25. Rates or dutyes upon Goods exported are 2o for each hhd of Tobacco & 18 3d on a beaver skin & other peltry proportionably, Provisions and all else paye nothing, Goods imported payes 2 per cent except Liquors particulerly rated something more, & Indian trade goeing up the river payes 3 per cent, there are some few quitt-rents, as also Excise or license monys for retaileing stronge drinke & a way house or publique Scale: all applyed to ye Garrison and publique charge, to which it hath not hitherto sufficed by a greate deale. 26. There are Religions of all sorts, one church of England, Several Presbiterians & Independents, Quakers & Anabaptists of Severall sects, some Jews but presbiterians & Independ's most numerous & Substantiall. 27. The Duke maintaines a chapline wch is all the certaine allowance or Church of England, but peoples free gifts to ye Ministry, and all places oblidged to build Churches & provide for a minister, in wch most very wanting, but presbiterians & Independt desierous to have and maintaine them if to be had, There are abt 20 Churches or Meeting places of wch aboue halfe vacant their allowance like to be from 40lb to 70lb a yeare and a house and garden. Noe Beggars but all poore cared ffor. If good Ministers could be had to goe theither might doe well & gaine much upon those people. Endorsed "Answers of inquiries of New-York Reed from Sr Edm. Andros on the 16th NOTE.-Chalmers gives in his Annals what purport to be copies of these Reports, but they will be found to be rather abstracts when compared with the official MSS. which are now published in full, it is believed for the first time. EXTRACT OF THE INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN BY THE KING TO M. DE LA BARRE. [Paris Doc. Vol. II.] Versailles, 10th May, 1682. He is equally informed that the Savages nearest adjoining to the French Settlements are the Algonquins and the Iroquois, that the latter had repeatedly troubled the peace and tranquillity of the Colonies of New France until His Majesty having waged a severe war against them, they were finally constrained to submit and to live in peace and quietness without making any incursions on the lands inhabited by the French. But as these restless and warlike tribes cannot be kept down except by terror, and as His Majesty has even been informed by the last despatches, that the Onnontagués and Senecas-Iroquois tribes-have killed a Recollet and committed many other violences and that it is to be feared that they will push their audacity even further; It is very important that the said Sieur de la Barre put himself in a condition to proceed as early as possible, with 5 or 600 of the militia most favorably situated for this expedition along the shores of Lake Frontenac at the mouth of Lake Conty, to exhibit himself to these Iroquois Settlements in a condition to restrain them within their duty and even to attack them should they do any thing against the French, wherein he must observe that he is not to break with them without a very pressing necessity and an entire certitude to promptly and advantageously finish a war that he will have undertaken against them. He must not only apply himself to prevent the violences of the Iroquois against the French. He must also endeavour to keep the Savages at peace among themselves, and prevent the Iroquois by all means making war on the Illinois and other tribes, neighbours to them, being very certain that if these Nations whose furs, the principal trade of Canada, are destroyed, should see themselves secure against the violence of the Iroquois by the protection they would receive from the French, they might be so much the more excited to wear their merchandizes and will thereby increase trade. At the meeting held the tenth October 1682, composed of M. the Governor, M. the Intendant, M. the Bishop of Quebec, M. Dollier Superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Montreal, the Rev. Fathers Beschefer Superior, D'Ablon and Fremin, Jesuits, M. the Major of the City, Messrs. de Varenne Governor of Three Rivers, de Brussy, Dalibout, Duguet, Lemoine, Ladurantais, Bizard, Chailly, Vieuxpont, Duluth, de Sorel, Derepentigny, Berthier and Boucher. It is proposed by M. the Governor, that from the records which M. the Count de Frontenac was pleased to deposit in his hands of what had passed at Montreal on the 12 Sept. last, between him and the Deputy of the Onontagué Iroquois, it is easy to infer that these people are inclined to follow the object of their enterprize, which is to destroy all the Nations in alliance with us, the one after the other, whilst they keep us in uncertainty and with folded arms; so that, after having deprived us of the entire fur trade which they wish alone to carry on with the English and Dutch established at Manate and Orange, they may attack us isolated, and ruin the Colony in obliging it to contract itself and abandon all the separate settlements, and thus arrest the cultivation of the soil which cannot bear grain nor be cultivated as meadow except in quarters where it is of good quality. As he is not informed in the short time since his arrival from France, of the state of these tribes and of the Colony, he requests them to acquaint him with all they know of these things in order |