Critical Position at Onondaga

The French must make a settlement at Onondaga, and that speedily, or, despite their professions of brotherhood, the Onondagas would make war.

Continuing chapter 1. Previously in The Old Regime In Canada

Our special project presenting the definitive account of France in Canada by Francis Parkman, one of America’s greatest historians.

The reply of the Indian orator was friendly to overflowing. He prayed his French brethren to choose a spot on the lake of Onondaga, where they might dwell in the country of the Iroquois, as they dwelt already in their hearts. Le Moyne promised, and made two presents to confirm the pledge. Then, his mission fulfilled, he set out on his return, attended by a troop of Indians. As he approached the lake, his escort showed him a large spring of water, possessed, as they told him, by a bad spirit. Le Moyne tasted it, then boiled a little of it, and produced a quantity of excellent salt. He had discovered the famous salt-springs of Onondaga. Fishing and hunting, the party pursued their way till, at noon of the 7th of September, Le Moyne reached Montreal.

When he reached Quebec, his tidings cheered for a while the anxious hearts of its tenants; but an unwonted incident soon told them how hollow was the ground beneath their feet. Le Moyne, accompanied by two Onondagas and several Hurons and Algonquins, was returning to Montreal, when he and his companions were set upon by a war-party of Mohawks. The Hurons and Algonquins were killed. One of the Onondagas shared their fate, and the other, with Le Moyne himself, was seized and bound fast. The captive Onondaga, however, was so loud in his threats and denunciations, that the Mohawks released both him and the Jesuit. [1] Here was a foreshadowing of civil war, Mohawk against Onondaga, Iroquois against Iroquois. The quarrel was patched up, but fresh provocations were imminent.

[1: Journal du Père Le Moine, Relation, 1654, chaps, vi. vii.]

The Mohawks took no part in the Erie war, and hence their hands were free to fight the French and the tribes allied with them. Reckless of their promises, they began a series of butcheries, fell upon the French at Isle aux Oies, killed a lay brother of the Jesuits at Sillery, and attacked Montreal. Here, being roughly handled, they came for a time to their senses, and offered terms, promising to spare the French, but declaring that they would still wage war against the Hurons and Algonquins. These were allies whom the French were pledged to protect; but so helpless was the colony, that the insolent and humiliating proffer was accepted, and another peace ensued, as hollow as the last. The indefatigable Le Moyne was sent to the Mohawk towns to confirm it, “so far,” says the chronicle, “as it is possible to confirm a peace made by infidels backed by heretics.” [2] The Mohawks received him with great rejoicing; yet his life was not safe for a moment. A warrior, feigning madness, raved through the town with uplifted hatchet, howling for his blood; but the saints watched over him and balked the machinations of hell. He came off alive and returned to Montreal, spent with famine and fatigue. [3]

[2: Compare Relation, 1654, 33, and Lettre de Marie de l’Incarnation, 18 Octobre, 1654.]

[3: Copie de Deux Lettres envoyées de la Nouvelle France au Père Procureur des Missions de la Compagnie de Jésus.]

Meanwhile a deputation of eighteen Onondaga chiefs arrived at Quebec. There was a grand council. The Onondagas demanded a colony of Frenchmen to dwell among them. Lauson, the governor, dared neither to consent nor to refuse. A middle course was chosen, and two Jesuits, Chaumonot and Dablon, were sent, like Le Moyne, partly to gain time, partly to reconnoitre, and partly to confirm the Onondagas in such good intentions as they might entertain. Chaumonot was a veteran of the Huron mission, who, miraculously as he himself supposed, had acquired a great fluency in the Huron tongue, which is closely allied to that of the Iroquois. Dablon, a newcomer, spoke, as yet, no Indian.

Their voyage up the St. Lawrence was enlivened by an extraordinary bear-hunt, and by the antics of one of their Indian attendants, who, having dreamed that he had swallowed a frog, roused the whole camp by the gymnastics with which he tried to rid himself of the intruder. On approaching Onondaga, they were met by a chief who sang a song of welcome, a part of which he seasoned with touches of humor, apostrophizing the fish in the river Onondaga, naming each sort, great or small, and calling on them in turn to come into the nets of the Frenchmen and sacrifice life cheerfully for their behoof. Hereupon there was much laughter among the Indian auditors. An unwonted cleanliness reigned in the town; the streets had been cleared of refuse, and the arched roofs of the long houses of bark were covered with red-skinned children staring at the entry of the “black robes.” Crowds followed behind, and all was jubilation. The dignitaries of the tribe met them on the way, and greeted them with a speech of welcome. A feast of bear’s meat awaited them; but, unhappily, it was Friday, and the fathers were forced to abstain.

On Monday, the 15th of November, at nine in the morning, after having secretly sent to Paradise a dying infant by the waters of baptism, all the elders and the people having assembled, we opened the council by public prayer.” Thus writes Father Dablon. His colleague, Chaumonot, a Frenchman bred in Italy, now rose, with a long belt of wampum in his hand, and proceeded to make so effective a display of his rhetorical gifts that the Indians were lost in admiration, and their orators put to the blush by his improvements on their own metaphors. “If he had spoken all day,” said the de lighted auditors, “we should not have had enough of it.” “The Dutch,” added others, “have neither brains nor tongues; they never tell us about Paradise and Hell; on the contrary, they lead us into bad ways.”

On the next day the chiefs returned their answer. The council opened with a song or chant, which was divided into six parts, and which, according to Dablon, was exceedingly well sung. The burden of the fifth part was as follows: —

Farewell war; farewell tomahawk; we have been fools till now; henceforth we will be brothers; yes, we will be brothers.”

