Book: Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV

F >> Francis Parkman >> Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV




Perhaps on this occasion Frontenac was too confident of his influence
over the savage confederates. Such at least was the opinion of
Lamberville, Jesuit missionary at Onondaga, the Iroquois capital. From
what he daily saw around him, he thought the peril so imminent that
concession on the part of the French was absolutely necessary, since
not only the Illinois, but some of the tribes of the lakes, were in
danger of speedy and complete destruction. "Tegannisorens loves the
French," he wrote to Frontenac, "but neither he nor any other of the
upper Iroquois fear them in the least. They annihilate our allies,
whom by adoption of prisoners they convert into Iroquois; and they do
not hesitate to avow that after enriching themselves by our plunder,
and strengthening themselves by those who might have aided us, they
will pounce all at once upon Canada, and overwhelm it in a single
campaign." He adds that within the past two years they have reinforced
themselves by more than nine hundred warriors, adopted into their
tribes. [Footnote: _P. Jean de Lamberville à Frontenac_, 20 _Sept_.,
1682.]

Such was the crisis when Frontenac left Canada at the moment when he
was needed most, and Le Febvre de la Barre came to supplant him. The
new governor introduces himself with a burst of rhodomontade. "The
Iroquois," he writes to the king, "have twenty-six hundred warriors.
I will attack them with twelve hundred men. They know me before seeing
me, for they have been told by the English how roughly I handled them
in the West Indies." This bold note closes rather tamely; for the
governor adds, "I think that if the Iroquois believe that your Majesty
would have the goodness to give me some help, they will make peace,
and let our allies alone, which would save the trouble and expense of
an arduous war." [Footnote: _La Barre au Roy_, (4 Oct.?) 1682.] He
then begs hard for troops, and in fact there was great need of them,
for there were none in Canada; and even Frontenac had been compelled
in the last year of his government to leave unpunished various acts of
violence and plunder committed by the Iroquois. La Barre painted the
situation in its blackest colors, declared that war was imminent, and
wrote to the minister, "We shall lose half our trade and all our
reputation, if we do not oppose these haughty conquerors." [Footnote:
_La Barre à Seignelay_, 1682.]

A vein of gasconade appears in most of his letters, not however
accompanied with any conclusive evidence of a real wish to fight. His
best fighting days were past, for he was sixty years old; nor had he
always been a man of the sword. His early life was spent in the law;
he had held a judicial post, and had been intendant of several French
provinces. Even the military and naval employments, in which he
afterwards acquitted himself with credit, were due to the part he took
in forming a joint-stock company for colonizing Cayenne. [Footnote: He
was made governor of Cayenne, and went thither with Tracy in 1664. Two
years later, he gained several victories over the English, and
recaptured Cayenne, which they had taken in his absence. He wrote a
book concerning this colony, called _Description de la France
Équinoctiale_. Another volume, called _Journal du Voyage du Sieur de
la Barre en la Terre Ferme et Isle de Cayenne_, was printed at Paris
in 1671.] In fact, he was but half a soldier; and it was perhaps for
this reason that he insisted on being called, not _Monsieur le
Gouverneur_, but _Monsieur le Général_. He was equal to Frontenac
neither in vigor nor in rank, but he far surpassed him in avidity.
Soon after his arrival, he wrote to the minister that he should not
follow the example of his predecessors in making money out of his
government by trade; and in consideration of these good intentions he
asked for an addition to his pay. [Footnote: _La Barre à Seignelay_,
1682.] He then immediately made alliances with certain merchants of
Quebec for carrying on an extensive illicit trade, backed by all the
power of his office. Now ensued a strange and miserable complication.
Questions of war mingled with questions of personal gain. There was a
commercial revolution in the colony. The merchants whom Frontenac
excluded from his ring now had their turn. It was they who, jointly
with the intendant and the ecclesiastics, had procured the removal of
the old governor; and it was they who gained the ear of the new one.
Aubert de la Chesnaye, Jacques Le Ber, and the rest of their faction,
now basked in official favor; and La Salle, La Forêt, and the other
friends of Frontenac, were cast out. There was one exception.
Greysolon Du Lhut, leader of _coureurs de bois_, was too important to
be thus set aside. He was now as usual in the wilderness of the north,
the roving chief of a half savage crew, trading, exploring, fighting,
and laboring with persistent hardihood to foil the rival English
traders of Hudson's Bay. Inducements to gain his adhesion were
probably held out to him by La Barre and his allies: be this as it
may, it is certain that he acted in harmony with the faction of the
new governor. With La Forêt it was widely different. He commanded Fort
Frontenac, which belonged to La Salle, when La Barre's associates, La
Chesnaye and Le Ber, armed with an order from the governor, came up
from Montreal, and seized upon the place with all that it contained.
The pretext for this outrage was the false one that La Salle had not
fulfilled the conditions under which the fort had been granted to him.
La Forêt was told that he might retain his command, if he would join
the faction of La Barre; but he refused, stood true to his chief, and
soon after sailed for France.

