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The Fighting Governor : A Chronicle of Frontenac by Charles W. Colby, CHAPTER VIII. FRONTENAC'S LAST DAYS (1)

CHAPTER VIII. FRONTENAC'S LAST DAYS (1)

Though the English might withdraw from Quebec, New France always had the Iroquois with her.

We must now pursue the thread of Frontenac's dealings with the savages from the moment when he replaced Denonville. It requires no flight of the imagination to appreciate the rage Frontenac must have felt when, on returning to Canada, he saw before his eyes the effects of La Barre's rapacity and Denonville's perfidy, of which the massacres of Lachine and La Chesnaye furnished the most ghastly proofs.

But in these two cases the element of tragedy was so strong as to efface the mood of exasperation. There remained a third incident which must have provoked pure rage. This was the destruction of Fort Frontenac, blown up, at Denonville's order, by the French themselves (October 1689). The erection and maintenance of this post had been a cardinal point in Frontenac's Indian policy; and, more particularly to aggravate the offence, there was the humiliating fact that Denonville had ordered it demolished to comply with a demand from the Iroquois. This shameful concession had been made shortly before Frontenac reached Canada. It was Denonville's last important act in the colony. On the chance that something might have occurred to delay execution of the order, Frontenac at once countermanded it and sent forward an expedition of three hundred men. But they were too late. His beloved fortress was gone. The only comfort which Frontenac could derive from the incident was that the work of destruction had been carried out imperfectly. There remained a portion of the works which could still be used. Thus with regard to the Iroquois the situation was far worse in 1689 than it had been when Frontenac came to Canada in 1672.

Everything which he had done to conciliate the Five Nations had been undone; and Dongan's intelligent activities, coinciding with this long series of French mistakes, had helped to make matters worse. Nor was it now merely a question of the Iroquois. The whole Indian world had been convulsed by the renewal of strife between Onontio and the Five Nations. Tribes long friendly to the French and in constant trade with them were being alienated. The Indian problem as Frontenac saw it in 1690 resolved itself to this: either peace with the Iroquois on terms which would prove impressive to the Hurons, the Ottawas, and even to the savages of the Mississippi; or else uncompromising war. For under no circumstances could the French afford to lose their hold upon the tribes from whom they derived their furs. Obviously an honourable peace would be preferable to the horrors of a forest war, and Frontenac did his best to secure it.

To undo, as far as possible, Denonville's treachery at Fort Frontenac and elsewhere, he had brought back with him to Quebec the Iroquois who had been sent to France—or such of them as were still alive. First among these was a Cayuga chief of great influence named Ourehaoue, whose friendship Frontenac assiduously cultivated and completely won. Towards the close of January 1690 an embassy of three released Iroquois carried to Onondaga a message from Ourehaoue that the real Onontio had returned and peace must be made with him if the Five Nations wished to live. A great council was then held at which the English, by invitation, were represented, while the French interest found its spokesman in a Christian Iroquois named Cut Nose. Any chance of success was destroyed by the implacable enmity of the Senecas, who remembered the attempt of the French to check their raids upon the Illinois and the invasion of their own country by Denonville. Cannehoot, a Seneca chieftain, rose and stated that the tribes of Michilimackinac were ready to join the English and the Iroquois for the destruction of New France; and the assembly decided to enter this triple alliance. Frontenac's envoys returned to Quebec alive, but with nothing to show for their pains. A later effort by Frontenac was even less successful. The Iroquois, it was clear, could not be brought back to friendship by fair words. War to the knife being inevitable, Frontenac promptly took steps to confirm his position with the hitherto friendly savages of the Ottawa and the Great Lakes.

When Cannehoot had said that the tribes of Michilimackinac were ready to turn against the French, he was not drawing wholly upon his imagination. This statement was confirmed by the report of Nicolas Perrot, who knew the Indians of the West as no one else knew them—save perhaps Du Lhut and Carheil. [Footnote: Etienne de Carheil was the most active of the Jesuit missionaries in Canada during the period of Frontenac. After fifteen years among the Iroquois at Cayuga (1668-83) he returned for three years to Quebec. He was then sent to Michilimackinac, Where he remained another fifteen years. Shortly after the founding of Detroit (1701) he gave up life in the forest. Despite the great hardships which he endured, he lived to be ninety-three. None of the missionaries was more strongly opposed to the brandy trade. The French were now playing a desperate game in the vast region beyond Lake Erie, which they had been the first of Europeans to explore.

