Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1672 to 1688, part 2

New France had not forgotten the Iroquois treachery to the French colony at Onondaga.

Iroquois raid and ambuscade kept the hostility of these sleepless foes fresh in French memory.

{125} When Jean Talon came to Canada as intendant, there had come as governor Courcelle, with the Marquis de Tracy as major general of all the French forces in America,--the West Indies as well as Canada.

The Carignan Regiment of soldiers seasoned in European campaigns had been sent to protect the colonists from Indian raid; and it was determined to strike the Iroquois Confederacy a blow that would forever put the fear of the French in their hearts.

Richelieu River was still the trail of the Mohawk warrior; and De Tracy sent his soldiers to build forts on this stream at Sorel and Chambly--named after officers of the regiment.

January, 1666, Courcelle, the Governor, set out on snowshoes to invade the Iroquois Country with five hundred men, half Canadian bushrovers, half regular soldiers.

By some mistake the snow-covered trail to the Mohawks was missed, the wrong road followed, and the French Governor found himself among the Dutch at Schenectady.

March rains had set in.

Through the leafless forests in driving sleet and rain retreated the French.

Sixty had perished from exposure and disease before Courcelle led his men back to the Richelieu.

The Mohawk warriors showed their contempt for this kind of white-man warfare by raiding some French hunters on Lake Champlain and killing a young nephew of De Tracy.

Nevertheless, on second thought, twenty-four Indian deputies proceeded to Quebec with the surviving captives to sue for peace.

De Tracy was ready for them.

Solemnly the peace pipe had been puffed and solemnly the peace powwow held.

The Mohawk chief was received in pompous state at the Governor's table.

Heated with wine and mistaking French courtesy for fear, the warrior grew boastful at the white chief's table.

"This is the hand," he exclaimed, proudly stretching out his right arm, "this is the hand that split the head of your young man, O Onontio!"

"Then by the power of Heaven," thundered the Marquis de Tracy, springing to his feet ablaze with indignation, "it is the hand that shall never split another head!"

{126} Forthwith the body of the great Mohawk chief dangled a scarecrow to the fowls of the air; and the other terrified deputies tore breathlessly back for the Iroquois land with such a story as one may guess.

With thirteen hundred men and three hundred boats the Marquis de Tracy and Courcelle set out from the St. Lawrence in October for the Iroquois cantons.

Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal bushrover, led six hundred wild-wood followers in their buckskin coats and beaded moccasins, with hair flying to the wind like Indians; and one hundred Huron braves were also in line with the Canadians.

The rest of the forces were of the Carignan Regiment.

Dollier de Casson, the Sulpician priest, powerful of frame as De Tracy himself, marched as chaplain.

[Illustration: A MAP IN THE RELATION OF 1662-1663 (This map includes Lake Ontario and the Iroquois Country.

It shows the relative positions of the Five Nations and Fort d'Orange (Albany).

It also gives plans of the forts on the Richelieu and shows their location)] Never had such an expedition been seen before on the St. Lawrence.

Drums beat reveille at peep of dawn.

Fifes outshrilled the roar of rapids, and stately figures in gold braid {127} and plumed hats glided over the waters of the Richelieu among the painted forests of the frost-tinted maples.

Indians have a way of conveying news that modern trappers designate as "the moccasin telegram."

"Moccasin telegram" now carried news of the coming army to the Iroquois villages, and the alarm ran like wildfire from Mohawk to Onondaga and from Onondaga to Seneca.

When the French army struck up the Mohawk River, and to beat of drum charged in full fury out of the rain-dripping forests across the stubble fields to attack the first palisaded village, they found it desolate, deserted, silent as the dead, though winter stores crammed the abandoned houses and wildest confusion showed that the warriors had fled in panic.

So it was with the next village and the next.

The Iroquois had stampeded in blind flight, and the only show of opposition was a wild whoop here and there from ambush.

De Tracy took possession of the land for France, planted a cross, and ordered the villages set on fire.

For a time, at least, peace was assured with the Iroquois.

Who first discovered the Province of Ontario?

Before Champlain had ascended the Ottawa, or the Jesuits established their missions south of Lake Huron, young men sent out as wood rovers had canoed up the Ottawa and gone westward to the land of the Sweet Water Seas.

Was it Vignau, the romancer, or Nicolet, the coureur de bois, or the boy Etienne Brulé, who first saw what has been called the Garden of Canada, the rolling meadows and wooded hills that lie wedged in between the Upper and the Lower of the Great Lakes?

Tradition says it was Brulé; but however that may be, little was known of what is now Ontario except in the region of the old Jesuit missions around Georgian Bay.

It was not even known that Michigan and Huron were _two_ lakes.

