Читать книгу A Canadian History for Boys and Girls - Emily Poynton Weaver - Страница 15
ОглавлениеLa Barre and the Iroquois.
La Barre, the new governor, seems to have hoped to make a fortune from the fur trade. Soon he had a number of coureurs de bois in his own service. He used the king’s canoes to carry his goods, and left Fort Frontenac so defenceless that the Iroquois robbed it of all it contained. The Indian wars still continued, and La Barre did not try to stop them so long as they did no harm to the fur trade. But when the Iroquois attacked a party of his own traders, and seized their canoes, he raised a great force to punish them. A large number of Indians joined him, some of whom travelled hundreds of miles in the hope of seeing the Iroquois humbled. Dongan, the governor of New York, warned the Five Nations of the intended attack, but offended them by claiming that they were under his government.
After working hard to get ready for war, La Barre’s courage all melted away. Without striking a blow, he made a disgraceful treaty with the Iroquois, leaving at their mercy the tribes living near the Illinois River, who looked to the French for protection. Upon this his Indian allies went home in disgust. The colonists were no better pleased, and in the following year La Barre was recalled and his treaty declared not binding on the French.
Denonville.
The Marquis de Denonville, who was appointed governor in 1685, appears to have been really anxious for the good of Canada. He did not soil his hands with unlawful trade, but was too ready, like the Indians themselves, to try to gain his ends by cunning. Soon after his arrival he met some of the Iroquois at Cataraqui, hoping to persuade them to make peace with the Illinois Indians. They refused, so he asked for more troops from France. In the meantime he sent the Jesuit Lamberville to the Five Nations to talk of peace, deceiving him as well as them.
Peace Pipe.
A short time later Denonville committed a shocking act of treachery. He invited nearly a hundred of the Iroquois living near Cataraqui, who had taken no part in the war, to a feast at Fort Frontenac. On their arrival they were bound to posts in the courtyard, and after being kept for several days without food or shelter, were sent in chains to France to work as slaves, rowing the king’s great boats.
Lamberville’s Escape.
Lamberville, who was still living with the Onondagas, was now in great danger, but he had won the love of the old men, and it is said that this saved his life. The young warriors were absent when the news of Denonville’s treachery reached the tribe, and their elders sent Lamberville back to his own people in haste, lest on their return the hot-blooded young braves should slay him for the wrong in which he had had no hand.
Invasion of the Seneca Country.
Denonville, at the head of a host of French soldiers, coureurs de bois, and wild Indians from the west, now pushed into the Iroquois country. But Dongan had again put them on their guard. The Senecas fled to the woods, and the French destroyed their dwellings and their crops of growing corn, in the hope that hunger would force them to submit. The other Iroquois nations and the English supplied them with food, however, and Dongan, declaring that Denonville had invaded English territory, prepared to help the Senecas to defend themselves.
Iroquois Outrages.
But merely defending themselves did not suit the Iroquois. For two terrible years they prowled through the country, preventing the western Indians bringing down their furs to Montreal, and murdering and scalping the settlers who ventured into the fields. It was impossible to till the ground. Food was sold at famine prices. New France was threatened with ruin, and Denonville’s courage failed. He agreed, like La Barre, to a treaty in which his Indian allies were not mentioned. But a Huron chief named Kondiaronk, or “The Rat,” found a way, as he said, “to kill the peace.”
The Rat’s Plot.
He lay in wait for a party of Iroquois, and slew several, pretending that he had never heard of the treaty, and was acting by Denonville’s orders. When told of the treaty, he professed the utmost horror at the governor’s treachery, and set all his captives at liberty except one, whom he said he intended to adopt. But instead of adopting him, he took him to the fort at Michillimackinac, and he was shot by the French, who really had not heard of the peace. The wily Rat next sent home an old Iroquois who had been imprisoned in the fort, bidding him tell his people what he had seen of the treachery and cruelty of the French. He obeyed, and his countrymen prepared in silence for a frightful revenge.
Massacre of Lachine, 1689.
On the night of August 4th, 1689, the people of the long, straggling village of Lachine went quietly to rest, little thinking that under cover of the darkness and of a raging storm fifteen hundred Senecas were gathering about their homes. Before morning dawned a terrific war-whoop rent the air. Doors and windows were battered in, and a horrible slaughter began. Strong men, gray-haired women, and little children were heartlessly slain. The Indians maddened themselves with the brandy they found in the village, and after robbing its houses of all they contained, they set them on fire. For seven miles and a half a line of blazing buildings lit the dark waters of the St. Lawrence, while the people of Montreal looked on helplessly, in agonizing fear and rage. At daybreak a French officer, Subercase, started in pursuit of the savages, but Denonville sent after him in hot haste, forbidding him to attempt the rescue of the wretched prisoners. Unopposed, the Iroquois now spread themselves over twenty miles of open country, slaying and destroying without hindrance. For weeks they lingered in the neighbourhood. At last, after burning five prisoners opposite Lachine, where the fires could be seen by the friends of the sufferers, they paddled past Montreal uttering frightful yells to tell the number of their captives. Two hundred are believed to have perished in the massacre, while one hundred and twenty were captured alive, to endure untold tortures on reaching the Indian villages, or to become the bond-slaves of the savages.
The people had lost all faith in Denonville, and in October Frontenac again took the reins of government from his feeble hands.