La Barre summoned the most able and experienced persons in the colony
to discuss the state of affairs. Their conclusion was that the
Iroquois would attack and destroy the Illinois, and, this
accomplished, turn upon the tribes of the lakes, conquer or destroy
them also, and ruin the trade of Canada. [Footnote: _Conference on the
State of Affairs with the Iroquois, Oct_., 1682, _in N. Y. Colonial
Docs_., IX. 194.] Dark as was the prospect, La Barre and his
fellow-speculators flattered themselves that the war could be averted
for a year at least. The Iroquois owed their triumphs as much to their
sagacity and craft as to their extraordinary boldness and ferocity. It
had always been their policy to attack their enemies in detail, and
while destroying one to cajole the rest. There seemed little doubt
that they would leave the tribes of the lakes in peace till they had
finished the ruin of the Illinois; so that if these, the allies of the
colony, were abandoned to their fate, there would be time for a
profitable trade in the direction of Michillimackinac.

But hopes seemed vain and prognostics illusory, when, early in spring,
a report came that the Seneca Iroquois were preparing to attack, in
force, not only the Illinois, but the Hurons and Ottawas of the lakes.
La Barre and his confederates were in dismay. They already had large
quantities of goods at Michillimackinac, the point immediately
threatened; and an officer was hastily despatched, with men and
munitions, to strengthen the defences of the place. [Footnote: _La
Barre au Ministre_, 4 _Nov_., 1683.] A small vessel was sent to France
with letters begging for troops. "I will perish at their head," wrote
La Barre to the king, "or destroy your enemies;" [Footnote: _La Barre
au Roy_, 30 _Mai_, 1683.] and he assures the minister that the Senecas
must be attacked or the country abandoned. [Footnote: _La Barre au
Ministre_, 30 _Mai_, 1683.] The intendant, Meules, shared something of
his alarm, and informed the king that "the Iroquois are the only
people on earth who do not know the grandeur of your Majesty."
[Footnote: _Meules au Roy_, 2 _Juin_, 1683.]

While thus appealing to the king, La Barre sent Charles le Moyne as
envoy to Onondaga. Through his influence, a deputation of forty-three
Iroquois chiefs was sent to meet the governor at Montreal. Here a
grand council was held in the newly built church. Presents were given
the deputies 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_. [1]

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. [Footnote: Belmont, _Histoire du
Canada_ (a contemporary chronicle).] It is affirmed, on good
authority, that he said more than this, and told them they were
welcome to plunder and kill him. [Footnote: See Discovery of the Great
West. La Barre denies the assertion, and says that he merely told the
Iroquois that La Salle should be sent home.] The rapacious old man was
playing with a two-edged sword.

