Delphi complete works of.., p.745
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 745
This later gave the plan of defense of the walled town. Luckily for Maisonneuve’s settlers who were armed soldiers, the Iroquois who were now armed like themselves with firearms, seldom found what is rudely called “the guts” for a direct attack. Their method was stealth, ambush, death by night. A few resolute armed men might face and defy them. But the danger was present enough. Within a few weeks the Montreal settlers were to learn what it meant. And here perhaps one may pause by the waters of Ville Marie to speak of the Indian terror of which they murmured. It is necessary, as the key to the next half century of the history of Montreal, to understand the Indian situation and the Indian danger.
The Indians of North America had migrated, long before memory and history, from Asia and were thinly scattered over the continent. They perhaps numbered, in what is now the United States and Canada, something over a million. Here and there they lived in clustered lodges, on the Pacific coast (then all unknown) probably in still larger groups. But mostly they wandered. Their languages are numerous, about seventy-five in all, but show them all of one family. Even the Eskimos are Indians in the historic sense.
Of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi the most widely spread were the great family of the Algonquins. They occupied the country north of the Great Lakes, the Ottawa valley, the lower St. Lawrence, the maritime coast (Acadia), and the Atlantic seaboard of New England. They included such tribes as the Montagnais, a northern tribe of the “Kingdom of Saguenay”; the Ojibways (otherwise Chippewas); the Micmacs; the Narragansetts, and the Delawares. Their language is easily recognized by such sounds as Kebek, Mikmak, Shediac, and all that spells New Brunswick. The Algonquins were largely a nomadic race, hunting and fishing and moving with the game and the seasons.
Over against these, in the space between the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, and the Hudson River, were the Huron-Iroquois, tribes of one family but divided later by the dissensions that brought on the wars of extermination. Their language is seen in the softer sounds of Hochelaga, Stadacona, and Niagára (pronounced as it is in Indian). The Iroquois, like the Algonquins, carry their Indian name. But “Huron” is a French nickname from la hure, the boar’s head, a metaphor suggested by the peculiar tufted appearance, the particular fashion in scalp locks, of the shaven Huron head. Huron in Indian is Wyandot.
The Hurons lived along the lakes and the St. Lawrence. The Iroquois filled the gap between the Hudson and Niagara which proved the key point of American strategy. There were five nations of them, known always by the English version of their Indian names. The Mohawks lived, as one might expect, on the Mohawk River. The French called them Agniers. West from the Mohawks ran the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas. Apart from the Mohawks they all were similarly named in English and French. But the transcription of their names into the two languages is so varied as to be almost unrecognizable. It is hard to believe that the French for Seneca is Tsonnonchouan. This last nation, the most foul and savage of the five, if comparison is possible, lived between where Rochester and Buffalo now stand. They were the left flank of the Five Nations. The Mohawks on the right had as their war trail the descent of the beautiful waterways by Lake George, Lake Champlain, and the Richelieu. The traveler of today over the Delaware and Hudson Railway line may reconstruct, if he will, amid the beauty of the woods and water that he passes, the ambush, the massacres, and the savagery of the Indian war, the agonies of Father Jogues in the wilderness, and the butchery of Fort William Henry.
To the left the Seneca and Onondaga country can recall the expeditions of Denonville and Frontenac. Holding this central region, the Iroquois Five Nations, ferocious beyond all record, conquered to the verge of extermination their neighboring Indian enemies one by one and for a century and a half played off England against France and turned the tide, literally, of the world’s history. For had they sided with France, what then?