The Sulpicians of Montreal had a mission at the Bay of Quinte on Lake Ontario, and the south shore of the lake, where it touched on Iroquois territory, was known to the Jesuits;

but from Quinte Bay to Detroit--a distance equal to that from New York to Chicago, or London to Italy--was an unknown world.

{128} But to return to the explorations which Jean Talon, the Intendant, had set in motion-- When Dollier de Casson, the soldier who had become Sulpician priest, returned from the campaign against the Iroquois, he had been sent as a missionary to the Nipissing Country.

There he heard among the Indians of a shorter route to the Great River of the West--the Mississippi--than by the Ottawa and Sault Ste.

Marie.

The Indians told him if he would ascend the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, he could portage overland to the Beautiful River,--Ohio,--which would carry him down to the Mississippi.

The Sulpicians had been encouraged by Talon in order to eclipse and hold in check the Jesuits.

They were eager to send their missionaries to the new realm of this Great River, and hurried Dollier de Casson down to Quebec to obtain Intendant Talon's permission.

There, curiously enough, Dollier de Casson met Cavalier de La Salle, the shy young seigneur of La Chine, intent on almost the same aim,--to explore the Great River.

Where the Sulpicians had granted him his seigniory above Montreal he had built a fort, which soon won the nickname of La Chine,--China,--because its young master was continually entertaining Iroquois Indians within the walls, to question them of the Great River, which might lead to China.

Governor Courcelle and Intendant Talon ordered the priest and young seigneur to set out together on their explorations.

The Sulpicians were to bear all expenses, buying back La Salle's lands to enable him to outfit canoes with the money.

Father Galinée, who understood map making, accompanied Dollier de Casson, and the expedition of seven birch canoes, with three white men in each, and two dugouts with Seneca Indians, who had been visiting La Salle, set out from Montreal on July 6, 1669. Not a leader in the party was over thirty-five years of age.

Dollier de Casson, the big priest, was only thirty-three and La Salle barely twenty-six.

Corn meal was carried as food.

For the rest, they were to depend on chance shots.

With {129} numerous portages, keeping to the south shore of the St. Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca guides, the canoes passed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, coming out in August on Lake Ontario, "which," says Galinée, "appeared to us like a great sea."

Striking south, they appealed to the Seneca Iroquois for guides to the Ohio, but the Senecas were so intent on torturing some prisoners recently captured, that they paid no heed to the appeal.

A

month was wasted, and the white men proceeded with Indian slaves for guides, still along the south shore of the lake.

[Illustration: GALINÉE'S MAP OF THE GREAT LAKES, 1669 (The next oldest chart to that of Champlain)] At the mouth of Niagara River they could hear the far roar of the famous falls, which Indian legend said "fell over rocks twice the height of the highest pine tree."

The turbulent torrent of the river could not be breasted, so they did not see the falls, but rounded on up Lake Ontario to the region now near the city of Hamilton.

Here they had prepared to portage overland to some stream that would bring them down to Lake Erie, when, to their amazement, they learned from a passing Indian camp that two Frenchmen were on their way down this very lake from searching copper mines on Lake Superior.

{130} The two Frenchmen were Louis Jolliet, yet in his early twenties, to become famous as an explorer of the Mississippi, and one Monsieur Jean Peré, soldier of fortune, who was to set France and England by the ears on Hudson Bay.

September 24, as La Salle and Dollier were dragging their canoes through the autumn-colored sumacs of the swamp, there plunged from among the russet undergrowth the two wanderers from the north,--Jolliet and Peré, dumb with amazement to meet a score of men toiling through this tenantless wilderness.

The two parties fell on each other's necks with delight and camped together.

Jolliet told a story that set the missionaries' zeal on fire and inflamed La Salle with mad eagerness to pass on to the goal of his discoveries.

Jolliet and Peré had not found the copper mine for Talon on Lake Superior, but they had learned two important secrets from the Indians.

First, if Iroquois blocked the way up the Ottawa, there was clear, easy water way down to Quebec by Lake Huron and Lake Ste.

Claire and Lake Erie.

Jolliet's guide had brought them down this way, first of white men to traverse the Great Lakes, only leaving them as they reached Lake Erie and advising them to portage across up Grand River to avoid Niagara Falls.

Second, the Indians told him the Ohio could be reached by way of Lake Erie.

Sitting round the camp fires near what is now Port Stanley, La Salle secretly resolved to go on down to Quebec with Jolliet and rearrange his plans independent of the missionaries.

The portaging through swamps had affected La Salle's health, and he probably judged he could make quicker time unaccompanied by missionaries.

