The Documentary History of the State of New York/Volume I/Chapter II/Article II

JOURNAL OF WHAT OCCURRED BETWEEN THE FRENCH AND SAVAGES.
[Relation, &c. 1657 and 1658.]

The word Onnota, which signifies, in the Iroquois tongue, a Mountain, has given the name to the village called Onnontaé, or as others call it, Onnontagué because it is on a mountain; and the people who inhabit it consequently style themselves Onnontaé-ronnons, or Onnontagué-ronnons.

1655.&emsp; These people have for a long time and earnestly demanded that some priests of our Society be sent to their country. Finally, Father Joseph Chaumont and Father Claude Dablon were granted to them, in the year 1655. They embarked on the 19$th$ Sept., and arnived at Onnontagué the 5$th$ November of the same year 1655.

1656.&emsp; These two good fathers finding themselves listened to with approval and kindness, Father Dablon left Onnontagué on the second day of March of the following year 1656, to look for help at Quebec, where he arrived in the beginning of April, and departed thence on the 17th May, in company with three Fathers and two brothers of the Society, and a good number of Frenchmen, who all proceeded towards this new country, where they arrived on the 11$th$ day of July of the same year, 1656.

1657.&emsp; In the year 1657, the harvest appearing plentiful in all the villages of the upper Iroquois, the common people listening to the words of the gospel with simplicity and the Chiefs with a well disguised dissimulation, Father Paul Ragueneau, Father Francois Du Peron, some Frenchmen and several Hurons, departed from Montreal the 26$th$ July, to aid their brethren and compatriots.

On the 3$d$ day of the month of August of the same year 1657, the perfidy of the Iroquois began to develop itself by the massacre which they made of the poor Hurons whom they broght into their country, after thousands of protestations of kindness and thousands of oaths, in their style, that they should treat them as brothers. And had not a number of Iroquois remained among the French, near Quebec, to endeavor to bring with them the rest of the Hurons, who distrusting these traitors, would not embark with the others, the Fathers and the Frenchmen who ascended with them would have then been destroyed; and all those who remained on the banks of Lake Ganantaa, near to Onnontagué, would shortly after have shared the same fate. But the fear that the French would wreak vengeance on their countrymen, staid their design,of which our fathers had had secret intelligence immediately on their arrival in the country. Even a captain who was aquainted with the secret of the Chiefs, having taken som liking to the preachings of the Gospel, and finding himself very sick, demanded Baptism; having received it with sufficient instruction, he discovered the evil designs of his countrymen to those who attended him, and went a short time afterwards to Heaven.

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The 9$th$ of the month of September. Our fathers at Onnontagué sent two canoes to Quebec with intelligence of the massacre of the poor Huron Christians, treacherously put to death by these barbarians, as we remarked above, 3 August of the year 1657.

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The 7$th$ of the month of November. Two Mohawks departed from Quebec, and took a third at Three Rivers. . . . . A number of letters from divers quarters were given to them for Father Le Moine, part of which were to be sent to our Fathers and our French of Onnontagué thro’ the medium of the Mohawks, who often go to that country.

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It is true that the Mohawks faithfully delivered the letters to Ondessonk, because they feared evil for their people detained by the French. But for the letters addressed to our French at Onnontagué, the Mohawk who was the bearer thereof, threw them in the river, or gave them, probably, to the chiefs of the country. But these good fellows, who wished to rid themselves of the preachers of the gospel and of those who assisted them, threw them into the fire.

The Onnontagué sent by Monsieur de Maisonneuve did still worse: for he told the chiefs of the nation, that the French were leagued principally with the Algonquins to make war on them, and that they had killed his comrade. It was an Algonquin killed him on his way to war as we have remarked on the 3$d$ November. Nothing more was necessary to excite these furious men, who had already concluded on the death of some and the captivity of others. They were desirous, however, to act in concert with the Mohawks, who could, no more than the others, reconcile then.selves to the detention of their people, believing it very unjust.

Our poor French were, meanwhile, much astonished at receiving no certain news either from Quebec, Three Rivers, or Montreal. These barbarians had entirely cut off all communication, so that Mons$r$. de Dailleboust’s orders were not delivered to Mons$r$. Du Puis, who commanded the soldiers, nor a letter to any of the French whomsoever.

OF THE RETURN OF OUR FATHERS AND OF OUR FRENCHMEN
FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE ONNONTAGUES.

[From the same.]