The Ottawas and the Hurons, while alike the hereditary foes of the Iroquois, were filled with mutual jealousy which must be composed. The successes of the Iroquois in their raids on the French settlements must be explained and minimized. 'The Rat' Kondiaronk, the cleverest of the western chieftains, must be conciliated. And to compass all these ends, Perrot found his reliance in the word that Frontenac had returned and would lead his children against the common foe. Meanwhile, the Iroquois had their own advocates among the more timid and suspicious members of these western tribes. During the winter of 1689-90 the French and the Iroquois had about an even chance of winning the Indians who centred at Michilimackinac. But the odds were against the French to this extent—they were working against a time limit. Unless Frontenac could quickly show evidence of strength, the tribes of the West would range with the Iroquois. In the spring of 1690 Frontenac dispatched a force of a hundred and fifty men to reinforce the garrison at Michilimackinac.

On their way westward these troops encountered a band of Iroquois and fortunately killed a number of them. The scalps were an ocular proof of success; and Perrot, who was of the party, knew how to turn the victory to its best use by encouraging the Ottawas to torture an Iroquois prisoner. The breach thus made between the Ottawas and the Five Nations distinctly widened as soon as word came that the French had destroyed Schenectady. Thus this dreadful raid against the English did not fail of its psychological effect, as may be gathered from one of the immediate consequences. Early in August there appeared on Lake St Louis a vast flotilla of canoes, which at first caused the afflicted habitants to fear that the Iroquois were upon them again. Instead of this it was a great band of friendly savages from the West, drawn from all the trading tribes and bringing a cargo of furs of far more than the usual value. Frontenac himself chanced to be in Montreal at this fortunate moment. The market was held and concluded to mutual satisfaction, but the crowning event of the meeting was a council, at which, after an exchange of harangues, Frontenac entered into the festivities of the savages as though he were one of themselves (August 1690). The governor's example was followed by his leading officers. Amid the chanting of the war-song and the swinging of the tomahawk the French renewed their alliance with the Indians of the West. All were to fight until the Iroquois were destroyed. Even the Ottawas, who had been coquetting with the Senecas, now came out squarely and said that they would stand by Onontio. Here, at last, was a real answer to the Lachine massacre.

The challenge had been fairly given, and now it was not a Denonville who made the reply. There followed three years of incessant warfare between the Iroquois and the French, which furnished a fair test of the strength that each side could muster when fighting at its best. The Five Nations had made up their minds. The cares of diplomacy they threw to the winds. They were on the war-path, united and determined. The French, on their side, had Frontenac for leader and many outrages to avenge. It was war of the wilderness in its most unrelenting form, with no mercy expected or asked. The general result can be quickly stated. The Iroquois got their fill of war, and Frontenac destroyed their power as a central, dominating, terrorizing confederacy. The measure of this achievement is to be sought in the difficulties which were overcome.

Despite the eighty years of its existence the colony was still so poor that regularity in the arrival of supplies from France was a matter of vital importance. From the moment war began English cruisers hovered about the mouth of the St Lawrence, ready to pounce upon the supply-ships as they came up the river. Sometimes the French boats escaped; sometimes they were captured; but from this interruption of peaceful oversea traffic Canada suffered grievously. Another source of weakness was the interruption of agriculture which followed in the train of war. As a rule the Iroquois spent the winter in hunting deer, but just as the ground was ready for its crop they began to show themselves in the parishes near Montreal, picking off the habitants in their farms on the edge of the forest, or driving them to the shelter of the stockade. These forays made it difficult and dangerous to till the soil, with a corresponding shrinkage in the volume of the crop. Almost every winter famine was imminent in some part of the colony, and though spring was welcome for its own sake, it invariably brought the Iroquois. A third calamity was the interruption of the fur trade. Ordinarily the great cargoes descended the Ottawa in fleets of from one hundred to two hundred canoes. But the savages of the West well knew that when they embarked with their precious bales upon a route which was infested by the Iroquois, they gave hostages to fortune. In case of a battle the cargo was a handicap, since they must protect it as well as themselves. In case they were forced to flee for their lives, they lost the goods which it had cost so much effort to collect. In these circumstances the tribes of Michilimackinac would not bring down their furs unless they felt certain that the whole course of the Ottawa was free from danger. In seasons when they failed to come, the colony had nothing to export and penury became extreme. At best the returns from the fur trade were precarious. In 1690 and 1693 there were good markets; in 1691 and 1692 there were none at all. From time to time Frontenac received from France both money and troops, but neither in sufficient quantity to place him where he could deal the Iroquois one final blow.

