|
|
It was well for the European colonies, above all for those of
England, that the wisdom of the Iroquois was but the wisdom of
savages. Their sagacity is past denying; it showed itself in many
ways; but it was not equal to a comprehension of their own situation
and that of their race. Could they have read their destiny, and
curbed their mad ambition, they might have leagued with themselves
four great communities of kindred lineage, to resist the
encroachments of civilization, and oppose a barrier of fire to the
spread of the young colonies of the East. But their organization and
their intelligence were merely the instruments of a blind frenzy,
which impelled them to destroy those whom they might have made their
allies in a common cause.
Of the four kindred communities, two at least, the Huron and the
Neutrals, were probably superior in numbers to the Iroquois. Either
one of these, with union and leadership, could have held its ground
against them, and the two united could easily have crippled them
beyond the power of doing mischief. But these so-called nations were
mere aggregations of villages and families, with nothing that
deserved to be called a government. They were very liable to panics,
because the part attacked by an enemy could never rely with
confidence on prompt succor from the rest; and when once broken,
they could not be rallied, because they had no centre around which
to gather. The Iroquois, on the other hand, had an organization with
which the ideas and habits of several generations were interwoven,
and they had also sagacious leaders for peace and war. They
discussed all questions of policy with the coolest deliberation, and
knew how to turn to profit even imperfections in their plan of
government which seemed to promise only weakness and discord. Thus,
any nation, or any large town, of their confederacy, could make a
separate war or a separate peace with a foreign nation, or any part
of it. Some member of the league, as, for example, the Cayuga, would
make a covenant of friendship with the enemy, and, while the
infatuated victims were thus lulled into a delusive security, the
war-parties of the other nations, often joined by the Cayuga
warriors, would overwhelm them by a sudden onset. But it was not by
their craft, nor by their organization,--which for military purposes
was wretchedly feeble,--that this handful of savages gained a bloody
supremacy. They carried all before them, because they were animated
throughout, as one man, by the same audacious pride and insatiable
rage for conquest. Like other Indians, they waged war on a plan
altogether democratic,--that is, each man fought or not, as he saw
fit; and they owed their unity and vigor of action to the homicidal
frenzy that urged them all alike.
The Neutral Nation had taken no part, on either side, in the war of
extermination against the Huron; and their towns were sanctuaries
where either of the contending parties might take asylum. On the
other hand, they made fierce war on their western neighbors, and, a
few years before, destroyed, with atrocious cruelties, a large
fortified town of the Nation of Fire.1
Their turn was now come, and their victims found fit avengers; for
no sooner were the Huron broken up and dispersed, than the Iroquois,
without waiting to take breath, turned their fury on the Neutrals.
At the end of the autumn of 1650, they assaulted and took one of
their chief towns, said to have contained at the time more than
sixteen hundred men, besides women and children; and early in the
following spring, they took another town. The slaughter was
prodigious, and the victors drove back troops of captives for
butchery or adoption. It was the death-blow of the Neutrals. They
abandoned their corn-fields and villages in the wildest terror, and
dispersed themselves abroad in forests, which could not yield
sustenance to such a multitude. They perished by thousands, and from
that time forth the nation ceased to exist.2
During two or three succeeding years, the Iroquois contented
themselves with harassing the French and Algonquins; but in 1653
they made treaties of peace, each of the five nations for itself,
and the colonists and their red allies had an interval of rest. In
the following May, an Onondaga orator, on a peace visit to Montreal,
said, in a speech to the Governor, "Our young men will no more fight
the French; but they are too warlike to stay at home, and this
summer we shall invade the country of the Erie. The earth trembles
and quakes in that quarter; but here all remains calm." [Le Mercier,
Relation, 1654, 9.] Early in the autumn, Father Le Moyne, who had
taken advantage of the peace to go on a mission to the Onondagas,
returned with the tidings that the Iroquois were all on fire with
this new enterprise, and were about to march against the Erie with
eighteen hundred warriors. [Le Mercier, Relation, 1654, 10. Le Moyne,
in his interesting journal of his mission, repeatedly alludes to
their preparations.]