Though it be true that the Iroquois are subtle, adroit and great cheats, I nevertheless cannot persuade myself that they possess so much intelligence, so much tact, and that they are such great politicians as to have had recourse to the ruses and intrigues imputed to them to destroy the French, the Hurons, the Algonquins, and their allies.

They urged for many years with incredible persistence; with evidences of especial affection and even with threats of rupture and war, if their friendship were despised and their demand rejected; they insisted, l say, and solicited that a goodly number of French should accompany them into their country, the one to instruct, the others to protect them against their enemies, as a token of peace and alliance with them.

The Mohawks desired to thwart this scheme; they fought the one against the other even unto polluting the earth with blood and murder. Some believed that all that was mere feint, the better to mask their game; but it would seem to me not a very pleasant game when the stakes are life and blood. I strongly doubt that Iroquoy policy should extend so far as that, and that Barbarians who repose but little confidence in each other, should so long conceal their intrigues. I believe rather that the Onnontagué Iroquois demanded some Frenchmen in sincerity, but with views very different. The Chiefs finding themselves engaged in heavy wars against a number of nations whom they had provoked, asked for Hurons as reinforcements to their warriors; they wished for the French to obtain firearms from them, and to repair those which might be broken. Further, as the Mohawks treated them sometimes very ill when passing through their villages to trade with the Dutch, they were anxious to rise out of this dependence in opening a trade with the French. This is not all, the fate of arms being fickle, they demanded that our Frenchmen should erect a vast fort in their country to serve as a retreat for them, or at least for their wives and children in case their enemies pressed too close on them. Here are the views of the Iroquois politicians. The common people did not penetrate so far ahead; curiosity to see strangers come from such distance the hope of deriving some little profit, created a desire to see them; but the Christian Hurons and captives among the people and those who approved their lives and conversations which they sometimes held regarding our belief, breathed nothing in the world so much as the coming of Preachers of the Gospel who had brought them forth unto Jesus Christ.

But so soon as the Captains and Chiefs became masters of their enemies, having crushed all the Nations who had attacked them; so soon as they believed that nothing could resist their arms, the recollection of the wrongs they pretended to have formerly experienced from the Hurons; the glory of triumphing over Europeans as well as Americans, caused them to take the resolution to revenge themselves on the one and destroy the other; so that at the very moment they saw the dreaded Cat Nation subjugated by their arms and by the power of the Senecas, their allies, they would have massacred all the French at Onnontagué, were it not that they pretended to make use of them as a decoy to attract some Hurons and to massacre them as they had already done. And if the influence of some of their tribe, then resident at Quebec, had not staid them, the path to Onnontagué had become the tomb to Frenchmen as well as to Hurons will be seen hereafter. From that time forth our people, having discovered their conspiracy, and perceived that their death was concluded on, bethought them on their retreat, which shall be described in the following letter.

FATHER PAUL RAGUENEAU
TO THE REV. FATHER JACQUES RENAULT, PROVINCIAL OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS IN THE PROVINCE OF FRANCE. Pax Christi.

My R. Father,

The present is to inform Y. R. of our return from the Iroquois mission, loaded with some spoils rescued from Hell. We bear in our hands more than five hundred children and a number of adults, the most part of whom died after Baptism. We have re-established Faith and piety in the hearts of a poor captive church, the first foundations of which we had laid in the Huron Country. We have proclaimed the gospel unto all the Iroquois Nations so that they are henceforth without excuse, and God will be fully justified against them at the great day of judgment.

The Devil enraged at seeing us reap so fine a harvest and enjoy so amply the fruits of our enterprise, made use of the inconstancy of the Iroquois to drive us from the centre of his estates; for these Barbarians, without other motive than to follow their volatile humor, renewed the war against the French, the first blows of which were discharged on our worthy Christian Hurons, who went up with us to Onnontagué at the close of the last summer, and who were cruelly massacred in our arms and in our bosom by the most signal treason imaginable. They then made prisoners of their poor wives and even burned some of them with their children of three and four years, at a slow fire.