Thus one year after another saw a war of skirmishes and minor raids, sufficiently harassing and weakening to both sides, but with results which were disappointing because inconclusive. The hero of this border warfare is the Canadian habitant, whose farm becomes a fort and whose gun is never out of reach. Nor did the men of the colony display more courage than their wives and daughters. The heroine of New France is the woman who rears from twelve to twenty children, works in the fields and cooks by day, and makes garments and teaches the catechism in the evening. It was a community which approved of early marriage—a community where boys and girls assumed their responsibilities very young. Youths of sixteen shouldered the musket. Madeleine de Vercheres was only fourteen when she defended her father's fort against the Iroquois with a garrison of five, which included two boys and a man of eighty (October 1692). A detailed chronicle of these raids and counter-raids would be both long and complicated, but in addition to the incidents which have been mentioned there remain three which deserve separate comment—Peter Schuyler's invasion of Canada in 1691, the activities of the Abnakis against New England, and Frontenac's invasion of the Onondaga country in 1696.

We have already seen that in 1690 an attempt was made by John Schuyler to avenge the massacre at Schenectady.

The results of this effort were insignificant, but its purpose was not forgotten; and in 1691 the Anglo-Dutch of the Hudson attempted once more to make their strength felt on the banks of the St Lawrence. This time the leader was Peter Schuyler, whose force included a hundred and twenty English and Dutch, as against the forty who had attacked Canada in the previous summer. The number of Indian allies was also larger than on the former occasion, including both Mohawks and Mohegans. Apart from its superior numbers and much harder fighting, the second expedition of the English was similar to the first. Both followed Lake Champlain and the Richelieu; both reached Laprairie, opposite Montreal; both were forced to retreat without doing any great damage to their enemies. There is this notable difference, however, that the French were in a much better state of preparation than they had been during the previous summer. The garrison at Laprairie now numbered above seven hundred, while a flying squadron of more than three hundred stood ready to attack the English on their retreat to the Richelieu. On the whole, Schuyler was fortunate to escape as lightly as he did. Forty of his party were killed in a hot battle, but he made his retreat in good order after inflicting some losses on the French (August 1, 1691). Although Schuyler's retreat was skilfully conducted, his original object had been far more ambitious than to save his men from extermination. The French missed a chance to injure their foe more seriously than they had done at Schenectady. At the same time, this second English invasion was so far from successful that the New France of Frontenac suffered no further attack from the side of Albany.


CHAPTER VIII. FRONTENAC'S LAST DAYS (1)

Though the English might withdraw from Quebec, New France always had the Iroquois with her.

We must now pursue the thread of Frontenac’s dealings with the savages from the moment when he replaced Denonville. It requires no flight of the imagination to appreciate the rage Frontenac must have felt when, on returning to Canada, he saw before his eyes the effects of La Barre’s rapacity and Denonville’s perfidy, of which the massacres of Lachine and La Chesnaye furnished the most ghastly proofs.

But in these two cases the element of tragedy was so strong as to efface the mood of exasperation. There remained a third incident which must have provoked pure rage. This was the destruction of Fort Frontenac, blown up, at Denonville’s order, by the French themselves (October 1689). The erection and maintenance of this post had been a cardinal point in Frontenac’s Indian policy; and, more particularly to aggravate the offence, there was the humiliating fact that Denonville had ordered it demolished to comply with a demand from the Iroquois. This shameful concession had been made shortly before Frontenac reached Canada. It was Denonville’s last important act in the colony. On the chance that something might have occurred to delay execution of the order, Frontenac at once countermanded it and sent forward an expedition of three hundred men. But they were too late. His beloved fortress was gone. The only comfort which Frontenac could derive from the incident was that the work of destruction had been carried out imperfectly. There remained a portion of the works which could still be used. Thus with regard to the Iroquois the situation was far worse in 1689 than it had been when Frontenac came to Canada in 1672.

Everything which he had done to conciliate the Five Nations had been undone; and Dongan’s intelligent activities, coinciding with this long series of French mistakes, had helped to make matters worse. Nor was it now merely a question of the Iroquois. The whole Indian world had been convulsed by the renewal of strife between Onontio and the Five Nations. Tribes long friendly to the French and in constant trade with them were being alienated. The Indian problem as Frontenac saw it in 1690 resolved itself to this: either peace with the Iroquois on terms which would prove impressive to the Hurons, the Ottawas, and even to the savages of the Mississippi; or else uncompromising war. For under no circumstances could the French afford to lose their hold upon the tribes from whom they derived their furs. Obviously an honourable peace would be preferable to the horrors of a forest war, and Frontenac did his best to secure it.

