USA > Vermont > The Lake Champlain and Lake George valleys, Vol. I > Part 4
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panions, and that I must do all I could to kill them. I promised to do what I could, and that I was very sorry they could not clearly under- stand me, so as to give them the order and plan of attacking their enemies, as we should indubitably defeat them all; but there was no help for that; that I was very glad to encourage them and to mani- fest to them my good will when we should be engaged.
"The moment we landed they began to run about two hundred paces toward their enemies who stood firm, and had not yet perceived my companions, who went into the bush with some savages. Our's commenced calling me in a loud voice, and making way for me opened in two, and placed me at their head, marching about twenty paces in advance until I was within thirty paces of the enemy. The moment they saw me, they halted, gazing at me and I at them. When I saw them preparing to shoot at us, I raised my arquebus, and aiming directly at one of the three Chiefs, two of them fell to the ground by this shot and one of their companions received a wound of which he afterwards died. I had put four balls in my arquebus. Our's, on witnessing a shot so favorable to them, set up such tremendous shouts that thunder could not have been heard; and yet, there was no lack of arrows on one side or the other. The Iroquois were greatly aston- ished seeing two men killed so instantaneously, notwithstanding they were provided with arrow-proof armour woven of cotton thread and wood; this frightened them very much. Whilst I was reloading, one of my companions in the bush fired a shot, which so astonished them anew, seeing their Chiefs slain, that they lost courage, took flight and abandoned the field and their fort, hiding themselves in the depths of the forest, whither pursuing them, I killed some others. Our sav- ages also killed several of them and took ten or twelve prisoners. The rest carried off the wounded. Fifteen or sixteen of ours were wounded by arrows; they were promptly cured.
"After having gained the victory, they amused themselves plun- dering Indian corn and meal from the enemy; also their arms which they had thrown away in order to run the better. And having feasted, danced and sung, we returned three hours afterwards with the prisoners."
At night the victors led out one of their prisoners, whom they immediately started to torture. When they finally scalped their cap- tive while he was yet alive, Champlain had seen enough of Indian
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INDIAN MEETS WHITE CIVILIZATION
atrocities and begged permission to shoot him. They at first refused, but when he turned away from them in disgust they reconsidered and finally told him he could do as he pleased. Needless to say Champlain shot the unfortunate prisoner.
Thus did the great French explorer incur the anger and displeasure of the powerful Iroquois confederacy. This was the beginning of a hostility that was to last for over one hundred and fifty years. From this time on the Five Nations instinctively turned to the arms of the Dutch and the English, this certainly being a high price for France to pay for winning the gratitude and friendship of Champlain's Algon- quins. Indians of all nations have been noted for their long memories, never forgetting to reward a friend or seek revenge for some wrong. The Iroquois were no exception to this aboriginal rule.
Another reason why the Five Nations remained faithful to the Dutch and then the English, rather than to the French, was the affec- tion the Indians felt toward some of the former. The red man was primarily a creature of emotions. He had strong likes and violent dislikes. He was easily influenced by those who won his affection, but not by those who incurred his displeasure. Per- sonalities played an extremely important part in Indian politics. It was unfortunate from the French point of view that the white men most loved and respected by the Iroquois were Dutch and English. One of these was Arendt Van Corlaer, the Dutch representative in the territory around Fort Orange (Albany). He was so popular with the Iroquois that they ever afterwards spoke of the white governor, whoever he might be, as Corlaer. He rendered the red men some fine services and they never forgot him. Among other whites pos- sessing considerable influence over the Five Nations were some of the members of the Schuyler family. However, the man who stood head and shoulders above all others in the influence he possessed in the councils of the confederacy was William Johnson.