Thus the Illinois, with the few Frenchmen who had tried to defend
them, were left to perish; and, in return, a brief and doubtful
respite was gained for the tribes of the lakes. La Barre and his
confederates took heart again. Merchandise, in abundance, was sent to
Michillimackinac, and thence to the remoter tribes of the north and
west. The governor and his partner, La Chesnaye, sent up a fleet of
thirty canoes; [Footnote: _Mémoire adressé a MM. les Intéressés en la
Société de la Ferme et Commerce du Canada,_ 1683.] and, a little
later, they are reported to have sent more than a hundred. This forest
trade robbed the colonists, by forestalling the annual market of
Montreal; while a considerable part of the furs acquired by it were
secretly sent to the English and Dutch of New York. Thus the heavy
duties of the custom-house at Quebec were evaded; and silver coin was
received in payment, instead of questionable bills of exchange.
[Footnote: These statements are made in a memorial of the agents of
the custom-house, in letters of Meules, and in several other
quarters. La Barre is accused of sending furs to Albany under pretext
of official communication with the governor of New York.] Frontenac
had not been faithful to his trust; but, compared to his successor, he
was a model of official virtue.

La Barre busied himself with ostentatious preparation for war; built
vessels at Fort Frontenac, and sent up fleets of canoes, laden or
partly laden with munitions. But his accusers say that the king's
canoes were used to transport the governor's goods, and that the men
sent to garrison Fort Frontenac were destined, not to fight the
Iroquois, but to sell them brandy. "Last year," writes the intendant,
"Monsieur de la Barre had a vessel built, for which he made his
Majesty pay heavily;" and he proceeds to say that it was built for
trade, and was used for no other purpose. "If," he continues, "the two
(_king's_) vessels now at Fort Frontenac had not been used for
trading, they would have saved us half the expense we have been forced
to incur in transporting munitions and supplies. The pretended
necessity of having vessels at this fort, and the consequent employing
of carpenters, and sending up of iron, cordage, sails, and many other
things, at his Majesty's charge, was simply in the view of carrying on
trade." He says, farther, that in May last, the vessels, canoes, and
men being nearly all absent on this errand, the fort was left in so
defenceless a state that a party of Senecas, returning from their
winter hunt, took from it a quantity of goods, and drank as much
brandy as they wanted. "In short," he concludes, "it is plain that
Monsieur de la Barre uses this fort only as a depot for the trade of
Lake Ontario." [Footnote: _Meules à Seignelay,_ 8 _July,_ 1684. This
accords perfectly with statements made in several memorials of La
Salle and his friends.]

In the spring of 1683, La Barre had taken a step as rash as it was
lawless and unjust. He sent the Chevalier de Baugis, lieutenant of his
guard, with a considerable number of canoes and men, to seize La
Salle's fort of St. Louis on the river Illinois; a measure which,
while gratifying the passions and the greed of himself and his allies,
would greatly increase he danger of rupture with the Iroquois. Late in
the season, he despatched seven canoes and fourteen men, with goods to
the value of fifteen or sixteen thousand livres, to trade with the
tribes of the Mississippi. As he had sown, so he reaped. The seven
canoes passed through the country of the Illinois. A large war party
of Senecas and Cayugas invaded it in February. La Barre had told their
chiefs that they were welcome to plunder the canoes of La Salle. The
Iroquois were not discriminating. They fell upon the governor's
canoes, seized all the goods, and captured the men. [2] Then they
attacked Baugis at Fort St. Louis. The place, perched on a rock, was
strong, and they were beaten off; but the act was one of open war.

When La Barre heard the news, he was furious. [Footnote: "Ce qui mit
M. de la Barre en fureur." Belmont, _Histoire du Canada_.] He trembled
for the vast amount of goods which he and his fellow-speculators had
sent to Michillimackinac and the lakes. There was but one resource: to
call out the militia, muster the Indian allies, advance to Lake
Ontario, and dictate peace to the Senecas, at the head of an imposing
force; or, failing in this, to attack and crush them. A small vessel
lying at Quebec was despatched to France, with urgent appeals for
immediate aid, though there was little hope that it could arrive in
time. She bore a long letter, half piteous, half bombastic, from La
Barre to the king. He declared that extreme necessity and the despair
of the people had forced him into war, and protested that he should
always think it a privilege to lay down life for his Majesty. "I
cannot refuse to your country of Canada, and your faithful subjects,
to throw myself, with unequal forces, against the foe, while at the
same time begging your aid for a poor, unhappy people on the point of
falling victims to a nation of barbarians." He says that the total
number of men in Canada capable of bearing arms is about two thousand;
that he received last year a hundred and fifty raw recruits; and that
he wants, in addition, seven or eight hundred good soldiers. "Recall
me," he concludes, "if you will not help me, for I cannot bear to see
the country perish in my hands." At the same time, he declares his
intention to attack the Senecas, with or without help, about the
middle of August. [Footnote: _La Barre au Roy_, 5 _Juin_, 1684.] Here
we leave him, for a while, scared, excited, and blustering.