To undo, as far as possible, Denonville’s treachery at Fort Frontenac and elsewhere, he had brought back with him to Quebec the Iroquois who had been sent to France—or such of them as were still alive. First among these was a Cayuga chief of great influence named Ourehaoue, whose friendship Frontenac assiduously cultivated and completely won. Towards the close of January 1690 an embassy of three released Iroquois carried to Onondaga a message from Ourehaoue that the real Onontio had returned and peace must be made with him if the Five Nations wished to live. A great council was then held at which the English, by invitation, were represented, while the French interest found its spokesman in a Christian Iroquois named Cut Nose. Any chance of success was destroyed by the implacable enmity of the Senecas, who remembered the attempt of the French to check their raids upon the Illinois and the invasion of their own country by Denonville. Cannehoot, a Seneca chieftain, rose and stated that the tribes of Michilimackinac were ready to join the English and the Iroquois for the destruction of New France; and the assembly decided to enter this triple alliance. Frontenac’s envoys returned to Quebec alive, but with nothing to show for their pains. A later effort by Frontenac was even less successful. The Iroquois, it was clear, could not be brought back to friendship by fair words. War to the knife being inevitable, Frontenac promptly took steps to confirm his position with the hitherto friendly savages of the Ottawa and the Great Lakes.

When Cannehoot had said that the tribes of Michilimackinac were ready to turn against the French, he was not drawing wholly upon his imagination. This statement was confirmed by the report of Nicolas Perrot, who knew the Indians of the West as no one else knew them—save perhaps Du Lhut and Carheil. [Footnote: Etienne de Carheil was the most active of the Jesuit missionaries in Canada during the period of Frontenac. After fifteen years among the Iroquois at Cayuga (1668-83) he returned for three years to Quebec. He was then sent to Michilimackinac, Where he remained another fifteen years. Shortly after the founding of Detroit (1701) he gave up life in the forest. Despite the great hardships which he endured, he lived to be ninety-three. None of the missionaries was more strongly opposed to the brandy trade. The French were now playing a desperate game in the vast region beyond Lake Erie, which they had been the first of Europeans to explore.

The Ottawas and the Hurons, while alike the hereditary foes of the Iroquois, were filled with mutual jealousy which must be composed. The successes of the Iroquois in their raids on the French settlements must be explained and minimized. 'The Rat' Kondiaronk, the cleverest of the western chieftains, must be conciliated. And to compass all these ends, Perrot found his reliance in the word that Frontenac had returned and would lead his children against the common foe. Meanwhile, the Iroquois had their own advocates among the more timid and suspicious members of these western tribes. During the winter of 1689-90 the French and the Iroquois had about an even chance of winning the Indians who centred at Michilimackinac. But the odds were against the French to this extent—they were working against a time limit. Unless Frontenac could quickly show evidence of strength, the tribes of the West would range with the Iroquois. In the spring of 1690 Frontenac dispatched a force of a hundred and fifty men to reinforce the garrison at Michilimackinac.

On their way westward these troops encountered a band of Iroquois and fortunately killed a number of them. The scalps were an ocular proof of success; and Perrot, who was of the party, knew how to turn the victory to its best use by encouraging the Ottawas to torture an Iroquois prisoner. The breach thus made between the Ottawas and the Five Nations distinctly widened as soon as word came that the French had destroyed Schenectady. Thus this dreadful raid against the English did not fail of its psychological effect, as may be gathered from one of the immediate consequences. Early in August there appeared on Lake St Louis a vast flotilla of canoes, which at first caused the afflicted habitants to fear that the Iroquois were upon them again. Instead of this it was a great band of friendly savages from the West, drawn from all the trading tribes and bringing a cargo of furs of far more than the usual value. Frontenac himself chanced to be in Montreal at this fortunate moment. The market was held and concluded to mutual satisfaction, but the crowning event of the meeting was a council, at which, after an exchange of harangues, Frontenac entered into the festivities of the savages as though he were one of themselves (August 1690). The governor’s example was followed by his leading officers. Amid the chanting of the war-song and the swinging of the tomahawk the French renewed their alliance with the Indians of the West. All were to fight until the Iroquois were destroyed. Even the Ottawas, who had been coquetting with the Senecas, now came out squarely and said that they would stand by Onontio. Here, at last, was a real answer to the Lachine massacre.