This bloody execution was followed by the murder of three Frenchmen at Montreal by the Oneidas, who scalped them and carried these as if in triumph into their villages in token of declared war. This act of hostility having obliged M. Dailleboust, then commanding in this country, to cause a dozen of Iroquois, in part Onnontagués and mostly Mohawks, to be arrested and put in irons at Montreal, Three Rivers and Quebec, where they happened to be at the time, both Iroquois Nations became irritated at this detention of their people, pretending that it was unjust; and to cruelly avenge themselves convoked a secret Council where they formed the scheme of an implacable war against the French. Yet, they judged it fitting to dissimulate for some time until through the return of Father Simon Le Moine, then with the Mohawks, they should have obtained delivery of their folks who were in irons. In that Council they even looked on our persons as precious hostages, either for the exchange of some of their tribe who were in prison, or obtainment of whatever pleased them when within view of our French settlements they should make us feel the effects of their cruelty; doubting not that these horrible spectacles and the lamentations of forty and fifty innocent Frenchmen would touch with compassion and distress the Governor and inhabitants of what place so ever.

We were only privately acquainted with thes disatrous designs of the Iroquois, but we openly saw their spirits prepared for war; and in the month of February divers bands took the field for that purpose, 200 Mohawks on the one side, 40 Oneidas on the other; some Onnontagué warriors had already gone forward whilst the main body of the army was assembling.

We could not expect, speaking humanly, to extricate from these dangers, by which we were surrounded on all sides, some fifty Frenchmen who had entrusted to us their lives and for whom we should feel ourselves responsible before God and men. What distressed us the most was, not so much the flames into which a part of our Frenchmen would be cast, as the unfortunate captivity to which the most of them were destined by the Iroquois, in which the salvation of their souls was more to be dreaded than the loss of their bodies. This is what the greater number most especially apprehended, who already seeing themselves prisoners, coveted rather the stroke of the hatchet or even the flames, than this captivity. They were determined in order to avoid this last misfortune, even to risk all and to fly each, his way in the woods, to perish there of hunger and wretchedness or to attempt to reach some of the French settlements.

In these circumstances so precipitous, our Fathers and I and a gentleman named Monsieur du Puys, who commanded all our Frenchmen and a garrison of soldiers, nine of whom had already of themselves resolved to abandon us, concluded that it would be better to withdraw in a body, either to encourage one another to die or to sell life more dearly. For that reason it became necessary to depart without breathing a syllable about it; for the least suspicion that the Iroquois would have had of our retreat, would hurry down on us the disaster we would avoid. But how hope to be able to depart without being discovered, being in the heart of the country, and always beset by a number of these Barbarians who left not our house so as to watch our countenances in this conjuncture? It is true they never imagined that we should have had the courage to undertake this exploit, knowing well that we had neither canoes, nor sailors, and that we were unacquainted with the paths topped by precipices where a dozen Iroquois could easily defeat us: Besides, the season was insupportable on account of the cold of the frozen water through which, under all circumstances, the canoes were to be dragged, throwing ourselves into the river and remaining there entire hours, sometimes up to the neck, and we never had undertaken such expeditions without having savages for guides.

Notwithstanding these obstacles which appeared insurmountable to them as well as to us, God, who holds in His hands all the moments of our lives, so happily inspired us with all that was necessary to be done, that having departed on the 20$th$ day of March from our house of Ste. Marie, near Onnontagué, at eleven o’clock at night, His divine providence guiding us, as if by a continued miracle, in the midst of all imaginable dangers, we arrived at Quebec on the 23$d$ of the month of April, having passed Montreal and Three Rivers before any canoe could be launched, the river not having been open for navigation until the very day that we made our appearance.

From the same to the same.

Your Rev. will be glad to learn the particulars of our departure from Ste. Marie of the Iroquois. &emsp; * &emsp; * &emsp; * &emsp; * &emsp; * &emsp; The resolution being taken to quit that country where God took through us, the small number of his disciples, the difficulties appeared insurmountable in their execution for which every thing failed us.

To supply the want of canoes, we had built, in secret, two Batteaux of a novel and excellent structure to pass the rapids; these batteaux drew but very little water and carried considerable freight, fourteen or fifteen men each, amounting to fifteen to sixteen hundred weight. We had moreover four Algonquin and four Iroquois canoes, which were to compose our little fleet of fifty-three Frenchmen.

But the difficulty was to embark unperceived by the Iroquois who constantly beset us. The batteaux, canoes and all the equipage could not be conveyed without great noise, and yet without secrecy there was nothing to be expected save a general massacre of all of us the moment it would be discovered that we entertained the least thought of withdrawing.