As for Galinée and Dollier, when they knelt in prayer that night, they fervently besought Heaven to let them carry the Gospel of truth to those benighted heathen west of Lake Michigan, of whom Jolliet told.

Dollier de Casson sent a letter by Jolliet to Montreal, begging the Sulpicians to establish a mission near what is now Toronto.

Early next morning an altar was laid on the propped paddles of the canoes and solemn service held.

La Salle and his four canoes went back to Montreal with Jolliet and Peré; Dollier and Galinée coasted along the shores of Lake Erie westward.

{131} It was October.

The forests were leafless, the weather damp, the lake too stormy for the frail canoes.

As game was plentiful, the priests decided to winter on a creek near Port Dover.

Here log houses were knocked up, and the servants dispersed moose hunting for winter supplies.

Then followed the most beautiful season of the year in the peninsula of Ontario, Indian summer, dreamy warm days after the first cold, filling the forest with a shimmer of golden light, the hills with heat haze, while the air was odorous with smells of nuts and dried leaves and grapes hanging thick from wild vines.

"It was," writes Galinée, "simply an Earthly Paradise, the most beautiful region that ever I have seen in my life, with open woods and meadows and rivers and game in plenty."

In this Earthly Paradise the priests passed the winter, holding services three times a week--"a winter that ought to be worth ten years of any other kind of life" Dollier calculated, counting up masses and vespers and matins.

Sometimes when the snow lay deep and the weird voices of the wind hallooed with bugle sound through the lonely forest, the priests listening inside fancied that they heard "the hunting of Arthur,"--unearthly huntsmen coursing the air after unearthly game.

March 23 (Sunday), 1670, the company paraded down to Lake Erie from their sheltered quarters, and, erecting a cross, took possession of this land for France.

Then they launched their boats to ascend the other Sweet Water Seas.

The preceding autumn the priests had lost some of their baggage, and now, in camp near Point Pelee, a sweeping wave carried off the packs in which were all the holy vessels and equipments for the mission chapel.

They decided to go back to Montreal by way of Sault Ste.

Marie, and ascended to Lake Ste.

Claire.

Game had been scarce for some days, the weather tempestuous, and now the priests thought they had found the cause.

On one of the rocks of Lake Ste.

Claire was a stone, to which the Indians offered sacrifices for safe passage on the lakes.

To the priests the rude drawing of a face seemed graven images of paganism,--signs of Satan, who had baffled their hunting and caused loss {132} of their packs.

"I consecrated one of my axes to break this god of stone, and, having yoked our canoes abreast, we carried the largest pieces to the middle of the river and cast them in.

God immediately rewarded us, for we killed a deer."

Following the east shore of Lake Huron, the priests came, on May 25, to Sault Ste.

Marie, where the Jesuits Dablon and Marquette had a mission.

Three days late, they embarked by way of the Ottawa for Montreal, where they arrived on June 18, 1670. Meanwhile, what had become of Jolliet and Peré and La Salle?

They have no sooner reached Quebec with their report than Talon orders St. Lusson to go north and take possession at Sault Ste.

Marie of all these unknown lands for France.

Jolliet accompanies St. Lusson.

Nicholas Perrot, a famous bushrover, goes along to summon the Indians, and the ceremony takes place on June 14, 1671, in the presence of the Jesuits at the Sault, by which the King of France is pronounced lord paramount of all these regions.

When Jolliet comes down again to Quebec, he finds Count Frontenac has come as governor, and Jean Talon, the Intendant, is sailing for France.

Before leaving, Talon has recommended Jolliet as a fit man to explore the Great River of the West.

With him is commissioned Jacques Marquette, the Jesuit, who has labored among the Indians west of Lake Superior.

The two men set out in birch canoes, with smoked meat for provisions, from Michilimackinac mission, May 17, 1673, for Green Bay, Lake Michigan.

Ascending Fox River on June 17, they induce the Mascoutin Indians, who had years ago conducted Radisson by this same route, to pilot them across the portage to the headwaters of the Wisconsin River.

Their way lies directly across that wooded lake region, which has in our generation become the resort first of the lumberman, then of the tourist,--a rolling, wooded region of rare sylvan beauty, park-like forests interspersed with sky-colored lakes.

Six weeks from the time they had left the Sault, Wisconsin River carried their canoe out on the swift eddies of a mighty river {133} flowing south,--the Mississippi.

For the first time the boat of a Canadian voyageur glided down its waters.

Each night as the explorers landed to sleep under the stars, the tilted canoe inverted with end on a log as roof in case of rain, Marquette fell to knees and invoked the Virgin's aid on the expedition; and each morning as Jolliet launched the boat out on the waters through the early mist, he headed closely along shore on the watch for sign or footprint of Indian.