CHAPTER XXVIII

The recall of Frontenac had great influence on La Salle's career, for the new governor, de La Barre, an aged man wanting in firmness and decision, intended to enrich himself [130] and had accordingly connected himself with a clique of merchants in the colony, intent on the monopoly of the western fur trade. He believed in their representations that by acting with them, he would be enabled to obtain large profits. The principals in this arrangement were Aubert de la Chesnaye, Jacques Leber and Charles Le Moyne, the latter two of Montreal.

Accordingly, when on April 3, 1683, after hearing that his protector, Frontenac, had sailed for France, La Salle wrote the new governor, telling of his success in the expedition to the mouth of the Mississippi, and dwelling on the necessity of establishing colonists along the route which he had opened, and asked that such of his men as were sent to Montreal for supplies should not be arrested, he little knew how poorly his exploration was valued by the governor. In a second letter he speaks of the threatened rising of the Iroquois in the Michillimackinac district, and of the danger he was in, at his Fort St. Louis, on the River Illinois, on the top of "Starved Rock" (as it was afterwards called after Pontiac's war in 1764), with but twenty men, and only 100 pounds of powder. He asks that his men should not be detained, as he was in need of reinforcements; likewise, that no seizure of his property in Montreal should be permitted as he was in want of munitions and supplies.

No supplies were sent him and his men were made prisoners in Montreal as transgressors of the law. Moreover, on pretense that the conditions, on which his fort at Frontenac had been granted, had not been carried out, the governor sent Leber and de la Chesnaye to seize it in the royal name. La Salle determined to appeal in person to the minister in France and coming down the lakes he met the Chevalier de Baugis, who had been sent by de La Barre to seize his Fort St. Louis. In the next year, 1684, the king wrote to the governor and the intendant, de Moules, commanding them to make restitution to La Salle for the injury done him at Fort Frontenac and Fort St. Louis.

Hardly had La Barre arrived in Canada than he learned of the declaration of war by the Iroquois against the Illinois, the allies of the French. A deliberation of the highest in the land resulted in a request to the king for help to restrain the Iroquois, which brought the promise of a convoy of 200 soldiers to be sent without delay from France! Wishing, however, to compromise with the Iroquois and to make peace rather than war which would damage his personal trade relations at Cataracqui, the governor sent Charles Le Moyne as envoy to Onondaga to invite a deputation of their chiefs to visit Montreal. This was fixed for June, but it was not till August that a meagre delegation from but five cantons arrived, and the grand council was held in the newly built church of Montreal.

Parkman tells the story thus: "Presents were given to the deputies (forty-three Iroquois chiefs) to the value of more than two thousand crowns. Soothing speeches were made them and they were urged not to attack the tribes of the lakes, nor to plunder French traders, without permission. They assented and La Barre then asked, timidly, why they made war on the Illinois. 'Because they deserve to die,' haughtily returned the Iroquois orator. La Barre dared not answer. They complained that La Salle had given guns, powder and lead to the Illinois; or in other words, that he had helped the allies of the colony to defend themselves. La Barre, who hated La Salle and his monopolies, assured them that he should be punished. It is affirmed on good authority that he said more than this, and told them that they were welcome to plunder and kill him. The rapacious old man was playing with a two-edged sword." ("Frontenac," p. 84).

Montreal that summer witnessed the preparations of La Barre and his 200 men, who left Quebec on July 10th ostensibly to fight the Iroquois around Fort Frontenac; among them was de la Chesnaye. The new intendant, Jacques de Meulles, Sieur de la Source, grieving no doubt that he had to finance this new war, has the lowest opinion of this enterprise and writes to the minister (July 8-11): "In a word, Monseigneur, this war has been decided upon in the cabinet of monsieur, the general (La Barre) along with six of the chief merchants of the country," and in a postscript he added, "I will finish this letter, Monseigneur, by telling you that he set out yesterday, July 10th, with a detachment of 200 men. All Quebec was filled with grief to see him embark on an expedition of war, tête à tête with the man La Chesnaye. Everybody says that the war is a sham, that these two will arrange everything between them and in a word do whatever will help their trade. The whole country is in despair to see how matters are managed." (Quoted by Parkman, "Frontenac," p. 103.)