On that account we invited all the Savages in our neighbourhood to a solemn feast at which we employed all our industry, and spared neither the noise of drums nor instruments of music, to deceive them by harmless device. He who presided at this ceremony played his part with so much address and success, that all were desirous to contribute to the publick joy: Every one vied in uttering the most piercing cries, now of war, anon of rejoicing. The Savages, through complaisance, sung and danced after the French fashion and the French in the Indian style. To encourage them the more in this fine play, presents were distributed among those who acted best, their parts and who made the greatest noise to drown that caused by about forty of our people who were engaged in removing all our equipage. The embarcation being completed, the feast was concluded at a fixed time; the guests retired, and sleep having soon overwhelmed them, we withdrew from our house by a back door and embarked with very little noise without bidding adieu to the Savages, who were acting cunning parts and were thinking to amuse us to the hour of our massacre with fair appearances and evidences of good will.

Our little Lake on which we silently sailed in the darkness of the night, froze according as ice advanced and caused us to fear being stopt by the ice after having evaded the fires of the Iroquois. God, however, delivered us, and after having advanced all night and all the following day through frightful precipices and waterfalls, we arrived finally in the evening at the great Lake Ontario, twenty leagues from the place of our departure. This first day was the most dangerous, for had the Iroquois observed our departure they would have intercepted us, and had they been ten or twelve it would have been easy for them to have thrown us into disorder, the river being very narrow, and terminating after travelling ten leagues in a frightful precipice where we were obliged to land and carry our baggage and canoes during four hours, through unknown roads covered with a thick forest which could have served the enemy for a Fort, whence at each step he could have struck and fired on us without being perceived. God’s protection visibly accompanied us during the remainder of the road, in which we walked through perils which made us shudder after we escaped them, having at night no other bed except the snow after having passed entire days in the water and amid the ice.

Ten days after our departure we found Lake Ontario on which we Boated, still frozen at its mouth. We were obliged to break the ice, axe in hand, to make an opening, to enter two days afterwards a rapid where our little fleet had well nigh foundered. For having entered a Great Sault without knowing it, we found ourselves in the midst of breakers which, meeting a quantity of big rocks, threw up mountains of water and cast us on as many precipices as we gave strokes of paddies. Our batteaux which drew scarcely half a foot, were soon filled with water and all our people in such confusion that their cries mingled with the roar of the torrent presented to us the spectacle of a dreadful wreck. It became imperitive however, to extricate ourselves, the violence of the current dragging us despite ourselves into the large rapids and through passes in which we had never been. Terror redoubled at the sight of one of our canoes being engulfed in a breaker which barred the entire rapid and which, notwithstanding, was the course that all the others must keep. Three Frenchmen were drowned there, a fourth fortunately escaped, having held on to the canoe and being saved at the foot of the Sault when at the point of letting go his hold, his strength being exhausted. &emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp; The 3d of April we landed at Montreal, in the beginning of the night.

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You noticed above. . . . . . how our Fathers and our Frenchmen withdrew from their habitation built on the banks of Lake Ganantaa, near Onnontagué. That happened at night, and without noise and with so much address, that the Iroquois, who cabined at the doors of our house, never perceived the removal of the canoes and batteaux and bagage which were launched, nor the embarcation of fifty-three persons. Sleep in which they were deeply enveloped, after considerable singing and dancing, deprived them of all conciousness; but at length night having given place to day, dark to light, sleep to awaking, these Barbarians left their cabins and roving round our well locked house, were astonished at the profound silence of the Frenchmen. They saw no one going out to work; they heard no voice. They thought at first that they were all at prayer, or in council, but the day advancing and these prayers not getting to an end, they knocked at the door. The dogs, which our Frenchmen designedly left behind, answered by barking. The cock’s crow which they heard in the morning and the noise of the dogs, made them think that the masters of these animals were not far off; they recovered the patience which they had lost. But at length the sun began to decline and no person answering neither to the voice of men nor to the cries of animals, they scaled the house to see the condition of our people in this terrible silence. Astonishment now gave place to fright and trouble. They open the door; the chiefs enter every where; ascend the garret; descend to the cellar; not a Frenchman makes his appearance dead or alive. They regard one another – terror seizes them; they imagine they have to do with Devils. They saw no batteau, and even if they saw it they could not imagine that our Frenchmen would be so rash as to precipitate themselves into rapids and breakers, among rocks and horrible dangers in which themselves though very expert in passing through Saults and Cascades, often lose their lives. They persuade themselves either that they walked on the waves, or fled through the air; or as seemed most probable, that they concealed themselves in the woods. They seek for them; nothing appears. They are quasi convinced that they rendered themselves invisible; and as they suddenly departed, so will they pounce as suddenly on their village.