The White and the Gold

by Thomas B. Costain

  The galley, propelled by great banks of oars or “sweeps,” had ceased by this time to be a ship of war, but France still kept a few of them in the Mediterranean as a means of punishment for criminals. The galiot was a tall vessel with sails as well as banks of thirty-two oars on each side. The slaves were the most unfortunate and the most pitied of men. In earlier ages they had been chained to their benches and kept there until they died. At this stage there was some slight mitigation of their lot. The galleys would go out on cruises and the slaves would pull on the oars, three or more to each, under the lash of supervisors. The supervisors had their own beds built over part of the bench they controlled, and those who sat immediately under were in luck because they escaped the indiscriminating flail of the lash. To be “under the bench,” the poor criminals toadied to their supervisors in every possible way. Between cruises the slaves would be kept in prisons, so closely packed into dark cells that they would have to sit knee to knee on damp masonry. They had the word “gal” branded on their backs, but it was generally hard to distinguish the letters because of the scars left by the whips of the galley masters.

  To condemn Indians to such a fate was particularly cruel. They were accustomed to a life in the open air, and their lungs soon collapsed in the fetid atmosphere of the galleys. Having as well a racial tendency to melancholia, the most powerful of them would pine away and die in such surroundings.

  Frontenac, who understood the Indians, would have brushed such instructions aside with no ceremony at all. Denonville, the earnest and obedient servant of the King, decided it was his duty to carry out the orders which had come to him.

  His choice of victims was as faulty as his judgment in taking action at all. If the unfortunate braves he sent to the galleys had been prisoners of war there might have been a bare excuse, for there were only differences of degree in the barbarity with which such prisoners were treated. Instead he sent the new intendant Champigny (Meules, the playing-card moneyman, had been recalled by this time) to the north shore of Lake Ontario, where there were two villages of expatriate Iroquois engaged in hunting and fishing. By various wiles these harmless people were coaxed into the waiting maw and, when the catch had been sifted out, fifty-one able-bodied men were left in the net. Until such time as they could be placed on ships and sent off to the galiots of Marseilles, the puzzled and frightened natives were tied to stakes and kept in this trussed-up position for many days. Some of them died of exposure.

  The unfortunate prisoners were being held in this way at Fort Frontenac when Baron la Hontan arrived to take part in the final phase of Denonville’s plans, the expedition against the Senecas. He reported that it was a favorite occupation of the Christian Indians, allies of the French, to burn the fingers of the men strapped to their stakes with the bowls of their tobacco pipes.

  Some of the prisoners were freed later, but a large number were sent to France. It had been in Denonville’s highly unimaginative mind that what he was doing would serve as a lesson and a warning to the Five Nations. When he discovered that his action had created an entirely different reaction, stirring the Iroquois tribes to a furious desire for revenge, he wrote to the colonial minister, begging that the prisoners be sent back.

  Many of the prisoners had died in their cruel captivity, but even if it had been possible to send them all back, sound and well, the damage could not be undone. The Iroquois never forgave this exhibition of treachery. With them it was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; and for every one of the harmless fishermen thus sent to a lingering death, many Canadian men and women would die in torment at the stake.

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  Denonville, earnest though he was by nature and honorable according to his lights, was still not above resorting to subterfuge in the matter of the projected attack on the British at Hudson’s Bay. As the two countries were at peace, he could not proceed against them openly and so he left it to the Compagnie du Nord to assume the responsibility. Seeing a chance at last to undo the grievous errors which had driven Radisson and Groseilliers to London and so had led to the English occupation, the enterprising merchants who composed the French company were only too ready to take advantage of the governor’s compliance.

  What followed has an importance out of proportion to the significance of the event itself, for this was the introduction to the pages of Canada’s history of one of her truly great sons, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville. He was third in the family in point of years but already he was recognized as outstanding among the many tall, brave sons of that equally brave father, Charles le Moyne. Born in 1661, Pierre was now twenty-five years of age and had spent his life on the wilderness trails and in the maritime service of France. It is unfortunate that so little is known about this remarkable man who was soon to demonstrate his ability to command successfully both on land and sea. To present him as he was in the flesh, to make him come alive by anecdote and story, would be a grateful task for any narrator of those stirring events. This much can be repeated: that his brief career was filled with such amazing exploits that the luster of his name would have shone with the bravest figures of French history had they not been enacted in the obscurity of an overlooked colonial backwater.

  It had been decided that the command of the expedition should be in the hands of the Chevalier de Troyes of Montreal, which lent something of official sanction to the effort. The Chevalier de Troyes was a good soldier but he dropped into the background when from the ranks there emerged the figure of the daring and inspired Iberville.

  In all honesty it is impossible to describe this beloved paladin of New France. Over the years stories have grown up about him and bits of description have accumulated which have served as a portrait of the man; but it must be asserted that most of this, if not actually all, has no basis in fact. It has been assumed that he was strongly built, which seems a reasonable conclusion, and also that he wore his hair long as his father had done before him; and this also seems within the range of probabilities because the close cropping of hair had not become general then and a woodsman venturing out into the wilds in a wig would be an absurdity. Perhaps, then, the gallant Iberville had ringlets falling to his shoulders. This is a pleasant assumption; but whether his hair glistened like ripe corn in the sun or inclined instead to the dark coloring more general among men of his race is open territory for personal preferences.

