Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/302

282 invasion of their well-defended territories. Not always did his arquebuse and his armor secure him awe and a charmed immunity. He found the fortified towns of the Iroquois, with their triple rows of strong palisades, with galleries for bowsmen and water-gutters for extinguishing fires, were not to be mastered by a handful of Frenchmen and five hundred yelling Hurons. He was signally baffled and disappointed. He was severely wounded, so that he had to be borne off in a basket on the back of an Indian, and so lost his prestige with friend and foe. He was initiated in all the atrocities of torture and burning, and his remonstrances were vain as addressed to those who had no word nor any sense for humanity.

Very soon after the settlement of Dutch farmers and traders on the Hudson River, in 1614, the powerful tribes of central New York, with whom they had established amicable and very profitable relations, were furnished by them with fire-arms and ammunition, in express violation of the prohibition of the authorities of the Dutch colony. But as some of these authorities were themselves the traffickers who dealt in the forbidden weapons, the traffic was winked at. Guns and strong waters soon became the most coveted articles of trade and barter with the natives. The charmed weapon, one discharge of which, as it belched forth its flame and sped its deadly bolt, had spread such dismay and fright as to disperse an army of Iroquois warriors on Champlain's first encounter with them when he discovered the magnificent lake which bears his name, had now become familiar to the savages. It lost its terror as a part of heaven's artillery for those who could themselves wield it. They very soon became experts in its use; indeed they taught the white man how to make it more serviceable in forest warfare, by breaking up the lines of an orderly military array, and by skulking with it behind a tree or a bush, and, after its deadly aim had had effect, creeping or crawling to another ambush to reload.