was now his only hope and consolation.
V .- THE ESCAPE.
At length, in the month of July, 1643, he went with a fishing party to a place on the Hudson about twenty miles below Fort Orange. Some of the Iroquois soon returned, bringing Jogues with them. On their way they stopped at Fort Orange, and he made his escape from the savages.
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Jogues was secreted by the Dutch, and the savages made diligent search for him. Fear- ing his discovery and recapture by the Indians, the kind-hearted Dutch paid a large ransom for the captive and gave him a free passage to his home in France. He arrived in Brittany on Christmas day and was received by his friends, who had heard of his captivity, as one risen from the dead. He was treated everywhere with mingled curiosity and rever- ence, and was summoned to Paris. The ladies of the court thronged around to do him homage.
When he was presented to the queen, Anne of Austria, she kissed his mutilated hands, the hands of the poor slave of the Mohawk squaws.
In the spring of 1644, Jogues returned to Canada, soon to become a martyr to his faith in the valley of the Mohawk.
For still another year the Iroquois war raged with unabated violence.
Early in the spring of 1645 a famous Algon- quin chief named Piskaret, with a band of braves, went out upon the war-path toward the country of the Mohawks. Upon an island in Lake Champlain they met a war party of thirteen Iroquois. They killed eleven of their number, made prisoners of the other two, and returned in triumph to the St. Lawrence.
At Sillery, a small settlement on the St. Lawrence, near Quebec, Piskaret, in a speech, delivered his captives to Montmagny, the governor-general, who replied with compli- ments and gifts. The wondering captives, when they fairly comprehended that they were saved from cruel torture and death, were sur- prised and delighted beyond measure. Then one of the captive Mohawks, of great size and of matchless symmetry of form, who was evi- dently a chief, arose and said to the governor, Montmagny :
" Onnontio, I am saved from fire. My body is delivered from death.
"Onnontio, you have given me my life. I thank you for it. I will never forget it. All my country will be grateful to you. The earth will be bright, the river calm and smooth ;
there will be peace and friendship between us. The shadow is before my eyes no longer. The spirits of my ancestors slain by the Algonquins have disappeared.
"Onnontio, you are good ; we are bad. But our anger is gone. I have no heart but for peace and rejoicing."
As he said this he began to dance, holding his hands upraised as if apostrophizing the sun. Suddenly he snatched a hatchet, bran- dished it for a moment like a madman, then flung it into the fire, saying as he did so, " Thus I throw down my anger ; thus I cast away the weapons of blood. Farewell, war! Now, Onnontio, I am your friend forever."
Onnontio means in the Indian tongue "great mountain." It is a literal translation of Montmagny's name. It was forever after the Iroquois name for the governors of Canada, as Corlear was for the governors of New York, so called from Arent van Curler, first superin- tendent of the colonies of Rensselaerswick, who was a great favorite with the Indians.
The captive Iroquois were well treated by the French, and one of them sent home to their country on the Mohawk, under a promise of making negotiations for peace with his people, and the other kept as a hostage.
The efforts of the captive chief who returned to the Mohawk were successful. In a short time he reappeared at Three Rivers with am- bassadors of peace from the Mohawk cantons. To the great joy of the French he brought with him Couture, who had become a savage in dress and appearance.
After a great deal of feasting, speech-mak- ing and belt-giving, peace was concluded, and order and quiet once more reigned for a brief period in the old wilderness.
But ambassadors from the French and Al- gonquins must be sent from Canada to the Mohawk towns with gifts and presents to ratify the treaty. No one among the French was so well suited for this office as Isaac Jogues. This, too, was a double errand, for he had already been ordered by his superior
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to found a new mission among the Mohawks. It was named, prophetically, in advance, "the mission of the martyrs."
At the first thought of returning to the Mo- hawks Jogues recoiled with horror. But it was only a momentary pang. The path of duty seemed clear to him, and, thankful that he was found worthy to suffer for the saving of souls, he prepared to depart.
On the 16th of May, 1646, he set out from Three Rivers, with Sieur Bondon, engineer to the governor, two Algonquin ambassadors and four Mohawks as guides.
On his way he passed over the well-remem- bered scenes of his former sufferings upon the river Richelieu and Lake Champlain.