These Indians were savage beyond belief. To say that they burned their prisoners alive is to say the least of it. No one wishes to dwell on the horrors of torture, the remembrances of a cruelty long gone and passed to its account. But, to be done with it once and for all, one must speak of it here in order to understand the history of Montreal for its first sixty years, in order to know what were the warnings whispered by the moving waters beside Ville Marie. These Indians not only burned their prisoners but burned them with slow and studied tortures that kept pain alive and life not yet extinct. They unbound them from the stake to drag them, mutilated and bleeding, along the trail for torture renewed every evening and all night, dragged them to their home lodges so that their wives and children might assist in the final scenes, might heap with hideous childish merriment burning coals in patches on the torn bodies dying in the ashes. Nor this to their fighting enemies alone; they stuck little children on spits of wood to burn slowly to death before a slow fire. They forced women to burn their husbands to death with flaming brands of resinous wood. Nor was death the end. These unspeakable creatures chopped up the dead and tortured bodies of their enemies, to boil and roast them for their cannibal feasts. The choicest portion, the brain, fell to the share of the chief. “They ate men,” a contemporary witness wrote, “with as much appetite and more pleasure than hunters eat a boar or a stag.” It was Father Vimont who wrote that, the priest who celebrated the first Mass at Ville Marie.
Imagine such scenes of horror, and imagine among them the torn and tortured priest, Father Jogues, crawling to reach out his mutilated hands into the flames to baptize with a few drops of water the dying victim in the name of Jesus Christ.
Horrors are well to avoid. But no one who does not know of these things can understand the lights and shadows, the horror and the glory of Canadian history.
Maisonneuve’s colonists were soon to learn of them at first hand. In the middle summer of the year, August, 1642, Father Jogues, a Jesuit of the Huron Mission, was coming up the river from Quebec to Montreal, carrying with him renewed supplies sent out from France for his work — sacred vestments, chasubles, vessels for the altars, bread and wine for the Eucharist, and such holy and necessary things. With him were three French companions, two associated with his work, one a boatman, and a band of Huron converts, and others waiting baptism in the faith. In all they filled twelve canoes. Their journey brought them to a place in the river at the western end of Lake St. Peter, where the swift current and broken water forced them close beside the shores under the woods. Here two hundred Iroquois, hidden in the leaves, armed with firearms, motionless and without sound, waited for them. They were Mohawks who had come down by the Richelieu for this ambush. At the chosen moment, with the shriek of their war whoop and the discharge of their muskets, they fell upon their victims. The Huron made little fight; those who could escaped, as did one Frenchman. The others were killed or taken.
The Frenchmen stood their ground to be torn down by the savages. Jogues had remained unresisting, baptizing his dying Hurons. The savages turned on him. They beat him senseless and, when revived, chewed and lacerated his fingers with their teeth. . . . Twenty-two Hurons had been taken. Some of them were burned alive forthwith for the immediate enjoyment of their captives. Others with Father Jogues were dragged back along the Mohawk war trail to endure sufferings such as those described above — beaten, mutilated, burned — to end their death in fire. Jogues alone was kept alive. For months the savages held him to witness and to share the torments inflicted on each new group of captives taken on the warpath. At length the Dutch contrived to rescue him. They sent him on a ship to France. He arrived at the College of Rennes, house of his order, ragged, mutilated almost beyond recognition. There he was restored to life.
It has been finely said that there is no suffering that human cruelty can inflict too great for human fortitude to bear. Jogues returned to his mission work in New France, once more to labor, to suffer, and to die under Indian torment, his flesh cut into strips, a tomahawk smashed into his brain.
Such was the news that spread from the fugitives of the massacre to the settlers at Ville Marie in that late summer of 1642. Although a few more colonists were added to their number that August, they scarcely dared go beyond the shelter of their palisades. What we think of today as the upper part of Montreal, its beautiful squares, its tall hotels, its crowded streets, its embowered university, its spacious cathedrals, its roaring stadium — all this was forest. In it at any moment might lurk the Mohawk. Settlers who ventured too far might pay for it with their lives.
The settlers at Ville Marie for the opening years of their settlement had no better shelter than their palisaded camp beside the river. Their first real building was the Hotel Dieu (finished 1644) higher up on the bank, its site indicated today by the intersection of St. Paul Street with St. Sulpice Street (formerly St. Joseph). This was to be the hospital for the ministrations of Jeanne Mance and those who followed her to the mission. It was a large wooden building, protected with a palisade and serving also as the first church of these days. Burned in 1695, rebuilt to be burned again in 1721, again burned in 1734, it was rebuilt in the building used until 1861, when its place was taken by the building still occupied on Pine Avenue West.
