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The peace was broken, and the hounds of war turned loose. The
contagion spread through all the Mohawk nation, the war-songs were
sung, and the warriors took the path for Canada. The miserable
colonists and their more miserable allies woke from their dream of
peace to a reality of fear and horror. Again Montreal and Three
Rivers were beset with murdering savages, skulking in thickets and
prowling under cover of night, yet, when it came to blows,
displaying a courage almost equal to the ferocity that inspired it.
They plundered and burned Fort Richelieu, which its small garrison
had abandoned, thus leaving the colony without even the semblance of
protection. Before the spring opened, all the fighting men of the
Mohawks took the war-path; but it is clear that many of them still
had little heart for their bloody and perfidious work; for, of these
hardy and all-enduring warriors, two-thirds gave out on the way, and
returned, complaining that the season was too severe. [Lettre du P.
Buteux au R. P. Lalemant. MS.] Two hundred or more kept on, divided
into several bands.
On Ash-Wednesday, the French at Three Rivers were at mass in the
chapel, when the Iroquois, quietly approaching, plundered two houses
close to the fort, containing all the property of the neighboring
inhabitants, which had been brought hither as to a place of
security. They hid their booty, and then went in quest of two large
parties of Christian Algonquins engaged in their winter hunt. Two
Indians of the same nation, whom they captured, basely set them on
the trail; and they took up the chase like hounds on the scent of
game. Wrapped in furs or blanket-coats, some with gun in hand, some
with bows and quivers, and all with hatchets, war-clubs, knives, or
swords,--striding on snow-shoes, with bodies half bent, through the
gray forests and the frozen pine-swamps, among wet, black trunks,
along dark ravines and under savage hill-sides, their small, fierce
eyes darting quick glances that pierced the farthest recesses of the
naked woods,--the hunters of men followed the track of their human
prey. At length they descried the bark wigwams of the Algonquin
camp. The warriors were absent; none were here but women and
children. The Iroquois surrounded the huts, and captured all the
shrieking inmates. Then ten of them set out to find the traces of
the absent hunters. They soon met the renowned Piskaret returning
alone. As they recognized him and knew his mettle, they thought
treachery better than an open attack. They therefore approached him
in the attitude of friends; while he, ignorant of the rupture of the
treaty, began to sing his peace-song. Scarcely had they joined him,
when one of them ran a sword through his body; and, having scalped
him, they returned in triumph to their companions.1
All the hunters were soon after waylaid, overpowered by numbers, and
killed or taken prisoners.
Another band of the Mohawks had meanwhile pursued the other party of
Algonquins, and overtaken them on the march, as, encumbered with
their sledges and baggage, they were moving from one hunting-camp to
another. Though taken by surprise, they made fight, and killed
several of their assailants; but in a few moments their resistance
was overcome, and those who survived the fray were helpless in the
clutches of the enraged victors. Then began a massacre of the old,
the disabled, and the infants, with the usual beating, gashing, and
severing of fingers to the rest. The next day, the two bands of
Mohawks, each with its troop of captives fast bound, met at an
appointed spot on the Lake of St. Peter, and greeted each other with
yells of exultation, with which mingled a wail of anguish, as the
prisoners of either party recognized their companions in misery.
They all kneeled in the midst of their savage conquerors, and one of
the men, a noted convert, after a few words of exhortation, repeated
in a loud voice a prayer, to which the rest responded. Then they
sang an Algonquin hymn, while the Iroquois, who at first had stared
in wonder, broke into laughter and derision, and at length fell upon
them with renewed fury. One was burned alive on the spot. Another
tried to escape, and they burned the soles of his feet that he might
not repeat the attempt. Many others were maimed and mangled; and
some of the women who afterwards escaped affirmed, that, in ridicule
of the converts, they crucified a small child by nailing it with
wooden spikes against a thick sheet of bark.
The prisoners were led to the Mohawk towns; and it is needless to
repeat the monotonous and revolting tale of torture and death. The
men, as usual, were burned; but the lives of the women and children
were spared, in order to strengthen the conquerors by their
adoption,--not, however, until both, but especially the women, had
been made to endure the extremes of suffering and indignity. Several
of them from time to time escaped, and reached Canada with the story
of their woes. Among these was Marie, the wife of Jean Baptiste, one
of the principal Algonquin converts, captured and burned with the
rest. Early in June, she appeared in a canoe at Montreal, where
Madame d'Ailleboust, to whom she was well known, received her with
great kindness, and led her to her room in the fort. Here Marie was
overcome with emotion. Madame d'Ailleboust spoke Algonquin with
ease; and her words of sympathy, joined to the associations of a
place where the unhappy fugitive, with her murdered husband and
child, had often found a friendly welcome, so wrought upon her, that
her voice was smothered with sobs.