The occasion of this new war is said to have been as follows. The
Erie, who it will be remembered dwelt on the south of the lake named
after them, had made a treaty of peace with the Seneca, and in the
preceding year had sent a deputation of thirty of their principal
men to confirm it. While they were in the great Seneca town, it
happened that one of that nation was killed in a casual quarrel with
an Erie; whereupon his countrymen rose in a fury, and murdered the
thirty deputies. Then ensued a brisk war of reprisals, in which not
only the Seneca, but the other Iroquois nations, took part. The Erie
captured a famous Onondaga chief, and were about to burn him, when
he succeeded in convincing them of the wisdom of a course of
conciliation; and they resolved to give him to the sister of one of
the murdered deputies, to take the place of her lost brother. The
sister, by Indian law, had it in her choice to receive him with a
fraternal embrace or to burn him; but, though she was absent at the
time, no one doubted that she would choose the gentler alternative.
Accordingly, he was clothed in gay attire, and all the town fell to
feasting in honor of his adoption. In the midst of the festivity,
the sister returned. To the amazement of the Erie chiefs, she
rejected with indignation their proffer of a new brother, declared
that she would be revenged for her loss, and insisted that the
prisoner should forthwith be burned. The chiefs remonstrated in
vain, representing the danger in which such a procedure would
involve the nation: the female fury was inexorable; and the
unfortunate prisoner, stripped of his festal robes, was bound to the
stake, and put to death. [De Quen, Relation, 1656, 30.] He warned
his tormentors with his last breath, that they were burning not only
him, but the whole Erie nation; since his countrymen would take a
fiery vengeance for his fate. His words proved true; for no sooner
was his story spread abroad among the Iroquois, than the confederacy
resounded with war-songs from end to end, and the warriors took the
field under their two great war-chiefs. Notwithstanding Le Moyne's
report, their number, according to the Iroquois account, did not
exceed twelve hundred.
[This was their statement to Chaumonot and Dablon,
at Onondaga, in November of this year. They added, that
the number of the Eries was between three and four
thousand, (Journal des PP. Chaumonot et Dablon, in
Relation, 1656, 18.) In the narrative of De Quen (Ibid.,
30, 31), based, of course, on Iroquois reports, the
Iroquois force is also set down at twelve hundred, but
that of the Eries is reduced to between two and three
thousand warriors. Even this may safely be taken as an
exaggeration.
Though the Eries had no fire-arms, they used poisoned
arrows with great effect, discharging them, it is said,
with surprising rapidity.] |
They embarked in canoes on the lake. At their approach the Erie
fell back, withdrawing into the forests towards the west, till they
were gathered into one body, when, fortifying themselves with
palisades and felled trees, they awaited the approach of the
invaders. By the lowest estimate, the Erie numbered two thousand
warriors, besides women and children. But this is the report of the
Iroquois, who were naturally disposed to exaggerate the force of
their enemies.
They approached the Erie fort, and two of their chiefs, dressed like
Frenchmen, advanced and called on those within to surrender. One of
them had lately been baptized by Le Moyne; and he shouted to the
Erie, that, if they did not yield in time, they were all dead men,
for the Master of Life was on the side of the Iroquois. The Erie
answered with yells of derision. "Who is this master of your lives?"
they cried; "our hatchets and our right arms are the masters of
ours." The Iroquois rushed to the assault, but were met with a
shower of poisoned arrows, which killed and wounded many of them,
and drove the rest back. They waited awhile, and then attacked again
with unabated mettle. This time, they carried their bark canoes over
their heads like huge shields, to protect them from the storm of
arrows; then planting them upright, and mounting them by the
cross-bars like ladders, scaled the barricade with such impetuous
fury that the Erie were thrown into a panic. Those escaped who
could; but the butchery was frightful, and from that day the Erie as
a nation were no more. The victors paid dear for their conquest.
Their losses were so heavy that they were forced to remain for two
months in the Erie country, to bury their dead and nurse their
wounded.
[De Quen, Relation, 1656, 31. The Iroquois, it
seems, afterwards made other expeditions, to finish
their work. At least, they told Chaumonot and Dablon, in
the autumn of this year, that they meant to do so in the
following spring.
