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Transcribed by R. Aungst
Some Years Ago
Some years ago when the first edition of this work was issued, the author's findings
concerning the coming of the first white man to Bowating and Gitchi Gumi were
the subjects of considerable chaffing and criticism from his friends. At that
time Butterfield's "Brule's Discoveries and Explorations" had been before the
public but a comparatively brief time, and his book was unknown to many in the
United States. Mr. Benjamin Sulte's scholarly researches had not been published,
although he had made claim to this honor for Brule in 1907 before the Royal Society.
Mr. James Curran, Editor of the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Daily Star, had not
published his articles on Brule, and the Dominion of Canada had not officially
recognized, in the Canada Year Book, Brule as the discoverer of Lake Superior
and the Bowating or Asticou Rapids.
Little doubt now remains that Etienne Brule, Frenchman pioneer of pioneers,
interpreter for Champlain, may fairly claim to have turned the first leaf in
the white man's history of Bowating, or Sault Ste. Marie as we know it; and
consequently of Michigan, Wisconsin, MInnesota and the great Northwest of the
United States and Canada. Indeed there is evidence that he wandered at least
to the Western confines of Lake Superior in or about the year 1622, twelve years
before the coming of Jean Nicolet to Bowating.
Brule Was Not a Writer
It took a careful and minute examination of the writings of the historian Sagard
by Sulte, Butterfield, Curran and other to balance the books for Brule. As far
as we know Brule never wrote a line of history. He came out from Champigny,
France, in 1608, seventy-four years after the first landing of Jacques Cartier,
and five years after Champlain's first coming to the new world. In 1610 Champlain,
Governor of New France at Quebec, sent Brule at the age of seventeen to the
Hurons as a hostage, and to learn the Indian tongue. Champlain wanted
a competent interpreter and in return he received at Quebec an Indian youth,
the son of a Chief, for the purpose of acquainting him with the ways of civilization.
Brule spent a year with the Hurons, mastered their language, and doubtless
became nearly as savage as they. He returned only occasionally to Quebec, and
in 1615 he volunteered to go through the enemy Iroquois country to the southward
on a mission the friendly Andastes. Remaining with them for a year, he was captured
by the Iroquois on his homeward journey and was put to torture near the head-waters
of the Susquehanna River. He was then twenty-three years of age. Tied to the
stake, his beard was torn out piecemeal and his body was singed from head to
foot with firebrands. One of his captors reached for an amulet hanging on Brule's
breast, and the latter warned hm in the Huron tongue, which was very similar
to that of the Iroquois, that the charm if touched would bring death to all
his torturers. Even as he spoke a fierce and sudden thunder storm broke above
their heads, and the superstitious Indians fled in terror.
Is Treated With Honor
When the storm had passed, the Indians returned and freed Brule from the stake.
They took him to their lodges and carefully dressed his wounds, treated him
with all honor, and soon turned him loose at the northern border of their territory,
whence he found his way back to his friends.
The following year this restless Frenchman started west. He had two reasons
for coming our way: one a commission from Champlain to explore the country,
and another the receipt of one hundred pistoles or two hundred dollars per year
from the Quebec traders, for inducing the Indians to go down to the St. Lawrence
with their furs. We have no positive evidence that he reached Gitchi Gumi on
this, his first journey westward, although it is possible that he toiled his
way through.
Since Champlain says little or nothing about discoveries in the west by Brule,
we must turn to Gabriel Sagard and his Histoire du Canada for information. We
find Sagard at Huronia with some Recollet priests in 1623---himself not being
in holy orders---and in Quebec the year following, whence he soon returned to
France. The Iroquois were very bothersome during Sagard's stay in New France.
They were mortal enemies of the French and desired the fur trade of the latter
which was developing down the St. Lawrence. In 1622 thirty or so canoe loads
of Iroquois had made a foray as far as Quebec. History writing under these conditions
must have been difficult. It is no wonder that the modern narrator, anxious
for the facts of the period, occasionally finds himself in a fog of doubtful
silence or a sea of conflicting statements. But we do know that Brother Sagard
was with Brule and talked with him in the Huron country in 1623, and in Quebec
the following year.
