Figure 6.2 This plan of Kanehsatake, drawn by François Vachon de Belmont to illustrate the ravages of the fire in 1694, shows the missionary compound with its stone wall (F) and towers (M, N, O, P), church (I), residence (H), and the palisaded village with visible flames (E). Gardens and orchards were laid out to the north (A, B, D). (“Plant de la mission de la Montagne” 1694, ANF, N/111/Canada/12)
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The campaign solidified the reputation of the mission settlements in the eyes of colonial officials. Governor La Barre was satisfied with the performance of the missions’ warriors – even those of Kanehsatake, of whom the governor had had low expectations beforehand, probably owing to his tendency to favour the Jesuits over Sulpicians, in the end impressed him as “very good soldiers and faithful subjects of the king.”56 But La Barre’s lackluster leadership, and the “shameful peace” that he had negotiated at La Famine, upset many and led to his prompt recall by Louis XIV. The new governor, Jacques-René de Brisay de Denonville, instructed to intimidate the League with French military might, began plotting another offensive against the Senecas as soon as he landed in the colony in the fall of 1685. He allowed two years of careful preparation.57 In early 1687, Denonville sent word to the Christian Iroquois to remind them “that it is necessary to destroy the Iroquois in order to establish religion; to destroy the Iroquois, it is necessary to attack them.”58 The actual message was no doubt couched in more nuanced terms, for although Denonville secretly hoped to conduct operations against all of the Five Nations, the target of his initial efforts would again be the Senecas, whose persistent depredations against allies and traders in the interior constituted a strong casus belli. By all accounts the leadership of the mission settlements again responded with commitment. Togouirout, but this time also Ogenheratarihiens, and a third captain, respectively representing the Mohawks, Oneidas, and Onondagas, headed Kahnawake’s contingent. It was at about this period that the Albany trader Anthony Lespinard, upon encountering Togouirout “the Indian General” at Chambly along the Richelieu River, observed him to be “very true to the French” and heard him explain that his community “would immediately join with the French in the war against the Sniekes [Senecas]” as long as their Mohawk, Oneida, and Onondaga relatives remained uninvolved.59
Estimates of the Saint Lawrence mission warriors involved in the expedition range from about 250 to 350. Kanehsatake and Lorette provided about the same number of men, 50 to 60 and 40 respectively; Kamiskouaouangachit fielded 60 to 100 Wabanakis; as well as Algonquins from the bands that orbited around Trois Rivières in numbers ranging from 10 to 60. As Ogenheratarihiens’s participation indicates, willingness to engage against the Senecas was more generalized at Kahnawake than it had been three years earlier. Though the community fielded about the same number of men on this occasion, around 100 or 120, in light of recent outmigration this represented a much more complete mobilization of the community’s warriors (1: 4.5/5, as opposed to 1: 6.5/7).60 A handful of members of the Kahnawake contingent felt strong-armed into taking part in the campaign, among whom were Garistasi and Kakare, who had returned to the village after the winter hunt with the intention of soon relocating to Mohawk country. The testimony subsequently given at Albany by one Adandidaghko, a Mohawk from the village of Tionnontoguen who had come to Canada to see relatives and obtain beaver skins to trade among the Dutch and English, only to be caught up in the preparations for war, allows a glimpse into the nature of the coercion. When he meant to return home, his “relations would not suffer it because the French had given contrary orders.” When these Christian relatives inquired whether he intended to “go and fight with the French against the Sinnakes or not,” he answered no. His relatives reportedly replied that “you shall be forced to go, and the French will put you in prison till the war is done and the army returns.”61
Denonville was indeed intent on surprising the enemy and ready to imprison those persons who threatened to jeopardize his campaign. Before the army’s departure from Montreal, he sent a detachment of fifteen Frenchmen to seize an Onondaga and three other Iroquois who were in the vicinity of the Châteauguay River, on the south shore of the Saint Lawrence river west of Kahnawake, purportedly “to spy on what was going on, and [who] said a thousand impertinences about the governor.” They were promptly placed in the prison at Montreal.62 However, beyond such a pointed intervention, neither Denonville nor any of the French had any coercive authority over the inhabitants of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake. Instead, it was the pressure of relatives invested in the French alliance, rather than largely unenforceable threats of imprisonment by colonial authorities themselves, that “forced” a small minority of men, such as Garistasi, Kakare, and Adandidaghko, to take a reluctant part in the expedition.