He reached the foot of Lake George on the eve of Corpus Christi, which is the feast of the Blessed Body of Jesus. He named the lake, in honor of the day, " the Lake of the Blessed Sacrament." When he visited the lake before, as a poor, bleeding prisoner, it was clad in the dreamy robes of the early autumn. Now its banks were clothed in the wild exuberance of leafy June. For more than a hundred years afterwards this lake bore no other name. When Sir William Johnson began his military operations at the head of the lake, in the summer of 1755, he changed its name to Lake George, in honor of England's king.
From Lake St. Sacrament Jogues proceeded on his way to the Mohawk country, and, hav- ing accomplished his political mission, re- turned to Canada.
VI .- THE MISSION OF THE MARTYRS.
His work was only half done. Again, in the month of September, he set out for the Mo- hawk country. On his way he again passed over the shining waters of Lake St. Sacra- ment. Now it was adorned with the gorgeous gold and crimson glories of the mid-autumn forests.
This time he went in his true character-a
missionary of the gospel. But he had a strong presentiment that his life was near its end. He wrote to a friend, "I shall go and shall not return." His forebodings were verified. While there in July he had left a small box containing a few necessary articles, in antici- pation of an early return. The superstitious savages were confident that famine, pestilence, or some evil spirit or other were shut up in the box, that would in time come forth and devastate their country. To confirm their suspicions, that very summer there was much sickness in their castles, and when the harvest came in the autumn they found that the cater- pillars had eaten their corn. The Christian missionary was held responsible for all this, and was therefore doomed to die.
He arrived at their village near Cach-na-na- ga, on the bank of the Mohawk, on the 17th of October, and was saluted with blows. On the evening of the 18th he was invited to sup in the cabin of a chief. He accepted the invitation, and, on entering the hut, he was struck on the head with a tomahawk by a savage who was concealed within the door. They cut off his head, and in the morning it was displayed upon one of the palisades that surrounded the village. His body they threw into the Mohawk.
Thus died Isaac Jogues, the discoverer of Lake George, at his Mission of the Martyrs, St. Mary's of the Mohawks, in the fortieth year of his age. He was but an humble, self-sacri- ficing missionary of the Cross, yet his was
"One of the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die."
The old trail followed by Jogues through Saratoga county ran from the Hudson at Glens Falls along the foot of Mount Mac- Gregor, and turning northerly at the Stiles tavern, crossed the whole length of Green- field, and passed near Lake Desolation over the Kayadrosseras range into the Mohawk valley.
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CHAPTER VIII.
FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS (Continued)- GOVERNOR COURCELLES' EXPEDITION AGAINST THE MOHAWKS IN JANU- ARY, 1666 -LIEUT .- GENERAL TRACY INVADES THE MOHAWK VALLEY - THE IROQUOIS INVASION OF CANADA.
I .- THE SITUATION IN CANADA.
Notwithstanding the solemn treaty of peace concluded at Quebec between the French and Iroquois in 1646, which was ratified by Father Jogues upon his second journey to the Mo- hawks as ambassador for that purpose, a few months before his last journey thereto as mis- sionary and to martyrdom, the war continued to be waged by the Iroquois for twenty years longer with unabated fury.
In the meantime the few colonists there were in Canada, were grouped for protection around three forts-the one at Quebec, and the other two at Three Rivers and Montreal, respectively.
In these three settlements there were at that time but about three thousand inhabitants all told.
Every summer the Iroquois war parties, consisting mostly of Mohawks and Oneidas, in bands numbering sometimes but five or six warriors, but oftener as many hundred, prowled around these feeble settlements like ravening wolves, keeping their inhabitants in continual alarm.
At length the King of France-then the youthful Louis XIV. - came to their rescue. He sent over a regiment of royal troops, the regiment Carignan-Salieres, to assist the colo- nists in chastising the insolent savages.
To supervise military operations in America, the King appointed the Marquis de Tracy to be lieutenant-general and the "Company of the West." The proprietors of New France had appointed Daniel de Rimi Sieur de Cour- celle governor.
The regiment Garignan-Salicres was the first body of regular troops that was sent to Canada by the French king.