After a long stay at Montreal the little army of 130 regular soldiers, 700 Canadians and 200 savages, principally Iroquois from Caughnawaga and Hurons from Lorette near Quebec, embarked at Lachine. The party from Montreal landed under the palisades of Fort Frontenac or Cataracqui, on a low, damp plain and became the victims of a malarial fever of which the men sickened. On the 3d of September Le Moyne was sent to La Famine at the mouth of the Salmon River, bringing with him the wily and astute orator of the Iroquois, Big Mouth, Latinized by La Hontan, who was present, as "Grangula." At the council which followed at La Famine, whither La Barre with such of his men who were well enough to move, had crossed to meet the Iroquois in their own territory, Big Mouth had all the honours and the ending was humiliating for the French. He declared the Iroquois could fight the Illinois to the death, and La Barre dared not utter a word in behalf of his allies. "He promised to decamp," says Parkman, "and set out for home on the following morning, being satisfied with the promise that the Iroquois would repair the damage done the French traders in the war against the Illinois—a promise never realized. La Barre embarked and hastened home in advance of his men. His camp was again full of the sick. Their comrades placed them, shivering with ague fits, on board the flatboats and canoes; and the whole force, scattered and disordered, floated down the current to Montreal. Nothing had been gained but a thin and flimsy peace, with new troubles and dangers plainly visible behind it." ("Frontenac," p. 111).

At Montreal, as a consequence of this disease-stricken expedition, the Hôtel-Dieu was filled with the sick, as was that of Quebec. The end was humiliating to La Barre; the honour was with the Iroquois and the Illinois allies had been shamefully abandoned. The treaty of La Famine was received by the colony with contumely and shortly afterwards the inefficient governor received his recall, polite, but unmistakable in its import.

On November 14th, Monseigneur de Laval left for France, sixty-one years of age, but broken down by his austere duties and unremitting labours. He attended the Sovereign Council on August 28th, and fought against the making of the secular clergy into "irremovable curés"—a policy which has been continued to this day. On November 2d, he established the Chapter of Quebec Cathedral, consisting of twelve canons and four chaplains. He came back to Quebec again on August 15, 1688, and took up his quarters at his beloved seminary founded by him, not any longer with the burdens and honours of the Episcopate, but as a simple retired prelate, the father-in-God of his seminarists—till nearly his death on May 6, 1708. He was a man who was a sign for contradiction to many, yet always firm, zealous, unbending and of upright principles, which even his enemies recognized, though they might have quailed before him and have withstood him.

De Meulles still continued as intendant, not being recalled till 1686. He was endowed with much initiative and executive ability, which La Barre wanted, so that he nearly brought the country to ruin. After the disgraceful treaty with the Iroquois, on September 4th, de Meulles found that the drain on the exchequer was so great that he was at his wits' end to pay the soldiers who belonged to "le détachement in French de la marine"—in spite of the name, purely a land body, supported by the department "of the marine," there being no colonial office to France. This detachment was organized in France about the year 1682, from among the disbanded soldiers who had taken part in the Dutch or other wars, to protect the inhabitants of New France from the relentless raids of ever-roving bands of ruthless Iroquois, which had become so persistent as almost to paralyze the agricultural pursuits as well as the trade and commerce of the country.

How was the intendant, de Meulles, to pay these soldiers? There was little or no coin currency. Beaver skins and wheat were legal tender, but very bulky and very inconvenient for small accounts. The dearth of currency may be explained as follows: In New France currency difficulties had always prevailed because any few doles of coin that came from the home government were returned as remittances by the importers as the balance of trade was always against the colony and therefore exchange was necessarily high. In 1670 a special coinage of 15 and 5 sol pieces of silver and doubles in copper were struck at Paris and sent out with a proviso that they should not be circulated in the mother country. But notwithstanding this interdiction these also were sent as remittances. Thus there was little or no coin currency in the country with which to trade. The ready witted intendant therefore invented the pioneer paper money, which originally circulated in the form of a note, on the back of an ordinary playing card signed by de Meulles, in 1685. It was the beginning of the paper money which is now so largely used all over the world. De Meulles hit upon the plan of using whole, or cutting up, ordinary playing cards into halves or quarters, with the word "bon" inserted on each, for a certain sum, signed and sealed in wax with his own hand and countersigned by the clerk of the treasury as they were issued. This emergency card money is claimed by Mr. R. W. McLachlan as the first regular paper money issued in any Caucasian nation. He claims that the Massachusetts paper money, issued first five years after that of Canada, for the similar purpose of paying soldiers, was an imitation.