Brought a Copper Ingot
Among other things Sagard has this to say of Brule:
"The Hurons in some places had copper of which I had seen a little ingot near
Mer Douce (Lake Huron), which interpreter Brule brought us from a nation about
80 leagues (240 miles) from the Hurons. About 100 leagues from the Hurons there
is a mine of copper from which the interpreter showed me an ingot on his return
from a voyage he had made to a neighboring nation with a man named Grenolle........"
"Interpreter Brule has assured us that above the Mer Douce there is a very
large lake which empties into it over rapids nearly two leagues in width, which
he has named Saut de Gaston; which lake with the Mer Douce takes about thirty
days canoe travel, according to the report of the savages, and of the interpreter,
400 leagues in length....."
"One of our Frenchmen, having been trading with a northern nation, near the
copper mine about 100 leagues from us, told us on his return of having seen
there several girls who had had the ends of their noses cut off because they
had been guilty of a breach of their honor......"
May Have Visited Lake Michigan
Of Grenolle we know practically nothing except that he was the companion of
Brule. But we do know that the Sioux Indians at the western end of Lake Superior
were wont to punish their unchaste women by cutting their noses, so it would
seem reasonably certain that Brule and perhaps Grenolle had penetrated far inland
beyond Bowating. There is some evidence that one or both of them visited Lake
Michigan in the neighborhood of Green Bay.
Inasmuch as Brule does not appear to have gone farther west than Manitoulin
on his 1617 journey, on account of Indian wars in that vicinity, it may reasonably
appear that the year which Brule and perhaps the shadowy Grenolle visited us
was 1622.
Champlain Hated Brule
We might expect to find corroborative evidence of Brule's explorations in the
writings of Champlain, did we not know that Champlain came to hate Brule in
his latter days. He accused Brule of being "abandoned to women;" of consorting
freely with the Indian girls, of whom many, he tells us, were very beautiful
and attractive in figure; of treacherously deserting the French for the English,
although it appears that it was Brule who was deserted; and of comporting himself
in a general way as a savage. But inasmuch as it was Champlain who sent Brule
among the savages when a boy, and kept him there for a year to learn their language
and their ways, if anyone is to blame for Brule's fall from grace was it not
Champlain himself?
"This poor Brule," writes Sagard, "is not very devout, and not much given to
praying." It is difficult to see how he could have been devout after his savage
youth.
Champlain accuses Brule of selling himself to the English after the fall of
Quebec. But we learn to our surprise that Champlain, after the return of the
French to Quebec, sent back an Indian boy, who had been educated in France,
to his father in the west, in charge of Etienne Brule.
Brule Killed and Eaten
Brule appears to have made his home more or less permanently among the Indians
in the village of Toanche, one of the chief towns of the Huron nation, located
on the north shore of Penetang Bay. He was killed there by the Hurons in June,
1633, and his body eaten. No one knows whether he died in some private brawl,
or as a result of Huron animosity aroused by his defection to the English. Brother
Sagard was then living in France, but hearing of the affair through letters
from Canada, he writes:
"Brule was condemned to death, then eaten by the Hurons to whom for a long
time he served as interpreter, and all for a dislike they had against him for
I know not what fault he had committed against them. He lived among them many
years, living as one of them, serving as interpreter to the French, and after
all has received for pay only a sad death and an unhappy end."
While the English held Quebec the Indians came no more to trade there, but
in 1633, Champlain having returned to his capital, a number of Hurons from Toanche
came down with the Indian youth Amentache, whom Brule had escorted home from
Quebec in 1629. Amentache excused Brule's death to Champlain on the ground that
the former had left Champlain's service to go with the English.