She had once before been a prisoner of the Iroquois, at the town of
Onondaga. When she and her companions in misfortune had reached the
Mohawk towns, she was recognized by several Onondagas who chanced to
be there, and who, partly by threats and partly by promises, induced
her to return with them to the scene of her former captivity, where
they assured her of good treatment. With their aid, she escaped from
the Mohawks, and set out with them for Onondaga. On their way, they
passed the great town of the Oneidas; and her conductors, fearing
that certain Mohawks who were there would lay claim to her, found a
hiding-place for her in the forest, where they gave her food, and
told her to wait their return. She lay concealed all day, and at
night approached the town, under cover of darkness. A dull red glare
of flames rose above the jagged tops of the palisade that
encompassed it; and, from the pandemonium within, an uproar of
screams, yells, and bursts of laughter told her that they were
burning one of her captive countrymen. She gazed and listened,
shivering with cold and aghast with horror. The thought possessed
her that she would soon share his fate, and she resolved to fly. The
ground was still covered with snow, and her footprints would
infallibly have betrayed her, if she had not, instead of turning
towards home, followed the beaten Indian path westward. She
journeyed on, confused and irresolute, and tortured between terror
and hunger. At length she approached Onondaga, a few miles from the
present city of Syracuse, and hid herself in a dense thicket of
spruce or cedar, whence she crept forth at night, to grope in the
half-melted snow for a few ears of corn, left from the last year's
harvest. She saw many Indians from her lurking-place, and once a
tall savage, with an axe on his shoulder, advanced directly towards
the spot where she lay: but, in the extremity of her fright, she
murmured a prayer, on which he turned and changed his course. The
fate that awaited her, if she remained,--for a fugitive could not
hope for mercy,--and the scarcely less terrible dangers of the
pitiless wilderness between her and Canada, filled her with despair,
for she was half dead already with hunger and cold. She tied her
girdle to the bough of a tree, and hung herself from it by the neck.
The cord broke. She repeated the attempt with the same result, and
then the thought came to her that God meant to save her life. The
snow by this time had melted in the forests, and she began her
journey for home, with a few handfuls of corn as her only provision.
She directed her course by the sun, and for food dug roots, peeled
the soft inner bark of trees, and sometimes caught tortoises in the
muddy brooks. She had the good fortune to find a hatchet in a
deserted camp, and with it made one of those wooden implements which
the Indians used for kindling fire by friction. This saved her from
her worst suffering; for she had no covering but a thin tunic, which
left her legs and arms bare, and exposed her at night to tortures of
cold. She built her fire in some deep nook of the forest, warmed
herself, cooked what food she had found, told her rosary on her
fingers, and slept till daylight, when she always threw water on the
embers, lest the rising smoke should attract attention. Once she
discovered a party of Iroquois hunters; but she lay concealed, and
they passed without seeing her. She followed their trail back, and
found their bark canoe, which they had hidden near the bank of a
river. It was too large for her use; but, as she was a practiced
canoe-maker, she reduced it to a convenient size, embarked in it,
and descended the stream. At length she reached the St. Lawrence,
and paddled with the current towards Montreal. On islands and rocky
shores she found eggs of water-fowl in abundance; and she speared
fish with a sharpened pole, hardened at the point with fire. She
even killed deer, by driving them into the water, chasing them in
her canoe, and striking them on the head with her hatchet. When she
landed at Montreal, her canoe had still a good store of eggs and
dried venison.
| [This story is taken from the Relation of 1647, and
the letter of Marie de l'Incarnation to her son, before
cited. The woman must have descended the great rapids of
Lachine in her canoe: a feat demanding no ordinary nerve
and skill.] |
Her journey from Onondaga had occupied about two months, under
hardships which no woman but a squaw could have survived. Escapes
not less remarkable of several other women are chronicled in the
records of this year; and one of them, with a notable feat of arms
which attended it, calls for a brief notice.
Eight Algonquins, in one of those fits of desperate valor which
sometimes occur in Indians, entered at midnight a camp where thirty
or forty Iroquois warriors were buried in sleep, and with quick,
sharp blows of their tomahawks began to brain them as they lay. They
killed ten of them on the spot, and wounded many more. The rest,
panic-stricken and bewildered by the surprise and the thick
darkness, fled into the forest, leaving all they had in the hands of
the victors, including a number of Algonquin captives, of whom one
had been unwittingly killed by his countrymen in the confusion.