Johnson migrated to this country in 1738 and set out with great success to make a fortune trading with the Indians. He built two strongholds for himself in the Mohawk valley and rapidly acquired a fine reputation among the Iroquois. He liked Indians, adopted many of their ways, and generally treated them with justice and compara- tive honesty. Their affection for him was by no means diminished when he married a Mohawk maiden, named Molly Brant, according
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to Indian ritual. She was known throughout the colony as "the brown Lady Johnson." In 1746, after he had been in the country only eight years, he was made an Iroquois chief and became an Indian agent. By virtue of his prestige among the aborigines, he was able to render valuable service to England in the final war with France. Whenever the Iroquois became lukewarm toward the English, or whenever there was danger that the French might lure them away, it was generally William Johnson to whom was given the task of increasing their zeal for the advancement of the interests of his King. Much has been written in criticism of this strange, brilliant individual, and some of it is justified. At the time of the battle of Lake George he was guilty of jealousy and petty selfishness. His reports reek with falsehood and mental dishonesty. On other occasions he showed himself to be utterly unscrupulous, dishonest and cruel in his relations with his com- petitors, particularly those who happened to cross his political path. However, none of these defects, found in this man who was so out- standing in other respects, should blind us to the fact that, by helping to retain for England the loyalty of the Iroquois, Johnson played an important part in deciding the duel for empire.
The main reason for the alliance of the Iroquois with the Dutch and the English, however, was economic. The prosperity of the French was based on the fur trade, and the traders who spread throughout the wilderness in search of beaver pelts became indi- viduals of importance. Far and near the red man began the extermi- nation of wild life in order to obtain liquor and guns from the whites. The French were not allowed for long to continue the profitable trade without competition, however, for soon Dutch traders began to move out of Albany on a similar mission. When he was at Ticonderoga, Champlain had been only about eighty miles from the site on which New York's capital city was to be built. If he had continued his journey over Lake George and the Hudson to the latter's juncture with the Mohawk, the history of this section of North America might have been entirely different. The truth is, however, that Champlain advanced no further south than Ticonderoga. This might not have been an important oversight on his part but for the fact that on Sep- tember fourth, very soon after the great Frenchman started his return trip to Canada, Henry Hudson turned the prow of the little Dutch ship, the "Half Moon," into the mouth of the river which today bears his name and which Champlain had neglected to explore.
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The Dutch took firm root on the banks of the Hudson, and gradu- ally extended their settlements northward. Five years later [1614] they built Fort Nassau at Albany, a place destined to assume tre- mendous importance in the fur trade and also in the later develop- ment of New York State. The first of the Dutch traders to invade the precincts of the Iroquois Confederacy were looked upon with sus- picion, as any white men undoubtedly would have been so soon after the engagement at Ticonderoga, but the policy of peaceful penetra- tion, followed by the citizens of New Netherland, soon reaped a rich harvest. The Indians began to look upon them with friendliness, and within a few years the celebrated Treaty of Tawasentha was framed. This marked the first permanent peace pact between Indians and white men in the history of the United States. The name was derived from the little creek, Tawasentha, where the Dutch then had their defenses, their first island stronghold of Fort Nassau having been ruined by spring floods. Much has been said of the "white man's burden" and of his willingness to undertake to civilize peoples living in a lower cultural stratum of society. Both France and Holland were willing and even anxious to assume that duty, but the chief burden of the white man in the present case was his desire for furs. We will now watch how he shouldered his burden as he carried rum to all the corners of the American wilderness.
On the whole, the relations between the Dutch and the Iroquois were good, but there were occasional causes of friction. Once, a stupid trader in charge of Fort Orange, named Van Krieckenbeeck, forgetting Champlain's experience, helped a party of Mohicans fight against the "People of the Long House." He was slain but was more fortunate than one of his companions who fought so fiercely that his body was cooked and eaten by the Mohawks, who thus hoped to inherit his courage. Van Krieckenbeeck's attack might have resulted in serious consequences, but the Dutchmen at Fort Orange escaped swift revenge by disavowing the act. On another occasion, in 1659, the Mohawks became bitter at the Dutch, charging that the latter would not sell them enough guns, and also because of the practice of the white men in selling rum. On this occasion Van Corlaer man- aged to maintain peace by visiting the Indian villages and destroying the barrels of rum that the traders had left. In spite of these isolated cases of friction, however, the Dutch and the Iroquois remained quite
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friendly. Thus, when England seized New Netherland from Hol- land in 1664 and took possession of Fort Orange, the new owners inherited the friendship of the red men. The Iroquois continued their habit of dealing with traders coming from Albany (as the English
THE INDIAN, LAKE GEORGE
named Fort Orange beginning with 1664), and the amicable rela- tions, which had been built up between the Dutch and the Five Nations, now served to assist England in keeping the Iroquois alien- ated from the French.