  With Iberville were two of his brothers, Jacques de Ste. Hélène, his senior by two years, and Paul de Maricourt, who was two years younger. Ste. Hélène was destined to an early death in the service of his country, and so it is impossible to make any comparisons among these elder brothers. Maricourt seems to have been quite different from the vivid and outstanding Iberville. He was already a rare woodsman, although he had not yet acquired his nickname among the Indians of Little-Bird-Always-in-Motion. One assumes from this picturesque term that Maricourt lacked the stature of his better-known brothers and that he possessed perhaps a delicacy of physique which would set him apart from them.

  The expedition left early in the spring of 1686. It had been decided, most wisely, to take the overland route to the bay, that pet project of the unlucky and unstable Radisson. The party proceeded up the Ottawa River, passed Lake Temiscaming and Lake Abitibi, and then proceeded north on the Abitibi River to strike at the nearest of the English posts, Fort Hayes, which lay about equidistant between the two other posts covering the southern portion of James Bay, Fort Rupert on the east and Fort Albany on the west. If they had sailed from Quebec, the arrival of their ship in the northern reaches of the bay would have been detected quickly and all element of surprise would have been lost. As it was, they emerged from the desolation of this unknown muskeg country like the men of Israel under Joshua surprising the city of Ai from the impassable hills or, to cast on into the future, Wolfe debouching on the Plains of Abraham.

  There were sixteen men in the four-bastioned stockade of Fort Hayes and they were sleeping snugly in their beds when the eighty Frenchmen materialized out of darkness in the
night attack. Troyes led his main force against the gate, which he proceeded to belabor with a battering-ram made from the trunk of a tree. What made the victory easy, however, was the fact that Iberville and his two brothers and a squad of the boldest French Canadians had climbed over one of the side walls and were already in possession of the compound when the first crash of the ram split the air. The English came rushing out to see what convulsion of nature had thus disturbed their slumbers, to find Iberville and his men scowling at them over leveled muskets.

  Before news of this bloodless triumph could circulate along the swampy and dismal shores of the Great Bay by that form of forest telepathy which has never been fully explained, the jubilant French force had covered the forty leagues eastward to Fort Rupert. The same tactics were employed: a night attack, a party scaling the walls and exploding a grenade down the chimney of the blockhouse where the garrison slept, a break through the main gate at the same time. Iberville had been assigned a still more daring part of the operation. A vessel lay at anchor near the fort, and it was seen to be highly essential that it should not get away to carry the alarm to the remaining English post. The daring Pierre led a small party over the side of the ship. They found the sentry asleep and killed him, then gave short shrift to such other members of the crew as came up through the hatch to investigate. The rest of the crew, imprisoned in the hold, finally surrendered. A big fish was caught in this casting of the net, none other than Governor Bridgar, who commanded on the bay for the Gentlemen Adventurers.

  The capture of Fort Albany, which lay to the west where the river of that name flowed into the ice-clogged waters of the bay, was a different matter. Somehow the garrison, which consisted of thirty men under the command of a resolute agent named Sargent, had heard what was afoot. Lacking the advantage of surprise which had made their successes relatively easy, the Frenchmen had to adopt more conventional methods. From the two forts already in their hands they brought ten cannon in the vessel which Iberville had captured and which he now commanded. The guns were mounted on a hill overlooking the fort. The fusillade directed at the fort from this protected position was so deadly that in the matter of an hour the stockade was in flames and the garrison had taken refuge in a cellar. The white flag was hoisted and terms of surrender were arranged between Troyes and the crestfallen Sargent.

  The part the Le Moyne brothers had played in this remarkably successful raid was recognized in the appointment of Maricourt to remain in command of the captured forts while the rest of the party returned to Montreal in triumph.

  The news of the raid shook London, and there was such clamor for reprisal that the submissive attitude of King James could not hold things in check. King Louis had to send a special envoy to London to assist Barillon, his Ambassador, in countering the angry demands made for the restitution of the forts and recompense for the losses sustained. A neutrality pact was signed finally at Whitehall. Whether the English had any intention of keeping it cannot be judged by what followed, but the French King soon made it clear that such was not his purpose.

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  Denonville had made Irondequoit Bay on the south shore of Lake Ontario the rendezvous for the forces he now intended to lead against the Senecas. He arrived there himself with four hundred canoes and two thousand men. By the greatest of good luck he reached the bay on the same day as his Indian allies from the north and west. They came four hundred strong, accompanied by a band of coureurs de bois led by three of the bravest Frenchmen in the West, Du Lhut, La Durantaye, and Henri Tonty.