In 1721 a copper currency was struck for the colony at the mint of La Rochelle and Rouen of nine denier pieces. Though issued with a proclamation throughout New France they were never acceptable to the Canadians and were at last withdrawn. There was then after the issue of the cards of 1717 a lull of about ten years, when in 1729 recourse was again had to the convenient paper money, but the playing card was superseded by a plain white card with clipped edges and with various other changes in stamps and signatures. This system was continued until Intendant Bigot's time and the fall of New France. The inventory of Jacques LeBer of Montreal, dated June 7, 1735, showing coins to the value of 84 livres 8 sols 3 deniers, and card money to the value of 2833.3.0, indicates the early predominance of card money. About 1750 Bigot introduced, as a new currency, an unauthorized note called an "ordonnance," which, unlike the card issue, did not seek the governor's approval by seal or signature. They were more than twice as large, on forms printed in France on ordinary writing paper, with blank spaces for filling in the amount, the date, and number in writing. These "ordonnances" were orders on the treasury of Quebec or, in the case of the fall of the capital, of Montreal, which could pass as cash and were redeemable in bulk, either in card money, or by drafts on the treasurer of the marine in France. This method afforded ample scope for peculation both from the government and the people. At first Bigot's issue of "ordonnances" was slight but by the end of the French régime, it exceeded 80,000,000 livres or nearly $14,000,000. This was a large sum for an impoverished country to refund. It was years after it was redeemed and some never so by the French Government, after the fall of the French régime in Canada. The cards and "ordonnances" were a drug on the market for many years pending redemption, so that the original holders gained very little. The introduction of specie did much to reconcile the French to the British régime. [131]

1685

La Barre's successor was the Marquis of Denonville, a pious colonel of dragoons, who had seen much active service, and who could act when occasion required with firmness and vigour. In the same boat with him and his wife there arrived at Quebec in the beginning of August, 1685, Laval's successor, the bishop-elect, the young, impetuous, zealous and rigid Monseigneur de Saint-Vallier—and a lasting friendship was then cemented. Denonville's instructions ordered him to uphold the allies of France, to humiliate the Iroquois and to establish peace on a solid basis. He was to spare no effort to maintain a good understanding with the English but should they and the Iroquois be allied in their battles, they were to be treated as enemies. On the 6th of August he presided at the Sovereign Council. After staying a short time at Quebec he went to Montreal and there set up the Chevalier de Callières, a former captain of the Navarre Regiment, as the governor in place of M. Perrot, who had been sent to Acadia (being appointed in 1684), where as governor he pursued the same tactics as at Montreal and was replaced in 1687. Denonville's reign with the English and the Iroquois was stormy, but he was singularly peaceful in his relations with the bishop, the intendant and the governor of Montreal.

"Nothing," says Denonville, "can be finer or better conceived than the regulations formed for the government of this country; but nothing, I assure you, is so ill-observed as regards both the fur trade and the general discipline of the colony. One great evil is the infinite number of drinking shops, which makes it almost impossible to remedy the disorders resulting from them. All the rascals and idlers of the country are attracted to this business of tavern keeping. They never dream of tilling the soil, but on the contrary they deter the other inhabitants from it, and end with ruining them. I know seignories where there are but twenty houses, and more than half of them dram shops. At Three Rivers there are twenty-five houses and liquor may be had at eighteen or twenty of them. Ville Marie (Montreal) and Quebec are on the same footing. The villages governed by the Jesuits and Sulpicians are models. Drunkenness there is not seen. But it is sad to see the ignorance of the population at a distance from the abodes of the curés, who are put to the greatest trouble to remedy the evils, traveling from place to place through the parishes in their charges." (Denonville au ministre, Parkman, "Old Régime," pp. 375-6-7; vide, résumé of Kingsford, I, 65.)

