Peeps at Many Lands: Canada 11

Peeps at Many Lands: Canada 11

Very soon Dollard and his companions saw a large fleet of the enemy's

canoes racing down the rapids, and filled with savage Iroquois all

thirsting for revenge. The first attack of the Indians was easily

beaten back. They had looked for an easy conquest, and attacked in

only a half-hearted manner. Then they set to work to build a rude fort

for themselves. This gave the little garrison further time in which to

strengthen their own defences. This work was still uncompleted when

the Iroquois advanced to the attack a second time. They had seized the

canoes of the allied French, Hurons, and Algonquins, and having broken

them to pieces and set them on fire, now rushed forward and piled the

blazing slabs of birch bark against the palisade. But they were met by

such a withering volley from the sixty rifles that they were staggered,

and glad to retreat.

 

A third time they made the attempt to rush Dollard's palisaded

enclosure, but a third time they were driven back, leaving a large

number of slain, and amongst them one of their most important chiefs.

This daunted their spirits, and they hastily sent off for

reinforcements.

 

In the meantime, until the reinforcements came up, which they did on

the fifth day, the first band of Iroquois kept up an unceasing fire and

constant menace of attack. In this way they gradually wore out the

little garrison, who dare not sleep, who were unable to get water from

the river, and were at last even in want of food.

 

Now, among the Iroquois were several Hurons, renegades from their own

tribe. These men now tried to win over the Hurons who were fighting

with Dollard, and at last hunger and thirst so told upon the latter

that they all slipped away and deserted the young Frenchman except one

man, their chief. He and the four Algonquins stood firm and loyal.

 

On the fifth day the yells of the fierce Iroquois and the firing of

muskets told the doomed defenders of the palisade that the expected

reinforcements had arrived. The Iroquois, having learnt from the Huron

deserters how small in numbers the little garrison was, now made sure

of an easy victory. Ostentatiously they advanced to the attack, but

the result was the same as before. They were forced to fall back

before the persistent and well-directed fire of the defenders.

 

Three days more were spent in this way, the Iroquois attacking from

time to time, but always falling back before the steady fire of the

heroic colonists. Dollard and his companions fought and prayed by

turns, and hungered, thirsted, and snatched fragments of broken sleep,

and were wellnigh utterly worn out by fatigue and exhaustion. At last

the spirit of the Iroquois began to quail. Some talked of abandoning

the attack, but others grew all the fiercer in their desire for

revenge, while their pride revolted at the thought of so many warriors

being beaten by so few of the hated palefaces. In the conflicting

councils the authority of the latter party prevailed. It was resolved

that, before finally abandoning the attack, they should make a general

assault, and volunteers were called for to lead the attack. To protect

themselves against the deadly fire of the little garrison they made

large wooden shields 4 or 5 feet high, and capable of covering each

three or four men. Under cover of these shields the volunteers were

able to rush close up to the palisades, which they immediately began to

hack to pieces with their hatchets.

 

Now, in anticipation of some such eventuality as this, Dollard had

filled a large, wide-mouthed blunderbuss with gunpowder and plugged up

the muzzle. Igniting the fuse which he had inserted into this

home-made "hand-grenade," Dollard tried to throw it over the palisade

amongst the Iroquois. But it was too heavy for him, and catching on

the top of one of the pointed palisades, it fell back among his own

friends, and killed or wounded several of them and nearly blinded

others. In the confusion arising out of this mishap the Iroquois

succeeded in effecting a breach in the palisade. Dollard and his

followers rushed to meet the inpouring foe, and slashing, striking,

stabbing at them with the energy of despair, succeeded in holding them

momentarily in check. But the Iroquois broke through at a second

place, and poured a volley into the devoted band of Frenchmen, and

Dollard fell; broke through a third breach, broke through a fourth,

and--all was soon over. The young French heroes, refusing to cease

fighting, refusing to accept quarter, bleeding, staggering, half

demented with exhaustion, weakness, and hopeless despair, were shot

down to a man. Not one was left on his feet.

 

This brave and stubborn fight proved to be the salvation of the French

settlements strung along the St. Lawrence. The Iroquois, although they

were the victors, were so thoroughly disheartened that they turned

their canoes about and paddled back by the way they had come, and for

many a day the white men had rest from their attacks.

