The White and the Gold

by Thomas B. Costain

  It seems certain that Dollard’s suggestion was that he would take his party up the Ottawa and pick off as many as possible of the hunting parties as they returned down the river. This plan was a reasonable one. Maisonneuve listened and gave his assent.

  But, conceding that Dollard did not expect to face the heavy odds which he was doomed to encounter, the plan he proposed was both bold and patriotic. It achieved, wittingly or not, the great result which early chronicles declared to have been in his mind from the start, the salvation of Montreal. The glory he won is not dimmed if we conclude that he did not plan in the beginning to commit himself and his comrades to the certainty of death. The heroes of the Long Sault deserve all the praise and the adulation which have been accorded them down the slow-turning calendar of the years.

  3

  Charles le Moyne came over from Longueuil when he heard what was afoot. He wanted to join the party, but he was strongly of the opinion that it would be better to wait until he and the other settlers thereabouts had finished with the sowing of their crops. What would be the use of beating the Iroquois, he asked, if there would not be flour and vegetables that winter in the food warehouses along La Commune? It was early to make any move, he contended also. No Iroquois parties would be encountered on the Ottawa for at least a fortnight. On these points both Lambert Closse and Picoté de Belestre, fighting men of proven courage and sagacity, agreed with the young seigneur of Longueuil.

  Dollard refused to wait. Perhaps this was due to a sense of urgency, a fear that the opportunity would be lost if they delayed. Perhaps—and this is the reason most generally accepted—he was concerned because he would have to surrender the command of the party if these men of established seniority joined. He felt that the plan was his and that he should have the responsibility of carrying it through. Whatever the reason, he convinced his followers that they must leave at once.

  He had recruited sixteen men, all as eager as he was to risk their lives in the common cause. The gallant seventeen made their wills, confessed, and received the sacrament in the little stone chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu.

  The band who knelt before the altar were almost pitifully young. There was one among them who had reached his thirty-first year; the rest were in their twenties, for the most part the early twenties. Their earnest faces carried the flush of youth and an exultation due to the fineness of the cause. They were not men of knightly rank venturing out to a deed of high emprise; they were of humble stock, soldiers who had come with the last contingent, artisans, tillers of the soil. The list of their names, which is still preserved and honored, testifies to the low social level from which most of them sprang.

  Because they were not experienced woodsmen, they lost time in negotiating the swift and treacherous currents around Montreal Island; a delay which Charles le Moyne could have saved them. It was a full week before they managed to enter the mouth of the tumultuous tributary. The task continued hard as they battled the swift-flowing waters. They passed the Carillon and then the Chute à Blondeau. It was only after nearly two weeks of backbreaking effort that they came to the narrow passage where in a white fury the roaring waters of the Long Sault rolled by.

  This was on May 1, and none of the Iroquois had yet come down the Ottawa. Here they decided to wait.

  A short distance back from the angry waters, on the eastern side of the Sault, they found an abandoned stockade. It was no more than a rough enclosure of logs, high enough to give protection to crouching men but not reinforced in any way and already showing signs of disintegration. This was indeed a stroke of luck, for all the heaviest work involved in creating a fort had been done. A little more effort would have turned the stockade into a tight island of defense against which an Iroquois wave might beat in vain. If Dollard and his followers had been expecting a large war party to come down the river against them, they would have taken advantage of this spell allowed them to raise the walls and strengthen them in every way. As it was, they did nothing. They even raised their kettles along the bank of the stream and did not stock the fort with provisions or water. This is the second reason, a conclusive one, for supposing that Dollard and his young companions had not anticipated the proportions of the risk ahead of them.

  At this point a large party of Indian allies joined them. There were forty Hurons under a wise and brave chief named Anahotaha and four Algonquins from Three Rivers led by Mitewemeg. They had arrived in Montreal and had heard of the bold venture of the seventeen Frenchmen and had conceived a desire to take a hand. Apparently there was open talk of Dollard’s plan in Montreal, and this would not have been the case if it had been regarded as a matter of high military strategy; nor, for that matter, would the Indian allies have been venturing along the St. Lawrence if they had known of the Iroquois concentration at Richelieu. Maisonneuve had given the chiefs a letter to Dollard to serve as their credentials.

  Dollard seems to have welcomed the newcomers and the unexpected augmentation of strength they gave him. For two more days they waited.

  4

  At last the hour struck. The scouts placed at the head of the Sault brought down word that two canoes, filled with Iroquois, were in sight. Dollard now gave proof of his capacity as a soldier. He selected a spot where he judged the Iroquois would land, and here his men concealed themselves in the underbrush. The ambush had been shrewdly planted, for the two elm-bark canoes, containing five Iroquois braves, pulled in here. As they came ashore the concealed Frenchmen fired a volley. Unfortunately one of the Iroquois escaped unharmed and carried the word back to the main party.

