France and England in N America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV

82

Meules au Roy, 2 Juin, 1683.

83

Soon after La Barre's arrival, La Chesnaye is said to have induced him to urge the Iroquois to plunder all traders who were not provided with passports from the governor. The Iroquois complied so promptly, that they stopped and pillaged, at Niagara, two canoes belonging to La Chesnaye himself, which had gone up the lakes in Frontenac's time, and therefore were without passports. Recueil de ce qui s'est passé en Canada au Sujet de la Guerre, etc., depuis l'année 1682. (Published by the Historical Society of Quebec.) This was not the only case in which the weapons of La Barre and his partisans recoiled against themselves.

84

Belmont, Histoire du Canada (a contemporary chronicle).

85

See Discovery of the Great West. La Barre denies the assertion, and says that he merely told the Iroquois that La Salle should be sent home.

86

Mémoire adressé a MM. les Intéressés en la Société de la Ferme et Commerce du Canada, 1683.

87

These statements are made in a memorial of the agents of the custom-house, in letters of Meules, and in several other quarters. La Barre is accused of sending furs to Albany under pretext of official communication with the governor of New York.

88

Meules à Seignelay, 8 July, 1684. This accords perfectly with statements made in several memorials of La Salle and his friends.

89

There appears no doubt that La Barre brought this upon himself. His successor, Denonville, writes that the Iroquois declared that, in plundering the canoes, they thought they were executing the orders they had received to plunder La Salle's people. Denonville, Mémoire adressé ou Ministre sur les Affaires de la Nouvelle France, 10 Août, 1688. The Iroquois told Dongan, in 1684, "that they had not don any thing to the French but what Monsr. delaBarr Ordered them, which was that if they mett with any French hunting without his passe to take what they had from them." Dongan to Denonville, 9 Sept., 1687.

90

"Ce qui mit M. de la Barre en fureur." Belmont, Histoire du Canada.

91

La Barre au Roy, 5 Juin, 1684.

92

Sir John Werden to Dongan, 4 Dec., 1684; N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 353. Werden was the duke's secretary.

Dongan has been charged with instigating the Iroquois to attack the French. The Jesuit Lamberville, writing from Onondaga, says, on the contrary, that he hears that the "governor of New England (New York), when the Mohawk chiefs asked him to continue the sale of powder to them, replied that it should be continued so long as they would not make war on Christians." Lamberville à La Barre, 10 Fév., 1684.

The French ambassador at London complained that Dongan excited the Iroquois to war, and Dongan denied the charge. N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 506, 509.

93

Report of Conferences at Albany, in Colden, History of the Five Nations, 50 (ed. 1727, Shea's reprint).

94

La Barre à Dongan, 15 Juin, 1684.

95

Dongan à La Barre, 24 Juin, 1684.

96

Speech of the Onondagas and Cayugas, in Colden, Five Nations, 63 (1727).

97

Except the small tribe of the Oneidas, who addressed Corlaer as Father. Corlaer was the official Iroquois name of the governor of New York; Onas (the Feather, or Pen), that of the governor of Pennsylvania; and Assarigoa (the Big Knife, or Sword), that of the governor of Virginia. Corlaer, or Cuyler, was the name of a Dutchman whom the Iroquois held in great respect.

98

Journal of Wentworth Greenhalgh, 1677, in N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 250.

99

Journal of Greenhalgh. The site of Onondaga, like that of all the Iroquois towns, was changed from time to time, as the soil of the neighborhood became impoverished, and the supply of wood exhausted. Greenhalgh, in 1677, estimated the warriors at three hundred and fifty; but the number had increased of late by the adoption of prisoners.

100

Letters of Lamberville in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. For specimens of Big Mouth's skill in drawing, see ibid., IX. 386.

101

Lamberville to La Barre, 11 July, 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 253.

102

Colden, Five Nations, 80 (1727).

103

Lamberville to La Barre, 28 Aug., 1684, in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 257.

104

La Barre au Ministre, 9 July, 1684.

105

La Barre au Roy, même date.