4. The War-Path Of The Iroquois
The story of the Richelieu River is a story of war and conflict. It opens just three hundred years ago, when Champlain set out from Quebec to join a war-party of Algonquins and Hurons, who had determined to seek the Iroquois in their own country, and had begged him to aid in the expedition. In consenting to do so, Champlain no doubt felt that he had good and sufficient reasons, but if he could have foreseen the consequences of his act he would surely have left the Algonquins and Iroquois to settle their difficulties in their own way, for from this first act of aggression dates the implacable hatred of the Iroquois for the French, and a century and more of ferocious raids into every corner of the struggling colony.
Champlain, with his little party of French and a horde of naked savages, reached the mouth of the Richelieu, or the River of the Iroquois as it was then called, about the end of June 1609. The Indians quarrelled among themselves, and three-fourths of their number deserted and made off for home. The rest continued their course up the waters of the Richelieu. When they reached the rapids, above the Basin of Chambly, it was found impossible to take the shallop in which the French had travelled any farther. Sending most of his men back to Quebec, he himself, with two companions, determined to see the adventure through. After many days' hard paddling, the flotilla of canoes swept out on to the bosom of the noble lake which perpetuates the name of Champlain, and in the evening of the twenty-ninth of July they discovered the Iroquois in their canoes, near the point of land where Fort Ticonderoga was long afterwards built. The Iroquois made for the shore, and as night was falling it was mutually agreed to defer the battle until the following morning. The Iroquois threw up a barricade, while Champlain and his native allies spent the night in their canoes on the lake.
In the morning Champlain and his two men put on light armour, and the whole party landed at some distance from the Iroquois. "I saw the enemy go out of their barricade," says Champlain, "nearly two hundred in number, stout and rugged in appearance. They came at a slow pace towards us, with a dignity and assurance which greatly amused me, having three chiefs at their head. Our men also advanced in the same order, telling me that those who had three large plumes were the chiefs, and that I should do what I could to kill them. I promised to do all in my power.
"As soon as we had landed, they began to run for some two hundred paces towards their enemies, who stood firmly, not having as yet noticed my companions, who went into the woods with some savages. Our men began to call me with loud cries; and in order to give me a passage-way, they opened in two parts, and put me at their head, where I marched some twenty paces in advance of the rest, until I was within about thirty paces of the enemy, who at once noticed me, and, halting, gazed at me, as I did also at them. When I saw them making a move to fire at us, I rested my musket against my cheek, and aimed directly at one of the three chiefs. With the same shot two fell to the ground, and one of their men was so wounded that he died some time after. I had loaded my musket with four balls. When our side saw this shot so favourable for them, they began to raise such loud cries that one could not have heard it thunder. Meanwhile, the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, although they were equipped with armour woven from cotton thread, and with wood which was proof against their arrows. This caused great alarm among them. As I was loading again, one of my companions fired a shot from the woods, which astonished them anew to such a degree that, seeing their chiefs dead, they lost courage, and took to flight, abandoning their camp and fort, and fleeing into the woods, whither I pursued them, killing still more of them. Our savages also killed several, and took ten or twelve prisoners. The remainder escaped with the wounded.
"After gaining the victory, our men amused themselves by taking a great quantity of Indian corn and some meal from their enemies, also their armour, which they had left behind that they might run better. After feasting sumptuously, dancing and singing, we returned three hours after, with the prisoners."
On the return journey, the Algonquins tied one of the prisoners to a stake, and tortured him with such refinement of cruelty as to arouse the disgust and resentment of Champlain. Finally, they allowed him to put the wretched Iroquois out of his misery with a musket-ball. Arrived at the rapids, the Algonquins and Hurons returned to their own country, with loud protestations of friendship for Champlain, while the latter continued his journey down to Quebec.
If anything remained to heap the cup of Iroquois resentment to the brim, it was provided the following year, when Champlain again lent his assistance to the Algonquins and Hurons, and, encountering a war-party of Iroquois, a hundred strong, near the mouth of the Richelieu, killed or captured every one of them. The day was to come when the tables would be turned with a vengeance, when the war-cry of the Iroquois would be heard under the walls of Montreal and Quebec, and the death of each of the hundred warriors avenged a hundredfold.
But the sanguinary story of the Richelieu is not limited to Indian wars, or the conflict between Indian and French. In later years it was to become the road of war between white and white, between New England and New France, and again between the revolted colonists of New England and the loyal colonists of Canada. On the very spot where Champlain and his Algonquins had defeated the Iroquois, one hundred and fifty years later another conflict took place, curiously similar in some respects, though different enough in others. Again one side fought behind a barricade, while the other gallantly rushed to the assault, and again the defeat was overwhelming; but there the resemblance ends. Behind the impregnable breastwork at Ticonderoga stood Montcalm with his three or four thousand French; without stood Abercrombie, with fifteen thousand British regulars and Colonial militia. Abercrombie's one and only idea was to carry the position by assault, and throughout the long day he hurled regiment after regiment up the deadly slope, only to see them mown down by hundreds and thousands before the breastwork. Champlain's victory was one of civilisation over savagery; Montcalm's was one of skill over stupidity.
Seventeen years after the battle of Ticonderoga, the Richelieu once more became the road of war. Down its historic waters came Montgomery, with his three thousand Americans, to capture Montreal and to be driven back from the walls of Quebec. Among all the singular circumstances that led up to and accompanied this disastrous attempt to relieve Canadians of the British yoke, none was more remarkable, or more significant, than the fact that the bulk of the plucky little army with which Guy Carleton successfully defended England's northern colony consisted of French-Canadians--the same down-trodden French-Canadians on whose behalf Congress had sent an army to drive the British into the sea. As for the Richelieu, having served for the better part of two centuries as the pathway of savage and civilised war, its energies were at length turned into channels of peaceful commerce.