The clergy, however, did their work manfully and unflinchingly and it was their devotion to their work of upbuilding the morality and character of the French Canadians that assured them the prestige which is enjoyed by them to this day. Bishop St. Vallier confirms Denonville, La Barre, Duchesneau and other contemporary writers when he says that, "the Canadian youths are for the most part demoralized," and although previously, in 1688, he had written very favourably on the religious state of Canada, in a pastoral mandate of October 31, 1690, he says: "Before we first knew our flock we thought that the English and the Iroquois were the only wolves we had to fear; but God having opened our eyes to the disorders of this diocese and made us feel more and more the weight of our charge, we are forced to confess that our most dangerous foes are drunkenness, impurity, and slander." The Canadian drank hard and many a man was old at forty. "But," says Parkman ("Old Régime," p. 378), "nevertheless the race did not die out. The prevalence of early marriages and the birth of numerous offspring before the vigour of the father had been wasted ensured the strength and hardihood which characterized the Canadians." Bishop St. Vallier soon visited Montreal and his description of the mountain settlement we have already given.

Here we may add a scathing picture which occurs in the ordinance of Monseigneur Jean Baptiste de Saint-Vallier, dated October 22, 1686, touching modesty and the want of veneration in the churches. It may justly apply to the Montreal ladies of the period, since it complains, "of the luxury and the vanity reigning, throughout the whole country among the girls and grown-up women, with more licence and scandal than ever. They are not content to have on them habits, the price and style of which are much above the means or the condition of life of those wearing them, but they affect moreover immodest head-dresses within and without their homes, and often even in the churches, leaving heads uncovered or only decked with a transparent veil and with an assemblage of ribbons, lace work, curls and other vanities. But what is still more to be deplored, and what pierces our soul with sorrow, is that they have no difficulty in rendering themselves the instruments of the demon and in cooperating with the loss of souls, bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, by uncovering the nudités of their neck and shoulders, the sight of which makes an infinite number of persons to fall." The good bishop might be similarly shocked if he visited Montreal today. [132]

In the spring of 1685, M. de Callières, the governor of Montreal, employed 600 men under the direction of M. du Luth, royal engineer, to erect a palisade around the town. [133] It was made of wood stakes furnished by the citizens and had to be constantly repaired. This palisade, with curtains and bastions, was 13 feet in height and there were five gates, those of Lachine, the Recollects, the Port, St. Martin and St. Lawrence; and five posterns, de Maricourt, the barracks, the General Hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu and de Callières.

About this time there was apparently laxity in the retention of arms. For one cause or another many households were very scantily accommodated, through sale or truck, or on account of seizure for debt. Accordingly a notice of the supreme council was affixed to the door of the parish church of Montreal by the sergeant, Quesneville, on February 18, 1686. After emphasizing the importance of the obligation which the Marquis de Denonville had laid upon every house-holder in the colony of being well armed, the council forbade all persons of whatever quality or condition to deprive themselves of their arms by sale or otherwise, unless they had weapons beyond what was necessary, to arm each father of the family, and his children and domestics, who shall have attained to the age of fourteen years; it forbade all "huissiers and sergeants of justice to seize these arms, all tavern keepers and others to buy them, or truck them, under penalties named."

With Denonville's advent as the representative of Louis XIV, the struggle for supremacy between Canada and the English, under Thomas Dongan, the Irish Catholic governor of New York representing James II, of England, began to assume warlike proportions. The English of New York were laying claim to the whole country south of the Great Lakes and were anxious to control the great western fur trade. The northern fur trade was being bid for by the Hudson's Bay Company, and the fisheries of New Acadia were being seized upon by the New Englanders. In the regions of Michillimackinac the English were striving to alienate the Hurons, Ottawas and other like tribes; they had already on their side, the Iroquois, whose arrogance to the French, especially that of the Senecas, was so galling that it seemed necessary for French prestige to humble them. Such were de Denonville's instructions. This was one of the reasons why he wished to build his fort at Niagara as early as May, 1685—a project highly displeasing to Dongan—to counteract the English desire for the same purpose, namely to obtain supremacy over the tribes in that direction and to be masters of the trade, for that was what most mattered. [134]

This was de Denonville's motive also for his projected forts at Toronto, or Lake Erie, and that at Détroit, for which latter enterprise he commissioned du Luth of Montreal. The intense rivalry showed itself in 1686 in the organized attempt of the French to dispute the supremacy claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company, then in its infancy, on the western shore of that dreary inland sea. As so many Montrealers joined in this effort, it may be recorded more fully than could otherwise be permitted.

