Frontenac Attacks the Onondagas

Onondaga, formerly an open town, had been fortified by the English, who had enclosed it with a double range of strong palisades.

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Previously in Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. Continuing Chapter 19.

When the falls were passed, the troops pushed on as before along the narrow stream, and through the tangled labyrinths on either side; till, on the first of August, they reached Lake Onondaga, and, with sails set, the whole flotilla glided before the wind, and landed the motley army on a rising ground half a league from the salt springs of Salina. The next day was spent in building a fort to protect the canoes, bateaux, and stores; and, as evening closed, a ruddy glow above the southern forest told them that the town of Onondaga was on fire.

The Marquis de Crisasy was left, with a detachment, to hold the fort; and, at sunrise on the fourth, the army moved forward in order of battle. It was formed in two lines, regulars on the right and left, and Canadians in the center. Callières commanded the first line, and Vaudreuil the second. Frontenac was between them, surrounded by his staff officers and his guard, and followed by the artillery, which relays of Canadians dragged and lifted forward with inconceivable labor. The governor, enfeebled by age, was carried in an arm-chair; while Callières, disabled by gout, was mounted on a horse, brought for the purpose in one of the bateaux. To Subercase fell the hard task of directing the march among the dense columns of the primeval forest, by hill and hollow, over rocks and fallen trees, through swamps, brooks, and gullies, among thickets, brambles, and vines. It was but eight or nine miles to Onondaga; but they were all day in reaching it, and evening was near when they emerged from the shadows of the forest into the broad light of the Indian clearing. The maize-fields stretched before them for miles, and in the midst lay the charred and smoking ruins of the Iroquois capital. Not an enemy was to be seen, but they found the dead bodies of two murdered French prisoners. Scouts were sent out, guards were set, and the disappointed troops encamped on the maize-fields.

Onondaga, formerly an open town, had been fortified by the English, who had enclosed it with a double range of strong palisades, forming a rectangle, flanked by bastions at the four corners, and surrounded by an outer fence of tall poles. The place was not defensible against cannon and mortars; and the four hundred warriors belonging to it had been but slightly reinforced from the other tribes of the confederacy, each of which feared that the French attack might be directed against itself. On the approach of an enemy of five times their number, they had burned their town, and retreated southward into distant forests.

The troops were busied for two days in hacking down the maize, digging up the caches, or hidden stores of food, and destroying their contents. The neighboring tribe of the Oneidas sent a messenger to beg peace. Frontenac replied that he would grant it, on condition that they all should migrate to Canada, and settle there; and Vaudreuil, with seven hundred men, was sent to enforce the demand. Meanwhile, a few Onondaga stragglers had been found; and among them, hidden in a hollow tree, a withered warrior, eighty years old, and nearly blind. Frontenac would have spared him; but the Indian allies, Christians from the mission villages, were so eager to burn him that it was thought inexpedient to refuse them. They tied him to the stake, and tried to shake his constancy by every torture that fire could inflict; but not a cry nor a murmur escaped him. He defied them to do their worst, till, enraged at his taunts, one of them gave him a mortal stab. “I thank you,” said the old Stoic, with his last breath; “but you ought to have finished as you began, and killed me by fire. Learn from me, you dogs of Frenchmen, how to endure pain; and you, dogs of dogs, their Indian allies, think what you will do when you are burned like me.”

[Relation de ce qui s’est passé, etc., 1695, 1696; La Potherie, III. 279. Callières and the author of the Relation of 1682-1712 also speak of the extraordinary fortitude of the victim. The Jesuits say that it was not the Christian Indians who insisted on burning him, but the French themselves, “qui voulurent absolument qu’il fût brulé à petit feu, ce qu’ils executèrent eux-mêmes. Un Jesuite le confessa et l’assista à la mort, l’encourageant à souffrir courageusement et chrétiennement les tourmens.” Relation de 1696 (Shea), 10. This writer adds that, when Frontenac heard of it, he ordered him to be spared; but it was too late. Charlevoix misquotes the old Stoic’s last words, which were, according to the official Relation of 1695-6: “Je te remercie mais tu aurais bien dû achever de me faire mourir par le feu. Apprenez, chiens de François, à souffrir, et vous sauvages leurs allies, qui êtes les chiens des chiens, souvenez vous de ce que vous devez faire quand vous serez en pareil état que moi.”]

Vaudreuil and his detachment returned within three days, after destroying Oneida, with all the growing corn, and seizing a number of chiefs as hostages for the fulfilment of the demands of Frontenac. There was some thought of marching on Cayuga, but the governor judged it to be inexpedient; and, as it would be useless to chase the fugitive Onondagas, nothing remained but to return home.

[On the expedition against the Onondagas, Callières au Ministre, 20 Oct., 1696; Frontenac au Ministre, 25 Oct., 1696; Frontenac et Champigny au Ministre (lettre commune) 26 Oct., 1696; Relation de ce qui s’est passé, etc., 1695, 1696; Relation, 1682-1712; Relation des Jesuites, 1696 (Shea); Doc. Hist. N. Y., I. 323-355; La Potherie, III. 270-282; N. Y. Col. Docs., IV. 242.]