[1] Soon after La Barre's arrival, La Chesnaye is said to have induced
him to urge the Iroquois to plunder all traders who were not provided
with passports from the governor. The Iroquois complied so promptly,
that they stopped and pillaged, at Niagara, two canoes belonging to La
Chesnaye himself, which had gone up the lakes in Frontenac's time, and
therefore were without passports. _Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en
Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, etc., depuis l'année_ 1682. (Published
by the Historical Society of Quebec.) This was not the only case in
which the weapons of La Barre and his partisans recoiled against
themselves.

[2] There appears no doubt that La Barre brought this upon himself.
His successor, Denonville, writes that the Iroquois declared that, in
plundering the canoes, they thought they were executing the orders
they had received to plunder La Salle's people. Denonville, _Mémoire
adressé ou Ministre sur les Affaires de la Nouvelle France,_ 10
_Août,_ 1688. The Iroquois told Dongan, in 1684, "that they had
not don any thing to the French but what Monsr. delaBarr Ordered them,
which was that if they mett with any French hunting without his passe
to take what they had from them." _Dongan to Denonville,_ 9
_Sept.,_ 1687.




CHAPTER VI.

1684.

LA BARRE AND THE IROQUOIS.

DONGAN.--NEW YORK AND ITS INDIAN NEIGHBORS.--THE RIVAL GOVERNORS.--
DONGAN AND THE IROQUOIS.--MISSION TO ONONDAGA.--AN IROQUOIS
POLITICIAN.--WARNINGS OF LAMBERVILLE.--IROQUOIS BOLDNESS.--LA BARRE
TAKES THE FIELD.--HIS MOTIVES.--THE MARCH.--PESTILENCE.--COUNCIL AT LA
FAMINE.--THE IROQUOIS DEFIANT.--HUMILIATION OF LA BARRE.--THE INDIAN
ALLIES.--THEIR RAGE AND DISAPPOINTMENT.--RECALL OF LA BARRE.


The Dutch colony of New Netherland had now become the English colony
of New York. Its proprietor, the Duke of York, afterwards James II of
England, had appointed Colonel Thomas Dongan its governor. He was a
Catholic Irish gentleman of high rank, nephew of the famous Earl of
Tyrconnel, and presumptive heir to the earldom of Limerick. He had
served in France, was familiar with its language, and partial to its
king and its nobility; but he nevertheless gave himself with vigor to
the duties of his new trust.

The Dutch and English colonists aimed at a share in the western fur
trade, hitherto a monopoly of Canada; and it is said that Dutch
traders had already ventured among the tribes of the Great Lakes,
boldly poaching on the French preserves. Dongan did his utmost to
promote their interests, so far at least as was consistent with his
instructions from the Duke of York, enjoining him to give the French
governor no just cause of offence. [1]

For several years past, the Iroquois had made forays against the
borders of Maryland and Virginia, plundering and killing the settlers;
and a declared rupture between those colonies and the savage
confederates had more than once been imminent. The English believed
that these hostilities were instigated by the Jesuits in the Iroquois
villages. There is no proof whatever of the accusation; but it is
certain that it was the interest of Canada to provoke a war which
might, sooner or later, involve New York. In consequence of a renewal
of such attacks, Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, came
to Albany in the summer of 1684, to hold a council with the Iroquois.

The Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas were the offending tribes. They
all promised friendship for the future. A hole was dug in the
court-yard of the council house, each of the three threw a hatchet
into it, and Lord Howard and the representative of Maryland added two
others; then the hole was filled, the song of peace was sung, and the
high contracting parties stood pledged to mutual accord. [Footnote:
Report of Conferences at Albany, in Colden, _History of the Five
Nations_, 50 (ed. 1727, Shea's reprint).] The Mohawks were also at the
council, and the Senecas soon after arrived; so that all the
confederacy was present by its deputies. Not long before, La Barre,
then in the heat of his martial preparations, had sent a messenger to
Dongan with a letter, informing him that, as the Senecas and Cayugas
had plundered French canoes and assaulted a French fort, he was
compelled to attack them, and begging that the Dutch and English
colonists should be forbidden to supply them with arms. [Footnote: _La
Barre à Dongan_, 15 _Juin_, 1684.] This letter produced two results,
neither of them agreeable to the writer: first, the Iroquois were
fully warned of the designs of the French; and, secondly, Dongan
gained the opportunity he wanted of asserting the claim of his king to
sovereignty over the confederacy, and possession of the whole country
south of the Great Lakes. He added that, if the Iroquois had done
wrong, he would require them, as British subjects, to make reparation;
and he urged La Barre, for the sake of peace between the two colonies,
to refrain from his intended invasion of British territory. [Footnote:
_Dongan à La Barre_, 24 _Juin_, 1684.]

Dongan next laid before the assembled sachems the complaints made
against them in the letter of La Barre. They replied by accusing the
French of carrying arms to their enemies, the Illinois and the Miamis.
"Onontio," said their orator, "calls us his children, and then helps
our enemies to knock us in the head." They were somewhat disturbed at
the prospect of La Barre's threatened attack; and Dongan seized the
occasion to draw from them an acknowledgment of subjection to the Duke
of York, promising in return that they should be protected from the
French. They did not hesitate. "We put ourselves," said the Iroquois
speaker, "under the great sachem Charles, who lives over the Great
Lake, and under the protection of the great Duke of York, brother of
your great sachem." But he added a moment after, "Let your friend
(_King Charles_) who lives over the Great Lake know that we are a free
people, though united to the English." [Footnote: Speech of the
Onondagas and Cayugas, in Colden, _Five Nations_, 63 (1727).] They
consented that the arms of the Duke of York should be planted in their
villages, being told that this would prevent the French from
destroying them. Dongan now insisted that they should make no treaty
with Onontio without his consent; and he promised that, if their
country should be invaded, he would send four hundred horsemen and as
many foot soldiers to their aid.

As for the acknowledgment of subjection to the king and the Duke of
York, the Iroquois neither understood its full meaning nor meant to
abide by it. What they did clearly understand was that, while they
recognized Onontio, the governor of Canada, as their father, they
recognized Corlaer, the governor of New York, only as their brother.
[Footnote: Except the small tribe of the Oneidas, who addressed
Corlaer as _Father. Corlaer_ was the official Iroquois name of the
governor of New York; _Onas_ (the Feather, or Pen), that of the
governor of Pennsylvania; and _Assarigoa_ (the Big Knife, or Sword),
that of the governor of Virginia. Corlaer, or Cuyler, was the name of
a Dutchman whom the Iroquois held in great respect.] Dongan, it seems,
could not, or dared not, change this mark of equality. He did his
best, however, to make good his claims, and sent Arnold Viele, a Dutch
interpreter, as his envoy to Onondaga. Viele set out for the Iroquois
capital, and thither we will follow him.

He mounted his horse, and in the heats of August rode westward along
the valley of the Mohawk. On a hill a bow-shot from the river, he saw
the first Mohawk town, Kaghnawaga, encircled by a strong palisade.
Next he stopped for a time at Gandagaro, on a meadow near the bank;
and next, at Canajora, on a plain two miles away. Tionondogué, the
last and strongest of these fortified villages, stood like the first
on a hill that overlooked the river, and all the rich meadows around
were covered with Indian corn. The largest of the four contained but
thirty houses, and all together could furnish scarcely more than three
hundred warriors. [Footnote: _Journal of Wentworth Greenhalgh_, 1677,
in _N. Y. Col. Docs_., III. 250.]

