USA > New York > The documentary history of the state of New York, Vol. I pt 1 > Part 4
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They urged for many years with incredible persistence; with evidences of especial affection and even with threats of rupture and war, if their friendship were despised and their demand reject- ed ; they insisted, [ say, and solicited that a goodly number of French should accompany them into their country, the one to instruct, the others to protect them against their enemies, as a token of peace and alliance with them.
The Mohawks desired to thwart this scheme ; they fought the one against the other even unto polluting the earth with blood and murder. Some believed that all that was mere feint, the better to mask their game ; but it would seem to me not a very pleasant game when the stakes are life and blood. I strongly doubt that Iroquoy policy should extend so far as that, and that Barbarians who repose but little confidence in each other, should so long conceal their intrigues. I believe rather that the Onnontagué Iro- quois demanded some Frenchmen in sincerity, but with views very different. The Chiefs finding themselves engaged in heavy wars against a number of nations whom they had provoked, asked for Hurons as reinforcements to their warriors ; they wished for the French to obtain firearms from them, and to repair those which might be broken. Further, as the Mohawks treated them some- times very ill when passing through their villages to trade with the Dutch, they were anxious to rise out of this dependence in
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FIRST SETTLEMENT OF ONONDAGA,
opening a trade with the French. This is not all, the fate of arms being fickle, they demanded that our Frenchmen should erect a vast fort in their country to serve as a retreat for them, or at least for their wives and children in case their enemies pressed too close on them. Here are the views of the Iroquois politicians. The common people did not penetrate so far ahead ; curiosity to see strangers come from such a distance, the hope of deriving some little profit, created a desire to see them ; but the Christian Hurons and captives among the people, and those who approved their lives and conversations which they sometimes held regarding our belief, breathed nothing in the world so much as the coming of Preachers of the Gospel who had brought them forth unto Jesus Christ.
But so soon as the Captains and Chiefs became masters of their enemies, having crushed all the Nations who had attacked them ; so soon as they believed that nothing could resist their arms, the recollection of the wrongs they pretended to have formerly experienced from the Hurons; the glory of triumphing over Euro- peans as well as Americans, caused them to take the resolution to revenge themselves on the one and destroy the other ; so that at the very moment they saw the dreaded Cat Nation subjugated by their arms and by the power of the Senecas, their allies, they would have massacred all the French at Onnontagué, were it not that they pretended to make use of them as a decoy to attract some Hurons and to massacre them as they had already done. And , if the influence of some of their tribe, then resident at Quebec, had not staid them, the path to Onnontagué had become the tomb to Frenchmen as well as to Hurons, as will be seen hereafter. From that time forth our people, having discovered their conspiracy, and perceived that their death was concluded on, bethought them on their retreat, which shall be described in the following letter.
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AND DISCOVERY OF THE SALT SPRINGS.
FATHER PAUL RAGUENEAU
TO THE REV. FATHER JACQUES RENAULT, PROVINCIAL OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS IN THE PROVINCE OF FRANCE.
Pax Christi. My R. Father,
The present is to inform Y. R. of our return from the Iroquois mission, loaded with some spoils rescued from Hell. We bear in our hands more than five hundred children and a number of adults, the most part of whom died after Baptism. We have re- established Faith and piety in the hearts of a poor captive church, the first foundations of which we had laid in the Huron Country. We have proclaimed the gospel unto all the Iroquois Nations so that they are henceforth without excuse, and God will be fully justified against them at the great day of judgment.
The Devil enraged at seeing us reap so fine a harvest and en- joy so amply the fruits of our enterprise, made use of the incon- stancy of the Iroquois to drive us from the centre of his estates; for these Barbarians, without other motive than to follow their volatile humor, renewed the war against the French, the first blows of which were discharged on our worthy Christian Hurons, who went up with us to Onnontagué at the close of the last summer, and who were cruelly massacred in our arms and in our bosom by the most signal treason imaginable. They then made prisoners of their poor wives and even burned some of them with their children of three and four years, at a slow fire.