  Almost at once, it seemed, the narrow stream became filled with canoes manned by savages eager to avenge the attack. The startled Dollard, making a hasty appraisal of the enemy strength, saw that there were forty or fifty canoes in the water. This meant a force of not less than two hundred warriors. For the first time, perhaps, he realized the extreme jeopardy in which he and his companions were placed. He ordered a retreat to the shelter of the fort.

  The Iroquois swarmed ashore like angry hornets. Without making any attempt at organization they came down on the stockade in an immediate attack. The Frenchmen and their allies poured volley after volley into them, killing and wounding many. The Iroquois chiefs soon realized from the firmness of the resistance that such a hasty onslaught would not succeed. They drew their men back out of range. A council was held, and then several of the furiously discomfited warriors came forward to open a parley.

  The heat of the conflict was in the blood of the little band behind the loosely constructed log wall. Without pausing for thought, they fired on the Iroquois emissaries, killing several of them. Those who escaped rejoined the waiting warriors in the woods above.

  Anahotaha is reported to have given his head a grave shake at this. He said to Dollard: “Ah, comrade, you have spoiled everything. You ought to have waited the result of the council our enemies are holding.”

  The state of mind which now possessed the Iroquois braves can easily be conceived. This interruption to their plans was a complete surprise. They had lost many of their number, shot down in that first angry attempt to clear the daring Frenchmen from their path, and there was in the men of the Five Nations a sense of loyalty which made the sight of their dead the most potent incitement to increased effort. If any serious delay resulted here, they would be late for the appointed rendezvous with the large concentration near the mouth of the Richelieu. The hasty council they held, therefore, was not marked by deliberate and rational discussion; it was, rather, an explosion of furious talk. Being wily tacticians, even when roused to the highest fighting pitch, they concluded that another frontal assault would be too costly. Perhaps they were misjudging the size of the force opposed to them; at any rate, their next step was to begin building a fort of their own farther up the river.

  This gave Dollard and his men an opportunity to accomplish the task they should have set themselves to as soon as they arrived and found the log barricade. They reinforced the wall by cutting branches from
the trees about them and binding them around the stakes and the crosspieces, thus turning the shaky structure into a solid circular wall. All gaps were stuffed with earth and stones, leaving only small loopholes. Realizing the dire peril in which they stood, the young Frenchmen worked in desperate haste; and as they worked they could see bands of the Iroquois ranging up and down the shore of the noisy Sault, smashing the canoes they found there (thus destroying the last chance of the French to make a dash for safety) and demolishing the kettles suspended over the ashes of the last fire.

  The second attack was launched from all sides and with the suddenness and weight of a thunderbolt. The men of the Long House rushed boldly out from the cover of the trees, leaping in the air as they ran and screaming in hate and rage. They strove to build a fire against the stockade, using for fuel the bark of the French canoes. Inside the fort there was no trace of panic. Dollard’s voice in directing the defense was clear and confident and amazingly cool. The Frenchmen at their small loopholes poured a devastating fire into the close ranks of the enemy. The Iroquois, failing to set the wall ablaze, retreated in a sudden confusion. Their chiefs rallied them and they came back a second time; with the same result. A third attack was broken and repulsed, and then the chagrined warriors returned to their own rude fort for a second council of war.

  The result of the Iroquois debate was proof of the bewilderment and dismay they were feeling as a result of the unexpected firmness of the French stand. They came to the conclusion that their strength was not sufficient to clear the path unassisted. Messengers were sent off to the main concentration, asking for reinforcements.

  For five days there was a lull, but this did not mean that the Iroquois were idle. They kept a close watch on the stockade, sniping with matchlock and bow from behind the trees, maintaining at all times a threat of attack so that the defenders were never permitted a moment’s ease. This was typical of Iroquois methods. Equally typical was the plan they carried out to split the defense forces. Renegade Hurons in the attacking force kept up a constant verbal assault on the followers of Anahotaha. The whole of the Iroquois strength was coming, they shouted gleefully, they were coming in their hundreds and thousands. The water would be black with their canoes, the loud roar of the rapids would be lost in the great battle cry of the Long House.

  “Come!” they cried. “Save yourselves while you have the chance. Come over to us!”

  The gallant Frenchmen behind the earth-chinked logs had no illusions. Death faced them, swift and inexorable. They had one consolation left: that they still had it in their power to make the Iroquois victory a costly one. In the hope of diverting attack from the vulnerable little town at the meeting place of the rivers, they would fight on. But their Indian allies had no such consolation, and it is not surprising that the followers of Anahotaha began to hearken to this invitation dinned so insistently into their ears. If there was a shred of hope left for them, it was in heeding the forked tongues of the renegades. One by one the Hurons began to climb the barricade.

  The Indians who remained jeered as the deserters sprang over the top and scuttled across the open space, which was now heaped high with the bodies of the dead. This, as it turned out, was sheer bravado. None of the Hurons caught in this deathtrap had any stomach left for fighting. Even as they jeered they were edging up to the barricade in order to join the exodus. In the end the brave Anahotaha was the only member of his party who remained. The four Algonquins, to whom no promise of clemency had been held out, remained with their chief when the last of the Hurons had vanished. But they were a badly shaken lot.