Bones Moved to Ossossane
Father Brebeuf visited Toanche in 1634 and saw the place where poor Brule had
been murdered, but the village no longer existed, for excepting one cabin nothing
remained but the ruins of the others. Not long after Brule's death fever broke
out in Toanche and many of the Hurons died miserably. The sick ones were sure
they saw Brule's spectre or that of his sister hovering above the village, breathing
forth flames and pestilence. Knowing the site to be accursed, they burned the
village and moved another location some miles away. Four years later the Indians
at the time of one of their feasts of the dead, removed Brule's bones to Ossossane,
on the shore of Nottawasaga Bay near Varwood Point. There they probably rest
today, somewhere in the ground known as the Grozelle farm, and within sight
of the great fresh water lake which he was the first white man to see.
Mr. Benjamin Sulte, the eminent Canadian historian, writes of Brule:
"He was a man little known in history, but celebrated in his time among the
French in Canada, because he surpassed in geographical knowledge all the explorers
of Upper Canada and the territory surrounding it. He had failed to attract the
attention of Europe, its papers and learned societies. Besides, he worked alone,
without the aid of anyone, without ambition or fame, like an humble courier
de bois that he was. His taste for savage life served him for inspiration, he
drew from it his mens of existence, his temperament, his European origin disposing
him to enlarge from year to year the circle of his travels.
A number of couriers de bois had done like him, only their discoveries had
brought nothing to them. Since 1616 he had traveled Upper Canada from north
to south, visited Pennsylvania, Chesapeake Bay to the ocean. In 1622 he went
around Lake Superior. It can hardly be said that there were three houses in
Quebec between these two dates.
Brule's Name to Remain
"It is regettable that on the moral side, one cannot admit Etienne Brule in
the same category as Jean Nicolet, Jacques Hertel, Jean and Thomas Godefroy,
who worthily filled their careers as interpreters and then became serious colonists.
He became like others whom savage life had absorbed. But these do not shine
in history, while Brule has graven his name on vast domains and such as he is
we must accept him, under penalty of committing an injustice in keeping silence
on this subject."
There is little doubt that Brule should rank with Radisson, Joliet, La Salle
and other famous explorers. The real discoverer of the three largest Great Lakes,
and the first white man to set foot upon territory ranging from the site of
Duluth to that of Baltimore, has earned the right to fame, and his name should
not be allowed to sink into oblivian. Honor to Brule, the intrepid and the unfortunate.
Governor Champlain believed, and many another New World Frenchman believed
with him, that the all-water route to China lay beyond Bowating to the westward
or southwestward. We find this stated positively in his writings:
"The voyageurs and French explorers have taken a vow never to cease their efforts
until they have found either a western or a northern sea, opening the route
to China, which so many have thus far sought in vain."
Sought Route to China
It is possible that this idea had already formed in the mind of Champlain
when he sent Etienne Brule to Lake Huron in 1617. Even at that time the rapids
in the St. Lawrence near Hochelaga (the site of Montreal) were known as La Chine,
or the rapids on the way to China. So when Jean Nicolet came to visit us at
Bowating in 1634, he came as a seeker of the route to China.
We do not know that Nicolet had such intimate knowledge of the Huron and kindred
tongues as had Brule. We find him living with the Algonquins on the Isle des
Allumettes about 1618, and it was only after 1625 the he is found with the Nipissing
Hurons. The languages of these tribes were unlike in many respects.
Nicolet's instructions from Champlain were to journey westward in an endeavor
to learn of those "distant western people who had neither hair nor beards, and
who journeyed in great canoes." They were said to come from beyond the "Great
Water" to trade with the Indians of the lakes. Nicolet left Trois Rivieres in
July, 1634, with Father Brebeuf and other priests and a large number of Indians,
who were returning home after their annual barter of furs at Quebec. Most of
these he left in the vicinity of Mer Douce, and with seven Indians only he proceeded
on his history-making way.