Let us, then, turn to the rivalry existing between the English and French in Hudson's Bay, represented by the great company of that name and the Canadian rival body, "La Compagnie du Nord." The English firm had discovered the bay under Hudson and, with the help of the two renegade Frenchmen, Médard Chouart des Groseilliers and Pierre Esprit de Radisson, [135] both well known at Montreal, as bold and unscrupulous coureurs de bois and fur traders, had formed a company with English capital from London and had established Fort Nelson near the mouth of the Nelson River, and then other forts, Albany, Rupert and Monsipi or Monsoni (Fort Hayes) on the southern end of the bay. But the French had a grant of the fur industry from Louis XIV and had done some trading there before the advent of the English. It had been taken possession of, in 1672, in the name of Louis XIV by the Jesuit Albanel (one of the early Montreal missionaries) and M. de St. Simon, and the French had built Fort Thérèse, which, on being taken from them by the English, was named Fort Nelson.

The French merchants desiring to oust their competitors appealed to Denonville and he commissioned the Chevalier de Troyes, a captain of infantry, to chase the English from the bay and retake their own. With him went the young d'Iberville (then twenty-four years of age) and his brothers Maricourt and St. Hélène, seventy Canadians and thirty soldiers, "all," says Ferland, "accustomed to long marches, able to manage canoes, to withstand the most piercing colds and well versed in 'la petite guerre.'" Their chaplain was the Jesuit Silvy. The party left Montreal in the month of March, 1686, when the rivers were still frozen and the snow was on the ground. They mounted the rivers and lakes on their snowshoes, dragging their provisions, arms and materials for canoe construction on their sleds, reaching the River Monsipi, near Fort Hayes, the first English fort, in June or so, which shortly afterwards fell with Forts Rupert and Albany, largely on account of the brilliant exploits of d'Iberville, whose reputation was established on this occasion. The whole expedition lasted only two months.

This brave buccaneering angered the English. A treaty of neutrality intervening between the two powers of France and England left them helpless for the moment, but in 1693 the Hudson's Bay Company were again in possession. In 1697, as we shall see, d'Iberville will again be in their waters and attacking these forts.

The year 1687 marks the tragic death of La Salle. In 1684 his last expedition had sailed from La Rochelle directly for the Mississippi, carrying three priests at least, his brother, the Sulpician, Jean Cavelier, and the Recollects, Zendbre Membre and Anastase Douay; twelve gentlemen of France and also soldiers, artisans and labourers, in all to the number of 144 persons, with a full supply of provisions and implements. There were four vessels, Le Joly, a frigate of thirty-six cannons; La Belle, six cannons; St. François, a transport; and l'Aimable, a fluke of 300 tons. M. de Beaujean, sailing in Le Joly, was commander of the squadron and La Salle led the land forces.

Disaster after disaster befell the expedition. M. de Beaujean passed the mouth of the Mississippi without noticing it, it being reserved for Le Moyne d'Iberville in 1699 to be the first white man to descend it by the sea. One vessel ran aground, another was captured by the Spaniards, with those that carried the greater part of the ammunition, implements and provisions. Beaujean in consequence of serious disagreements with La Salle returned to France with Le Joly and the luckless explorer found himself reduced, by these losses and by sickness, to the number of thirty-six despairing colonists. In this plight La Salle conceived the plan of reaching Canada on foot. Sixteen of his party consented to follow him, among them his brother Jean, his nephew Moranget, the faithful Joutel, du Hault and his servant Larchevêque, Hiens of Wurtembourg a buccaneer, Ruter Liotot or Lanquetot, the surgeon of the expedition, Sager and Nika, and the faithful Recollect, Père Douay, who accompanied La Salle to his last hour.