The building of the Hotel Dieu was followed by the construction of a real fort, with solid walls and enclosed buildings, set on the tongue of land between the little St. Pierre River and the St. Lawrence. A cannon brought from Quebec was mounted on the fort. Beside it, on the tip of the tongue of land, was laid out the first cemetery, soon abandoned as the spring floods of the river gave even the dead no rest. Later on the fort also was abandoned and demolished, and M. de Callières, Governor of Montreal and, after Frontenac, of Canada, built a fine house on its former site. Hence the place was presently called the Pointe à Callières.
For Maisonneuve was built (1652), in a clearing of the woods between the Hotel Dieu and the fort, a large three-story wooden structure, something like a French chalet, and protected also with palisades. A rough track that later became St. Paul Street ran from the Hotel Dieu to this house, then turned and went over a little bridge to the fort. When the Sulpician priests came to Ville Marie (1650) they lived first in Maisonneuve’s house, which was remodeled to become (1661) their first seminary. It must be remembered, of course, that up to this time they were present at Ville Marie only as priests serving on mission. The feudal proprietors were still the “Compagnie de Montreal.” It was not till March 9, 1663, that the Compagnie transferred, with the consent of the Crown, its obligations and rights to the Seminary of Saint Sulpice at Paris. It was in 1712 that the Sulpicians moved into their “new” seminary, the one still occupied. But even before this they had constructed their outside fort in the woods (Le Fort des Messieurs), of which two corner towers still stand on Sherbrooke Street West.
TABLET ON THE FROTHINGHAN AND WORKMAN COURT OFF ST. PAUL STREET
Upon this foundation stood the first manor House of Montreal built 1661, burnt 1852, rebuilt 1853. It was the seminary of St. Sulpice from 1661 to 1712. Residence of de Maisonneuve, Governor of Montreal, and of Pierre Raimbault, Civil and Criminal Lieutenant General.
Pierre Raimbault lived in the house after the Sulpicians moved in 1712 into their “new” seminary, the one still standing.
Another pious foundation of the earliest days of Ville Marie was the Church of Notre Dame de Bonsecours farther downstream than the other building. It owes its foundation to the saintly labors of Marguerite Bourgeoys, who came to the mission in 1653, one of the most distinguished and devoted of the women who gave their lives to Ville Marie. Her labors were chiefly in the work of teaching. But she is remembered also for having brought out from France a miraculous statue of the Virgin and the funds to erect a chapel where it might stand in full sight from the river and serve as the guardian saint of approaching sailors.
Such, then, was the situation of the mission post of Ville Marie in the early years of its history, the Indian peril ever close at hand. Some Algonquins came about in the summer of 1642, but the Iroquois only learned of the settlement in the summer of 1643 when they kept it under watch, roving the forests in bands. On one occasion (it was June 9, 1643) six men who were cutting wood less than a hundred yards from the fort were attacked by a band of forty savages who rushed upon them from behind the trees. Three of them were killed outright, the rest carried off for a worse fate. One, it was said, escaped later.
Maisonneuve forbade all wandering out. Work must be to the sound of the bell, all leaving the fort together. Some of the more reckless of the French, chafing at this captivity, urged Maisonneuve to go out and fight. Their importunities, month after month, wore out his better judgment. He ordered thirty men to get ready and come out with him to fight. This was at the end of March (1644), with deep snow still in the hollows under the leafless trees, before the return of the birds to the forests. All was silent as they entered the woods. Then the hidden savages, a band of eighty Iroquois, rushed toward them. The French stood firm, firing from behind trees, learning the new strategy of the American woodsman. . . . Some fell. The others, under orders, moved back, tree to tree, toward the fort, Maisonneuve the last. The Iroquois, seeing who he was, tried to rush him, to drag him off captive. Maisonneuve turned at bay, fearless. As the Iroquois chief approached he fired; the pistol missed; his second pistol shot the chief dead. While the Indians clutched for the fallen body Maisonneuve escaped. The French, carrying some of their wounded, reached the fort. Three lay dead in the woods. Two were carried off and burned at the stake. After that no one ever questioned Maisonneuve’s courage or his commands.