Champlain Didn't Come
He had been ordered by Champlain not to go farther north in his quest
than the Saut de Gaston or Bowating. On Champlain's map dated 1632, there is
a notation that he had gathered information from which the map was drawn, over
the period from 1603 to 1629. But Mr. Sulte shows that Champlain was using the
results of explorations which only Brule and Grenolle could have furnished.
Furthermore, he has placed Lakes Michigan and Superior, the latter with its
island of copper (Isle Royale) in contrapostion and this is proof to Mr. Sulte
at least that Champlain had never visited these lakes himself, but had made
a natural mistake in setting down their locations.
The inverted Lake Michigan or Green Bay (des Puants) is placed above Bowating
on Champlain's map, and its outlet is marked by rocks and a fall. The term "Sault"
is inserted there, also a figure referring to the map index. The index for this
figure reads as follows, the reference evidently being taken with certain omissions,
from the writings of Sagard:
"Saut de Gaston, nearly two leagues wide, which discharges into Mer Douce,
comng from another very large lake, which with the Mer Douce are 30 days journey
by canoe according to the reports of savages."
The part omitted reads:
"And according to Brule, four hundred leagues in length."
The conclusion is inevitable that the omission was deliberate, probably the
result of the petty rancor of Champlain. We must further conclude that the ground
covered by Nicolet in 1634 had been traversed to some extent at least by a white
man before him. That man, it is reasonably certain, was Etienne Brule.
Still Hunting China
The Saut de Gaston, named by Brule in honor of the brother of the Kind of France,
was to mark the northern limit of Nicolet's explorations. This indicates two
things: First, that Champlain was satisfied with his knowledge of Lake Superior,
furnished by Brule; and second, that the route to China was supposed to stretch
in a southwesternly direction from Bowating. When Nicolet started his journey
Chinaward, Brule had been dead two years.
Nicolet, then, may be considered the ambassador of New France to the Chinese
Empire, contingent, of course, on his finding it. He was to visit specifically
the Indians of Bay des Puants and to obtain all possible information of the
beardless people who could be none other than Chinese or Japanese. This was
a natural enough conclusion in the little light there was then on the land to
the west.
We do not know that Nicolet tarried long at Bowating. The very casualness of
his visit seems to indicate his knowledge of some other white man's preceding
him. He found an interesting and populous village of Saulteur Chippewas at the
rapids, and he might have lingered there had not his instructions been imperative.
He had taken the usual Ottawa River route from the St. Lawrence; coming down
through Lake Nipissing, skirting the north shore of Georgian Bay, and paddling
up through the Devil's Gap to Bowating.
He now proceeded down Gitchi Gumi Sippi, turned westward into the Michilimackinac
Straits past the island of that name and arrived at the head of Green Bay where
the city so called now stands. The site at that time was occupied by a village
of the Winnebagoes. Upon approaching the town he sent a messenger ahead to announce
his coming. Before landing he attired himself in a flaming robe of Chinese silk,
adorned with embroidered birds and flowers. Then he sallied ashore, carrying
a pistol in each hand.
Indians All Flee
Imagine if you can the stunning effect produced upon the Indians by this pale
apparition, clad in a fiery rainbow of a gown, with Jovian thunder pealing from
his fists! If you had been there no doubt you would have taken to the woods
just as they did. In a twinkling the little town became a solitude, save for
one or two old men palsied with age and fear. When it was seen from vantage
ground in the timber that these innocents were still alive and unharmed, the
rest took courage and returned, at first with trembling but soon with confidence.
Nicolet convinced them of his peaceful intentions and they hurried to make a
great feast for him. He sojourned with his new friends a few days, canoed up
the Fox river and portaged over to the Wisconsin, descending thereon to a point
within three days' journey of the Mississippi. Being warned of hostile tribes
beyond, he ventured no farther. But he went back to New France firm in the belief
that the open sea lay just beyond. For he had misinterpreted the Indian term
for the Mississippi---"Father of Waters"---thinking it meant the great ocean
which he sought.
