Speech of Chaumonot

Avert this ruin; be not the authors of your own destruction; accept the truth; listen to the voice of the Omnipotent.”

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.

Meanwhile three hundred Mohawk warriors had taken the warpath, bent on killing or kidnapping the Hurons of Orleans. When they heard of the departure of the colonists for Onondaga, their rage was unbounded; for not only were they full of jealousy towards their Onondaga confederates, but they had hitherto derived great profit from the control which their local position gave them over the traffic between this tribe and the Dutch of the Hudson, upon whom the Onondagas, in common with all the upper Iroquois, had been dependent for their guns, hatchets, scalping-knives, beads, blankets, and brandy. These supplies would now be furnished by the French, and the Mohawk speculators saw their occupation gone. Nevertheless, they had just made peace with the French, and, for the moment, were not quite in the mood to break it. To wreak their spite, they took a middle course, crouched in ambush among the bushes at Point St. Croix, ten or twelve leagues above Quebec, allowed the boats bearing the French to pass unmolested, and fired a volley at the canoes in the rear, filled with Onondagas, Senecas, and Hurons. Then they fell upon them with a yell, and, after wounding a lay brother of the Jesuits who was among them, flogged and bound such of the Indians as they could seize. The astonished Onondagas protested and threatened; whereupon the Mohawks feigned great surprise, declared that they had mistaken them for Hurons, called them brothers, and suffered the whole party to escape without further injury. *

[Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettres, 1656. Le Mercier, Relation, 1657 chap. iv. Chaulmer, Nouveau Monde, II. 265, 322, 319.]

The three hundred marauders now paddled their large canoes of elm-bark stealthily down the current, passed Quebec undiscovered in the dark night of the 19th of May, landed in early morning on the island of Orleans, and ambushed themselves to surprise the Hurons as they came to labor in their cornfields. They were tolerably successful, killed six, and captured more than eighty, the rest taking refuge in their fort, where the Mohawks dared not attack them.

[Compare Marie de l’Incarnation, Lettre 14 Aout, 1656, Le Jeune. Relation, 1657, 9.]

At noon, the French on the rock of Quebec saw forty canoes approaching from the island of Orleans, and defiling, with insolent parade, in front of the town, all crowded with the Mohawks and their prisoners, among whom were a great number of Huron girls. Their captors, as they passed, forced them to sing and dance. The Hurons were the allies, or rather the wards of the French, who were in every way pledged to protect them. Yet the cannon of Fort St. Louis were silent, and the crowd stood gaping in bewilderment and fright. Had an attack been made, nothing but a complete success and the capture of many prisoners to serve as hostages could have prevented the enraged Mohawks from taking their revenge on the Onondaga colonists. The emergency demanded a prompt and clear-sighted soldier. The governor, Lauson, was a gray-haired civilian, who, however enterprising as a speculator in wild lands, was in no way matched to the desperate crisis of the hour. Some of the Mohawks landed above and below the town, and plundered the houses from which the scared inhabitants had fled. Not a soldier stirred and not a gun was fired. The French, bullied by a horde of naked savages, became an object of contempt to their own allies.

The Mohawks carried their prisoners home, burned six of them, and adopted or rather enslaved the rest.

Meanwhile the Onondaga colonists pursued their perilous way. At Montreal they exchanged their heavy boats for canoes, and resumed their journey with a flotilla of twenty of these sylvan vessels. A few days after, the Indians of the party had the satisfaction of pillaging a small band of Mohawk hunters, in vicarious reprisal for their own wrongs. On the 26th of June, as they neared Lake Ontario, they heard a loud and lamentable voice from the edge of the forest; whereupon, having beaten their drum to show that they were Frenchmen, they beheld a spectral figure, lean and covered with scars, which proved to be a pious Huron, one Joachim Ondakout, captured by the Mohawks in their descent on the island of Orleans, five or six weeks before. They had carried him to their village and begun to torture him; after which they tied him fast and lay down to sleep, thinking to resume their pleasure on the morrow. His cuts and burns being only on the surface, he had the good fortune to free himself from his bonds, and, naked as he was, to escape to the woods. He held his course northwestward, through regions even now a wilderness, gathered wild strawberries to sustain life, and, in fifteen days, reached the St. Lawrence, nearly dead with exhaustion. The Frenchmen gave him food and a canoe, and the living skeleton paddled with a light heart for Quebec.

The colonists themselves soon began to suffer from hunger. Their fishing failed on Lake Ontario and they were forced to content themselves with cranberries of the last year, gathered in the meadows. Of their Indians, all but five deserted them. The Father Superior fell ill, and when they reached the mouth of the Oswego many of the starving Frenchmen had completely lost heart. Weary and faint, they dragged their canoes up the rapids, when suddenly they were cheered by the sight of a stranger canoe swiftly descending the current. The Onondagas, aware of their approach, had sent it to meet them, laden with Indian corn and fresh salmon. Two more canoes followed, freighted like the first; and now all was abundance till they reached their journey’s end, the Lake of Onondaga. It lay before them in the July sun, a glittering mirror, framed in forest verdure.