It seems, that, before attacking the great fort of the
Erie, the Iroquois had made a promise to worship the new
God of the French, if He would give them the victory.
This promise, and the success which followed, proved of
great advantage to the mission.
Various traditions are extant among the modern remnant
of the Iroquois concerning the war with the Erie. They
agree in little beyond the fact of the existence and
destruction of that people. Indeed, Indian traditions
are very rarely of any value as historical evidence. One
of these stories, told me some years ago by a very
intelligent Iroquois of the Cayuga Nation, is a striking
illustration of Iroquois ferocity. It represents, that,
the night after the great battle, the forest was lighted
up with more than a thousand fires, at each of which an
Erie was burning alive. It differs from the historical
accounts in making the Erie the aggressors.] |
One enemy of their own race remained,--the Andaste. This nation
appears to have been inferior in numbers to either the Huron, the
Neutrals, or the Erie; but they cost their assailants more trouble
than all these united. The Mohawks seem at first to have borne the
brunt of the Andaste war; and, between the years 1650 and 1660, they
were so roughly handled by these stubborn adversaries, that they
were reduced from the height of audacious insolence to the depths of
dejection.3 The remaining four nations
of the Iroquois league now took up the quarrel, and fared scarcely
better than the Mohawks. In the spring of 1662, eight hundred of
their warriors set out for the Andaste country, to strike a decisive
blow; but when they reached the great town of their enemies, they
saw that they had received both aid and counsel from the neighboring
Swedish colonists. The town was fortified by a double palisade,
flanked by two bastions, on which, it is said, several small pieces
of cannon were mounted. Clearly, it was not to be carried by
assault, as the invaders had promised themselves. Their only hope
was in treachery; and, accordingly, twenty-five of their warriors
gained entrance, on pretence of settling the terms of a peace. Here,
again, ensued a grievous disappointment; for the Andaste seized them
all, built high scaffolds visible from without, and tortured them to
death in sight of their countrymen, who thereupon decamped in
miserable discomfiture. [Lalemant, Relation, 1663, 10.]
The Seneca, by far the most numerous of the five Iroquois nations,
now found themselves attacked in turn,--and this, too, at a time
when they were full of despondency at the ravages of the small-pox.
The French reaped a profit from their misfortunes; for the
disheartened savages made them overtures of peace, and begged that
they would settle in their country, teach them to fortify their
towns, supply them with arms and ammunition, and bring "black-robes"
to show them the road to Heaven. [Lalemant, Relation, 1664, 33.]
The Andaste war became a war of inroads and skirmishes, under which
the weaker party gradually wasted away, though it sometimes won
laurels at the expense of its adversary. Thus, in 1672, a party of
twenty Seneca and forty Cayuga went against the Andaste. They were
at a considerable distance the one from the other, the Cayuga being
in advance, when the Seneca were set upon by about sixty young
Andaste, of the class known as "Burnt-Knives," or "Soft-Metals,"
because as yet they had taken no scalps. Indeed, they are described
as mere boys, fifteen or sixteen years old. They killed one of the
Seneca, captured another, and put the rest to flight; after which,
flushed with their victory, they attacked the Cayuga with the utmost
fury, and routed them completely, killing eight of them, and
wounding twice that number, who, as is reported by the Jesuit then
in the Cayuga towns, came home half dead with gashes of knives and
hatchets. [Dablon, Relation, 1672, 24.] "May God preserve the
Andaste," exclaims the Father, "and prosper their arms, that the
Iroquois may be humbled, and we and our missions left in peace!"
"None but they," he elsewhere adds, "can curb the pride of the
Iroquois." The only strength of the Andaste, however, was in their
courage: for at this time they were reduced to three hundred
fighting men; and about the year 1675 they were finally overborne by
the Seneca. [État Présent des Missions, in Relations Inédites, II.
44. Relation, 1676, 2. This is one of the Relations printed by Mr.
Lenox.] Yet they were not wholly destroyed; for a remnant of this
valiant people continued to subsist, under the name of Conestogas,
for nearly a century, until, in 1763, they were butchered, as
already mentioned, by the white ruffians known as the "Paxton Boys."
