River City (34 page)

Adam Dollard des Ormeaux nodded. “I will die with my hair on. What they do to my scalp after I’m dead, that’s their business. But nobody’s taking me alive.”

They knew the gruesome stories. Of scalping, of men having their limbs removed and, legless and armless, made to drink their own blood. Each soldier feared his fate, but no one was remotely willing to choose surrender over death. They feared surrender more.

“We’re French,” Dollard declared. “Look.” From inside his coat, he took out the Cartier Dagger. “With this, we will fight with the spirit of the French people and the power of God.”

“Where’d you get that?”

He had sworn never to tell. But he did not believe that anyone here would survive to reveal his indiscretion. “Maisonneuve,” the youth said.

“Maisonneuve knows we’re here?”

“Where do you think we got the extra knives and swords and guns? Who else gave us the Huron? He told me that the future of New France depends upon us.” He was their leader now, and had suddenly to assume that role. A simple lie couldn’t hurt, he figured, not when it might remedy their fright.

“The knife will see us through,” a youth with a thick growth of beard said. “We’ll beat them back.”

“The longer we hold out,” Dollard declared, for the cloak of leadership fit him well and he was rising to the task at hand, “the closer the fur traders will come. Sooner or later, they will reinforce us. Radisson. Groseilliers. They will help us rout the Iroquois.”

That seemed plausible, and the lads were encouraged.

“Look,” one of their number said.

More canoes. Would they never end? Dollard ceased his counting and checked his rifles to make certain they were ready to fire. His friends faithfully followed his example, as did the Huron, who readied their rifles and tested the moose hair on their bows.

Then, when they were ready, most of the Huron fled.

Leaving the young men and four loyal Huron to stand alone.

Twenty, now, against more than two hundred.

The Iroquois moved through the woods to gain position on the rubble of rocks where the white fighters had hunkered down. They allowed the French access to the river, as it would be easy to pick them off if they crossed the beach, and the rapids were no refuge for any man. From the security of the woods, they unleashed a rain of arrows, then stopped to listen. They did not hear the moans of the wounded in their death throes. Hundreds of arrows appeared to be stuck in the air, as though the circle of rocks had a roof. This puzzled the chief who had been given responsibility to conduct the attack.

The Frenchmen looked up. Their canoes had been pierced countless times by arrowheads, but none of their number had suffered a wound. One whooped, and the remaining Huron started to join in, but Dollard hushed them.

“Why can’t I give a yell?” the soldier complained. “The Iroquois yell. They’re always yelling.”

“They don’t know how many we are. Yelling lets them count us. So don’t yell.”

Dollard was not experienced, although he had fought in defence of the fort alongside Lambert Closse, the bravest of the officers. He had blindly fired into the woods as the dogs howled in warning, but he had never waged a battle, having only assisted in retreats.

From here, there could be no retreat.

“The time may come,” Dollard added, “when only one of us is left alive, but the Iroquois won’t know that because they won’t know how many we are.”

The others nodded, understanding.

In the trees that lined the beach, the Iroquois leader was unsure of his next move. Not so many French could fit behind the rocks, but he needed to do more than win this battle—he needed to protect his forces. The greater battles lay upon this waterway when the fur traders arrived, and ahead at the island of Montreal. He was confused by this contingent, fearing a trap. Why would the French send out a war party unless they had greater plans than this?

Donaagatai, the young war chief, ordered that rifles be fired at the cairn, and for seven minutes the Iroquois guns barked across the beach along the riverbank, chasing ducks into the air in contemptuous flight. Then the guns fell silent, and the Iroquois listened.

No man moaned.

“Everybody all right?” Adam Dollard des Ormeaux inquired.

“What fools. Do they think they can shoot through rock?”

“Maybe they were hoping we’d stick our heads up.”

A few of them laughed nervously.

“They just wanted to see if we would fire back,” Dollard said.

“When do we?”

“When they’re easy to kill,” the leader said, and around the rock embankment the young men nodded their consent.

Then one of their number announced, “Here they come.”

