Choueguen and to intercept the English and Indians who may want to penetrate into the Colony, and the voyage to Missilimakinac could be made in safety.

Moreover, this establishment is only thirty-five leagues from Montreal; twenty-five from Fort Frontenac and thirty-three from Choueguen; a distance sufficient to remove the Indians from the disorders which the proximity of Forts and Towns ordinarily engenders among them. It is convenient for the reception of the • Lake Ontario, and more distant, Indians.

Abbé Picquet's views are to accustom these Indians to raise Cows, Hogs and Poultry; there are beautiful prairies, acorns and wild oats.

On the other hand it can be so regulated that the batteaux carrying goods to the posts, may stop at La Presentation. The cost of freight would become smaller; men could be found to convey those batteaux @ fifteen to twenty livres instead of fortyfive and fifty livres which are given for the whole voyage. Other batteaux of La Presentation would convey them farther on, and the first would take in return plank, boards and other timber, abundant there. This timber would not come to more than twelve @fifteen livres, whilst they are purchased at sixty-eight livres at Montreal and sometimes more. Eventually this post will be able to supply Fort Frontenac with

King considerable expense.

provisions which will save the

The Abbé Picquet adds in his letter, that he examined in his voyage the nature of the rapids of the Fort Frontenac river, very important to secure to us the possession of Lake Ontario on which the English have an eye. The most dangerous of those rapids, in number fourteen, are the Trou (the Hole) and the Buisson (the Thicket). Abbé Picquet points out a mode of rendering this River navigable; and to meet the expense he proposes a tax of ten livres on each canoe sent up and an ecu (fifty cents) on each of the crew, which according to him will produce three thousand livres, a sum sufficient for the workmen.

1 Ogdensburg is 105 miles from Montreal; 60 from Kingston, Can., and about 90 from Oswego. The distances laid down in the Text are very accurate, considering the time and the circumstances.

Messrs de la Jonquière and Bigot remark that they find this establishment necessary as well as the erection of a saw-mill, as it will diminish the expense in the purchase of timber; but as regards the Rapids they will verify them in order to ascertain if in fact the river can be rendered navigable and they will send an estimate of the works.

They have caused five cannon of two pound calibre to be sent to the Abbé Picquet for his little fort so as to give confidence to his Indians and to persuade them that they will, be in security there.

M. de la Jonquière in particular says, he will see if the proprietors of batteaux would contribute to the expense necessary to be incurred for the Rapids; but he asks that convicts from the galleys or people out of work (gens inutiles) be sent every year to him to cultivate the ground. He is in want of men, and the few he has exact high wages,

1

1st 8ber, 1749. Mr. Bigot also sends a special memoir of the expense incurred by Abbé Picquet for improvements (defrichemens) amounting to three thousand four hundred and eighty five livres ten sous. Provisions were also furnished him for himself and workmen, and this settlement is only commenced. M. de la Jonquière cannot dispense with sending an officer there and some soldiers. Sieur de la Morandière, Engineer, is to be sent there this winter to draw out a plan of quarters for these soldiers and a store for provisions. If there be not a garrison at that post, a considerable foreign trade will be carried on there.

7th 9ber 1749. Since all these letters M. de la Jonquière has written another in which he states that M. de Longueuil informed him that a band of Savages believed to be Mohawks had attacked Sieur Picquet's Mission on the twenty-sixth of October last—that Sieur de Vassau, commandant of Fort Frontenac, had sent a detachment thither which could not prevent the burning of two vessels loaded with hay and the palisades of the fort. Abbé Picquet's house alone was saved.

The loss by this fire is considerable. It would have been greater were it not for four Abenakis who furnished on this occasion a

1 Equal to $653.23.

proof of their fidelity. The man named Perdreaux had half the hand carried away. His arm had to be cut off. One of the Abenakis received the discharge of a gun the ball of which remained in his blanket.

M. de Longueuil has provided every thing necessary. M. de la Jonquière gave him orders to have a detachment of ten soldiers sent there, and he will take measures, next spring, to secure that post. M. de la Jonquière adds that the Savages were instigated to this attack by the English. The Iroquois who were on a complimentary visit at Montreal were surprized at it and assured M. de Longueuil that it could only be Colonel Amson [Johnson?] who could have induced them. He omitted nothing to persuade those same Iroquois to undertake this expedition and to prevent them going to compliment the Governor, having offered them Belts which they refused.

COL. JOHNSON TO GOV. CLINTON, 18 AUG. 1750.

[Lond. Doc. XXIX.]

