SECTION SECOND.

CANADA A MISSION.

CHAPTER IV.

1653-1658.

THE JESUITS AT ONONDAGA.

THE IROQUOIS WAR.

· FATHER PONCET: HIS ADVENTURES. JESUIT BOLDNESS.-LE MOYNE'S MISSION.-CHAUMONOT AND DABLON.IROQUOIS FEROCITY. - THE MOHAWK KIDNAPPERS. -CRITICAL POSITION. THE COLONY OF ONONDAGA. OF CHAUMONOT.-OMENS OF DESTRUCTION. JESUITS. -THE MEDICINE FEAST. THE ESCAPE.

SPEECH

DEVICE OF THE

IN the summer of 1653 all Canada turned to fasting and penance, processions, vows, and supplications. The saints and the Virgin were beset with unceasing prayer. The wretched little colony was like some puny garrison, starving and sick, compassed with inveterate foes, supplies cut off, and succor hopeless.

At Montreal - the advance guard of the settlements, a sort of Castle Dangerous, held by about fifty Frenchmen, and said by a pious writer of the day to exist only by a continuous miracle- some two

1653.]

THE IROQUOIS WAR.

55

hundred Iroquois fell upon twenty-six Frenchmen. The Christians were outmatched, eight to one; but, says the chronicle, the Queen of Heaven was on their side, and the Son of Mary refuses nothing to his holy mother.1 Through her intercession, the Iroquois shot so wildly that at their first fire every bullet missed its mark, and they met with a bloody defeat. The palisaded settlement of Three Rivers, though in a position less exposed than that of Montreal, was in no less jeopardy. A noted war-chief of the Mohawk Iroquois had been captured here the year before, and put to death; and his tribe swarmed out, like a nest of angry hornets, to revenge him. Not content with defeating and killing the commandant, Du Plessis Bochart, they encamped during the winter in the neighboring forest, watching for an opportunity to surprise the place. Hunger drove them off, but they returned in the spring, infesting every field and pathway; till at length some six hundred of their warriors landed in secret and lay hidden in the depths of the woods, silently biding their time. Having failed, however, in an artifice designed to lure the French out of their defences, they showed themselves on all sides, plundering, burning, and destroying, up to the palisades of the fort.2

Of the three settlements which, with their feeble

1 Le Mercier, Relation, 1653, 3.

2 So bent were they on taking the place, that they brought their families, in order to make a permanent settlement. Marie de l'Incarnation, Lettre du 6 Sept., 1653.

dependencies, then comprised the whole of Canada, Quebec was least exposed to Indian attacks, being partially covered by Montreal and Three Rivers. Nevertheless, there was no safety this year, even under the cannon of Fort St. Louis. At Cap Rouge, a few miles above, the Jesuit Poncet saw a poor woman who had a patch of corn beside her cabin, but could find nobody to harvest it. The father went to seek aid; met one Mathurin Franchetot, whom he persuaded to undertake the charitable task, and was returning with him, when they both fell into an ambuscade of Iroquois, who seized them and dragged them off. Thirty-two men embarked in canoes at Quebec to follow the retreating savages and rescue the prisoners. Pushing rapidly up the St. Lawrence, they approached Three Rivers, found it beset by the Mohawks, and bravely threw themselves into it, to the great joy of its defenders and discouragement of the assailants.

Meanwhile, the intercession of the Virgin wrought new marvels at Montreal, and a bright ray of hope beamed forth from the darkness and the storm to cheer the hearts of her votaries. It was on the twenty-sixth of June that sixty of the Onondaga Iroquois appeared in sight of the fort, shouting from a distance that they came on an errand of peace, and asking safeconduct for some of their number. Guns, scalpingknives, tomahawks, were all laid aside; and, with a confidence truly astonishing, a deputation of chiefs, naked and defenceless, came into the midst of those

1653.]

PACIFIC OVERTURES.

57

whom they had betrayed so often. The French had a mind to seize them, and pay them in kind for past treachery; but they refrained, seeing in this wondrous change of heart the manifest hand of Heaven. Nevertheless, it can be explained without a miracle. The Iroquois, or at least the western nations of their league, had just become involved in war with their neighbors the Eries,1 and "one war at a time was the sage maxim of their policy.

All was smiles and blandishment in the fort at Montreal; presents were exchanged, and the deputies departed, bearing home golden reports of the French. An Oneida deputation soon followed; but the enraged Mohawks still infested Montreal and beleaguered Three Rivers, till one of their principal chiefs and four of their best warriors were captured by a party of Christian Hurons. Then, seeing themselves abandoned by the other nations of the league and left to wage the war alone, they too made overtures of peace.

A grand council was held at Quebec. Speeches were made, and wampum-belts exchanged. The Iroquois left some of their chief men as pledges of sincerity, and two young soldiers offered themselves as reciprocal pledges on the part of the French. The war was over; at least Canada had found a moment to take breath for the next struggle. The

1 See "Jesuits in North America," ii. 264. The Iroquois, it will be remembered, consisted of five "nations," or tribes, - the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. For an account of them, see the work just cited, Introduction.

fur-trade was restored again, with promise of plenty; for the beaver, profiting by the quarrels of their human foes, had of late greatly multiplied. It was a change from death to life; for Canada lived on the beaver, and robbed of this, her only sustenance, had been dying slowly since the strife began.1

"Yesterday," writes Father Le Mercier, "all was dejection and gloom; to-day, all is smiles and gayety. On Wednesday, massacre, burning, and pillage; on Thursday, gifts and visits, as among friends. If the Iroquois have their hidden designs, so too has God.

"On the day of the Visitation of the Holy Virgin, the chief, Aontarisati, 2 so regretted by the Iroquois, was taken prisoner by our Indians, instructed by our fathers, and baptized; and on the same day, being put to death, he ascended to heaven. I doubt not that he thanked the Virgin for his misfortune and the blessing that followed, and that he prayed to God for his countrymen.

"The people of Montreal made a solemn vow to celebrate publicly the fête of this mother of all blessings; whereupon the Iroquois came to ask for peace.

"It was on the day of the Assumption of this Queen of angels and of men that the Hurons took at

1 According to Le Mercier, beaver to the value of from 200,000 to 300,000 livres was yearly brought down to the colony before the destruction of the Hurons (1649-50). Three years later, not one beaver-skin was brought to Montreal during a twelvemonth, and Three Rivers and Quebec had barely enough to pay for keeping the fortifications in repair.

2 The chief whose death had so enraged the Mohawks.