Our third white visitor--conceding Brule and Grenolle--met death by drowning
in the St. Lawrence in 1642. In the same year died Samuel de Champlain, governor
of New France, the man who sent us these emissaries. He was a truly great character.
The next white men to ascend the lovely Old Channel of Mer Douce were Jesuits,
and they came by special invitations of the Indians there. Members of the order,
welcomed by the populous Huron villages around Georgian Bay and Lake Simcoe,
had established in 1849 on the River Wye the Mission of St. Mary's. It was a
convenient and fairly central location.
War Club Laid Aside
The occasion of the Jesuits' first coming to the rapids was a Huron decennial
Feast of the Dead held in the vicinity of St. Mary's. This was a curious ceremony
practiced by the Chippewas and other northern tribes as well.
At the time of these grand burial feasts the war club was laid aside. All were
welcome to pay the last marks of respect, and to make sure by this ceremony
the final entry of the souls of the departed into eternal happiness. For it
was the belief of these Indians that a second soul resided in the dead body,
not to be released until the due performing of the last sacred rites at the
great feast.
At the time appointed the accumulated corpses of years were lowered from their
scaffolds and raised from their graves, while the trees gave up their ghastly
winter's fruit. The coverings were removed and the bodies claimed by relatives,
who proceeded to scrape as far as possible the flesh from the bones. There,
having been wept over with many lamentations, were tenderly wrapped in skins
and furs and brought sometimes great distances to the feasting place. Meanwhile
great burial pits had been prepared and lined with beaver and other skins.
Sacrifices to the Dead
At the funeral dinner famed orators of the tribes reounted the virtues of the
deceased and bewailed their loss in rounded periods. Many of the hearers gave
themselves over to extravagant demonstrations of grief. When the bones were
deposited at the edge of the pits other panegyrics were delivered. Belongings
of the greatest possible value were deposited in the huge graves as sacrifices
to the dead, and the more costly the offerings the greater was deemed the piety
of the bereaved relatives. Then were the bodies and the disjointed bones placed
in their last sepulchre, and arranged with poles as evenly as possible and carefully
covered with earth and stones. Thus did our northern tribes insure to their
dead a safe abode in the Country of Souls. The ceremonies ended with another
great feast, which was more joyful than the first, and where singing and dancing
took the place of funeral orations.
Chippewa tradition points to the shore of Tahquamenon River, and Skull Cave
on Mackinac Island, as ancient locations of the Feast of the Dead.
Some of the Huron pits have been found to contain more than a thousand bodies.
Weapons of different kinds, stones or clay pipes, copper ornaments, beads and
other trinkets are found in great numbers. A few of the Georgian Bay pits contain
articles of aboriginal Mexican make, proving ancient traffic relations over
a vast territory.
Objects of European workmanship are found in nearly all these communal graves.
From this ethnologists infer that the Feasts of the Dead did not greatly antedate
the coming of the whites.
Jesuits First Meet Chippewas
The Jesuits of St. Mary's Mission first made acquaintance with the Saulteur
Chippewas at one of their feasts. The following is from the Jesuits Relations
for 1641, wherein the missionary priests set down a careful record of their
experiences for their superiors:
"The inhabitants of the Sault, who came to this feast from a distance of a
hundred or a hundred and twenty leagues were actors in this ballet, which the
women appeared and danced the third part of the ball...."
"The Pauoitigoneinchas invited us to go and see them in their own country.
They are a nation of the Algonquin language, distant from the Hurons a hundred
or a hundred and twenty leagues to the west whom we call the inhabitants of
the Sault. We promised to pay them a visit and see how they might be disposed,
in order to labor for their conversion; especially as we learned that a more
remote nation whom they called the Ponteatami had abandoned their own country
and taken refuge with the inhabitants of the Sault, in order to remove from
some other hostile nation who persecuted them with endless wars. We selected
Father Charles Raymbault to undertake this journey; and as at the time some
Hurons were to be of the party, Father Isaac Jogues was chosen, that he might
deal with them."