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At first the "People of the Long House" had an ample supply of furs in their own territory with which to meet the needs of the white man as well as their own necessities, but the traders demanded so many pelts for their powder and their "firewater" that within thirty years fur-bearing animals became scarce in the lands owned by the Iroquois. Beaver pelts in particular were no longer forthcoming in large quantities from the Adirondack area. So long as furs had been plentiful there had been no need of collision with the French Indians, but now trouble was bound to appear. The French Indians controlled a much larger trapping territory and still possessed an abundance of fur-bearing animals at a time when the Iroquois lands were becoming exhausted. Where were the mighty warriors of the Long House now going to obtain the furs that were so necessary to secure their favorite luxuries, rum and powder ? Since they had few fur resources of their own they must secure them elsewhere.
The Iroquois accordingly attacked the Hurons, from whom the French obtained their furs, with such energy and determination that for a year or two practically no pelts reached Quebec. The demands of the fur trade were gradually bringing the Five Nations and the French into open collision. Finally, the Iroquois attacked the posts at Montreal and Three Rivers, and the fur routes, so essential to the economic welfare of New France, were closed. It became neces- sary for the King of France to send large numbers of troops to the American wilderness to preserve the life-blood of his colonists. Eventually, the Iroquois were forced to make temporary agreements with the French, but they continued to be economic rivals.
By this time, most of the furs came from the Indian tribes farther west. Both the Iroquois and the French became engaged in competi- tion with the western Indians in order to secure trade advantages and they sometimes came into open conflict. Very rapidly the Five Nations subdued the Eries and extended their authority over tribes in New England, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Maryland and North Caro- lina. Most of the furs came east by two routes: the southern one along the Mohawk controlled by the Indians; and the northern one along the St. Lawrence under the jurisdiction of France. The pros- perity of both groups depended upon the number of pelts they could obtain, the Five Nations acting as middlemen between the western Indians and the English. This rivalry between the Iroquois and the French was inevitable. First the Dutch and then the English did
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what they could to fan the flames of that hostility. One reason for the establishment of the English forts at Oswego was to divert the furs, that normally were sent over the St. Lawrence to Montreal, into the hands of the Iroquois. The Five Nations had nothing to gain from an alliance with the French. Indeed, the Indian hope of pros- perity depended for its achievement upon the limitation of French power. What was more natural, therefore, than that the Iroquois should remain friendly with the proprietors of Fort Orange ?
Thus we find some very good reasons why, during the duel between France and England for the control of North America, the Iroquois threw in their lot with the English. Champlain's poor judgment in unnecessarily antagonizing these Indians caused them to distrust the French from the very beginning. Their fondness for Van Corlaer, the Schuylers, William Johnson and others tended to widen the breach. However, in all probability, the Iroquois would have become enemies of the French as soon as the demands of the Dutch traders had exhausted the furs of their domain, even if Champlain had never existed and William Johnson had never seen an Indian. When, dur- ing the great French and Indian War, the Iroquois beheld the incom- petence, the lethargy, and the stupidity of Braddock, Loudoun, Webb and Abercrombie, to mention only a few of England's generals; when they learned of the French destruction of Oswego, Fort William Henry and other posts ; when England's American empire seemed to be crumbling into the dust, neither the slight skirmish in which Cham- plain took part a century and a half before, nor their love of Johnson could fully explain why these highly emotional aborigines should still refrain from joining the seemingly invincible legions of France. They knew that a final victory for the French would result in the economic doom and political decay of the Iroquois confederacy. An example of the contempt which the "People of the Long House" entertained for the war-making ability of the English can be found in a speech deliv- ered to them by that great Mohawk, King Hendrick :
"'Tis your fault, brethren, that we are not strengthened by con- quest, for we would have gone and taken Crown Point, but you hin- dered us. We had concluded to go and take it, but we were told that it was too late, and that the ice would not bear us. Instead of this, you burned your own fort at Saraghtoga, and ran away from it, which was a shame and a scandal to you. Look about your country and see.
