French Jesuits in America

Coeval with the rise of Protestantism in Germany, was the foundation of a society designed to counteract its influence. It was established by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish enthusiast, and was called the Society of Fesus. It is better known in later times as the Order of Fesuits. Their organization was as perfect as any which human wisdom has yet devised for a special object. They are not a society of priests, but of Roman Catholics of every degree, bound by a solemn oath to extend the sway of the Church of Rome, and to fight Protestantism wherever it may be found. Their missionaries were soon found proselyting in every quarter of the globe. They regarded as a brother every man, without respect to skin or lineage; and the French Jesuits, who were the pioneers of French dominion in America, regarded every convert to Christianity among the savages an enfranchised citizen of France. Whole tribes came under their spiritual sway, and many of the votaries of commerce, who followed them into the wilds of America to traffic with the Indians, made wives of the native maidens, and so established strong social ties between the French and the savages. When, therefore, the former quarrelled with the English, they could rely upon the latter as faithful allies; and this barbarian element in the contest made border wars tenfold more distressing to the English colonists, especially to those of New England. The border settlers in New York had the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, like a strong wall, between themselves and the Indians in Canada.

The eastern Indians were easily excited into hostility by those white allies. Dover, a frontier town of New Hampshire, was the first to feel the violent hands of the mongrel foe. There three hundred Indians had been treacherously doomed to slavery years before. Revenge had slumbered; now it was awakened and was gratified. The venerable Major Waldron, then eighty years of age, and a local magistrate, had been a party to the treachery. On a warm evening in July, 1689, two squaws craved lodging at his house. They lay upon the floor, and in the night they unbarred the doors and let in several painted warriors. The aroused old man seized his sword and fought valiantly, until he was overpowered, when, with bitter taunts, they tortured him to death in his own hall. Then they laid his house in ashes, killed twenty of the garrison, and carried away nearly thirty persons and sold them as slaves to the French in Canada.

In August, a party came from Penobscot, after being purified by confession by Thury a Jesuit priest, and captured the garrison at Pemaquid, which Andros had established there. In February following, Governor Frontenac sent three hundred French and Indians from Montreal to destroy Albany. Through deep snows they made their way as far as Schenectady, a frontier town on the Mohawk, and at midnight burned the dwellings and murdered more than sixty of the inhabitants there. Seventeen of the slain were children. Early the next spring several eastern villages shared the same fate, and scores of women and children were carried away captives and suffered untold cruelties.

These atrocities--murders in cold blood--aroused all the colonies to a sense of danger, and on the suggestion of Massachusetts, a congress of delegates from several colonies met at New York on the first of May, 1690, to devise measures for the general security. Already the colony of Massachusetts had fitted out an expedition against Acadie, under Sir William Phipps, of Pemaquid, consisting of eight vessels with eight hundred men. He seized Port Royal, and obtained plunder sufficient to pay the expenses of the expedition. The town was again plundered by English privateers from the West Indies, in June; so retaliation went on. The Congress at New York resolved to invade Canada by land and sea, with an army that should march from the Hudson River by way of Lake Champlain to Montreal; and, at the same time, a strong naval armament was to ascend the St. Lawrence and attack Quebec. The army was placed under the command of a son of Governor Winthrop, of Connecticut, the cost of the expedition being borne jointly by that colony and New York; and Milborne, son-in-law of Leisler [see Chapter V of this Book], undertook to furnish the supplies. The command of the fleet, which was composed of thirty-four vessels manned by two thousand New Englanders, was given to Phipps.

The army moved from Albany early in July, at a snail's pace. At the beginning of September the bulk of them had only reached the head of Lake Champlain, where they remained, while some troops, and Indians of the Five Nations, under Colonel Peter Schuyler, pushed on toward the St. Lawrence. Old Frontenac was in Montreal when an Indian runner told him of the approach of the invaders. He called out his Indian allies. Taking a tomahawk in his hand, he danced the war-dance and chanted the war-song, in their presence, and then led them against the foe. Schuyler was repulsed, and the whole army returned to Albany. Leisler charged Winthrop with treachery, and Winthrop, in turn, charged the failure of the expedition to the inefficiency of Milborne in furnishing supplies.