The White and the Gold (32 page)

Not a move was made to rescue the helpless Hurons, not a shot was fired from the guns of the fort. Lauson considered in gloomy speculation the risks of interference and decided finally he must respect the peace, allowing the poor captives to be borne off to torture and death. But the peace had ceased to be a peace long before.

Houses straggled out from under the walls in all directions. The people who lived in them, frightened by the spectacle of war canoes on the river, had already rushed in for shelter. Before departing, the Mohawks sent parties ashore and with much whooping and maniacal laughter they ransacked the houses, taking whatever seemed to them of value. Lauson still did nothing.

The prestige of the French had been dealt a severe blow. The jeering Mohawks took away with them the conviction that Onontio had come down from his high mountain, that he was no more to be feared than a disused garment stuffed with leaves and elevated over a maize field. The young men had thrown their defiance in his teeth. For a long time thereafter the Five Nations carried off things with a high hand, showing no manner of respect for the authority of France.

In the meantime the party for Onondaga proceeded on their way. They changed to canoes at Montreal and finished the journey behind
a large banner of white taffeta containing the word JESUS. If a sense of duty gave them some elevation of spirits, the presence of Mohawks on the edge of the flotilla dampened them again—tall, sulky fellows who needed only wings on their ankles to look like woodland gods. The Mohawks had death behind their scowling brows, but because the Onondagas restrained them they had to be content with an almost daily murder among the Hurons of the party, braining the women and dragging the men out of the canoes to be carried away and burned.

When the canoes had crossed the eastern end of Lake Ontario and had entered the Oswego River, the watchful whites saw that they had come to a land of great promise. Here the harvests had been good. The trees were heavy with fruit, with stoneless cherries and apples shaped like goose eggs, with chestnuts and walnuts. The long lakes, stretched out like the fingers of a human hand, were alive with fish. The Valley of Onondaga, they found, lay in the heart of the Iroquois country—the Oneidas and Mohawks to the east, the Senecas and Cayugas to the west—and it was high, rich land.

Father Chaumonot had selected for the settlement a place on the highest lake, in the midst of salt springs and with a view of all this rich rolling country. The party was escorted there at once, with the French soldiers in their blue coats piping and drumming to keep up their courage and making a brave enough show of it, and copper faces on every hand like a forest of masks, the Indian drums joining in the tumult.

The Jesuit fathers went on at once to Onontagué (Onondaga) to begin their work. They found they had arrived at a moment of considerable drama, the Five Nations having assembled for a tribal council. The sachems smoked their pipes and orated in the secrecy of the council house. Outside, as far as the eye could see, were dusky warriors and their wives, squatting among the withered pumpkin vines and the tall stalks of maize, debating the same issues. The question under consideration might very well have been the fate of the newly arrived party.

The orators who had extended a welcome had done so in extravagant terms of friendship. “Farewell, war!” they had cried. “Farewell, arms! In the future we will be brothers.” But the arrival of the priests caused a lowering of heads to conceal the message of hatred in the eyes. Some of the natives could not conceal their emotions.

“I have killed Black-Gowns!” cried one.

“I have helped burn them!” contributed another.

Back at the lake, the newly arrived Frenchmen were feeling some of the emotions that Protestant converts had experienced on being dragged to an auto-da-fé. It was only too apparent that soon the fires would be lighted for the most terrible orgy of murder by torture in which these past masters, the Iroquois, had ever indulged. Fear lent urgency to the axes and speed in the construction of the walls. They hardly dared draw breath until the tall timbers of a palisade closed them in. Now they could, at any rate, sell their lives dearly.

Inside the palisade they built a house capable of accommodating them all, a chapel and such smaller buildings as were needed. They called this the Mission of Ste. Marie of Gannentaa.

The Jesuits met with success at first, and their reports to the
Relations
tell of two hundred baptisms, including five chiefs. Chaumonot went to the Senecas, who were the most numerous of the five tribes, Ménard to the Cayugas. The number of converts rose to four hundred. Had there been an honest desire, after all, for a mission?

Conditions in the beautiful country around the outstretched fingers bore out one contention of the Jesuits. The Iroquois, whose fighting strength at the peak of their power had been very little in excess of two thousand warriors, had been very much depleted by the bloody victory over the Eries and the long struggle with the Andastes. A plan of enforced enrollment was being carried out. In Onondaga were captives from eleven alien tribes, all existing in graded scales of slavery. The women, kept for lust and drudgery, were on the lowest scale and could be killed at any time by an irritable tomahawk.

It was apparent almost from the start that death, imminent and terrible, ringed the colony about. The Frenchmen were kept informed of what was going on by the whispers of the slaves. They knew when a special meeting was called in the valley to debate the questions of the time and method of their end, and that the hand of extermination was held back only because D’Ailleboust, who had taken over the duties of government from the feeble Lauson fingers until a new appointee could arrive from France, had boldly seized twelve Mohawk warriors and was holding them as hostages.

Winter arrived and a dying captive gave the fifty-odd Frenchmen, cooped up like livestock marked for slaughter behind their palisade,
the truth about the plans of the Iroquois. They were to be allowed to exist through the winter, but they would be killed as soon as the ice went off the rivers and lakes, by which time the hostages would surely be redeemed by guile.

The condemned colonists spent many long hours discussing their situation. What chance had they of extricating themselves before the blow fell? It was unsafe to show as much as a nose outside the timber wall, for a close watch was being kept. Winter had gripped the country in fetters of ice; and the first sanctuary, Montreal, was many scores of leagues away. How long could they withstand an assault when the fatal day arrived?