["History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac," Chap. XXIV. Compare Shea,
in Historical Magazine, II. 297.]
The bloody triumphs of the Iroquois were complete. They had "made a
solitude, and called it peace." All the surrounding nations of their
own lineage were conquered and broken up, while neighboring
Algonquin tribes were suffered to exist only on condition of paying
a yearly tribute of wampum. The confederacy remained a wedge thrust
between the growing colonies of France and England.
But what was the state of the conquerors? Their triumphs had cost
them dear. As early as the year 1660, a writer, evidently
well-informed, reports that their entire force had been reduced to
twenty-two hundred warriors, while of these not more than twelve
hundred were of the true Iroquois stock. The rest was a medley of
adopted prisoners,--Huron, Neutrals, Erie, and Indians of various
Algonquin tribes.4 Still their
aggressive spirit was unsubdued. These incorrigible warriors pushed
their murderous raids to Hudson's Bay, Lake Superior, the
Mississippi, and the Tennessee; they were the tyrants of all the
intervening wilderness; and they remained, for more than half a
century, a terror and a scourge to the afflicted colonists of New
France.
1 "Last summer," writes Lalemant in 1643, "two
thousand warriors of the Neutral Nation attacked a town of the
Nation of Fire, well fortified with a palisade, and defended by nine
hundred warriors. They took it after a siege of ten days; killed
many on the spot; and made eight hundred prisoners, men, women, and
children. After burning seventy of the best warriors, they put out
the eyes of the old men, and cut away their lips, and then left them
to drag out a miserable existence. Behold the scourge that is
depopulating all this country!"--Relation des Hurons, 1644, 98.
The Assistaeronnons, Atsistaehonnons, Mascoutins, or Nation of Fire
(more correctly, perhaps, Nation of the Prairie), were a very
numerous Algonquin people of the West, speaking the same language as
the Sacs and Foxes. In the map of Sanson, they are placed in the
southern part of Michigan; and according to the Relation of 1658,
they had thirty towns. They were a stationary, and in some measure
an agricultural people. They fled before their enemies to the
neighborhood of Fox River in Wisconsin, where they long remained.
Frequent mention of them will be found in the later Relations, and
in contemporary documents. They are now extinct as a tribe.
2 Ragueneau, Relation, 1651, 4. In the unpublished
journal kept by the Superior of the Jesuits at Quebec, it is said,
under date of April, 1651, that news had just come from Montreal,
that, in the preceding autumn, fifteen hundred Iroquois had taken a
Neutral town; that the Neutrals had afterwards attacked them, and
killed two hundred of their warriors; and that twelve hundred
Iroquois had again invaded the Neutral country to take their
revenge. Lafitau, Murs des Sauvaqes, II. 176, gives, on the
authority of Father Julien Garnier, a singular and improbable
account of the origin of the war.
An old chief, named Kenjockety, who claimed descent from an adopted
prisoner of the Neutral Nation, was recently living among the
Senecas of Western New York.
3 Relation, 1660, 6 (anonymous).
The Mohawks also suffered great reverses about this time at the
hands of their Algonquin neighbors, the Mohicans.
4 Relation, 1660, 6, 7 (anonymous). Le Jeune
says, "Their victories have so depopulated their towns, that there
are more foreigners in them than natives. At Onondaga there are
Indians of seven different nations permanently established; and,
among the Senecas, of no less than eleven." (Relation, 1657, 34.)
These were either adopted prisoners, or Indians who had voluntarily
joined the Iroquois to save themselves from their hostility. They
took no part in councils, but were expected to join war-parties,
though they were usually excused from fighting against their former
countrymen. The condition of female prisoners was little better than
that of slaves, and those to whom they were assigned often killed
them on the slightest pique.
This site includes some historical
materials that may imply negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language
of a particular period or place. These items are presented as part of the
historical record and should not be interpreted to mean that the WebMasters in
any way endorse the stereotypes implied.
The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, 1867
Jesuits
in North America
 |