This heroic conflict is one of the treasured memories of French Canada. The exact scene of the actual struggle is a matter of argument among antiquarians. We know at least that it was in the heart of the financial district of Montreal, near by the present struggles of the Stock Exchange.
Such scenes and such dangers marked the life of Montreal for its first three years. To safeguard its existence the Governor General of New France was ordered to build a fort at the foot of the Richelieu to block the Mohawk warpath. The Indians (two hundred) ambushed the French soldiers at their work. But they seized their arms just in time. After a fierce fight they beat off their assailants at odds of two to one. The Iroquois never had much heart for fighting man to man in the open.
Even at that the fort was of little service. The French were still to learn that against an Indian raid one fort was of little value. They carried their war canoes around it. There must be at least two and a stretch of protected water to make the portage long and hazardous. Hence another fort was presently built on the Richelieu beside the Chambly Rapids. Visitors to Montreal, at no greater sacrifice than a pleasant motor drive of twenty miles, may view the old fort at Chambly and study Indian strategy on the spot.
Maisonneuve’s historic fight had taken place at the end of March 1644. All through that year and well into the next there was no safety. The Iroquois seemed to swarm in the woods. Their war parties roved over all Montreal Island till there was no place safe except the fort itself. A small reinforcement of soldiers was sent out to New France by the Hundred Associates in 1645, sixty men to be divided along the river at Quebec, Three Rivers, the Richelieu fort, and Montreal. But their numbers, as with all the little detachments sent out at intervals in the next twenty years, were hopelessly few for adequate protection.
Yet their presence helped to induce the Iroquois to offer peace, which marked the close of what some historians care to call the First Iroquois War. But it closed only to open again more deadly than ever in the fall of 1646. The Iroquois war, or rather the series of raids and massacres, was to last, with only casual cessations, for twenty years.
Maisonneuve was absent when the war broke out; the momentary peace had allowed him (1646) to return to France for his personal affairs and for those of the Association of Montreal. He did not return to Ville Marie till 1648, when the danger was at its height. The raids never stopped. “At Montreal,” so wrote from Quebec the Jesuit Superior, “there are barely sixty Frenchmen, twenty Hurons, a few Algonquins, and two of our fathers.” “It is a marvel,” said the Jesuit Relation of 1651, “that the French of Ville Marie were not exterminated by the frequent surprises of the Iroquois bands. The Indians broke into the settlement again and again, sneaking among the trees or along the sunken ditches. Often ten men or less fought against fifty or eighty.” Here belong the heroic episodes of such fights as those of Charles le Moyne. At heavy odds he drove off a band of Iroquois from Point St. Charles, leaving them dead with only four French wounded. Here belongs also the heroic fight for the Hotel Dieu itself. This building was now armed with two pieces of cannon and with swivel guns in its windows. Early in the morning of Tuesday, July 26, 1651, a band of two hundred Iroquois swarmed against its palisades. Lambert Closse, the major of the garrison, whose figure stands as one of those on the Maisonneuve monument, with sixteen men fought off the attacks that never ceased till evening. There was need of courage. The terrible massacre which had already overwhelmed the mission of St. Louis among the Hurons on what is now the Georgian Bay, with the martyrdom of Father Brébeuf and Father Lalemantt, showed what might befall Ville Marie. Maisonneuve, going again to France to seek help, was almost in despair, ready to recall the colony.
The crowning episode of glory was found in 1660 in the voluntary sacrifice and death of Dollard des Ormeaux and his sixteen companions, a story that can be read beside that of Thermopylae. To save Ville Marie by going out to meet the Indians, Dollard and his companions, their sins confessed, their death accepted, fought off behind a rude stockade at the Long Sault on the Ottawa River the assaults of eight hundred savages. Only after eight or nine days did their heroic sufferings (wounded, sleepless, and without water) end in death by extermination. Dollard’s name is also written, as by Francis Parkman, as Daulac. Such confusion of spelling was natural in a colony where spelling was a rare art.