Then came four presents, the third of which enraptured the fathers. It was a belt of seven thousand beads of wampum. “But this,” says Dablon, “was as nothing to the words that accompanied it.” “It is the gift of the faith,” said the orator; “it is to tell you that we are believers; it is to beg you not to tire of instructing us; have patience, seeing that we are so dull in learning prayer; push it into our heads and our hearts.” Then he led Chaumonot into the midst of the assembly, clasped him in his arms, tied the belt about his waist, and protested, with a suspicious redundancy of words, that as he clasped the father, so would he clasp the faith.

What had wrought this sudden change of heart? The eagerness of the Onondagas that the French should settle among them, had, no doubt, a large share in it. For the rest, the two Jesuits saw abundant signs of the fierce, uncertain nature of those with whom they were dealing. Erie prisoners were brought in and tortured before their eyes, one of them being a young stoic of about ten years, who endured his fate without a single outcry. Huron women and children, taken in war and adopted by their captors, were killed on the slightest provocation, and sometimes from mere caprice.

For several days the whole town was in an uproar with the crazy follies of the “dream feast,” * and one of the Fathers nearly lost his life in this Indian Bedlam.

One point was clear; the French must make a settlement at Onondaga, and that speedily, or, despite their professions of brotherhood, the Onondagas would make war. Their attitude became menacing; from urgency they passed to threats; and the two priests felt that the critical posture of affairs must at once be reported at Quebec. But here a difficulty arose. It was the beaver-hunting season; and, eager as were the Indians for a French colony, not one of them would offer to conduct the Jesuits to Quebec in order to fetch one. It was not until nine masses had been said to Saint John the Baptist, that a number of Indians consented to forego their hunting, and escort Father Dablon home. [4] Chaumonot remained at Onondaga, to watch his dangerous hosts and soothe their rising jealousies.

[4: De Quen, Relation, 1656, 35. Chaumonot, in his Autobiography, ascribes the miracle to the intercession of the deceased Brébeuf.]

It was the 2nd of March when Dablon began his journey. His constitution must have been of iron, or he would have succumbed to the appalling hardships of the way. It was neither winter nor spring. The lakes and streams were not yet open, but the half-thawed ice gave way beneath the foot. One of the Indians fell through and was drowned. Swamp and forest were clogged with sodden snow, and ceaseless rains drenched them as they toiled on, knee-deep in slush. Happily, the St. Lawrence was open. They found an old wooden canoe by the shore, embarked, and reached Montreal after a journey of four weeks.

[See Jesuits in North America, 67.]

Dablon descended to Quebec. There was long and anxious counsel in the chambers of Fort St. Louis. The Jesuits had information that, if the demands of the Onondagas were rejected, they would join the Mohawks to destroy Canada. But why were they so eager for a colony of Frenchmen? Did they want them as hostages, that they might attack the Hurons and Algonquins without risk of French interference; or would they massacre them, and then, like tigers mad with the taste of blood, turn upon the helpless settlements of the St. Lawrence? An abyss yawned on either hand. Lauson, the governor, was in an agony of indecision, but at length declared for the lesser and remoter peril, and gave his voice for the colony. The Jesuits were of the same mind, though it was they, and not he, who must bear the brunt of danger. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” said one of them, “and, if we die by the fires of the Iroquois, we shall have won eternal life by snatching souls from the fires of Hell.”

Preparation was begun at once. The expense fell on the Jesuits, and the outfit is said to have cost them seven thousand livres, — a heavy sum for Canada at that day. A pious gentleman, Zachary Du Puys, major of the fort of Quebec, joined the expedition with ten soldiers; and between thirty and forty other Frenchmen also enrolled themselves, impelled by devotion or destitution. Four Jesuits, Le Mercier, the superior, with Dablon, Menard, and Frémin, besides two lay brothers of the order, formed, as it were, the pivot of the enterprise. The governor made them the grant of a hundred square leagues of land in the heart of the Iroquois country, — a preposterous act, which, had the Iroquois known it, would have rekindled the war; but Lauson had a mania for landgrants, and was himself the proprietor of vast domains which he could have occupied only at the cost of his scalp.

Embarked in two large boats and followed by twelve canoes filled with Hurons, Onondagas, and a few Senecas lately arrived, they set out on the 17th of May “to attack the demons,” as Le Mercier writes, “in their very stronghold.” With shouts, tears, and benedictions, priests, soldiers, and inhabitants waved farewell from the strand. They passed the bare steeps of Cape Diamond and the mission-house nestled beneath the heights of Sillery, and vanished from the anxious eyes that watched the last gleam of their receding oars.

– The Old Regime In Canada, Chapter 1 by Francis Parkman

The below is from Francis Parkman’s Introduction.

If, at times, it may seem that range has been allowed to fancy, it is so in appearance only; since the minutest details of narrative or description rest on authentic documents or on personal observation.

Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far more than a research, however patient and scrupulous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed with the most minute exactness, and yet the narrative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself with the life and spirit of the time. He must study events in their bearings near and remote; in the character, habits, and manners of those who took part in them, he must himself be, as it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he describes.

With respect to that special research which, if inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense indispensable, it has been the writer’s aim to exhaust the existing material of every subject treated. While it would be folly to claim success in such an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at least as relates to the present volume, nothing of much importance has escaped him. With respect to the general preparation just alluded to, he has long been too fond of his theme to neglect any means within his reach of making his conception of it distinct and true.

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