It was raised by Prince Carignan, in Savoy, during the year 1644. Eight years after it was conspicuous in the service of the French king, in the battles with Prince Conde, in the revolt of the Fronde. But the Prince of Carig- nan was unable to support the regiment, and gave it to the king, who attached it to the armies of France.
In 1664 it took a distinguished part with the allied forces of France in the Austrian war with the Turks. The next year it went with Tracy to Canada. Among its captains besides Chazy, were Sorel, Chambly La Motte, and others whose names are so familiar in Cana- dian annals. The regiment was commanded by Colonel de Salieres. Hence its double name.
In 1665, Tracy landed at Quebec in great pomp and splendor. The Chevalier de Chau- mont was at his side, and a long line of young noblesse, gorgeous in lace, ribbons and majes- tic leonine wigs, followed in his train. As this splendid array of noblemen marched through the narrow streets of the young city at the tap of the drum, escorted by the regiment Carig- nan-Salieres, "the bronzed veterans of the Turkish wars," each soldier with slouched hat, nodding plume, bandolier, and shouldered fire-lock, they formed a glittering pageant, such as the New World had never seen before.
II. - COURCELLE'S EXPEDITION.
In January, 1666, now that the long hoped for military aid from France had at last come, Governor Courcelle resolved to lose no time in invading the Mohawk country.
It was in the depth of the Canadian winter, and those familiar with its rigors tried to per- suade him from his purpose and to induce him to wait till spring should liberate the ice- bound earth from its fetters. But he would listen to no argument, and set out at once
1
ALBANY
GEN. SCHUYLER TRANSFERRING HIS COMMAND TO GEN. GATES.
-
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OF SARATOGA COUNTY.
on his fool-hardy expedition to the enemy's country.
"Courcelle," writes Father Le Mercier, " breathed nothing but war." At the head of about five hundred men he prepared to march to the Mohawk towns, a distance then esti- mated at three hundred leagues, and waited only till the St. Lawrence should be well frozen over. Early in January the ice in the river became solid. On the ninth day of the month they set out from Quebec and the long march began.
They all, officers and men, before proceed- ing further, stopped at the little mission chapel at Sillery, and kneeling before the shrine of Saint Michael, prayed for the aid and protec- tion of the warrior archangel. When they resumed their course they walked with diffi- culty and toil over the bare and slippery ice with their snow shoes tied at their backs and dragging their toboggans loaded with provi- sions and camping utensils slowly after them. A cutting wind swept over the broad frozen river and the intense cold froze their ears, noses and fingers. Some fell in torpor and were dragged on by their comrades to the "shivering bivouac."
After a march of ninety miles they reached Three Rivers. A considerable number were disabled and had to be left behind ; but others from the garrison joined them, and they pro- ceeded up the frozen River Richelieu.
In their progress they passed the new forts, Sorel and Chambly, on the Richelieu, and near the end of January reached the third fort, called Ste. Thérèse. They left this fort on the 30th, and not long after reached the foot of Lake Champlain.
The long line of weary men crept slowly on under the protection of the lee shore. The snow-covered lake was one vast expanse of dazzling whiteness, bordered on either side by grim mountain ranges-the Adirondacks on the right hand and the Green Mountains on the left.
When night came on they bivouacked in
squads on the shore among the trees. They dug away the snow with their snow shoes down to the fallen leaves, piled the snow in a bank around them, built their fire in the mid- dle, and lay down on beds of spruce or hem- lock boughs to rest. "While as they lay close packed for mutual warmth," says Parkman, "the winter sky arched above them like a vault of burnished steel, sparkling with the cold diamond lustre of its myriads of stars."
Three hundred of them were regular troops of the regiment Carignan-Salieres. Unaccus- tomed to the rigors of the Canadian winter their sufferings were extreme. They were not yet the hardy woodmen they in after times became. To travel on snow shoes and carry on their backs the heavy loads they all were obliged to carry, officers and men alike from Courcelle downwards in rank, was a feat ex- tremely difficult for them to accomplish.
The Canadians of the party, about two hun- dred in number, of whom seventy were old Indian fighters from Montreal, were seasoned to the climate, familiar with woodcraft, and trained to hardships and dangers. Wrapped in their heavy blue capotes, with their provis- ions and blankets strapped to their backs, they strode along the trail with facility and ease. Courcelle quickly saw their value, and placed his "Blue Coats," as he called them, in the van.
