France and England in North America, Part III: La Salle, Discovery of The Great West
settlement of La Chine, Frontenac himself followed on the twenty-eighth
of June. Including Indians from the missions, he now had with him about
four hundred men and a hundred and twenty canoes, besides two large
flat-boats, which he caused to be painted in red and blue, with strange
devices, intended to dazzle the Iroquois by a display of unwonted
splendor. Now their hard task began. Shouldering canoes through the
forest, dragging the flat-boats along the shore, working like
beavers,--sometimes in water to the knees, sometimes to the armpits,
their feet cut by the sharp stones, and they themselves well-nigh swept
down by the furious current,--they fought their way upward against the
chain of mighty rapids that break the navigation of the St. Lawrence.
The Indians were of the greatest service. Frontenac, like La Salle,
showed from the first a special faculty of managing them; for his keen,
incisive spirit was exactly to their liking, and they worked for him as
they would have worked for no man else. As they approached the Long
Saut, rain fell in torrents; and the governor, without his cloak, and
drenched to the skin, directed in person the amphibious toil of his
followers. Once, it is said, he lay awake all night, in his anxiety lest
the biscuit should be wet, which would have ruined the expedition. No
such mischance took place, and at length the last rapid was passed, and
smooth water awaited them to their journey's end. Soon they reached the
Thousand Islands, and their light flotilla glided in long file among
those watery labyrinths, by rocky islets, where some lonely pine towered
like a mast against the sky; by sun-scorched crags, where the brown
lichens crisped in the parching glare; by deep dells, shady and cool,
rich in rank ferns, and spongy, dark-green mosses; by still coves, where
the water-lilies lay like snow-flakes on their broad, flat leaves,--till
at length they neared their goal, and the glistening bosom of Lake
Ontario opened on their sight.
Frontenac, to impose respect on the Iroquois, now set his canoes in
order of battle. Four divisions formed the first line, then came the two
flat-boats; he himself, with his guards, his staff, and the gentlemen
volunteers, followed, with the canoes of Three Rivers on his right, and
those of the Indians on his left, while two remaining divisions formed a
rear line. Thus, with measured paddles, they advanced over the still
lake, till they saw a canoe approaching to meet them. It bore several
Iroquois chiefs, who told them that the dignitaries of their nation
awaited them at Cataraqui, and offered to guide them to the spot. They
entered the wide mouth of the river, and passed along the shore, now
covered by the quiet little city of Kingston, till they reached the
point at present occupied by the barracks, at the western end of
Cataraqui bridge. Here they stranded their canoes and disembarked.
Baggage was landed, fires lighted, tents pitched, and guards set. Close
at hand, under the lee of the forest, were the camping sheds of the
Iroquois, who had come to the rendezvous in considerable numbers.
[Sidenote: FRONTENAC AT CATARAQUI.]
At daybreak of the next morning, the thirteenth of July, the drums beat,
and the whole party were drawn up under arms. A double line of men
extended from the front of Frontenac's tent to the Indian camp; and,
through the lane thus formed, the savage deputies, sixty in number,
advanced to the place of council. They could not hide their admiration
at the martial array of the French, many of whom were old soldiers of
the regiment of Carignan; and when they reached the tent they ejaculated
their astonishment at the uniforms of the governor's guard who
surrounded it. Here the ground had been carpeted with the sails of the
flat-boats, on which the deputies squatted themselves in a ring and
smoked their pipes for a time with their usual air of deliberate
gravity; while Frontenac, who sat surrounded by his officers, had full
leisure to contemplate the formidable adversaries whose mettle was
hereafter to put his own to so severe a test. A chief named Garakontié,
a noted friend of the French, at length opened the council, in behalf of
all the five Iroquois nations, with expressions of great respect and
deference towards "Onontio;" that is to say, the governor of Canada.
Whereupon Frontenac, whose native arrogance where Indians were concerned
always took a form which imposed respect without exciting anger, replied
in the following strain:--
"Children! Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. I am glad
to see you here, where I have had a fire lighted for you to smoke by,
and for me to talk to you. You have done well, my children, to obey the
command of your Father. Take courage: you will hear his word, which is
full of peace and tenderness. For do not think that I have come for war.
My mind is full of peace, and she walks by my side. Courage, then,
children, and take rest."
With that, he gave them six fathoms of tobacco, reiterated his
assurances of friendship, promised that he would be a kind father so
long as they should be obedient children, regretted that he was forced
to speak through an interpreter, and ended with a gift of guns to the
men, and prunes and raisins to their wives and children. Here closed
this preliminary meeting, the great council being postponed to another
day.
During the meeting, Raudin, Frontenac's engineer, was tracing out the
lines of a fort, after a predetermined plan; and the whole party, under
the direction of their officers, now set themselves to construct it.