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INDIAN MEETS WHITE CIVILIZATION
You have no fortifications about you; no, not even in this city. 'Tis but one step from Canada hither, and the French may easily come and turn you out of your doors. Brethren, you are desirous that we should open our minds and our hearts to you. Look at the French. They are men; they are fortifying everywhere; but, we are ashamed to say it, you are like women, bare and open, without any fortifications."
Johnson's secretary, Wraxall, correctly summed up the attitude of the Iroquois when he wrote: "I believe their Affections are in our Favour, but their Fears are on the French side." Concerning the fur trade he also wrote: "I am persuaded that putting the Indian Trade under proper regulations is the only Method we have left to resist and overthrow the French Influence among the Indians; in all other ways they are & will be our Superiors." Again he reported: "The Indians frequently repeat that Trade was the foundation of their Alliance or Connexions with us & that it is the chief Cement wch binds us together. And this should undoubtedly be the first Principle of our whole Sys- tem of Indian Politics."*
The American Indian was greatly influenced by the approaching European civilization. The Iroquois, as well as the other races of red men, succumbed to the enfeebling embrace of rum, land thieves and moral degradation. Those Indians farthest removed from white civilization remained the strongest, which reminds us that Julius Cæsar reported that those Germanic barbarians who were farthest away from Roman civilization were the most difficult to conquer. The story of the despoliation of the red man is an extremely sad page of history and one that is not well enough known. Very few vanquished races in all history were ever accorded more dishonest and pitiless treatment by their conquerors than was dealt out to the red man by our ancestors.
Before the white man came along, it was unnecessary for the Indian to lock or guard his home against burglars. Although he had a different code of morality, he usually lived up to it. The greatest punishment was exile from the tribe. When he sold land, he generally understood that he was selling only hunting and trapping rights on it and not giving up his own privileges. On the other hand, the white man felt that when an Indian sold him some land, the red man could no longer use it. Consequently the Indian was an easy prey for land
*McIlwain, Charles H .: "Wraxall's Abridgment of the Indian Affairs."
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speculators. If a white man defrauded an Indian out of his land, the proper remedy from the red man's point of view was to scalp the guilty one. After justice had been done, however, the red man was often surprised when the white man's friends came to burn down his village, destroy his crops, and murder as many Indians as possible. The greatest of the evil results of the Indian adoption of white "civili- zation" was due to the sale of rum. Many of the wiser Iroquois real- ized how terrible the use of "firewater" was for the red man, and what horrible consequences were bound to follow. They frequently did their best to stop the liquor traffic, once enlisting the aid of Van Corlaer, as we have already noted, but the fur traders were never firmly controlled. Rum was a far greater enemy of the Iroquois than the French ever were. One of Hendrick's famous speeches exposed the evils resulting from the liquor habit. He said :
"Brethren, there is an affair about which our hearts tremble and our minds are deeply concerned. We refer to the selling of rum in our castles. It destroys many, both of our old and young people. We are in great fears about this rum. It may cause murder on both sides. We, the Mohawks of both castles, request that the people who are settled around about us may not be suffered to sell our people rum. It keeps them all poor, and makes them idle and wicked. If they have any money or goods they lay all out in rum. It destroys virtue and the progress of religion among us. We now have a friendly request to make to the Governors here present, that they will help us build a church at Canajoharie, and that we may have a bell in it, which, together with the putting a stop to the sale of rum, will tend to make us religious and to lead to better lives than we do now."