They did not begin with the usual war whoops, but came silently, running at great speed across the sand and stones. As the young men put their heads up, they were protected from arrows fired from the trees. They pulled their canoes forward to better cover their heads and opened fire. The four Huron released their arrows, also, then fired their guns. Iroquois fell. They still came running, and now their cries seemed demonic to the Catholic youth, and fierce and invincible, and each soldier continued to fire his rifle, then grab another and fire again and again. They reloaded, and while one lad did so, another fired, and they met the Iroquois onslaught with deadly force. Only a few warriors flew up and over their rock-and-tree walls, and landing, they did not fall upon Frenchmen, as they had hoped, or upon Huron, their second choice, but upon upturned canoes. They’d slip off the canoes awkwardly, a foot coming down first, only to be pierced with a sword. Or an arm would dangle down, soon stabbed, or they’d slide down headfirst so that they’d land at the lads’ feet, where they were quickly slaughtered, a Huron knife slitting their throats.

The Iroquois retreated, and the French shot at them some more.

“Don’t shout!” Dollard warned when they were done, although his own heart was pounding in his chest as loudly and chaotically as any Iroquois war whoop.

From the forest, Donaagatai stared across the battlefield.

The makeshift guard post remained eerily quiet. What strange white man’s war was this? Across the short stretch of beach, he counted eleven Iroquois
dead, but he had seen men go over the walls of the fort never to return again. Fourteen dead, then, by his count. Of the wounded, two more would have to be killed, and one or two more might prefer to take their own lives. Ten more might recover, but they would not fight again that day. What was the meaning of this? How was it possible? Why did these French not attack or run as any French, or Huron, would do? Their confidence must surely derive from a more elaborate plan. Were his warriors being led into a trap?

Valiant fighters, the Iroquois were also superb strategists in the conduct of battle. No chief wanted to lose lives, and no warrior wanted to die by surprise. The Iroquois kept looking at one another, and talking to one another, unable to comprehend what had transpired here. How could this odd defence be defeated without further losses?

One of the wounded talked to his war chief. “They squat down. They shoot. Their canoes stand over their heads, so our arrows do not kill them.”

These French were smart, Donaagatai surmised. He organized a party to prepare twenty torches. Thrown into the fortress, they might burn the canoes or ignite their powder supplies. If the French wanted to fight the Indians from small forts, they could only do so with great powder supplies.

The French were readying themselves for combat when the torches began to land over their heads. They tilted the canoes up and let the torches fall harmlessly at their feet, then created a collection of them and, from the rear, began to toss them back into the woods. As Donaagatai saw ten, then twenty, torches hurl back at them from the rocks, he shouted in a fury, for nothing he directed had turned out well.

One torch landed an arm’s length from his head.

The Iroquois took pride in their organization. They were a confederacy of six nations, and in a future epoch, as yet unimagined, Benjamin Franklin would borrow from their constitution to formulate his own for a country to be called the United States of America. Even in the chaos of war, they followed sophisticated strategies, and during the winter months they worked out solutions to logistical problems concerning supply movements and attack coordination. They were now confronted with a battle they had not anticipated—they had been alone in instigating attacks for decades—and they were
stymied as to how to proceed. The warriors looked to their leaders to devise an appropriate response.

For the next foray, the Iroquois made it appear they were attacking from the woods again, but in the heat of battle they slipped dozens of warriors around to the water side and crept up from there. Unseen to them, Dollard des Ormeaux had assigned his youngest and smallest fighter to creep between rocks and keep an eye peeled on their rear. When he saw what was happening and communicated the word back to his leader, five soldiers carried a canoe over their heads for protection and moved to the rear of their fort, where they fired at will upon the exposed Iroquois.

This was the final defeat for Donaagatai as war chief. He was a younger man and was removed from his position by an older one. The war chief who replaced him, Nomotigneega, advised that they wait until dark to stage the next skirmish.

Dollard des Ormeaux, expecting as much, planned his countermove.