[See Perrot Mœurs des Sauvages, 106.]

They knew that Çhaumonot with a crowd of Indians was awaiting them at a spot on the margin of the water, which he and Dablon had chosen as the site of their settlement. Landing on the strand, they fired, to give notice of their approach, five small cannon which they had brought in their canoes. Waves, woods, and hills resounded with the thunder of their miniature artillery. Then reembarking, they advanced in order, four canoes abreast, towards the destined spot. In front floated their banner of white silk, embroidered in large letters with the name of Jesus. Here were Du Puys and his soldiers, with the picturesque uniforms and quaint weapons of their time; Le Mercier and his Jesuits in robes of black; hunters and bush-rangers; Indians painted and feathered for a festal day. As they neared the place where a spring bubbling from the hillside is still known as the “Jesuits’ Well,” they saw the edge of the forest dark with the muster of savages whose yells of welcome answered the salvo of their guns. Happily for them, a flood of summer rain saved them from the harangues of the Onondaga orators, and forced white men and red alike to seek such shelter as they could find. Their hosts, with hospitable intent, would fain have sung and danced all night; but the Frenchmen pleaded fatigue, and the courteous savages, squatting around their tents, chanted in monotonous tones to lull them to sleep. In the morning they woke refreshed, sang Te Deum, reared an altar, and, with a solemn mass, took possession of the country in the name of Jesus.

Three things, which they saw or heard of in their new home, excited their astonishment. The first was the vast flight of wild pigeons which in spring darkened the air around the Lake of Onondaga; the second was the salt springs of Salina; the third was the rattlesnakes, which Le Mercier describes with excellent precision, adding that, as he learns from the Indians, their tails are good for toothache and their flesh for fever. These reptiles, for reasons best known to themselves, haunted the neighborhood of the salt-springs, but did not intrude their presence into the abode of the French [1] escorted by a file of soldiers, set out for Onondaga, scarcely five leagues distant. They followed the Indian trail, under the leafy arches of the woods, by hill and hollow, still swamp and gurgling brook, till through the opening foliage they saw the Iroquois capital, compassed with cornfields and girt with its rugged palisade. As the Jesuits, like black specters, issued from the shadows of the forest, followed by the plumed soldiers with shouldered arquebuses, the red-skinned population swarmed out like bees, and they defiled to the town through gazing and admiring throngs. All conspired to welcome them. Feast followed feast throughout the afternoon, till, what with harangues and songs, bear’s meat, beaver-tails, and venison, beans, corn, and grease, they were well nigh killed with kindness. “If, after this, they murder us,” writes Le Mercier, “it will be from fickleness, not premeditated treachery.” But the Jesuits, it seems, had not sounded the depths of Iroquois dissimulation. [2]

[1: On the 17th of July, Le Mercier and Chamnonot]

[2: Le Mercier, Relation, 1657, 14.]

There was one exception to the real or pretended joy. Some Mohawks were in the town, and their orator was insolent and sarcastic; but the ready tongue of Chaumonot turned the laugh against him and put him to shame.

Here burned the council fire of the Iroquois, and at this very time the deputies of the five tribes were assembling. The session opened on the 24th.

[The Jesuits were afterwards told by Hurons, captive among the Mohawks and the Onondagas, that, from the first, it was intended to massacre the French as soon as their presence had attracted the remnant of the Hurons of Orleans into the power of the Onondagas. Lettre du P Ragueneau au R. P. Provincial, 31 Août, 1658.]

In the great council house, on the earthen floor and the broad platforms beneath the smoke-begrimed concave of the bark roof, stood, sat, or squatted, the wisdom and valor of the confederacy; Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas; sachems, counsellors, orators, warriors fresh from Erie victories; tall, stalwart figures, limbed like Grecian statues.

The pressing business of the council over, it was Chaumonot’s turn to speak. But, first, all the Frenchmen, kneeling in a row, with clasped hands sang the Veni Creator, amid the silent admiration of the auditors. Then Chaumonot rose, with an immense wampum-belt in his hand.

“It is not trade that brings us here. Do you think that your beaver skins can pay us for all our toils and dangers? Keep them, if you like; or, if any fall into our hands, we shall use them only for your service. We seek not the things that perish. It is for the Faith that we have left our homes to live in your hovels of bark, and eat food which the beasts of our country would scarcely touch. We are the messengers whom God has sent to tell you that his Son became a man for the love of you; that this man, the Son of God, is the prince and master of men; that he has prepared in heaven eternal joys for those who obey him, and kindled the fires of hell for those who will not receive his word. If you reject it, whoever you are, — Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Cayuga, or Oneida, — know that Jesus Christ, who inspires my heart and my voice, will plunge you one day into hell. Avert this ruin; be not the authors of your own destruction; accept the truth; listen to the voice of the Omnipotent.”

– 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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