On March 17, 1687, two months after the departure from the Bay of Matagorda, on the coast of Texas, which the expedition had reached at the end of January, the surgeon, Liotot, slew with his axe Moranget, Sager and Nika. He was but the cowardly executor of the order of a band of assassins of the rest of the party, consisting of Hiens, Larchevêque and their leader du Hault. Fearing the vengeance of La Salle, two days later, the mutineers determined to make away with him, and on March 19th, between the rivers, San Jacinto and La Trinité, Robert René de Cavelier, at the age of forty-three years and four months, fell a victim to the musket of the treacherous du Hault. [136]

Joutel, who accompanied the expedition and whom Charlevoix met in Rouen in 1713 and described as a very honest man and one of the few of his troop that La Salle could count on, says of his friend in the "Journal historique du dernier voyage que feu M. de la Salle fit dans le Golfe du Mexique, Paris, 1713," written on the notes taken from 1684-1687: "Thus unhappily ended the life of M. de la Salle, at the time when he had all to hope for from his great labours. He had the intelligence and talent to crown his enterprise with success—firmness, courage, a great knowledge of sciences and arts, which rendered him capable of anything, and an indefatigable perseverance which made him surmount every obstacle. These fine qualities were balanced by too haughty manners, which made him sometimes unsupportable, and by a harshness towards those who were under him, which drew upon him their implacable hatred and was the cause of his death." Ferland (Cours d'Histoire t. II, p. 172) has a similar judgment. We have different writings on the death of La Salle: first, the story of Father Douay, the eye witness of the assassination; he gave the details to Joutel, who was not present at the moment of the crime; second, "La Relation of the death of Sieur de la Salle, following the report of one named Couture." This Couture of Rouen, who had remained with Tonti, had learned the circumstances of the assassination of La Salle from a Frenchman. This description shows animosity to La Salle; third, the "Mémoire" of Henry Tonti. The "Relation" of Abbé Cavelier stops before the death of his brother.

All the assassins perished miserably. Liotot and du Hault died at the hands of Ruter, a Breton sailor. Hiens and Ruter were also slain by one of their accomplices. (Parkman, Great West, p. 461.) Larchevêque was discovered in Texas by the Spaniards and was sent to Mexico to work in the mines as a galley slave. Père Douay, l'Abbé Cavelier, Joutel and others finished by arriving at Arkansas and from there they went to Fort St. Louis on the Illinois.

Thus ended the career of one of the most remarkable men of this continent. The lights and shades of this man's story are fascinating but we cannot pursue them. For Montrealers he is interesting in that he, one of their predecessors, it was who discovered by land the Ohio and the mouth of the Mississippi, and the vast district of Louisiana, of which he had taken solemn possession on April 9, 1682, in the name of Louis XIV. It remained for another Montrealer, Le Moyne d'Iberville, to build a stockade fort at Biloxi in 1699 to hold the country for the king, thus laying the first foundations of Louisiana in Mississippi, which soon saw also the forts of Mobile Bay and Dauphin Island. The first governors of Louisiana the brothers d'Iberville and de Bienville, are also proudly remembered as of Montreal origin. It is foreign to the scope of this history to settle the dispute as to how far La Salle discovered the Mississippi. [137] But granting that Father Marquette and Louis Joliet commenced the discovery in 1673, of the upper inland reaches, its completion to the mouth by land must be conceded to La Salle, its discovery from the sea having been made a century before by de Soto.

In many ways La Salle differed very much from the type of men exploring North America at this time. He had little of the traditional gayety and insouciance of the leader of coureurs de bois; he did not seek, primarily, wealth or glory; nor is his life marked with any of the excesses of a scandalous time. This silent and uncommunicative man, of a hardy and uncommon physiognomy, active in body and restless in mind, with those powerful and tyrannical instincts, ever latent, which push strong and energetic natures to the arduous search after the unknown and the vague was one of those characters that feel the need of fleeing from society to go out of themselves and to lose themselves in movement and action. Repose is to them irksome and wearisome. Such men are the victims of the perpetual tempests agitating them and it is no wonder that sometimes they break forth impetuously into anger or brutality against friend or foe alike. Such a one was La Salle; and the above psychological explanation of his career, it seems, is the key of understanding to this original personality.

CHAPTER XXIX

Arriving at Fort Frontenac, it was found that there were in the neighbourhood a number of Iroquois of the two neutral villages of Kenté (Quinté) and Ganneious or Ganeyout, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, forming a sort of colony, where the Sulpicians of Montreal had established their mission. They were on excellent terms with the garrison of Fort Frontenac and hunted and fished for them. These Denonville determined to seize, partially because of the fear that they might communicate with their relatives, the hostile Seneca Iroquois, but principally because he wished to satisfy the desire of Louis XIV that the Iroquois prisoners of war should be sent to France to be put in the galleys, "because," said the royal letters, "the savages being strong and robust, they will serve usefully on our convict gangs."

