Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/40

 16 HISTORY OP The use of firearms was unknown to the Aborigines. The simple weapons I have described had been their armory for ages. The rifle, therefore, was to him a source of inexplicable mystery and awe — the quick flash — the lightning speed it gave the leaden ball, and the shrill report and smoke that fol- lowed, were unsolved problems in his mind. To the celebrated navigator, Samuel Champlain, is the introduction of fire-arms among the -Indians accredited. In 1608, Champlain founded a settlement of French upon the present site of the city of Quebec, in Eastern Canada. At that period a fierce and bloody war was raging between the Algonquins, the Mon- tagues, together with the Hurons in alliance, against their powerful enemy, the Iroquois nation. Impelled by his restless spirit, Champlain, in an unlucky moment, joined these tribes against the Iroquois. He furnished the Algonquins with arms and the munitions of war, and it is even asserted that he headed the beleagued force and mingled in the hottest of the fight. A change now came over the tide of battle, and the Iroquois heretofore uniformly victorious, were now defeated in numerous pitched battles. The booming musketry and the thundering cannon sent their showers of iron hail into their ranks with terrible devastation and death, and disheartened and dismayed, they were obliged to evacuate the ground they had so lately won. About this time a settlement was made at Albany, on the Hudson, and trading houses were erected to open communi- cation with the Indians. The vanquished Iroquois seized this opportunity with avidity, and bringing their choicest furs, exchanged them for fire-arms and other munitions of war. The contest was now renewed upon equal footing, and the Five Nations soon regained their former ascendancy ; and not content with the chastisement they had inflicted upon their • combined foes, they turned now to deal out the measure of their revenge upon the French settlements, whose inhabitants