The challenge had been fairly given, and now it was not a Denonville who made the reply. There followed three years of incessant warfare between the Iroquois and the French, which furnished a fair test of the strength that each side could muster when fighting at its best. The Five Nations had made up their minds. The cares of diplomacy they threw to the winds. They were on the war-path, united and determined. The French, on their side, had Frontenac for leader and many outrages to avenge. It was war of the wilderness in its most unrelenting form, with no mercy expected or asked. The general result can be quickly stated. The Iroquois got their fill of war, and Frontenac destroyed their power as a central, dominating, terrorizing confederacy. The measure of this achievement is to be sought in the difficulties which were overcome.

Despite the eighty years of its existence the colony was still so poor that regularity in the arrival of supplies from France was a matter of vital importance. From the moment war began English cruisers hovered about the mouth of the St Lawrence, ready to pounce upon the supply-ships as they came up the river. Sometimes the French boats escaped; sometimes they were captured; but from this interruption of peaceful oversea traffic Canada suffered grievously. Another source of weakness was the interruption of agriculture which followed in the train of war. As a rule the Iroquois spent the winter in hunting deer, but just as the ground was ready for its crop they began to show themselves in the parishes near Montreal, picking off the habitants in their farms on the edge of the forest, or driving them to the shelter of the stockade. These forays made it difficult and dangerous to till the soil, with a corresponding shrinkage in the volume of the crop. Almost every winter famine was imminent in some part of the colony, and though spring was welcome for its own sake, it invariably brought the Iroquois. A third calamity was the interruption of the fur trade. Ordinarily the great cargoes descended the Ottawa in fleets of from one hundred to two hundred canoes. But the savages of the West well knew that when they embarked with their precious bales upon a route which was infested by the Iroquois, they gave hostages to fortune. In case of a battle the cargo was a handicap, since they must protect it as well as themselves. In case they were forced to flee for their lives, they lost the goods which it had cost so much effort to collect. In these circumstances the tribes of Michilimackinac would not bring down their furs unless they felt certain that the whole course of the Ottawa was free from danger. In seasons when they failed to come, the colony had nothing to export and penury became extreme. At best the returns from the fur trade were precarious. In 1690 and 1693 there were good markets; in 1691 and 1692 there were none at all. From time to time Frontenac received from France both money and troops, but neither in sufficient quantity to place him where he could deal the Iroquois one final blow.

Thus one year after another saw a war of skirmishes and minor raids, sufficiently harassing and weakening to both sides, but with results which were disappointing because inconclusive. The hero of this border warfare is the Canadian habitant, whose farm becomes a fort and whose gun is never out of reach. Nor did the men of the colony display more courage than their wives and daughters. The heroine of New France is the woman who rears from twelve to twenty children, works in the fields and cooks by day, and makes garments and teaches the catechism in the evening. It was a community which approved of early marriage—a community where boys and girls assumed their responsibilities very young. Youths of sixteen shouldered the musket. Madeleine de Vercheres was only fourteen when she defended her father’s fort against the Iroquois with a garrison of five, which included two boys and a man of eighty (October 1692). A detailed chronicle of these raids and counter-raids would be both long and complicated, but in addition to the incidents which have been mentioned there remain three which deserve separate comment—Peter Schuyler’s invasion of Canada in 1691, the activities of the Abnakis against New England, and Frontenac’s invasion of the Onondaga country in 1696.

We have already seen that in 1690 an attempt was made by John Schuyler to avenge the massacre at Schenectady.

The results of this effort were insignificant, but its purpose was not forgotten; and in 1691 the Anglo-Dutch of the Hudson attempted once more to make their strength felt on the banks of the St Lawrence. This time the leader was Peter Schuyler, whose force included a hundred and twenty English and Dutch, as against the forty who had attacked Canada in the previous summer. The number of Indian allies was also larger than on the former occasion, including both Mohawks and Mohegans. Apart from its superior numbers and much harder fighting, the second expedition of the English was similar to the first. Both followed Lake Champlain and the Richelieu; both reached Laprairie, opposite Montreal; both were forced to retreat without doing any great damage to their enemies. There is this notable difference, however, that the French were in a much better state of preparation than they had been during the previous summer. The garrison at Laprairie now numbered above seven hundred, while a flying squadron of more than three hundred stood ready to attack the English on their retreat to the Richelieu. On the whole, Schuyler was fortunate to escape as lightly as he did. Forty of his party were killed in a hot battle, but he made his retreat in good order after inflicting some losses on the French (August 1, 1691). Although Schuyler’s retreat was skilfully conducted, his original object had been far more ambitious than to save his men from extermination. The French missed a chance to injure their foe more seriously than they had done at Schenectady. At the same time, this second English invasion was so far from successful that the New France of Frontenac suffered no further attack from the side of Albany.