Some cut down trees, some dug the trenches, some hewed the palisades;
and with such order and alacrity was the work urged on, that the Indians
were lost in astonishment. Meanwhile, Frontenac spared no pains to make
friends of the chiefs, some of whom he had constantly at his table. He
fondled the Iroquois children, and gave them bread and sweetmeats, and
in the evening feasted the squaws to make them dance. The Indians were
delighted with these attentions, and conceived a high opinion of the new
Onontio.
[Sidenote: FRONTENAC AND THE INDIANS.]
On the seventeenth, when the construction of the fort was well advanced,
Frontenac called the chiefs to a grand council, which was held with all
possible state and ceremony. His dealing with the Indians on this and
other occasions was truly admirable. Unacquainted as he was with them,
he seems to have had an instinctive perception of the treatment they
required. His predecessors had never ventured to address the Iroquois
as "Children," but had always styled them "Brothers;" and yet the
assumption of paternal authority on the part of Frontenac was not only
taken in good part, but was received with apparent gratitude. The
martial nature of the man, his clear, decisive speech, and his frank and
downright manner, backed as they were by a display of force which in
their eyes was formidable, struck them with admiration, and gave tenfold
effect to his words of kindness. They thanked him for that which from
another they would not have endured.
Frontenac began by again expressing his satisfaction that they had
obeyed the commands of their Father, and come to Cataraqui to hear what
he had to say. Then he exhorted them to embrace Christianity; and on
this theme he dwelt at length, in words excellently adapted to produce
the desired effect,--words which it would be most superfluous to tax as
insincere, though doubtless they lost nothing in emphasis because in
this instance conscience and policy aimed alike. Then, changing his
tone, he pointed to his officers, his guard, the long files of the
militia, and the two flat-boats, mounted with cannon, which lay in the
river near by. "If," he said, "your Father can come so far, with so
great a force, through such dangerous rapids, merely to make you a visit
of pleasure and friendship, what would he do, if you should awaken his
anger, and make it necessary for him to punish his disobedient children?
He is the arbiter of peace and war. Beware how you offend him!" And he
warned them not to molest the Indian allies of the French, telling them,
sharply, that he would chastise them for the least infraction of the
peace.
From threats he passed to blandishments, and urged them to confide in
his paternal kindness, saying that, in proof of his affection, he was
building a store-house at Cataraqui, where they could be supplied with
all the goods they needed, without the necessity of a long and dangerous
journey. He warned them against listening to bad men, who might seek to
delude them by misrepresentations and falsehoods; and he urged them to
give heed to none but "men of character, like the Sieur de la Salle." He
expressed a hope that they would suffer their children to learn French
from the missionaries, in order that they and his nephews--meaning the
French colonists--might become one people; and he concluded by
requesting them to give him a number of their children to be educated in
the French manner, at Quebec.
[Sidenote: TREATY WITH THE INDIANS.]
This speech, every clause of which was reinforced by abundant presents,
was extremely well received; though one speaker reminded him that he had
forgotten one important point, inasmuch as he had not told them at what
prices they could obtain goods at Cataraqui. Frontenac evaded a precise
answer, but promised them that the goods should be as cheap as possible,
in view of the great difficulty of transportation. As to the request
concerning their children, they said that they could not accede to it
till they had talked the matter over in their villages; but it is a
striking proof of the influence which Frontenac had gained over them,
that, in the following year, they actually sent several of their
children to Quebec to be educated,--the girls among the Ursulines, and
the boys in the household of the governor.
Three days after the council, the Iroquois set out on their return; and
as the palisades of the fort were now finished, and the barracks nearly
so, Frontenac began to send his party homeward by detachments. He
himself was detained for a time by the arrival of another band of
Iroquois, from the villages on the north side of Lake Ontario. He
repeated to them the speech he had made to the others; and, this final
meeting over, he embarked with his guard, leaving a sufficient number to
hold the fort, which was to be provisioned for a year by means of a
convoy then on its way up the river. Passing the rapids safely, he
reached Montreal on the first of August.
His enterprise had been a complete success. He had gained every point,
and, in spite of the dangerous navigation, had not lost a single canoe.
Thanks to the enforced and gratuitous assistance of the inhabitants, the
whole had cost the King only about ten thousand francs, which Frontenac
had advanced on his own credit. Though in a commercial point of view the
new establishment was of very questionable benefit to the colony at
large, the governor had, nevertheless, conferred an inestimable blessing
on all Canada by the assurance he had gained of a long respite from the
fearful scourge of Iroquois hostility. "Assuredly," he writes, "I may
boast of having impressed them at once with respect, fear, and
good-will."[68] He adds that the fort at Cataraqui, with the aid of a
vessel now building, will command Lake Ontario, keep the peace with the
Iroquois, and cut off the trade with the English; and he proceeds to say
that by another fort at the mouth of the Niagara, and another vessel on
Lake Erie, we, the French, can command all the Upper Lakes. This plan
was an essential link in the schemes of La Salle; and we shall soon find
him employed in executing it.
A curious incident occurred soon after the building of the fort on Lake