Denonville’s resolve to ensure the secrecy and security of his army by seizing every Iroquois encountered along the route of the upper Saint Lawrence and throughout the north shore of Lake Ontario did, however, clash with the natural tendency of the Christian Iroquois to make distinctions between elements of the Five Nations. When the scouts of the advancing army spotted a band fishing on the island of Toniata, a party of Christian Iroquois was immediately deployed in cooperation with a corps of Algonquins and Wabanakis, under the supervision of Jacques Le Moyne de Sainte-Hélène, to encircle them. According to Louis Henri de Baugy, the officer who served as Denonville’s aide-de-camp during the campaign, the deployment of the Christian Iroquois on this occasion had been intended as a test, “to arouse their honor and see if they would do what they had promised.” Baugy’s misgivings were in a sense borne out when, upon learning that their intended targets had withdrawn to Cataraqui, these warriors expressed relief to Sainte-Hélène and made it known that it would have saddened them to carry out the capture. Relief was short lived, though, for upon arriving at Cataraqui on 3 July, the warriors discovered there some two hundred Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas who had been seized by a ruse after having been invited to a great feast on Denonville’s orders.63
Though contemporary French observers might lump these prisoners together under the rubric of “Iroquois,” the missions’ warriors would have recognized them plainly as Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, and as relatives and friends. This must have been particularly true for the men of Kanehsatake, given that many of the people who currently found themselves in custody had orbited around the now defunct Sulpician missions of the north shore of Lake Ontario, and that over the years these missions had constituted something of a recruiting ground for their own community near Montreal.64 Disgusted and alarmed by the behaviour of their French allies, who had not respected their desire not to take part in the war if their relatives were involved, about a hundred Christian Iroquois warriors took advantage of the confusion of the army’s departure from Cataraqui on the morning of 4 July to return to their villages. Meanwhile, Garistasi and a second man chose to slip away towards Seneca country to warn its inhabitants of the impending attack.65
A solid core of some 120 Christian Iroquois, no doubt predominantly consisting of those warriors who had no kinship ties to the prisoners or otherwise felt little affinity with them, remained with the army as it made its way across Lake Ontario and towards the Seneca villages. When three or four Seneca scouts appeared at a distance and asked what the intentions of the French were, it was a Christian Mohawk who, interpreting for his French brothers-in-arms, shouted out defiantly from the lines: “You blockheads, I’ll tell you what I have come to do: to war upon you; and tomorrow I will march up with my army to your castles.”66 At a half league from the main Seneca village of Ganondagan, the army engaged in battle with an opposing force of approximately 450 Seneca warriors. While commentators noted that the Odawa warriors posted on the right flank faltered, and that confusion and disorder momentarily set in among the soldiers and militiamen, the conduct of the warriors of the mission settlements was universally praised. In retelling the episode, even Baugy deviated from his habitually mistrustful tone: “Our Christian Natives […] perfor
med deeds of valour, our Iroquois outdid themselves and showed that they surpassed by far the Senecas and that we could henceforth trust them.”67 That the Christian Iroquois had not shirked the action was further confirmed by the fact that 3 or 4 of their number lay among the army’s dozen dead, including a chief from Kanehsatake named Tegaretouan (The Sun), recognized as that community’s “first Christian,” as well as Kahnawake’s celebrated Ogenheratarihiens.68
The days that followed the advancing army found the four Seneca villages abandoned and smoldering. The divergent priorities of the allies became readily apparent when Denonville ordered the destruction of the adjoining corn fields and the abundant stores. The warriors of the missions understood that to starve out the Senecas would turn them into a burden for the other four nations, and could only serve to unite the League and harden its attitude towards the French. The Christian Iroquois accordingly refused to destroy the Seneca’s corn or, when they separated themselves from the main force to scout and loot the surroundings, to facilitate the Frenchmen’s job by pointing out outfields.69 Divergences again manifested themselves when Denonville made it known that his intention was to proceed to Niagara to build a fort there. Victorious in battle, weary after a long campaign, and eager to get started on the fall hunt, the mission warriors were reluctant to press on. Togouirout and his men momentarily ceded to the governor’s arguments, but when the time came to embark – and in an echo of what another group of warriors had done three weeks earlier – the warriors set out eastwards in the direction of Cataraqui. Only after Denonville’s insistence and one warrior’s impassioned speech did all but two of the Christian Iroquois canoes resolve to accompany the army until the end of the campaign (the reluctant Kakare being aboard one of the two that did not remain with the governor).70
