OF THE RETURN OF OUR FATHERS AND OF OUR FRENCHMEN FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE ONNONTAGUES.

[From the same.]

Though it be true that the Iroquois are subtle, adroit and great cheats, I nevertheless cannot persuade myself that they possess so much intelligence, so much tact, and that they are such great politicians as to have had recourse to the ruses and intrigues imputed to them to destroy the French, the Hurons, the Algonquins, and their allies.

They urged for many years with incredible persistence; with evidences of especial affection and even with threats of rupture and war, if their friendship were despised and their demand rejected; they insisted, I say, and solicited that a goodly number of French should accompany them into their country, the one to instruct, the others to protect them against their enemies, as a token of peace and alliance with them.

The Mohawks desired to thwart this scheme; they fought the one against the other even unto polluting the earth with blood and murder. Some believed that all that was mere feint, the better to mask their game; but it would seem to me not a very pleasant game when the stakes are life and blood. I strongly doubt that Iroquoy policy should extend so far as that, and that Barbarians who repose but little confidence in each other, should so long conceal their intrigues. I believe rather that the Onnontagué Iroquois demanded some Frenchmen in sincerity, but with views very different. The Chiefs finding themselves engaged in heavy wars against a number of nations whom they had provoked, asked for Hurons as reinforcements to their warriors; they wished for the French to obtain firearms from them, and to repair those which might be broken. Further, as the Mohawks treated them sometimes very ill when passing through their villages to trade with the Dutch, they were anxious to rise out of this dependence in

opening a trade with the French. This is not all, the fate of arms being fickle, they demanded that our Frenchmen should erect a vast fort in their country to serve as a retreat for them, or at least for their wives and children in case their enemies pressed too close on them. Here are the views of the Iroquois politicians. The common people did not penetrate so far ahead; curiosity to see strangers come from such a distance, the hope of deriving some little profit, created a desire to see them; but the Christian Hurons and captives among the people, and those who approved their lives and conversations which they sometimes held regarding our belief, breathed nothing in the world so much as the coming of Preachers of the Gospel who had brought them forth unto Jesus Christ.

But so soon as the Captains and Chiefs became masters of their enemies, having crushed all the Nations who had attacked them; so soon as they believed that nothing could resist their arms, the recollection of the wrongs they pretended to have formerly experienced from the Hurons; the glory of triumphing over Europeans as well as Americans, caused them to take the resolution to revenge themselves on the one and destroy the other; so that at the very moment they saw the dreaded Cat Nation subjugated by their arms and by the power of the Senecas, their allies, they would have massacred all the French at Onnontagué, were it not that they pretended to make use of them as a decoy to attract some Hurons and to massacre them as they had already done. And if the influence of some of their tribe, then resident at Quebec, had not staid them, the path to Onnontagué had become the tomb to Frenchmen as well as to Hurons, as will be seen hereafter. From that time forth our people, having discovered their conspiracy, and perceived that their death was concluded on, bethought them on their retreat, which shall be described in the following letter.

FATHER PAUL RAGUENEAU

TO THE REV. FATHER JACQUES RENAULT, PROVINCIAL OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS IN THE PROVINCE OF FRANCE.

My R. Father,

Pax Christi.

The present is to inform Y. R. of our return from the Iroquois mission, loaded with some spoils rescued from Hell. We bear in our hands more than five hundred children and a number of adults, the most part of whom died after Baptism. We have reestablished Faith and piety in the hearts of a poor captive church, the first foundations of which we had laid in the Huron Country. We have proclaimed the gospel unto all the Iroquois Nations so that they are henceforth without excuse, and God will be fully justified against them at the great day of judgment.

The Devil enraged at seeing us reap so fine a harvest and enjoy so amply the fruits of our enterprise, made use of the inconstancy of the Iroquois to drive us from the centre of his estates; for these Barbarians, without other motive than to follow their volatile humor, renewed the war against the French, the first blows of which were discharged on our worthy Christian Hurons, who went up with us to Onnontagué at the close of the last summer, and who were cruelly massacred in our arms and in our bosom by the most signal treason imaginable. They then made prisoners of their poor wives and even burned some of them with their children of three and four years, at a slow fire.