Another captive, a woman, had escaped on a previous night. They had
stretched her on her back, with limbs extended, and bound her wrists
and ankles to four stakes firmly driven into the earth,--their
ordinary mode of securing prisoners. Then, as usual, they all fell
asleep. She presently became aware that the cord that bound one of
her wrists was somewhat loose, and, by long and painful efforts, she
freed her hand. To release the other hand and her feet was then
comparatively easy. She cautiously rose. Around her, breathing in
deep sleep, lay stretched the dark forms of the unconscious
warriors, scarcely visible in the gloom. She stepped over them to
the entrance of the hut; and here, as she was passing out, she
descried a hatchet on the ground. The temptation was too strong for
her Indian nature. She seized it, and struck again and again, with
all her force, on the skull of the Iroquois who lay at the entrance.
The sound of the blows, and the convulsive struggles of the victim,
roused the sleepers. They sprang up, groping in the dark, and
demanding of each other what was the matter. At length they lighted
a roll of birch-bark, found their prisoner gone and their comrade
dead, and rushed out in a rage in search of the fugitive. She,
meanwhile, instead of running away, had hid herself in the hollow of
a tree, which she had observed the evening before. Her pursuers ran
through the dark woods, shouting and whooping to each other; and
when all had passed, she crept from her hiding-place, and fled in an
opposite direction. In the morning they found her tracks and
followed them. On the second day they had overtaken and surrounded
her, when, hearing their cries on all sides, she gave up all hope.
But near at hand, in the thickest depths of the forest, the beavers
had dammed a brook and formed a pond, full of gnawed stumps, dead
fallen trees, rank weeds, and tangled bushes. She plunged in, and,
swimming and wading, found a hiding-place, where her body was
concealed by the water, and her head by the masses of dead and
living vegetation. Her pursuers were at fault, and, after a long
search, gave up the chase in despair. Shivering, naked, and
half-starved, she crawled out from her wild asylum, and resumed her
flight. By day, the briers and bushes tore her unprotected limbs; by
night, she shivered with cold, and the mosquitoes and small black
gnats of the forest persecuted her with torments which the modern
sportsman will appreciate. She subsisted on such roots, bark,
reptiles, or other small animals, as her Indian habits enabled her
to gather on her way. She crossed streams by swimming, or on rafts
of driftwood, lashed together with strips of linden-bark; and at
length reached the St. Lawrence, where, with the aid of her hatchet,
she made a canoe. Her home was on the Ottawa, and she was ignorant
of the great river, or, at least, of this part of it. She had
scarcely even seen a Frenchman, but had heard of the French as
friends, and knew that their dwellings were on the banks of the St.
Lawrence. This was her only guide; and she drifted on her way,
doubtful whether the vast current would bear her to the abodes of
the living or to the land of souls. She passed the watery wilderness
of the Lake of St. Peter, and presently descried a Huron canoe.
Fearing that it was an enemy, she hid herself, and resumed her
voyage in the evening, when she soon came in sight of the wooden
buildings and palisades of Three Rivers. Several Huron saw her at
the same moment, and made towards her; on which she leaped ashore
and hid in the bushes, whence, being entirely without clothing, she
would not come out till one of them threw her his coat. Having
wrapped herself in it, she went with them to the fort and the house
of the Jesuits, in a wretched state of emaciation, but in high
spirits at the happy issue of her voyage. [Lalemant, Relation, 1647,
15, 16.]
Such stories might be multiplied; but these will suffice. Nor is it
necessary to dwell further on the bloody record of inroads,
butcheries, and tortures. We have seen enough to show the nature of
the scourge that now fell without mercy on the Indians and the
French of Canada. There was no safety but in the imprisonment of
palisades and ramparts. A deep dejection sank on the white and red
men alike; but the Jesuits would not despair.
"Do not imagine," writes the Father Superior, "that the rage of the
Iroquois, and the loss of many Christians and many catechumens, can
bring to nought the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ, and the
efficacy of his blood. We shall die; we shall be captured, burned,
butchered: be it so. Those who die in their beds do not always die
the best death. I see none of our company cast down. On the
contrary, they ask leave to go up to the Huron, and some of them
protest that the fires of the Iroquois are one of their motives for
the journey." [Lalemant, Relation, 1647, 8.]
1 Lalemant, Relation, 1647, 4. Marie de
l'Incarnation, Lettre à son Fils. Québec, . . . 1647. Perrot's
account, drawn from tradition, is different, though not essentially
so.]
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The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
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