Page:History of the Ojibway Nation.djvu/426

416 quarters, as is done in slaughter-houses, in order to put them into the kettle; the greater number was opened while still warm that their blood might be drank. Our rascally Otaoas distinguished themselves particularly by these barbarities, and by their poltroonery; the Hurons of Michilimaquina did very well."

After this battle, fear of the Iroquois stopped the fur trade beyond Lake Erie, and the merchants of Montreal and Quebec were impoverished.

Du Luth, in the summer of 1687, came back for a short time to Fort St. Joseph, and one of his escorts was Lahontan.

Early in June, 1688, Lahontan visited the Falls of Saint Mary, where he found a village of Outchipoués, or Saulteurs, not far from the Jesuit's house. On the 13th, he left with forty Saulteurs, in five canoes, and at Mackinaw was joined by a party of Ottawas. On the first of July he reached Fort St. Joseph. Two days later, he and the Indians embarked for Lake Erie, and on the 28th the Saulteurs had a fight with the Iroquois, in which they lost four of their number, but killed three, wounded five, and took prisoners the remainder of the Iroquois party. On the 24th of August, Lahontan returned to Fort St. Joseph, which had been built in 1686–87 by Du Luth. A Miami Indian having brought the intelligence that the fort at Niagara had been demolished by order of the Governor of Canada, on the 27th of August, he burned Fort St. Joseph, and retired to Mackinaw.

Lahontan mentions that when he was at Sault Ste. Marie there was no permanent Indian village on the banks