So on they went, those grim warriors, full five hundred strong, in Indian file, over the deep snow, through storm and sunshine, across the wintry solitude.
Leaving Lake Champlain, they crossed to Lake St. Sacrament (now Lake George), and from the head of that lake they crossed over to the river Orange (now the Hudson).
Passing down the Hudson, they sought the nearest trail that led along the foot of Mount MacGregor, over the Greenfield hills, and over the Kayaderrosseros range, near Lake Deso- lation, to the Mohawk castles, but mistook their way, and going by the way of Old Sara- toga (now Schuylerville), Saratoga Lake, the
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
Mourning Kill, Ballston Lake, and Eel-Place creek, to their surprise they found themselves, on Saturday, the 26th of February, near the little Dutch town of Corlear (now Schenec- tady). Their Algonquin guides had found the means for a drunken debauch at Fort Sainte Thérèse, and had lingered behind ; hence their mistake.
Thus they found themselves far from the Mohawk towns, worn out with cold, hunger and fatigue. Their situation was deplorable, and they tried to make the best of it.
They were told that most of the Mohawks and Oneidas had taken the war path against another tribe. They, however, caught a few stragglers and had a smart skirmish with a party of warriors, losing an officer and several privates.
On Saturday night they encamped in the woods near the settlement, half frozen and half starved.
On Sunday three envoys came to their camp to demand why they had invaded the territory of his Royal Highness the Duke of York. They had not before heard of the English conquest of the New Netherlands, which took place two years before.
The envoys received their explanations kindly, gave them some provisions and wine, and even invited them to enter the village. Courcelle declined, partly on the ground that if his men once got near a fireside he could never drive them from it.
Their situation was critical in the extreme. A thaw had begun, the snows were melting fast, and it was feared that the ice on the rivers and lakes might waste away and cut off their retreat.
On Sunday night they began a precipitate retreat by the oft-trodden trail they had come, by the way of Saratoga Lake to the Hudson and thence to Lakes George and Champlain.
The Mohawks followed in their rear and took a few prisoners, but cold and hunger were worse foes than the Mohawks, for sixty of their number perished before they reached
the friendly shelter of Fort Ste. Thérèse on the Richelieu river.
This expedition, unfortunate as it was, had the good effect to convince the Iroquois that their country was no longer safe from French invasion.
In May following the Senecas sent an em- bassy of peace, and the other nations, includ- ing the Mohawks, soon followed.
III .- TRACY'S EXPEDITION. Y
In 1665, the same year that Tracy landed at Quebec, the captain, Sieur La Motte, built Fort St. Motte upon the Isle La Motte, at the south end of Lake Champlain, opposite the mouth of the Chazy river. Young Chazy was stationed at this fort in the spring of 1666, and while hunting in the woods near the mouth of the river, with a party of officers, was sur- prised and attacked by a roving band of Iro- quois. Chazy, with two or three others, was killed upon the spot, and the survivors cap- tured and carried off prisoners to the valley of the Mohawk. For months the war thus begun afresh raged with unabated violence, and the old wilderness was again drenched in blood, as it had been in the time of Father Jogues, twenty years before.
But in the August following a grand coun- cil of peace was held with the Iroquois at Quebec. During the council Tracy invited some Mohawk chiefs to dine with him. At the table some allusion was made to the mur- der of Chazy. A chief named Ag-are-ata, at once held out his arm and boastingly said :
" This is the hand that split the head of that young man! "
"You shall never kill anybody else," ex- claimed the horror-stricken Tracy, and ordered the insolent savage to be taken out and hanged upon the spot, in sight of his comrades.
Of course peace was no longer to be thought of. Tracy made haste to march against the Mohawks with all the forces at his command.
During the month of September, Quebec,
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on the St. Lawrence, and Fort St. Anne, on the Isle La Motte, in Lake Champlain, were the scenes of busy preparation. At length Tracy and the governor, Courcelle, set out from Quebec on the day of the exaltation of the Cross, " for whose glory," says the Relation, "this expedition is undertaken." They had with them a force of thirteen hundred men and two pieces of cannon. It was the begin- ning of October, and the forests were putting on the gorgeous hues of an American autumn. They went up Lake Champlain and into Lake St. Sacrament, now Lake George. As the flotilla swept gracefully over the crystal waters of this gem of the old wilderness, it formed the first of the military pageants that in after years made that fair scene famous in history.