To pass the time, the French slept, or cut branches from the trees that lined their fort and fashioned their tips to use as spears. They had seen the way the Iroquois had hurled themselves over the boulders. The next time they did that, they would be impaled. The lads were in full battle attitude now, learning skills quickly, and each one reminded the other that they would die with their hair on or they would not die. When they looked out around them, they viewed the lumps of dead Iroquois. Hard to grasp that they had done all that killing themselves. And still they were quiet, revealing nothing to their enemies.

The moon concealed behind scudding clouds, the Indians crept forward, inching towards the beach ramparts. They were surprised when, from their left and their right, warriors suddenly came running, upsetting their careful strategy of stealth, and they were further surprised when those runners swiped at them with swords, killing a few and causing others to cry out with their sudden afflictions. These four who had betrayed them carried on to the fort and were welcomed there, for they were not Iroquois at all, but French, sent out beforehand in the dark to hide in the bushes, and suddenly the ramparts were lit with the explosion of rifle shot and the Indians cried out upon the ground
and bled. Many died, and those who saw that they were trapped arose to attack the fort and swiftly died on their feet.

When the Iroquois retreated, they were incredulous. They bemoaned their failure and raged against one another, and against the French, who fought without being seen and killed without suffering similar tribulation.

Nomotigneega assessed his situation. Down to a hundred and sixty men, he guessed his enemy had fifty or sixty, probably seventy, hidden behind the barricades. He still outnumbered his foe by about three to one. Nevertheless, their trouble here would not be well received in the Iroquois nations. Their Mohawk brothers would rail against them if they accepted defeat now. Honour was at stake. They had to fight this battle and they had to win. As a precaution, the white-haired war chief summoned a runner and told him to carry the news to the Iroquois who were coming up the Richelieu River that their brothers on the Ottawa were engaged in a fierce battle and might not be able to join them in the conquest of the place the French sometimes called Ville-Marie, although on the old maps it was known as Montreal. The runner took four paddlers with him and headed off downstream. Next, the war chief brought his warriors together. He reminded them that the Iroquois would hold them in contempt if they did not win this battle. If they lost here, the French would fight the Iroquois in this way more and more. He told them that the people of the Iroquois depended upon them to vanquish these French. They had fought with courage, but now the time had come to be victorious.

A great cry rose up among the men.

The French fighters heard it.

“They’re coming,” one lad said.

“Soon,” agreed another.

“We’ll be ready,” said a third.

Dollard spoke last. “We’ll die with our hair on,” he said.

That morning, they did not die. They fought hard. The Iroquois tried to kill them from the safety of the tree line, firing arrows and spears and shot. Occasionally, even a tomahawk came sailing through the air. The Iroquois had reverted to their favourite tactic, a war of attrition, and the garrison boys knew
then that they’d have to endure days of battle. They began to suffer their first casualties, but even the wounded fought on.

At all hours of the day, at all times of night, the attacks came. Sometimes, the skirmishes were meant to upset their sleep, while at other times they were full-on assaults. The Iroquois were rolling boulders closer to the fort, allowing them to aim their arrows and fire their Dutch rifles from closer range. The French were exhausted, scared and rationing food, and still they fought on and continued to kill Iroquois.

They suffered their first death.

A youth named Claude took an arrow through a lung, and for an hour he squirmed in anguish. They cooled his brow, but his torment only increased the closer he came to death. Lads wept at the moment that he expired, then resumed their places behind rocks.

The next day brought another death. A soldier put his head up and was shot through the temple.

Two days later, a third comrade fell. They didn’t know how. Six of them were sitting around their little campfire eating a ration of beans when he suddenly gagged and moaned, blood streaming from his neck. In four hours, he was gone. Somehow, a stray chunk of metal shot had ricocheted through an imperceptible channel in their defences. That bad luck demoralized everyone.

Seven days had passed. Exhausted, deprived and injured, the French awaited the final assault. They knew it was coming. They had tried to preserve their shot, but not much was left. Where were the
coureurs de bois
? Radisson and Groseilliers would be voyaging with seasoned Indian fighters and Huron and Cree loyal to them. Every day must be bringing them closer, but could they not arrive sooner? Perhaps they were not coming at all, and their battle was not only hopeless but without purpose as well.