This bloody execution was followed by the murder of three Frenchmen at Montreal by the Oneidas, who scalped them and carried these as if in triumph into their villages in token of de- clared war. This act of hostility having obliged M. Dailleboust, then commanding in this country, to cause a dozen of Iroquois, in part Onnontagués and mostly Mohawks, to be arrested and put in irons at Montreal, Three Rivers and Quebec, where they happened to be at the time, both Iroquois Nations became irri- 4
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FIRST SETTLEMENT AT ONONDAGA,
tated at this detention of their people, pretending that it was unjust ; and to cruelly avenge themselves convoked a secret Council where they formed the scheme of an implacable war against the French. Yet, they judged it fitting to dissimulate for some time until through the return of Father Simon Le Moine, then with the Mohawks, they should have obtained the delivery of their folks who were in irons. In that Council they even looked on our persons as precious hostages, either for the exchange of some of their tribe who were in prison, or obtain- ment of whatever pleased them when within view of our French settlements they should make us feel the effects of their cruelty; doubting not that these horrible spectacles and the lamentations of forty and fifty innocent Frenchmen would touch with compassion and distress the Governor and inhabitants of what place so ever.
We were only privately acquainted with these disastrous de- signs of the Iroquois, but we openly saw their spirits prepared for war; and in the month of February divers bands took the field for that purpose, 200 Mohawks on the one side, 40 Oneidas on the other ; some Onnontagué warriors had already gone for- ward whilst the main body of the army was assembling.
We could not expect, speaking humanly, to extricate from these dangers, by which we were surrounded on all sides, some fifty Frenchmen who had entrusted to us their lives and for whom we should feel ourselves responsible before God and men. What distressed us the most was, not so much the flames into which a part of our Frenchmen would be cast, as the unfortunate captivity to which the most of them were destined by the Iro- quois, in which the salvation of their souls was more to be dreaded than the loss of their bodies. This is what the greater number most especially apprehended, who already seeing them- selves prisoners, coveted rather the stroke of the hatchet or even the flames, than this captivity. They were determined in order to avoid this last misfortune, even to risk all and to fly each, his way in the woods, to perish there of hunger and wretchedness or to attempt to reach some of the French settlements.
In these circumstances so precipitous, our Fathers and I and a gentleman named Monsieur du Puys, who commanded all our
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AND DISCOVERY OF THE SALT SPRINGS.
Frenchmen and a garrison of soldiers, nine of whom had already of themselves resolved to abandon us, concluded that it would be better to withdraw in a body, either to encourage one another to die or to sell life more dearly. For that reason it became necessary to depart without breathing a syllable about it ; for the least suspicion that the Iroquois would have had of our retreat, would hurry down on us the disaster we would avoid. But how hope to be able to depart without being discovered, being in the heart of the country, and always beset by a number of these Bar- barians who left not our house so as to watch our countenances in this conjuncture ? It is true they never imagined that we should have had the courage to undertake this exploit, knowing well that we had neither canoes, nor sailors, and that we were unacquainted with the paths topped by precipices where a dozen Iroquois could easily defeat us: Besides, the season was insup- portable on account of the cold of the frozen water through which, under all circumstances, the canoes were to be dragged, throwing ourselves into the river and remaining there entire hours, sometimes up to the neck, and we never had undertaken such expeditions without having savages for guides.
Notwithstanding these obstacles which appeared insurmounta- ble to them as well as to us, God, who holds in His hands all the moments of our lives, so happily inspired us with all that was necessary to be done, that having departed on the 20th day of March from our house of Ste. Marie, near Onnontagué, at eleven o'clock at night, His divine providence guiding us, as if by a continued miracle, in the midst of all imaginable dangers, we ar- rived at Quebec on the 23d of the month of April, having passed Montreal and Three Rivers before any canoe could be launched, the river not having been open for navigation until the very day that we made our appearance.
From the same to the same.
Your Rev. will be glad to learn the particulars of our depart- ure fromi Ste. Marie of the Iroquois. * *
* *
The resolution being taken to quit that country where God took through us, the small number of his disciples, the difficulties ap-
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FIRST SETTLEMENT AT ONONDAGA,
peared insurmountable in their execution for which every thing failed us.