  The Senecas had been marked down as the victims of this great drive because they were the most numerous and powerful of the Five Nations and, at the moment, the most belligerent; more obdurate even than the Mohawks, who had once opposed the French with the greatest determination. There was another reason, however, which focused hostility on this single nation. Dark rumors had spread about the Senecas. Not only had more Frenchmen and their allies been burned to death in the main village of the tribe, but the place was reputed to be the scene of strange orgies. Men whispered about the dark magic practiced there, calling the village Babylon, Sodom, or Gomorrah. Witchcraft of the most foul and devilish description was carried out in dark temples of infamy. The Senecas must therefore be wiped out first. Perhaps their fate would teach the rest of the Iroquois tribes to bury the hatchet for good and consent to live on terms of friendship with the rest of the world.

  The strength of the invaders was so great that the Senecas, after one unsuccessful attempt to ambush the advancing Frenchmen, retreated in panic toward the east, taking their families with them and such food supplies as they could hastily gather. Before running away, however, they burned the main village about which such unsavory stories had been told. Even if it had been left standing, it would have disappointed the least avid of the invaders. It had occupied the crest of a hill and it was neither very large nor very strong; a tawdry affair of tanbark and logs. Where were the temples in which the medicine men had performed their dreadful rites? Was this the scene of the orgies in which the strange and fierce tribesmen indulged?

  All the French found were the blackened remnants of small lodgings and the mask of a medicine man attached to a bearskin. One recorder, not to be robbed of his chance for an effect, speaks of the many snakes slithering about the ruins and over the graves of dead Senecas, believing them to be evidence of the evil which had existed there.

  One thing was certain: the valleys and hills of the Seneca country were bright with warm sunshine and covered with great fields of maize. About the stalks of the corn there crept, not snakes and rodents, but the thick vines of the yellow pumpkin. There would have been a bountiful harvest if the green fields had been left to the ripening sun, but the French spent ten days of backbreaking labor in cutting down the corn and burning the fields. Three other villages were located and burned. Convinced then that the Senecas had been taught a lesson they would never forget, the invaders turned and marched to Niagara, where a fort of considerable size and strength was built.

  The Senecas did not forget. The other four nations shared in the hatred inspired by the French attack. Nor had the Iroquois forgotten the seizure of the harmless fishermen on the Bay of Quinte, some of whom were still tugging at their oars under the lash of slave masters. They had never forgotten, it might be added, the first sight of a white man vouchsafed their fathers: Champlain stepping out from the ranks of the Hurons in his glistening breastplate and bobbing plumes with his strange new weapon, the terrible musket. While Denonville set his men to work at Niagara, the gloomy interior of the council house at Onondaga echoed with the talk of the chiefs assembled there to decide upon measures of reprisal.

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  The demolition of the Seneca villages was followed by a period of indecision. Denonville was realizing that his problem had not been solved by the partial victory he had scored. Canada was faced with a famine. There had been no furs delivered for two years, and the revenues of the colony were at a low ebb. Finally it was obvious to the blindest of observers that the Iroquois were hatching schemes of revenge. Even the fact that the wary and active Dongan had been recalled by the British Government and that a new governor, Sir Edmund Andros, had been sent out to take charge of all the Anglo-Saxon possessions in the New World did not bring Denonville any sense of security or relief. He began to write the King in a state of panic, begging for more troops.

  The Iroquois, deep in their plans for retaliation, played a waiting game and even dispatched some envoys to Fort Frontenac to discuss the patching up of the broken peace. Even if they had been sincere in these advances (and it soon became clear that they were not), there was no possibility of a satisfactory outcome. A remarkable Indian chief makes his appearance on the scene at this juncture for the purpose of defeating any peace moves.

  He was a Huron from Michilimackinac and his name was Kondiaronk, which meant the Rat. There was nothing of the rodent in his nature, however. He was a good leader in war or peace, as wise as any white statesman and as
crafty as the most Machiavellian diplomat trained in the wiles and guiles of European chancellories. Kondiaronk had one fixed purpose, to preserve the lives of the scattered remnants of the Huron people who existed, humbly and miserably, about the trading posts and missions at the junction of the Great Lakes. He knew, this wily old chief, that peace between the French and the Iroquois might mean his people would then be exposed to the full fury of Iroquois designs. He recalled, as did all the tribal leaders in the West, the silence of La Barre when the Five Nations, speaking with the tongue of Big Mouth, had declared their intention of making war on the French allies.

  It is to the pages of La Hontan, that busy but useful gossip, that one must turn for the details of what the Rat proceeded to do in his determination to prevent a truce. He went promptly into action when the news reached him that the envoys from the Five Nations were on their way to Fort Frontenac. Waylaying them near La Famine, he killed one of the chiefs with the first volley and took the rest prisoners. The Iroquois, stunned by the unexpectedness of the attack, protested that they were on their way to propose terms of peace.

  The Rat then staged a scene in which he professed chagrin and anger at the French for deceiving him. Denonville, he declared, had informed him, Kondiaronk, that a war party was approaching and had sent him out to attack them.

  Kondiaronk released all of the party but one, who was to be held as a hostage. “Go back!” he said to the rest in effect. “Go back to your people and tell them of the treachery of Onontio.”