Leaving their canoes where Fort William Henry was afterward built, they plunged boldly on foot into the southern wilderness that lay before them, toward the Mohawk country. They took the old Indian trail, so often trodden by Father Jogues and by war parties of savages, which led across the Hud- son at the main bend above Glens Falls, and passed across the old hunting-ground, Kay-ad- ros-se-ra, through what are now the towns of Wilton, Greenfield, and Galway, in Saratoga county, to the lower castles on the Mohawk, near the mouth of the Schoharie creek. It was more than forty miles of forests, filled with swamps, rivers, and mountains, that lay before them. Their path was a narrow, rugged trail, filled with rocks and gullies, pitfalls and streams. Their forces consisted of six hun- dred regulars of the regiment Carignan- Saliéres, six hundred Canadian militia, and a hundred Christian Indians from the missions.
" It seems to them," writes Mother Maria de l'Incarnation, in her letter of the 16th of October, 1666, " that they are going to lay seige to Paradise, and win it and enter in, be- cause they are fighting for religion and the faith."
On they went through the tangled woods, officers as well as men carrying heavy loads
upon their backs, and dragging their cannon "over slippery logs, tangled roots, and oozy mosses.
Before long, in the vicinity of what is now known as Lake Desolation, their provisions gave out, and they were almost starved. But soon the trail led through a thick wood of chestnut trees full of nuts, which they eagerly devoured and thus stayed their hunger.
At length, after many weary days, they reached the lower Mohawk cantons. The names of the two lower Mohawk castles were then Te-hon-da-lo-ga, which was at Fort Hunter at the mouth of the Schoharie creek, and Ga- no-wa-ga, now Cach-na-wa-ga, which was near Tribes hill. The upper castles, which were further up the Mohawk, were the Ca-na-jo-ha-e, near Fort Plain, and Ga-ne-ga-ho-ga, opposite the mouth of East Canada creek.
They marched through the fertile valley of the Mohawk, the Indians fleeing into the for- est at their approach. Thus the brillant pa- geant of the summer that had glittered across the sombre rock of Quebec, was twice repeated by this war-like band of noblemen and soldiers amid the crimson glories of the autumn woods in the wild valley of the Mohawk. They did not need the cannon which they had brought with so much toil across the country from Lake St. Sacrament. The savages were fright- ened almost out of their wits by the noise of their twenty drums. "Let us save ourselves, brothers," said one of the Mohawk chiefs, as · he ran away, "the whole world is coming against us."
After destroying all the corn fields in the valley and burning the last palisaded Mohawk village, they planted a cross on its ashes and by the side of the cross the royal arms of France. Then an officer, by order of Tracy, advanced to the front, and, with sword in hand, proclaimed in a loud voice that he took possession, in the name of the king of France, of all the country of the Mohawks.
Having thus happily accomplished their ob- ject without the loss of a man, they returned
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
unmolested to Canada over the route by which they came.
The death of young Chazy was avenged. The insolent Iroquois were for the first time chastised and humbled in their own country. For twenty years afterwards there was peace in the old wilderness- peace bought by the blood of young Chazy.
Surely was the beautiful river on whose banks his bones still rest, christened with his name amid a baptism of fire at an altar upon which the villages, the wigwams, the corn fields of his murderers were the sacrificial offerings.
And so ended the second French and Indian war, known in colonial annals as the war of 1666.
II. - THE IROQUOIS INVADE CANADA IN 1689.
After the return of Tracy's expedition of 1666 there was comparative peace in the old wilderness for a period of more than twenty years. But at length, owing to the mistaken policy of Governor Denonville, the war broke out afresh, and the old northern valley again became the scene of untold horrors.
All colonies are sometimes unfortunate in their governors, and the dominion of New France was not an exception to the rule. In the manner in which some of the early Cana- dian governors treated the Iroquois of central New York, can easily be traced the persistent enmity of these savages to the French, and their unshaken friendship for the English col- onists of the Atlantic slope.
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