To supply the want of canoes, we had built, in secret, two Batteaux of a novel and excellent structure to pass the rapids ; these batteaux drew but very little water and carried considera- ble freight, fourteen or fifteen men each, amounting to fifteen to sixteen hundred weight. We had moreover four Algonquin and four Iroquois canoes, which were to compose our little fleet of fifty-three Frenchmen.
But the difficulty was to embark unperceived by the Iroquois who constantly beset us. The batteaux, canoes and all the equi- page could not be conveyed without great noise, and yet without secrecy there was nothing to be expected save a general massacre of all of us the moment it would be discovered that we enter- tained the least thought of withdrawing.
On that account we invited all the Savages in our neighbour- hood to a solemn feast at which we employed all our industry, and spared neither the noise of drums nor instruments of music, to deceive them by harmless device. He who presided at this ceremony played his part with so much address and success, that all were desirous to contribute to the publick joy: Every one vied in uttering the most piercing cries, now of war, anon of re- joicing. The Savages, through complaisance, sung and danced after the French fashion and the French in the Indian style. To encourage them the more in this fine play, presents were distri- buted among those who acted best their parts and who made the greatest noise to drown that caused by about forty of our people outside who were engaged in removing all our equipage. The embarcation being completed, the feast was concluded at a fixed time ; the guests retired, and sleep having soon overwhelmed them, we withdrew from our house by a back door and embarked with very little noise, without bidding adieu to the Savages, who were acting cunning parts and were thinking to amuse us to the hour of our massacre with fair appearances and evidences of good will.
Our little Lake on which we silently sailed in the darkness of the night, froze according as we advanced and caused us to fear
53
AND DISCOVERY OF THE SALT SPRINGS.
being stopt by the ice after having evaded the fires of the Iroquois. God, however, delivered us, and after having advanced all night and all the following day through frightful precipices and water- falls, we arrived finally in the evening at the great Lake Ontario, twenty leagues from the place of our departure. This first day was the most dangerous, for had the Iroquois observed our de- parture they would have intercepted us, and had they been ten or twelve it would have been easy for them to have thrown us into disorder, the river being very narrow, and terminating after tra- velling ten leagues in a frightful precipice where we were obliged to land and carry our baggage and canoes during four hours, through unknown roads covered with a thick forest which could have served the enemy for a Fort, whence at each step he could have struck and fired on us without being perceived. God's protection visibly accompanied us during the remainder of the road, in which we walked through perils which made us shudder after we escaped them, having at night no other bed except the snow after having passed entire days in the water and amid the ice.
Ten days after our departure we found Lake Ontario on which we floated, still frozen at its mouth. We were obliged to break the ice, axe in hand, to make an opening, to enter two days . af- terwards a rapid where our little fleet had well nigh foun- dered. For having entered a Great Sault without knowing it, we found ourselves in the midst of breakers which, meeting a quantity of big rocks, threw up mountains of water and cast us on as many precipices as we gave strokes of paddles. Our bat- teaux which drew scarcely half a foot, were soon filled with wa- ter and all our people in such confusion, that their cries mingled with the roar of the torrent presented to us the spectacle of a dreadful wreck. It became imperative, however, to extricate ourselves, the violence of the current dragging us despite our- selves into the large rapids and through passes in which we had never been. Terror redoubled at the sight of one of our canoes being engulfed in a breaker which barred the entire rapid and which, notwithstanding, was the course that all the others must keep. Three Frenchmen were drowned there, a fourth fortu-
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FIRST SETTLEMENT AT ONONDAGA,
nately escaped, having held on to the canoe and being saved at the foot of the Sault when at the point of letting go his hold, his strength being exhausted. * The 3d of April we landed at Montreal, in the beginning of the night.
