CHAPTER III. 1608-1763. THE FRENCH, THE ENGLISH, AND THE INDIANS. THE French colonists of Canada held, from the beginning, a peculiar intimacy of relation with the Indian tribes. With the English colonists it was far otherwise; and the difference sprang from several causes. The fur-trade was the life of Canada; agriculture and commerce were the chief sources of wealth to the British provinces. The Romish zealots of Canada burned for the conversion of the heathen; their heretic rivals were fired with no such ardor. And finally while the ambi tion of France grasped at empire over the farthest deserts of the west, the steady industry of the Eng lish colonists was contented to cultivate and improve a narrow strip of seaboard. Thus it happened that the farmer of Massachusetts and the Virginian planter were conversant with only a few bordering tribes, while the priests and emissaries of France were roaming the prairies with the buffalo-hunting Pawnees, or lodging in the winter cabins of the Dahcotah; and swarms of savages, whose uncouth were strange to English ears, descended names yearly from the north, to bring their beaver and otter skins to the market of Montreal. The position of Canada invited intercourse with the interior, and eminently favored her schemes of commerce and policy. The river St. Lawrence, and the chain of the great lakes, opened a vast extent of inland navigation; while their tributary streams, interlocking with the branches of the Mississippi, afforded ready access to that mighty river, and gave the restless voyager free range over half the continent. But these advantages were well nigh neutralized. Nature opened the way, but a watchful and terrible enemy guarded the portal. The forests south of Lake Ontario gave harborage to the five tribes of the Iroquois, implacable foes of Canada. They waylaid her trading parties, routed her soldiers, murdered her missionaries, and spread havoc and woe through all her settlements. It was an evil hour for Canada, when, on the twenty-eighth of May, 1609,1 Samuel de Champlain impelled by his own adventurous spirit, departed from the hamlet of Quebec to follow a war-party of Algonquins against their hated enemy, the Iroquois. Ascending the Sorel, and passing the rapids at Chambly, he embarked on the lake which bears his name, and with two French attendants, steered southward, with his savage associates, toward the rocky promontory of Ticonderoga. They moved with all the precaution of Indian warfare; when, 1 Champlain, Voyages, 136 (Paris 1632). Charlevoix, I. 142. at length as night was closing in, they descried a band of the Iroquois in their large canoes of elm bark approaching through the gloom. Wild yells from either side announced the mutual discovery. The Iroquois hastened to the shore, and all night long the forest resounded with their discordant warsongs and fierce whoops of defiance. Day dawned, and the fight began. Bounding from tree to tree, the Iroquois pressed forward to the attack; but when Champlain advanced from among the Algonquins, and stood full in sight before them, with his strange attire, his shining breastplate, and features unlike their own,- when they saw the flash of his arquebuse, and beheld two of their chiefs fall dead, they could not contain their terror, but fled for shelter into the depths of the wood. The Algonquins pursued, slaying many in the flight, and the victory was complete. Such was the first collision between the white men and the Iroquois; and Champlain flattered himself that the latter had learned for the future to respect the arms of France. He was fatally deceived. The Iroquois recovered from their terrors, but they never forgave the injury; and yet it would be unjust to charge upon Champlain the origin of the desolating wars which were soon to scourge the colony. The Indians of Canada, friends and neighbors of the French, had long been har assed by inroads of the fierce confederates, and under any circumstances the French must soon. have become parties to the quarrel. Whatever may have been its origin, the wai was fruitful of misery to the youthful colony. The passes were beset by ambushed war-parties. The routes between Quebec and Montreal were watched with tiger-like vigilance. Bloodthirsty warriors prowled about the outskirts of the settlements. Again and again the miserable people, driven within the palisades of their forts, looked forth upon wasted harvests and blazing roofs. The Island of Montreal was swept with fire and steel. The fur-trade was interrupted, since for months together all communication was cut off with the friendly tribes of the west. Agriculture was checked; the fields lay fallow, and frequent famine was the necessary result. The name of the Iroquois became a by-word of horror through the colony, and to the suffering Canadians they seemed troops of incarnate fiends. Revolting rites and monstrous superstitions were imputed to them; and, among the rest, it was currently believed that they cherished the custom of immolating young children, burning them, and drinking the ashes mixed with water to increase their bravery.2 Yet the wildest imaginations could scarcely exceed the truth. At the attack of Montreal, they placed infants over the embers, and forced the wretched mothers to turn the spit; and those who fell within their clutches endured torments too hideous for description. Their ferocity was equalled only by their courage and address. 1 Vimont, Colden, Charlevoix, passim. 3 2 Vimont seems to believe the story. - Rel. de la N. F. 1640, 195 Charlevoix, I. 549. At intervals, the afflicted colony found respite from its sufferings; and, through the efforts of the Jesuits, fair hopes began to rise of propitiating the terrible foe. At one time, the influence of the priests availed so far, that under their auspices a French colony was formed in the very heart of the Iroquois country; but the settlers were soon forced to a precipitate flight, and the war broke out afresh. The French, on their part, were not idle; they faced their assailants with characteristic gallantry. Courcelles, Tracy, De la Barre, and De Nonville invaded by turns, with various success, the forest haunts of the confederates; and at length, in the year 1696, the veteran Count Frontenac marched upon their cantons with all the force of Canada. Stemming the surges of La Chine, gliding through the romantic channels of the Thousand Islands, and over the glimmering surface of Lake Ontario, and trailing in long array up the current of the Oswego, they disembarked on the margin of the Lake of Onondaga; and, startling the woodland echoes with the clangor of their trumpets, urged their march through the mazes of the forest. Never had those solitudes beheld so strange a pageantry. The Indian allies, naked to the waist and horribly painted, adorned with streaming scalp-locks and fluttering plumes, stole crouching among the thickets, or peered with lynx-eyed vision through the labyrinths of foliage. Scouts and forest-rangers scoured the woods in front and flank of the marching columns-men 1 A. D. 1654-1658. - Doc Hist. N Y. I. 47. |