The two priests left St. Mary's for Bowating in September of the same year,
and reached their destination after seventeen days travel. They received a friendly
welcome in the village here of about two thousand Indians, and secured much
information about the neighboring tribes. It is likely the local population
had been swelled by a temporary influx of Potawatomies, driven here by their
old-time enemies the Iroquois.
Invited to Stay Here
Jogues and Raymbault met the Chippewa Chiefs in council here, and an invitation
was extended to the Fathers to take up their abode in Bowating. They must have
remained but two or three weeks, however, as they left the Chippewa captial
and returned to St. Mary's the same autumn. They
are said to have planted a cross at the foot of the rapids, the first to have
been raised in the million or more square miles comprising the Northwest. Father
Raymbult was weak and ill, and he died that winter at Quebec.
Three hundred and twenty Jesuits in all visited New France under the French
regime, and many of them lived long years and died there. They labored among
the Iroquois and the Algonquins, the Hurons and the Chippewas, over country
stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to Chequamagon on Lake Superior. Most of
them were educated, cultured and refined men, some were descendents of noble
families, and the contrast between their homes in France and the savage haunts
of the north must have been great indeed. For instance, Father LeJeune tells
us in his Relation of a winter spent with a hunting band of Algonquins. He roamed
the snowy forests with them, sharing their hunger and cold and unsanitary conditions.
Often they were on starvation's verge and again he was revolted by their gorging
when game was plentiful. "I told them," he says, "that if dogs and swine could
talk
they would use just such language."
Jogues Stands Out Pre-eminently
Of all this band of Christian men, Isaac Jogues, the first Jesuit missionary
to visit our locality, stands pre-eminent in suffering, fortitude and frightful
martyrdom. When he was returning to the Huron country from Quebec with two other
Frenchmen, Goupil and Couture, and some Hurons, they were
captured by a war party of the Iroquois. Coutre had killed one of them, and
in the end they gave the three white men a ferocious beating and chewed off
their finger-nails. After this they were clubbed almost to death.
On Lake Champlain they met another party of Iroquois and were compelled to
run the gauntlet between lines of Indians armed with clubs and thorny sticks.
When the Frenchmen fell, drenched with their own blood, they were recalled to
life by firebrands applied to their bodies. Couture showed such physical stamina
and bull-dog courage that his admiring enemies adopted him into their tribe,
and he was safe from torture thereafter. But Jogues and Goupil were dragged
from town to town by the savages, and constantly exposed to the utmost torments
that could be inflicted without killing them. In the intervals of his sufferings
Jogues managed to baptize some Huron prisoners with rain-drops gathered from
an ear of corn.
Still Preached Gospel
Soon Goupil was killed, and as Jogues showed no disposition to escape he was
allowed a little liberty. This he spent in baptizing infants and prisoners wherever
possible, and in preaching
the Gospel to anyone who would listen.
Having accompanied a fishing party of Iroquois to the Hudson River, he was
seen by the Dutch at Fort Orange (Albany), and they aided his escape to Manhattan.
There the Dutch Governor arranged
for his passage to Europe. He arrived safely in Paris and became the hero of
the day, for the account of his adventures made a great sensation. He was received
at court and narrated his sufferings
to the queen, who kissed his wounded hands.
The following spring found him in Montreal, preparing to go as a peace envoy
to the Iroquois country. "I shall go, but I shall never return," he wrote. On
his way he recalled at Fort
Orange, where the kindly Dutchmen marvelled greatly at his second venture among
his enemies. A few days later he was unmercifully clubbed by some Mohawk Indians,
one of whom drove a
tomahawk into his brain. Thus died Jogues, valiant soldier of the cross and
first missionary to penetrate the wilderness to Bowating.
Love Your Enemies
In the Relation for 1647, Lalemant says of Jogues: "He felt no aversion to his
tormentors, even in the midst of his sufferings. As a mother regards with pity
her stricken child, so he looked with an eye of compassion upon his enemies."