Accordingly by various artifices, such as by the invitation to a feast, the unsuspecting and friendly Indians were enticed to the fort by the advances of the new intendant, Champigny, and then seized, the men being sent to Quebec and then deported to the galleys in France. [138] This was a breach of faith, unjustifiable according to the natural law of nations; these men could in no way have been called prisoners of war. The other Indians were deeply incensed at this treason and they brooded over it long and deeply. A sad incident in the story is that the Jesuit missionary Lamberville was unwittingly the instrument used to induce the Onondaga chief to accept the invitation to a parley at Fort Frontenac. When the news of the capture was made known, he was summoned before a council of the angry Iroquois. The magnanimity of the Iroquois saved his life. One of them addressed him thus: "You cannot but agree that all sorts of reasons, authorize us to treat you as an enemy, but we cannot agree to that; we know you too well not to be persuaded that your heart has had no part in the treason against us in which you have shared, and we are not unjust enough to punish you for a crime of which we believe you are innocent, and for which without doubt you are in despair for having been the instrument. But it is not fitting that you should remain here, for when once our young men have sung the war cry, they will see in you for the future nothing but a traitor, who has delivered our chiefs to the most disgraceful slavery. Then fury will fall on you and we shall not be able any longer to save you." [139] They gave him guides and sent him back to Denonville. [140]

Meanwhile La Durantaye arrived with news of the capture of the Dutch and English traders under Rosenboom and Major Patrick McGregor, who had been carried to Niagara and afterward to Quebec, a proceeding which mightily angered the English governor of New York, Dongan. The war soon began; the rendezvous was at Irondequoit Bay on the borders of the Seneca country. There were gathered the armies of Denonville, joined by the flotilla of La Durantaye, with Duluth and his cousin Tonti, who had come from Niagara, the Ottawas from Michillimackinac and savages of every nation. There were the regulars from France, the Canadian militia under de Callières of Montreal, the Jesuit chaplains, the Sulpician, de Belmont, from Montreal, the noblesse, the Christian Indians from the Montreal district, the hardy explorer Nicholas Perrot and others, such as Le Moyne de Longueuil. Nearly three thousand men, red and white, were under Denonville on July 12, when the march against the Senecas began and most men of note in the colony seemed to be there. On the 24th of July the army returned to the fortified fort at Irondequoit Bay and shortly descended to Montreal, victorious in name. But the Senecas were only scotched, not killed.

The expedition returned to Montreal in August. In October the Iroquois, to the number of 200, attacked the upper part of Montreal, where they burned five houses and killed six habitants. The consequence was that de Callières (the governor) caused a redoubt to be constructed in each seignory, so that the troops quartered there and the inhabitants could find refuge in the hour of attack. A contemporary writer says that there were twenty-eight such forts in the government of Montreal. A corps of 120 men picked from the coureurs de bois was placed at Lachine, but the great massacre there was not to occur till 1689. Thus Montreal was virtually enclosed in de Callières' palisaded picket. "New troops were called for from France and the plan of the next campaign was to advance with two columns in distinct expeditions against the Iroquois.

"The possession of New York by the French as a desirable acquisition was advocated by the leading men in Canada more than ever." De Callières, the governor of Montreal, was conceiving a plan for such an invasion. [141]