Charlevoix charges Frontenac on this occasion with failing to pursue his advantage, lest others, and especially Callières, should get more honor than he. The accusation seems absolutely groundless. His many enemies were silent about it at the time; for the king warmly commends his conduct on the expedition, and Callières himself, writing immediately after, gives him nothing but praise.

While Frontenac was on his march, Governor Fletcher had heard of his approach, and called the council at New York to consider what should be done. They resolved that “it will be very grievous to take the people from their labour; and there is likewise no money to answer the charge thereof.” Money was, however, advanced by Colonel Cortlandt and others; and the governor wrote to Connecticut and New Jersey for their contingents of men; but they thought the matter no concern of theirs and did not respond. Fletcher went to Albany with the few men he could gather at the moment and heard on his arrival that the French were gone. Then he convoked the chiefs, condoled with them, and made them presents. Corn was sent to the Onondagas and Oneidas to support them through the winter and prevent the famine which the French hoped would prove their destruction.

What Frontenac feared had come to pass. The enemy had saved themselves by flight; and his expedition, like that of Denonville, was but half successful. He took care, however, to announce it to the king as a triumph.

QUOTE
“Sire, the benedictions which Heaven has ever showered upon your Majesty’s arms have extended even to this New World; whereof we have had visible proof in the expedition I have just made against the Onondagas, the principal nation of the Iroquois. I had long projected this enterprise, but the difficulties and risks which attended it made me regard it as imprudent; and I should never have resolved to undertake it, if I had not last year established an entrepôt (Fort Frontenac), which made my communications more easy, and if I had not known, beyond all doubt, that this was absolutely the only means to prevent our allies from making peace with the Iroquois, and introducing the English into their country, by which the colony would infallibly be ruined. Nevertheless, by unexpected good fortune, the Onondagas, who pass for masters of the other Iroquois, and the terror of all the Indians of this country, fell into a sort of bewilderment, which could only have come from on High; and were so terrified to see me march against them in person, and cover their lakes and rivers with nearly four hundred sail, that, without availing themselves of passes where a hundred men might easily hold four thousand in check, they did not dare to lay a single ambuscade, but, after waiting till I was five leagues from their fort, they set it on fire with all their dwellings, and fled, with their families, twenty leagues into the depths of the forest. It could have been wished, to make the affair more brilliant, that they had tried to hold their fort against us, for we were prepared to force it and kill a great many of them; but their ruin is not the less sure, because the famine, to which they are reduced, will destroy more than we could have killed by sword and gun.

“All the officers and men have done their duty admirably; and especially M. de Callières, who has been a great help to me. I know not if your Majesty will think that I have tried to do mine, and will hold me worthy of some mark of honor that may enable me to pass the short remainder of my life in some little distinction; but, whether this be so or not, I most humbly pray your Majesty to believe that I will sacrifice the rest of my days to your Majesty’s service with the same ardor I have always felt.”

[Frontenac au Roy, 25 Oct., 1696.]

The king highly commended him and sent him the cross of the Military Order of St. Louis. Callières, who had deserved it less, had received it several years before; but he had not found or provoked so many defamers. Frontenac complained to the minister that his services had been slightly and tardily requited. This was true, and it was due largely to the complaints excited by his own perversity and violence. These complaints still continued; but the fault was not all on one side, and Frontenac himself had often just reason to retort them. He wrote to Ponchartrain: “If you will not be so good as to look closely into the true state of things here, I shall always be exposed to detraction, and forced to make new apologies, which is very hard for a person so full of zeal and uprightness as I am. My secretary, who is going to France, will tell you all the ugly intrigues used to defeat my plans for the service of the king, and the growth of the colony. I have long tried to combat these artifices, but I confess that I no longer feel strength to resist them, and must succumb at last, if you will not have the goodness to give me strong support.”

[Frontenac au Ministre, 25 Oct., 1696.]

He still continued to provoke the detraction which he deprecated, till he drew, at last, a sharp remonstrance from the minister. “The dispute you have had with M. de Champigny is without cause, and I confess I cannot comprehend how you could have acted as you have done. If you do things of this sort, you must expect disagreeable consequences, which all the desire I have to oblige you cannot prevent. It is deplorable, both for you and for me, that, instead of using my good-will to gain favors from his Majesty, you compel me to make excuses for a violence which answers no purpose, and in which you indulge wantonly, nobody can tell why.”

[Le Ministre à Frontenac, 21 Mai, 1698.]

Most of these quarrels, however trivial in themselves, had a solid foundation, and were closely connected with the great question of the control of the west. As to the measures to be taken, two parties divided the colony; one consisting of the governor and his friends, and the other of the intendant, the Jesuits, and such of the merchants as were not in favor with Frontenac. His policy was to protect the Indian allies at all risks, to repel by force, if necessary, every attempt of the English to encroach on the territory in dispute, and to occupy it by forts which should be at once posts of war and commerce and places of rendezvous for traders and voyageurs. Champigny and his party denounced this system; urged that the forest posts should be abandoned, that both garrisons and traders should be recalled, that the French should not go to the Indians, but that the Indians should come to the French, that the fur trade of the interior should be carried on at Montreal, and that no Frenchman should be allowed to leave the settled limits of the colony, except the Jesuits and persons in their service, who, as Champigny insisted, would be able to keep the Indians in the French interest without the help of soldiers.

From Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV, Chapter 19 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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