You noticed above. . how our Fathers and our Frenchmen withdrew from their habitation built on the banks of Lake Ganan- taa, near Onnontagué. That happened at night, and without noise and with so much address, that the Iroquois, who cabined at the doors of our house, never perceived the removal of the ca- noes and batteaux and bagage which were launched, nor the em- barcation of fifty-three persons. Sleep in which they were deep- ly enveloped, after considerable singing and dancing, deprived them of all consciousness ; but at length night having given place to day, darkness to light, sleep to awaking, these Barbarians left their cabins, and roving round our well locked house, were as- tonished at the profound silence of the Frenchmen. They saw no one going out to work ; they heard no voice. They thought at first that they were all at prayer, or in council, but the day advancing and these prayers not getting to an end, they knocked . at the door. The dogs, which our Frenchmen designedly left behind, answered by barking. The cock's crow which they heard in the morning and the noise of the dogs, made them think that the masters of these animals were not far off ; they recovered the patience which they had lost. But at length the sun began to decline and no person answering neither to the voice of men nor to the cries of animals, they scaled the house to see the condition of our people in this terrible silence. Astonishment now gave place to fright and trouble. They open the door ; the chiefs enter every where ; ascend the garret ; descend to the cellar ; not a Frenchman makes his appearance dead or alive. They re- gard one another-terror seizes them ; they imagine they have to do with Devils. They saw no batteau, and even if they saw it they could not imagine that our Frenchmen would be so rash as to precipitate themselves into rapids and breakers, among rocks and horrible dangers in which themselves though very ex- pert in passing through Saults and Cascades, often lose their
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AND DISCOVERY OF THE SALT SPRINGS.
lives. They persuade themselves either that they walked on the waves, or fled through the air ; or as seemed most probable, that they concealed themselves in the woods. They seek for them ; nothing appears. They are quasi convinced that they rendered themselves invisible ; and as they suddenly departed, so will they pounce as suddenly on their village.
III. PAPERS
RELATING TO
De Courcelles and De Cracy's Expeditions
AGAINST
THE MOHAWK INDIANS.
Anno 1665-6.
OF THE FIRST FORTS ERECTED ON THE IROQUOIS RIVER.
[Relation de ce qui s'est passé en la Nouvelle France ès années 1664 & 1665.]
At the same time that the Outaouaks embarked to return to their country, the wind becoming more favorable, the soldiers who had been obliged to stop at Three Rivers likewise embarked; and after having navigated Lake St. Peter arrived at the mouth of the River Richelieu, which leads to the Iroquois of the Mohawk.
The plan entertained at this first campaign was to erect on the route some forts, which were considered absolutely necessary as well to secure the passage and liberty of trade as to serve for stores for the troops and retreats for sick and wounded sol- diers. For this purpose three advantageous posts were selected. The first at the mouth of the Iroquois River ; the second seven- teen leagues higher up, at the foot of a current of water called the Sault de Richelieu ; the third about three leagues above this current.
The first fort, named Richelieu, was built by Mons. de Cham- blay, who commanded five companies which Monsieur de Tracy sent there. The second fort, named Saint Louis, because it was commenced the week of the celebration of the festival of that great saint, protector of our Kings and' of France, was built by M. de Sorel, who commanded five other companies of the Regi- ment of the Carignan Salières. . . . The [third] fort was for- tunately finished in the month of October on St. Theresa's day, whence it derived its name. From this third fort of St. Therese we can easily reach Lake Champlain without meeting any rapids to stop the batteaux.
This Lake, after a length of sixty leagues, finally terminates in
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FRENCHI EXPEDITIONS AGAINST
the country of the Mohawk Iroquois. It is still intended to build there, early next spring, a fourth fort, which will command those countries, and from which continual attacks can be made on the enemy, if they do not listen to reason.
We shall give at the end of the next chapter, the plan of these three forts, with the map of the Iroquois country1 which has not been as yet seen, after having given some particulars of those people, who thwart us so long a time, because they have never been efficiently attacked.
OF THE IROQUOIS COUNTRY AND THE ROUTES LEADING THITHER.
It must be premised that the Iroquois are composed of five Na- tions, of which the nearest to the Dutch, is that of the Mohawk consisting of two or three villages containing about three to four hundred men capable of bearing arms. These have always been at war with us, though they sometimes pretended to sue for peace.
Proceeding towards the West, at a distance of forty-five league's, is found the second Nation, called Oneida, which has no more, at most, than one hundred and forty warriors, and has never wished to listen to any negotiations for peace ; on the contrary it has al- ways embarrassed affairs when they appeared about to be arranged.