  The position of the small remnant was a desperate one. Rest was denied them, for the foe maintained the threat of attack through the hours of darkness. They had no water, and their thirst became so great that they could not force down their throats the dry rations which remained. Hungry, thirsty, unnerved by lack of sleep, the gaunt young men stood at the loopholes and prayed constantly to the God in Whom they placed their trust.

  On the fifth day the warriors from the Richelieu concentration arrived, more than five hundred in all. The din of their arrival, the triumphant war whoops which echoed through the woods, the formidable massing on all sides accentuated the hopelessness of the odds; seven or eight hundred trained fighting men, filled with hate and rage, against seventeen weary Frenchmen and six native allies. The defenders were starved, maddened with thirst, their nerves raw. The end, it was only too clear, could not long be delayed.

  But in an area as restricted as the ground over which the small redoubt could be attacked, the law of diminishing returns came into operation. Eight hundred Iroquois could do little more, when it came to a frontal attack, than two hundred, save to assure replacements and an unrelenting persistence. The first attack, delivered to the eldritch clamor of hundreds of threats, was no more successful than the earlier ones. The desperate defenders treated the charging tribesmen to such a welcome of lead that the Iroquois charge curled back like a spent wave, broke, and receded. This check was so unexpected that an Iroquois council was held immediately after, and the suggestion of abandoning the contest was seriously debated.

  Second thoughts prevailed, however. The Unbeatable Men, the Ongue Honwe, as they still proudly called themselves, could not concede their inability to break down the resistance of a mere handful. The stockade must be carried, no matter at what cost in lives. For three days they busied themselves with preparations, keeping up an incessant all-day and all-night aggression. The white of complete exhaustion began to show under the two weeks’ accumulation of beard on the faces of the defenders. Staggering from lack of nourishment, they were barely able to keep their positions at the loopholes.

  The Iroquois chiefs then produced the packages of sticks. This was always a solemn moment in the Spartan ritual of war which the men of the Five Nations observed. The sticks were strewn on the ground near the simmering food kettles. No exhortation was delivered, no form of compulsion employed. Each man willing to attack in the van was expected to come forward and pick up one of the sticks.

  There was no delay, no holding back. The tall, proud volunteers stepped up and each selected his stick. These bold spirits were then given shields which had been fashioned out of the trunks of trees during the three days of preparation. Behind these they crouched, waiting for the signal to advance, another Birnam Wood ready to move on Dunsinane.

  The charge was delivered from all quarters. Nothing could exceed the dread and horror of the scene on which the eyes of the little white handful rested. First came the Men of the Sticks, bold, vengeful, crouching like tigers behind their rough shields, lighted torches in their hands to be applied to the logs of the barricade; behind this vanguard the less bold spirits, fierce nevertheless in their war paint, wildly vocal. If the defenders cast despairing glances upward, they were robbed of a last glimpse of the sun, for the smoke of the torches and the burning fuel, which was being dragged forward, had already mounted above the tops of the trees. It was impossible to exchange a word, for the air was filled with the wild screeching of the embattled braves. Only one consolation was left, and each of the gallant young men took advantage of it, without a doubt, to say a brief prayer. Perhaps each made a special intercession, “O God, in Thy mercy, let me die in the fighting!”

  The charge did not succeed at once, so stoutly were the loopholes manned. It was the recoil of an experiment which gave the Iroquois their chance. Dollard had crammed a musketoon with powder and bullets, intending to toss it over the barricade so that it would explode in the close ranks of the attacking redskins. His aim was not good; the handmade grenade struck the top of the logs and fell back into the enclosure. The explosion which followed killed several of the defenders and nearly blinded the rest. In the confusion thus created, the Iroquois gained possession of some of the loopholes and began to fire through them at the surviving members of the little band.

  It was soon over then. The Men of the Sticks climbed the barricade, tomahawks out and ready, scalping knives bare i
n their belts, screeching in triumph. Dollard was one of the first killed. In the hand-to-hand fighting which ensued the Frenchmen were soon cut down. All but four died in the struggle, and of the survivors, three were so close to death that the savages dispatched them where they lay. The fate of the fourth has never been determined definitely. He may have succumbed to his wounds before he could be carried away to die on a torture platform; and even after a lapse of three centuries it is impossible to suppress a shudder at the thought of the terrible retribution which may have been exacted of one unfortunate man.

  The Men of the Sticks tossed their improvised shields on the fire which licked at the barricade of logs. They had gambled with death and now they could strut in the insolence of pride in their home villages, each with his stick suspended around his neck. The Iroquois losses had not been heavy on this last day, but it is much to be doubted if the leaders of this great concentration took satisfaction out of the result. They had won, but at a bitter cost in men, in prestige, in the complete dislocation of their plans for driving the French into the sea.

  5

  A few days after the finish of the struggle a trading company came down the Ottawa in canoes loaded with fur from a profitable winter of hunting and trading. In the van were the two eager young men who had slipped out in the dead of night through the harbor guards at Three Rivers, Radisson and Groseilliers.