An accurate example of the influence of liquor upon the red man is contained in the life of Anthony Paul, a famous Indian preacher, who spent many years in the vicinity of Lake George. His career is a heart-rending story of a conflict between religion and rum. Devout, educated, a striking personality, he was a capable preacher, but he possessed the terrible craving of his race for liquor. He tried in vain to cling to his religion, alternately sinning and repenting, all the while sinking more and more into the slavery of his thirst. He some- times made the most humble and heart-rending confessions and his congregations sometimes unanimously voted him forgiveness, but the poor man was never able to rule his own life.
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The religious beliefs of the Iroquois were, of course, crude and immature. Although they believed in a supreme being and had inter- esting and comparatively elaborate conceptions of a future life, they were extremely superstitious, powerfully swayed by dreams and under the thumbs of medicine men. Their feasts were astonishing exhibi- tions of debauchery and gluttony. At the same time they had many beautiful legends to explain various relations between man and his maker. The story of Hiawatha, already narrated, is an example of their ideas of divine intervention. Another of their legends is con- nected with the vicinity of Ticonderoga, and has been preserved for us by priests, in the "Jesuit Relations," as follows :
"Arriving within three-quarters of a league of the falls by which Lake St. Sacrament (Lake George) empties, we all halted at this spot, without knowing why, until we saw our savages at the water- side gathering up flints, which were almost all cut into shape. We did not at that time reflect upon this, but have since then learned the mystery, for our Iroquois told us that they never failed to halt at this place to pay homage to a race of invisible men who dwell there at the bottom of the lake. These beings occupy themselves in preparing flints nearly all cut for the passersby, provided the latter pay their respects to them by giving them tobacco. If they give these beings much of it, the latter give them a liberal supply of stones. These water men travel in canoes as do the Iroquois; and when their great captain proceeds to throw himself into the water to enter his palace, he makes so loud a noise that he fills with fear the minds of those who have no knowledge of this great spirit and of these little men.
"At the recital of this fable which our Iroquois told us, in all seriousness, we asked them if they did not also give some tobacco to the Great Spirit of Heaven, and to those who dwelt with Him. The answer was that they did not need any, as do people on this earth. The occasion of this ridiculous story is the fact that the lake is, in reality, often agitated by very frightful tempests, especially in the basin where Sieur Corlart (Corlaer) met his death; and when the wind comes in the direction of the lake, it drives on the beach a quan- tity of stones which are hard, and capable of striking fire."
As a rule the attempts of white missionaries to make good Chris- tians of the Indians were not crowned with great success. The red C & G-3
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men attended public worship, listened attentively to long sermons, and sang extremely well, but seldom managed to forsake their primi- tive customs. More than one of the early missionaries became dis- couraged and disgusted, feeling that there was no hope of making them better and that "heathen they are and heathen they still must be." The first and foremost among the missionaries from the Dutch post at Fort Orange was Domine Johannes Megapolensis. For that matter he was also the first Protestant missionary in America, begin- ning his work three years before the famous Puritan clergyman, Eliot, started to preach to the red men of New England. He showed very good judgment in his methods of approaching them. In the first place he mastered the Iroquois language and talked to the Indians along the Mohawk in their own tongue. In the second place he preached morality first, and Christianity afterwards. It was difficult for the Indians to understand the complex theology of the whites, but they could be shown the dangers of adopting the white men's vices, such as rum, even though they did not always have sufficient will power to follow the dictates of their reason. Megapolensis acquired consider- able influence among the Iroquois and was instrumental in delaying the decay of the confederacy.
It was not from the Dutch or the English, however, that the Iro- quois received their first missionaries. The men of God who were the most zealous and persistent, as well as the first to attempt the conversion of the "People of the Long House," were French Jesuits. Their utter self-sacrifice as they resolutely journeyed into the certain jaws of torture and death in order to spread the Gospel constitutes one of the most thrilling and most inspiring stories of the American wilderness, or any other time and place.
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