Fifteen leagues towards sunset is Onnontagué, which has full three hundred men. We have been formerly received there as friends and treated as enemies, which obliged us to abandon that post, where we remained two years, as if in the centre of all the Iroquois Nations, whence we proclaimed the gospel to all those poor people, assisted by a garrison of Frenchmen sent by Mon- sieur de Lauzon, then Governor of New France, to take possession of those countries in his Majesty's name.
At twenty or thirty leagues from there still towards the West
1 For the Map above referred to, see the Vol. of Relations in the State Library.
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AGAINST THE MOHAWKS.
is the village of Cayuga, of three hundred warriors, where in the year 1657, we had a mission which formed a little church filled with piety in the midst of these Barbarians.
Towards the termination of the Great Lake, called Ontario, is located the most numerous of the Five Iroquois Nations, named the Senecas, which contains full twelve hundred men in two or three villages of which it is composed.
These last two nations have never openly made war on us, and have always remained neuter.
All that extent of country is partly south, partly west of the French settlements, at a distance of from one hundred to one hundred and fifty leagues. It is for the most part fertile, covered with fine timber ; among the rest entire forests of chestnut and hickory (noyer,) intersected by numerous lakes and rivers abound- ing in fish. The air is temperate; the seasons regular as in France, capable of bearing all the fruits of Touraine and Pro- vence. The snows are not deep nor of long duration. The three winters which we passed there among the Onnontagués, were mild, compared with the winters at Quebec where the ground is covered five months with snow, three, four and five feet deep. As we inhabit the Northern part of New France and the Iroquois the South, it is not surprising that their lands are more agreeable and more capable of cultivation and of bearing better fruit.
There are two principal rivers leading to the Iroquois ; one to those which are near New Netherland and this is the Richelieu river of which we shall speak hereafter ; the second conducts to the other Nations more distant from us, always ascending our great river St. Lawrence which divides, above Montreal, as if into two branches, whereof one goes to the antient country of the Hurons, the other to that of the Iroquois.
This is one of the most important rivers that can be seen, whether we regard its beauty or its convenience; for we meet there almost throughout, a vast number of beautiful Islands, some large, others small, but all covered with fine timber and full of deer, bears, wild cows which supply abundance of provisions necessary for the travellers who find it every where, and some
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FRENCH EXPEDITIONS
times entire herds of fallow deer. The banks of the main land are ordinarily shaded by huge oaks and other lofty timber cover- ing a good soil.
Before arriving at the Great Lake Ontario, two others are tra- versed, one of which adjoins the Island of Montreal, the other is amidway. It is ten leagues long by six wide. It is terminated by a great many little islands very pleasing to the sight, and we have named it Lake St. Francis.
But what renders this river inconvenient is the water falls and rapids which extend for the space of forty leagues, to wit from Montreal to the entrance of Lake Ontario, there being only the two lakes just mentioned of easy navigation. To surmount these torrents, we must often debark from the canoe and walk in the river whose waters are sufficiently low in these quarters, chiefly towards the banks. We take the canoe in hand dragging it after us. Ordinarily two men suffice, one forward at the bow, the other behind at the stern ; and as the canoe is very light, being made merely of the bark of trees, and as it is not loaded, it glides more smoothly over the water, not meeting great resistance. Some times the canoe is to be landed and carried some distance, one man in front, the other in the rear ; the first carrying one end of the canoe on the right shoulder, the second carrying the other end on the left. It becomes necessary to do this either on meet- ing cascades and entire rivers which fall some times perpendicu- larly from a prodigious height or when the current is too rapid ; or when the water thereabout being too deep, we cannot walk, dragging the canoe along by the hand ; or when the country is to be crossed from one river to the other.
But when the mouth of the Great Lake is reached, the navi gation is easy, when the waters are tranquil, becoming insensibly wider at first ; then about two-thirds, next one half and finally out of sight (of land) ; especially after one has passed an infinity of little islands which are at the entrance of the Lake, in such great number and in such a variety that the most experienced Iroquois Pilots sometimes lose themselves there, and experience considerable difficulty in distinguishing the course to be steered, in the confusion and as it were in the labyrinth formed by the
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