Champlain and the Iroquois: Hurons and Ottawa

Each of the three Frenchmen was in a separate canoe, and, as it grew light, they kept themselves hidden, either by lying in the bottom, or covering themselves with an Indian robe. The canoes approached the shore, and all landed without opposition at some distance from the Iroquois, whom they presently could see filing out of their barricade, tall, strong men, some two hundred in number, of the boldest and fiercest warriors of North America. They advanced through the forest with a steadiness which excited the admiration of Champlain. Among them could be seen several chiefs, made conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some bore shields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of armor made of tough twigs interlaced with a vegetable fibre supposed by Champlain to be cotton.

The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for their champion, and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. He did so, and, advancing before his red companions-in-arms, stood revealed to the astonished gaze of the Iroquois, who, beholding the warlike apparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. But his arquebuse was levelled; the report startled the woods, a chief fell dead, and another by his side rolled among the bushes. Then there rose from the allies a yell, which, says Champlain, would have drowned a thunder-clap, and the forest was full of whizzing arrows. For a moment, the Iroquois stood firm and sent back their arrows lustily; but when another and another gunshot came from the thickets on their flank, they broke and fled in uncontrollable terror. Swifter than hounds, the allies tore through the bushes in pursuit. Some of the Iroquois were killed; more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the panic flight. The arquebuse had done its work. The victory was complete. .

The victors made a prompt retreat from the scene of their triumph. Three or four days brought them to the mouth of the Richelieu. Here they separated; the Hurons and the Algonquins made for the Ottawa, their homeward route, each with a share of prisoners for future torments. At parting they invited Champlain to visit their towns and aid them again in their wars, -- an invitation which this paladin of the woods failed not to accept.

Thus ended the first Indian battle in the northern United States, the fruitful seed of an abundant crop of future disasters. The subsequent history of Champlain may be rapidly epitomized. In the next year (1610) he took part in another successful war-expedition. In 1611 he founded the city of Montreal. The year 1613 he employed in an exploration of the Ottawa River, deceived by a statement that it led to a great lake which was connected with the North Sea. In 1614 he made another long journey, up the Ottawa, then overland to Lake Huron, and then south, in company with a war-party of Hurons, to the Iroquois country, where an attack was made on a strong fortification. The assault proved a failure. The Iroquois defended themselves valiantly, and finally drove off their foes, Champlain being twice wounded. In 1629, twenty years after the settlement of Quebec, it contained less than a hundred persons, and these the prey of a severe famine, from whose consequences they were saved only by a surrender of the place to the English, then at war with France. At the end of the war it was restored to France. The history of Canada during the remainder of the century is largely made up of the revenge taken by the Iroquois for their earlier disasters. Their dreaded foe, Champlain, died in 1635. He had aided in making a treaty of peace between the Hurons and the Iroquois in 1622, but in 1648 the latter broke the truce, and suddenly fell upon the French and their allies, slaughtering the whites without distinction of sex or age, and causing a complete dispersal of the Hurons, who ceased to exist as a separate tribe. For years afterwards the Iroquois remained lords of the situation, keeping the French shut up in their fortified posts, while their allies were left without succor. The Algonquins were dispersed, the Eries obliterated, and the war ended in 1672, after more than twenty years' duration, in the conquest of the Andastes, a powerful Huron tribe. In 1687 the war was renewed, through a treacherous act of Denonville, the Canadian governor, and in the succeeding year the Iroquois made a descent on the Island of Montreal, which they laid waste, and carried off two hundred prisoners. This brings us to the era of war between the French and the English, in which the services of the Indians were freely called into requisition, and desolating raids and massacres abounded.