This became more popular as James II, on November 10, 1687, formally claimed the Iroquois as subjects and ordered Dongan to protect them. This was the beginning of the long struggle between the two powers, the supremacy of the west being the bone of contention, for the trade of which the English were always "itching." As this trade was Montreal's support we may realize the anxiety present during the next year, 1688. For two years the trade had been stopped. Montreal was again in a siege. The Iroquois moved about mysteriously in small bands, and paralyzed agriculture. The early history of Montreal was being reproduced; yet the country had far more troops than formerly. At the head of the Island of Montreal a large body of militia under Vaudreuil was on guard. In the midst of this anxiety negotiations took place with the great and crafty diplomatist, Big Mouth, the chief of the Onondagas, who on the promise of Denonville to return the prisoners captured up west, made his way to Montreal, in spite of the prohibitions of Sir Edward Andros, who had now succeeded Dongan, with six Onondaga, Cayuga and Oneida chiefs; but, it is said, he had sent ahead a force of 1,200 men. He arrived at Montreal on June 8, 1688. A declaration of neutrality was drawn up and he promised that within a certain time the whole confederacy should come to Montreal to conclude a general peace. They never came. For, although they were on their way, Kondiaronk, surnamed the Rat, the renowned chief of the Hurons at Michillimackinac, a most astute man, treacherously "killed" the peace as he boasted, by intercepting and firing on them, pretending he had been prompted to this action by Denonville. Thus he aroused the Iroquois against the French. For his fear was that should peace be concluded with the Iroquois, the French allies, such as the Hurons, would not be protected against their hereditary enemies, the Iroquois. Hence Montreal never saw the delegation. But the danger still hovered around, although Denonville with false security still wrote to France that there was hope of peace. The Iroquois, however, had not forgotten his treachery at Fort Frontenac. Their brethren in the galleys of France called for vengeance.

The winter of 1688 and part of the summer of 1689 passed quietly enough. Changes had occurred in the government. Denonville received his recall by a letter of May 31, 1689, being needed for the war in Europe. St. Vallier had been consecrated bishop of Quebec on January 25th. Count Frontenac was named governor for a second time. De Callières, the governor of Montreal, being replaced in his absence by de Vaudreuil, was in France communicating his ambitious plans of conquering New York as the only means of preserving the colony. [142] Incidentally he was to be New York's new governor. It could be done, he argued, with the forces in Canada, 1,000 regulars and 600 militia, and two royal ships of war. The king modified the scheme and adopted it, but it never came into execution. The long delay in the preparation of the ships and the unexpectedly long passage of Callières and Frontenac across the Atlantic, caused by head winds, ruined the enterprise. The two governors did not reach Quebec until October 12th, bringing back with them from the galleys of France the remnant of the Iroquois. Thence they left on October 20th and arrived at Montreal on October 27th, where Denonville, with Duluth in charge of the garrison, was still making the last arrangements for maintaining the peace of Montreal before departing for France. But this was not to be till after the horrible massacre of reprisal, so long threatened, that fell upon the island at Lachine on the night of August 5, 1689.

The story of the disaster at Lachine, saddening the last days of Denonville, must now be told in the graphic words of Parkman (Frontenac, pp. 177-181).

"On the night before the 4th and 5th of August a violent hailstorm burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. Lawrence, a little above Montreal. Concealed by the tempest and the darkness, 1,500 warriors landed at Lachine and silently posted themselves about the houses of the sleeping settlers, then screeched the war whoop and began the most frightful massacre in Canadian history. The houses were burned and men, women and children indiscriminately butchered. In the neighbourhood were three stockade forts, called Rémy, Rolland and La Présentation; and they all had garrisons. There was also an encampment of 200 regulars about three miles distant, under an officer named Subercasse, then absent from Montreal on a visit to Denonville, who had lately arrived with his wife and family. At four o'clock in the morning the troops in this encampment heard a cannon shot from one of the forts. They were at once ordered under arms. Soon after, they saw a man running toward them just escaped from the butchery. He told his story and passed on with the news to Montreal, six miles distant. Then several fugitives appeared, chased by a band of Iroquois who gave up the pursuit at sight of the soldiers but pillaged several houses before their eyes. The day was well advanced before Subercasse arrived. He ordered the troops to march. About a hundred armed inhabitants had joined them and they moved together toward Lachine. Here they found the houses still burning and the bodies of the inmates strewn among them or hanging from the stakes where they had been tortured. They learned from a French surgeon, escaped from the enemy, that the Iroquois were all encamped a mile and a half further on, behind a tract of forest. Subercasse, whose force had been strengthened by troops from the forts, resolved to attack them; and had he been allowed to do so, he would probably have punished them severely, for most of them were hopelessly drunk with brandy taken from the houses of the traders. Sword in hand, at the head of his men, the daring officer entered the forest; but at that moment a voice from the rear commanded him to halt. It was that of the Chevalier de Vaudreuil, just come from Montreal, with positive orders from Denonville to run no risks and stand solely on the defensive. Subercasse was furious. High words passed between him and Vaudreuil, but he was forced to obey.