 

Thirty-two years later, in the autumn, when the woods were beginning to

shed their leaves, and the men were gathering in the last lingering

remnants of their harvest, another heroic deed was done, which still

lives fresh and green in Canadian song and story. Twenty miles from

Montreal, on the south bank of the River St. Lawrence, was the

blockhouse of Verchères, enclosed within a palisade of palings. The

lord of the manor was absent from home, and within the blockhouse the

only persons were Madeline, the daughter of the lord of the manor, a

girl of fourteen, her two little brothers, one of them twelve years of

age, the other younger, and two old men-servants. The rest of the men

were at work in the fields, outside the stockade, and at some distance

from it.

 

It was a beautiful morning, and Madeline, attended by one of the old

men, started out for the river. But before she had advanced very far

her quick young eyes caught sight of a band of painted savages

approaching the farm. She at once started to run back to the stockade,

at the same time shouting a warning to the harvesters in the fields.

And she had barely time to get within the shelter of the palisade and

close the gates when the Iroquois were upon it. Both the men-servants

were old soldiers, and as soon as the gate of the stockade was closed

one of them went straight to the powder-magazine, intending to blow up

himself and all who were inside the stockade, to prevent them from

falling into the hands of the ruthless red men. Death by their own

hands would, he was convinced, be preferable to torture and a horrible

death at the hands of the savages. But Madeline Verchères thought

there was a third alternative, and she checked the old man, and

prevented him from blowing up the magazine.

 

Being herself animated by the loftiest and stanchest courage, she made

her little garrison promise to obey her, and then proceeded to give to

each a fixed and definite duty to perform. The fort possessed one

cannon. This Madeline bade one of the old soldiers discharge at the

enemy. The report alarmed them, but did not drive them away.

 

Almost immediately after this the beleaguered garrison saw a canoe

approaching on the river. Madeline at once guessed that the occupants

were women friends of her own. As there was no one else to go down to

the water's edge to meet them, Madeline determined to go herself, for

the two old men could not be spared from the defence of the stockade.

The Indians, seeing the young girl going down to the river alone, were

afraid to attack her, for they suspected a trap or stratagem of war.

Madeline was therefore able to get her friends safely within the

stockade.

 

But though there was no stratagem in this act, there was stratagem in

the method of defence which Madeline adopted. She took care to have a

relay of sentinels, challenging each other at stated intervals and at

stated places; she made signals, which the Indians were able to see, as

though issuing orders to a full garrison; she practised every device

she could think of to deceive the enemy into the belief that the

defenders were a numerous and undaunted band. And for a whole week

this brave-hearted girl, with two old men, two little boys, and three

or four women, kept a whole band of fierce and remorseless Iroquois

successfully at bay. At the end of that time help, summoned by the

escaped harvesters of the manor, arrived from Montreal, and the little

beleaguered garrison was relieved.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XIV

 

THE HABITANT OF THE ST. LAWRENCE SHORE

 

The earliest white settlers on the shores of the St. Lawrence came from

France, and the country of their adoption was known as New France. To

this very day, not only the language, but the manner of life and most

of the social institutions of the province of Quebec, are still

emphatically French. And yet the French-Canadians, despite their

passionate devotion to their race and their language, their religious

creed (Roman Catholicism), and the customs and manners of their

ancestors, manifest an irreproachable loyalty to the British Crown.

When, soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, the new country

was first settled, the land was granted by the King of France to French

gentlemen, who became known as seigneurs, or lords of the manor. In

return for these grants the seigneurs paid homage to the French King,

and bound themselves by an oath to fight for him in time of need. They

were also bound to have their land cleared of trees within a given

time, otherwise the seigneury was to be taken away from them again.

The seigneur in his turn granted slices of his lands to humbler

arrivals from France--emigrants, as we should call them nowadays,

though they called themselves, and are known to history as,

"habitants." Their relation to their seigneur was something like that

of medieval vassals to their feudal lord.

 

Now, in the early days these habitants, or emigrants, were mostly

single young men, and naturally, when they settled down on the farms,

which they rented from this or the other seigneur, they soon found that

they required each a wife to help them in their work, and to cook and

stitch for them; but young women were scarce in the colony.

Accordingly, the French King, with the view of meeting this want, used

every year to send out one or two shiploads of young girls as wives for

the habitants. About the time the "bride ships" were expected the

young men of the settlements, dressed in their Sunday best, used to

repair to Quebec, where the ships landed. There, entering the great

hall of the convent of the Ursuline nuns, where the girls were

gathered, they each picked out a bride, led her straightway before the priest, and were married without an instant's delay.