The next thing of consequence he (an Indian Sachem) told me was, that he had heard from several Indians that the Gover nor had given orders to the Priest who is now settled below Cadaraqui to use all means possible to induce the five Nations to settle there, for which end they have a large magazine of all kinds of clothing fitted for Indians as also Arms, Ammunition Provision &c which they distribute very liberally.

THE SAME TO THE BOARD OF TRADE, 28 AUG. 1756.

[Lond. Doc. XXXIII.]

The Onnondagas and Oneidas are in the neighbourhood of Swegatchie a French settlement on the River St. Lawrence, whither numbers of those two Nations have of late years been debauched and gone to live. Tho' our Indians do not now resort to

those places as frequently and familiarly as they formerly did, yet some among them do occasionally visit there, when the French and the Indians in their interest poison the minds of ours with stories not only to the disadvantage of our good intentions towards them, but endeavour to frighten them with pompous accounts of the superior prowess and martial abilities of the French.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE REV. ABBE PICQUET.

[Abridged from Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses, XIV.]

FRANCOIS PICQUET, doctor of the Sorbonne, King's Missionary and Prefect Apostolic to Canada was born at Bourg in Bresse on the 6th December, 1708 . . . As early as the seventeenth year of his age, he successfully commenced the functions of a missionary in his country and at twenty years the Bishop of Sinope, Suffragan of the Diocese of Lyon, gave him, by a flattering exception, permission to preach in all the parishes of Bresse and Franche-Comté which depended on his diocese. The enthusiasm of his new state rendered him desirous to go to Rome, but the Archibishop of Lyons advised him to study theology at Paris. He followed this advice and entered the Congregation of Saint Sulpice. The direction of the new converts was soon proposed to him; but the activity of his zeal induced him to seek a wider field, and led him beyond the seas in 1733, to the Missions of North America where he remained thirty years, and where his constitution debilitated by labor, acquired a force and vigor which secured for him a robust health to the end of his life.

M. Picquet was among the first to foresee the war which sprung up about 1742 between the English and the French. He prepared himself for it a long time beforehand. He began by drawing to his Mission (at the Lake of the Two Mountains) all the French scattered in the vicinity, to strengthen themselves and afford more liberty to the savages. These furnished all the necessary detachments; they were continually on the frontiers to spy the enemy's movements. M. Picquet learned, by one of these detachments that the English were making warlike preparations at Sarasto [Saratoga ?] and were pushing their settlements up to

J

Lake St. Sacrement.' He informed the General of the circumstance and proposed to him to send a body of troops there at least to intimidate the enemy, if we could do no more. The expedition was formed. M. Picquet accompanied M. Marin who commanded this detachment. They burnt the fort, the Lydius establishments, several saw mills, the planks, boards and other building timber, the stock of supplies, provisions, the herds of cattle along nearly fifteen leagues of settlement and made one hundred and forty-five prisoners without having lost a single Frenchman or without having any even wounded. This expedition alone prevented the English undertaking any thing at that side during the war.

Peace having been re-established in 1748, our Missionary occupied himself with the means of remedying, for the future, the inconveniences which he had witnessed. The road he saw taken* by the Savages and other parties of the enemy sent by the English against us, caused him to select a post which could, hereafter, intercept the passage of the English. He proposed to M. de la Galissonière to make a settlement of the Mission of La Presentation, near Lake Ontario, an establishment which succeded beyond his hopes, and has been the most useful of all those of Canada.

Mr. Rouillé, Minister of the Marine wrote on the 4th May 1749; "A large number of Iroquois having declared that they were desirous of embracing Christianity, it has been proposed to establish a Mission towards Fort Frontenac in order to attract the greatest number possible thither. It is Abbé Picquet, a zealous Missionary and in whom these Nations seem to have confidence, who has been en

1 "I am building a Fort at this Lake which the French call Lake St. Sacrement, but I have given it the name of Lake George, not only in honour to his Majesty but to ascertain his undoubted dominion here." Sir William Johnson to the Board of Trade, Sept. 3d, 1755. Lond. Doc. xxxii., 178.

2 Now Fort Edward, Washington County.

3 "I received an account on the 19th inst., by express from Albany, that a party of French and their Indians had cut off a settlement in this Province called Saraghtoge, about fifty miles from Albany, and that about twenty houses with a Fort (which the publick would not repair) were burned to ashes, thirty persons killed and scalped and about sixty taken prisoners. Gov. Clinton to the Board, 30 Nov. 1745. Lond. Doc. xxvii., 187, 235.