No sooner had their warriors returned from the campaign – the governor and the bulk of his army having spent only five days at Niagara – than the Christian Iroquois sent emissaries southward to probe the intentions of the League’s eastern nations and to ensure that they remained neutral. Togouirout and seven other men, including Kakare and Adandidaghko, journeyed towards the Mohawk villages. About halfway there, they encountered a party of sixty warriors from the Mohawk village of Tionnontoguen intent, in solidarity with the Senecas, on raiding Canada in retaliation for the recent invasion. After calling out from a distance to make sure that the party itself included no Senecas, Togouirout approached them, delivered his message, and dissuaded the warriors from going any further. While Kakare and Adandidaghko journeyed on towards the Mohawk villages, four of the would-be raiders accompanied Togouirout back to Kahnawake.71 Meanwhile five Christian Onondagas from the mission had been dispatched to Onondaga with wampum belts and presents to “persuade them not to war” and to offer, on Denonville and Bruyas’s instruction, the release of the prisoners taken on the way to Cataraqui.72 This would have been a persuasive argument. In June of 1688, an Onondaga, Cayuga, and Oneida delegation headed by Otreouti arrived at Montreal to declare the neutrality of their peoples. In response, the people of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake handed over ninety-one prisoners whom the colonial officials had entrusted to them.73
Freed captives were not alone in streaming back to Iroquoia around this time. As in 1684, the realization that to remain in Canada meant being drawn into a large-scale conflict, now coupled with English promises that lands and a priest would be made available, led a wave of individuals and families to abandon the mission settlements. Kakare and his brother Garistatsi, who had been contemplating this move for some time, and who had turned out to form the most reluctant element during the recent campaign, returned to Kahnawake by the winter of 1688. The first of the two explained to the missionaries that he had come back “for his religion[’s] sake,” but in reality the pair had journeyed to fetch their close relatives and to encourage others to undertake the return migration to Mohawk country. According to Vachon de Belmont, some thirty men and twenty women left the community as a result of these and other visitors’ entreaties.74 The extant census records confirm that Kahnawake experienced a significant dip in population between 1685 and 1688, from 682 individuals to 485, and that Kanehsatake’s population similarly fell from 222 to 181.75
Back in Mohawk country, Garistasi and Kakare settled in the village of Tionnontoguen, which was quickly emerging as a center of Anglophile sentiment and Mohawk Protestantism. It should not be surprising that many of the men and women who had been disappointed by life in the Canadian missions did not reject Christianity altogether. They found that Protestantism offered a promising alternative to Roman Catholicism: insofar as the Frenchmen’s religion had torn Iroquoia apart, draining its population and power northward, the religion of the New Yorkers, they reasoned, might provide the means of reversing the trend. Mohawk leaders’ oft reiterated requests for English missionaries were partly answered by the intervention of the Dutch Reformed minister Domine Godfredius Dellius who, having taken the pulpit at Albany in 1683, began to cultivate an Indigenous constituency in the fall of 1689; by the following year, he was taking an active part in Indigenous affairs as a close collaborator of the town’s officials.76 Garistatsi, who within a few years would emerge as Tionnontoguen’s “chief sachem,” as well as Kakare and Onnonragewas, were among those who developed and nurtured the strongest ties to the minister and the magistrates.77 Over the next few years they would continue to act as the most persistent promoters of a returnmigration from Canada to Mohawk country, alternating between diplomatic and military means to achieve it.