This bloody execution was followed by the murder of three Frenchmen at Montreal by the Oneidas, who scalped them and carried these as if in triumph into their villages in token of declared war. This act of hostility having obliged M. Dailleboust, then commanding in this country, to cause a dozen of Iroquois, in part Onnontagués and mostly Mohawks, to be arrested and put in irons at Montreal, Three Rivers and Quebec, where they happened to be at the time, both Iroquois Nations became irri

tated at this detention of their people, pretending that it was unjust; and to cruelly avenge themselves convoked a secret Council where they formed the scheme of an implacable war against the French. Yet, they judged it fitting to dissimulate for some time until through the return of Father Simon Le Moine, then with the Mohawks, they should have obtained the delivery of their folks who were in irons. In that Council they even looked on our persons as precious hostages, either for the exchange of some of their tribe who were in prison, or obtainment of whatever pleased them when within view of our French settlements they should make us feel the effects of their cruelty; doubting not that these horrible spectacles and the lamentations of forty and fifty innocent Frenchmen would touch with compassion and distress the Governor and inhabitants of what place so ever. We were only privately acquainted with these disastrous designs of the Iroquois, but we openly saw their spirits prepared for war; and in the month of February divers bands took the field for that purpose, 200 Mohawks on the one side, 40 Oneidas on the other; some Onnontagué warriors had already gone forward whilst the main body of the army was assembling.

We could not expect, speaking humanly, to extricate from these dangers, by which we were surrounded on all sides, some fifty Frenchmen who had entrusted to us their lives and for whom we should feel ourselves responsible before God and men. What distressed us the most was, not so much the flames into which a part of our Frenchmen would be cast, as the unfortunate captivity to which the most of them were destined by the Iro quois, in which the salvation of their souls was more to be dreaded than the loss of their bodies. This is what the greater number most especially apprehended, who already seeing themselves prisoners, coveted rather the stroke of the hatchet or even the flames, than this captivity. They were determined in order to avoid this last misfortune, even to risk all and to fly each, his way in the woods, to perish there of hunger and wretchedness or to attempt to reach some of the French settlements.

In these circumstances so precipitous, our Fathers and I and a gentleman named Monsieur du Puys, who commanded all our

Frenchmen and a garrison of soldiers, nine of whom had already of themselves resolved to abandon us, concluded that it would be better to withdraw in a body, either to encourage one another to die or to sell life more dearly. For that reason it became necessary to depart without breathing a syllable about it; for the least suspicion that the Iroquois would have had of our retreat, would hurry down on us the disaster we would avoid. But how hope to be able to depart without being discovered, being in the heart of the country, and always beset by a number of these Barbarians who left not our house so as to watch our countenances In this conjuncture? It is true they never imagined that we should have had the courage to undertake this exploit, knowing well that we had neither canoes, nor sailors, and that we were unacquainted with the paths topped by precipices where a dozen Iroquois could easily defeat us: Besides, the season was insupportable on account of the cold of the frozen water through which, under all circumstances, the canoes were to be dragged, throwing ourselves into the river and remaining there entire hours, sometimes up to the neck, and we never had undertaken such expeditions without having savages for guides.

Notwithstanding these obstacles which appeared insurmountable to them as well as to us, God, who holds in His hands all the moments of our lives, so happily inspired us with all that was necessary to be done, that having departed on the 20th day of March from our house of Ste. Marie, near Onnontagué, at eleven o'clock at night, His divine providence guiding us, as if by a continued miracle, in the midst of all imaginable dangers, we arrived at Quebec on the 23d of the month of April, having passed Montreal and Three Rivers before any canoe could be launched, the river not having been open for navigation until the very day that we made our appearance.

From the same to the same.

Your Rev. will be glad to learn the particulars of our departure from Ste. Marie of the Iroquois.

The resolution being taken to quit that country where God took through us, the small number of his disciples, the difficulties ap