When the last Mohawk town was passed, a ride of four or five days
still lay before the envoy. He held his way along the old Indian
trail, now traced through the grass of sunny meadows, and now
tunnelled through the dense green of shady forests, till it led him to
the town of the Oneidas, containing about a hundred bark houses, with
twice as many fighting men, the entire force of the tribe. Here, as in
the four Mohawk villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of
York, and, still advancing, came at length to a vast open space where
the rugged fields, patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a
broad, low hill, crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga. There
were from one to two hundred of these large bark dwellings, most of
them holding several families. The capital of the confederacy was not
fortified at this time, and its only defence was the valor of some
four hundred warriors. [Footnote: _Journal of Greenhalgh_. The site of
Onondaga, like that of all the Iroquois towns, was changed from time
to time, as the soil of the neighborhood became impoverished, and the
supply of wood exhausted. Greenhalgh, in 1677, estimated the warriors
at three hundred and fifty; but the number had increased of late by
the adoption of prisoners.]

In this focus of trained and organized savagery, where ferocity was
cultivated as a virtue, and every emotion of pity stifled as unworthy
of a man; where ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held with
the tenacity of a people who joined the extreme of wildness with the
extreme of conservatism,--here burned the council fire of the five
confederate tribes; and here, in time of need, were gathered their
bravest and their wisest to debate high questions of policy and war.

The object of Viele was to confirm the Iroquois in their very
questionable attitude of subjection to the British crown, and persuade
them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through
the intervention of Dongan, or at least with his consent. The envoy
found two Frenchmen in the town, whose presence boded ill to his
errand. The first was the veteran colonist of Montreal, Charles le
Moyne, sent by La Barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference. They
had known him, in peace or war, for a quarter of a century; and they
greatly respected him. The other was the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville,
who had long lived among them, and knew them better than they knew
themselves. Here, too, was another personage who cannot pass
unnoticed. He was a famous Onondaga orator named Otréonati, and called
also Big Mouth, whether by reason of the dimensions of that feature or
the greatness of the wisdom that issued from it. His contemporary,
Baron La Hontan, thinking perhaps that his French name of La Grande
Gueule was wanting in dignity, Latinized it into Grangula; and the
Scotchman, Colden, afterwards improved it into Garangula, under which
high-sounding appellation Big Mouth has descended to posterity. He was
an astute old savage, well trained in the arts of Iroquois rhetoric,
and gifted with the power of strong and caustic sarcasm, which has
marked more than one of the chief orators of the confederacy. He
shared with most of his countrymen the conviction that the earth had
nothing so great as the league of the Iroquois; but, if he could be
proud and patriotic, so too he could be selfish and mean. He valued
gifts, attentions, and a good meal, and would pay for them abundantly
in promises, which he kept or not, as his own interests or those of
his people might require. He could use bold and loud words in public,
and then secretly make his peace with those he had denounced. He was
so given to rough jokes that the intendant, Meules, calls him a
buffoon; but his buffoonery seems to have been often a cover to his
craft. He had taken a prominent part in the council of the preceding
summer at Montreal; and, doubtless, as he stood in full dress before
the governor and the officers, his head plumed, his face painted, his
figure draped in a colored blanket, and his feet decked with
embroidered moccasins, he was a picturesque and striking object. He
was less so as he squatted almost naked by his lodge fire, with a
piece of board laid across his lap, chopping rank tobacco with a
scalping-knife to fill his pipe, and entertaining the grinning circle
with grotesque stories and obscene jests. Though not one of the
hereditary chiefs, his influence was great. "He has the strongest head
and the loudest voice among the Iroquois," wrote Lamberville to La
Barre. "He calls himself your best friend.... He is a venal creature,
whom you do well to keep in pay. I assured him I would send him the
jerkin you promised." [Footnote: _Letters of Lamberville in N. Y. Col.
Docs_., IX. For specimens of Big Mouth's skill in drawing, see
_ibid_., IX. 386.] Well as the Jesuit knew the Iroquois, he was
deceived if he thought that Big Mouth was securely won.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.