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The offensives of 1684 and 1687 – the fumbling effort of one Onontio and the treacherous behaviour of another – pushed the Five Nations League to its greatest unity and fullest elaboration yet. Events unfolding on both sides of the Atlantic would complicate relations between the Christian and League Iroquois even further. During the summer of 1688, a party of Tionnontaté Wendats from Michilimackinac attacked an Iroquois delegation en route to Montreal to ratify the terms discussed by the Onondaga Otreouti earlier that summer. Amidst false reports that Denonville had ordered the attack, the projected peace settlement fell through.78 During the winter that followed, across the ocean, Louis XIV invaded the German Palatinate, and William of Orange deposed James II of England in a “Glorious Revolution.” In the spring, England and the Dutch Republic declared war against France, joining the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Sweden in what soon would become formalized as the Grand Alliance or League of Augsburg. Governor Dongan, along with the mayor of Albany and fur trader Peter Schuyler, and Domine Dellius, redoubled their efforts to incite the Five Nations to wage an open war against the French.79
The Five Nations’ response to this new context was very much in keeping with the traditional patterns of incorporative warfare and diplomacy. As one Mohawk chief explained it to Dongan in early August of 1687, “we are much inclined to get our Christian Indians back again from Canida, but know no way to effect it except by taking one or more of their prisoners and send[ing] them into the castle to tell the rest that they may come freely, and to know why they fight against their brethren.”80 Through the summer of 1689, rumours of an impending major offensive against the colony by the Five Nations reached the ears of the Christian Iroquois. When a certain Jean-Baptiste Honnentarionni from Kanehsatake encountered a party of Iroquois on the Island of Montreal, they stole his shirt and wampum bracelet and told him that they would give them back only if he persuaded the people of his village to return to Iroquoia. The French, they explained, “were lost.” Despite the fact that a Kanehsatake chief vouched for the validity of this report, neither missionaries nor officials believed it. Louis Ateriata, an early Onondaga resident of Kentake who had visited France and received Louis XIV as godfather but had since been banished from the mission on account of his loose morals, now returned to Kahnawake with alarming reports. Owing to his dubious reputation, they were similarly dismissed.81
French mistrust would have grave consequences. On 5 August, a combined Five N
ations force estimated at fifteen hundred warriors fell in a surprise attack on the parish of Lachine, located across the river and just a few kilometers upstream from Kahnawake. Over eighty colonists were captured or killed in the raid. The next day some thirty to fifty warriors from the two nearby mission settlements responded by joining the French troops in a poorly orchestrated and disastrous defensive maneuver. Although word circulated that the raiders aimed only at the French, and not at the Christian Iroquois, at least seven men from Kahnawake were killed in the affair, and a few more from both villages were taken prisoners.82
The “Lachine Massacre,” as it became known, understandably caused much alarm among both the French and their allies. The Kahnawakes and Kanehstakes who had been willing to go to war only against the distant and unrelated Senecas now clearly faced the hostility of united elements of the Five Nations. In late August or early September, five “Praying Canada Indians” were captured by Mohawks on Lake Champlain.83 It was rumoured that Kahnawake, whose fortifications were already in an advanced state of disrepair, would be the next target of the Five Nations and of the English. According to Jesuit chronicler Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix and to Vachon de Belmont, “fear overtook the Natives” who henceforth ceased to “consider themselves safe in their village.” At Denonville’s urging, the people of the mission sought refuge in a makeshift encampment within the recently fortified town of Montreal, even though a substantial segment of the community believed this measure to be excessive.84
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