A plan was made finally. All through the winter, which for once seemed much too short, the French labored secretly to prepare themselves for one of the most unusual escapes in history.

First of all they began to build boats. Every night parties slipped out into the woods and carried back with them the limbs of trees. In the loft above the main house, where no prying eye could see what was going forward, they succeeded in making two large open boats and four elm-bark canoes. March came, and with it the promise of open water. The second half of the stratagem was then put into execution.

It had been proposed by the youngest member of the party, whose name was Pierre Esprit Radisson. Coming with his parents from St. Malo when fifteen years old, he had lived at Three Rivers and had been captured by a prowling band of Mohawks while hunting with two young friends. Adopted into a Mohawk family and most affectionately treated, he had managed to escape and had sailed from Manhattan in a Dutch ship for France. Returning to the colony, he had been among those who had volunteered for the journey into the Onondaga country. This youth will reappear again and again as the history of New France develops and will start many bitter controversies and do many remarkable things. Bear him in mind.

The plan was to invite the Indians to a great feast and stuff them with so much food that they would fall into a coma. These feasts had an almost religious significance for the natives of North America. Such an invitation could not be refused, even though the guests were planning to butcher their hosts immediately after.

It is safe to say that in all Iroquois history there had never been one to equal this. All the male population of Onondaga came at the appointed time. They could not be allowed inside, of course, and so
large fires had been set blazing in front of the gate. The guests said “Ho!” the ceremonial greeting, and seated themselves at one of the fires. There they waited.

It was a curious scene: the tossing tops of the trees strongly etched against the black sky by the light of the fires, the silent braves squatting cross-legged on the ground with no trace for once of enmity, the young Frenchmen entertaining the guests by singing and dancing and playing on musical instruments (young Radisson played a guitar and proved himself quite adept), the smell of hot food from the courtyard setting copper-colored jaws to spasmodic movements. Although the Indians contributed no sound whatever, the din was tremendous.

Then the gate swung open wide and the food was carried out. The Indians never seasoned their food with salt or pepper or herbs of any kind, and it might be supposed that the French cooks would attack those starved palates with highly spiced dishes. Fortunately they knew enough not to do this. They were aware that the doughty sons of the forest were creatures of habit, that they liked the way their squaws prepared food for them. Salt made things bitter to the Indian taste. According to a writer in the
Relations
, they “abhorred Dutch cheese, radishes, spices, mustard, and similar condiments.” Accordingly, the long succession of dishes which emerged from the kitchens and the fires in the courtyard were cooked in the manner to which the squatting guests were accustomed.

The French cooks could be trusted, however, to prepare a tremendous variety of dishes. All the pigs belonging to the colony had been butchered, and this provided a wonderful base for the meal. Corn and a kind of mincemeat were brought in first, followed by kettles full of broiled bustard and chicken and turtle. Next came eels and salmon and carp and a sagamité of thickened flour filled with vegetables. These were dishes the Indians understood. They allowed themselves to be served great spoonfuls of everything. No dish passed them untouched. As young Radisson put it in his diary, “they eat as many wolves, having eyes bigger than bellies.”

It was Radisson who whispered to one of the other Frenchmen as the orgy continued unabated, “They do not cry
skenon
[enough], but soon we will cry
hunnay
[we are going].”

It was customary for the hosts to abstain from eating, and so, while the feasting went on, the French beat on their drums and blazed away on their instruments and so made it impossible for the gorged
warriors to detect certain unusual sounds which came from the rear of the enclosure. The drums beat faster when the appetites began to slacken. It is possible that some drug had been put in the food, although none of the records available mentions this. Nature finally took a decisive part. The overstuffed stomachs of the warriors brought sleep to their eyes. One by one they toppled over.

A last loud salvo on the drums brought all sound to an end save for the rhythmic snoring of the guests.

When the fires died down, the sleeping Indians were wakened by the cold. Some of them stirred, sat up, and then roused the others, not with the ceremonial “Ho!” but with an urgent gabble of words. It was not yet dawn, and the stars were still in the sky. The gate of the Mission of Ste. Marie was closed with an undefinable hint of finality, an effect increased by the silence reigning over it.

One of the additional senses which men of the wild possess told the aroused Indians that something was wrong, but they made no effort to get at the truth of things until the end of the day. In the meantime no hint of sound came from the cluster of buildings, not the snuffle of a dog or the cackle of hens. When dusk began to fall the warriors could no longer be restrained. They broke down the front gate and rushed into the enclosure.

They discovered at once that their suspicions had been well founded. The place was deserted. Everything had been cleared out and the rooms were bare. All the livestock was gone save a few lonely hens on their roosts.

Footprints led from the rear of the mission to the shore of the lake; a great many of them, suggesting to the trained eyes of the angry Iroquois that they had been made by men in a great hurry. The French had departed, then, by water. But how? They had no boats. Had some magic vessel, with white wings like a monster bird, dropped from the sky to take them out of danger’s way?

The ice on the surface of the lake was unbroken. There was no way of knowing that the white men in departing had broken the ice before them as they made their way out from the shore, using axes and the butts of their muskets, and that it had frozen over behind them.

On April 3 the heavily loaded craft reached Montreal. The hungry and weary people, who had braved the winds of March for a fortnight
without cover, went eagerly ashore for rest and food. On April 23 they arrived at Quebec. The population turned out in excitement and delight to welcome them back. It was clear they had given up the adventurers into the Onondaga Valley as lost, although there were some who contended that Zachary du Puis and his band had given in to their fears too easily.