Champlain and the Iroquois: Grande Isle

Late in the day they landed and drew up their canoes, ranging them closely side by side. All was life and bustle. Some stripped sheets of bark, to cover their camp-sheds; others gathered wood,--the forest was full of dead, dry trees; others felled the living trees, for a barricade. They seem to have had steel axes, obtained by barter from the French; for in less than two hours they had made a strong defensive work, a half-circle in form, open on the river side, where their canoes lay on the strand, and large enough to enclose all their huts and sheds. Some of their number had gone forward as scouts, and, returning, reported no signs of an enemy. This was the extent of their precautions, for they placed no guard, but all, in full security, stretched themselves to sleep,--a vicious custom from which the lazy warrior of the forest rarely departs.

An important part of the subsequent proceedings was the operation of the medicine-man, who entered his magic lodge and invoked the spirits in mumbling tones, while his dusky audience listened in awe and wonder. Suddenly the lodge rocked with violence to and fro,--as alleged, by the power of the spirits, through Champlain could see the first of the medicine-man shaking the poles. The diviner was now seized with convulsions, and invoked the spirit in an unknown language, while the answer came in squeaking and feeble accents. This mummery over, the chief stuck sticks in the earth in a certain order, each stick representing a warrior and indicating his position in the expected battle. They all gathered round and studied the sticks, then formed, broke, and reformed their ranks with alacrity and skill.

Again the canoes advanced, the river widening as they went. Great islands appeared, leagues in extent,--Isle a la Motte, Long Island, Grande Isle. Channels where ships might float and broad reaches of expanding water stretched between them, and Champlain entered the lake which preserves his name to posterity. Cumberland Head was passed, and from the opening of the great channel between Grande Isle and the main he could look forth on the wilderness sea. Edged with woods, the tranquil flood spread southward beyond the sight. Far on the left the forest ridges of the Green Mountains were heaved against the sun, patches of snow still glistening on their tops; and on the right rose the Adirondacks, haunts in these later years of amateur sportsmen from counting-rooms or college halls, nay, of adventurous beauty, with sketch-book and pencil. Then the Iroquois made them their hunting-ground; and beyond, in the valleys of the Mohawk, the Onondaga, and the Genesee, stretched the long line of their five cantons and palisaded towns.

The progress of the party was becoming dangerous. They changed their mode of advance, and moved only in the night.. At twilight they embarked again, paddling their cautious way till the eastern sky began to redden. Their goal was the rocky promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was long afterwards built. Thence they would pass the outlet of Lake George, and launch their canoes again on that Como of the wilderness.. Landing at the future site of Fort William Henry, they would carry their canoes through the forest to the river Hudson, and, descending it, attack, perhaps, some outlying town of the Mohawks.

The allies were spared so long a progress. On the morning of the twenty-ninth of July, after paddling all night, they hid as usual in the forest on the western shore, not far from Crown Point. The warriors stretched themselves to their slumbers, and Champlain, after walking for a time through the surrounding woods, returned to take his repose on a pile of spruce boughs.

It was ten o'clock in the evening, when they descried dark objects in motion on the lake before them. These were a flotilla of Iroquois canoes, heavier and slower than theirs, for they were made of oak bark (or more probably elm bark). Each party saw the other, and the mingled war-cries pealed over the darkened water. The Iroquois, who were near the shore, having no stomach for an aquatic battle, landed, and, making night hideous with their clamors, began to barricade themselves. Champlain could see them in the woods laboring like beavers, hacking down trees with iron axes taken from the Canadian tribes in war, and with stone hatchets of their own making. The allies remained on the lake, a bowshot from the hostile barricade, their canoes made fast together by poles lashed across. All night they danced with as much vigor as the frailty of their vessels would permit, their throats making amends for the enforced restraint of their limbs. It was agreed on both sides that the fight should be deferred till daybreak; but meanwhile a commerce of abuse, sarcasm, menace, and boasting gave unceasing exercise to the lungs and fancy of the combatants,--"much," says Champlain, "like the besiegers and besieged in a beleaguered town."

As day approached, he and his two followers put on the light armor of the time. Champlain wore the doublet and long hose then in vogue. Over the doublet he buckled on a breastplate, and probably a back-piece, while his thighs were protected by cuisses of steel, and his head by a plumed casque. Across his shoulder lay the straps of his bandoleer, or ammunition-box; at his side was his sword, and in his hand his arquebuse, which he had loaded with four balls. Such was the equipment of this ancient Indian-fighter, whose exploits date eleven years before the landing of the Puritans at Plymouth, and sixty-six years before King Philip's War.