The Jesuits of New France carried the following instructions, which throw an
interesting light upon the lives of missionaries and Indians alike:
"You should love like brothers the Indians with whom you are to spend the rest
of your life. Never make them wait for you in embarking. Take a flint and steel
to light their pipes and kindle their fires at night, for these little services
win their hearts. Try to eat their sagamite as they cook it, bad and
dirty as it is. Fasten up the skirts of your cassock, that you may not carry
water or sand into the canoe. Wear no shoes or stockings in the canoes, but
you may put them on in crossing the portages.
Do not make yourself troublesome, even to a single Indian. Do not ask too many
questions. Bear their faults in silence and always be cheerful. Buy fish for
them from the tribes you will pass;
and for this purpose take with you some awls, beads, knives and fish-hooks.
Be not ceremonious with the Indians; take at once what they offer you, for ceremony
offends them. Be very careful when
in a canoe, that the brim of your hat does not annoy them. Perhaps it would
be better to wear your night-cap. There is no such thing as impropriety among
Indians. Remember that it is Christ and His cross that you are seeking and if
you aim at anything else, you will get nothing but affliction for body and mind."
Iroquois Attack the French
Shortly after the death of Jogues the Iroquois attacked the French and their
Algonquin and Huron allies with red hot fury. Champlain had made a foray into
the Iroquois territory in 1615,
and the Five Nations, biding their time, had never forgotten it. Furthermore,
the Dutch and the English to the east of the Iroquois lands wanted furs and
more furs. The forests of what was now
central New York, and which were then the home of the Five Nations, housed no
such fur-bearing animals either in quantity or quality as were to be found across
the St. Lawrence to the north and west. Indian wants and needs increased rapidly
with the coming of the white man and his European commodities. The red man desired
powder and guns, hatchets, cloth, beads, traps, cooking utensils and whisky;
the white brother was keen for furs. With a tribal organization not surpassed
even under Pontiac a century later, the Iroquois opened hostilities under the
double inspiration of plunder and
revenge.
Nothing could have exceeded their ferocity. They swept down the St. Lawrence
valley and devoted the Huron villages to a fearful slaughter. Nor did they spare
the French, whose island of Montreal
was devastated by two bloody incursions. The Hurons were scattered to the winds.
As a nation they ceased to exist.The work of the Jesuits among them, prosecuted
with so much toil and care, sank in blood before the hatchets of the Iroquois,
and Father Brebeuf and Lalemant and others were put to death with horrible barbarities.
The Iroquois Confederacy reached the zenith of its power about 1653. In that
year we find its victorious and omnipresent butchers swarming afar upon the
upper Great Lakes in pursuit of the flying Ottawas and Hurons. In view of the
likelihood that at no time the number of their fighting men exceeded 2,600,
the destruction they created seems almost inconceivable. It surely was a marvelously
small number to make such great havoc among so many tribes, and seriously to
imperil the existence of the French
Barbaraties Beyond Belief
Through the Jesuit Relations some of the fearful details of that war have come
down to us that are well-nigh beyond belief. The Northern Hurons met with an
occasional success in their battles with the enemy, and they did not fail to
extract a savage pleasure from the agonies of their captives. Once they took
a hundred Iroquois prisoners, including the Chief Ononkwaya and these were distributed
among the Huron villages for torture and feasting. But in the hour of his death
the Iroquois leader baffled his enemies, who considered it an augury of diaster
if no cry of pain could be forced from their victims.
When he had been baptized by the Jesuits, who tried unavailingly to save his
life, he was bound to a stake upon a low scaffold and a scorching fire was built
beneath him. This was just near enough to roast him by slow degrees, permitting
the delighted Hurons to witness his agony for hours. But they could not draw
as much as a single moan from him, for he had wrought himself into an ecstasy
of fury that rose superior to pain. And when his executioners thinking him nearly
dead, tore his reeking
scalp from his head, he burst his bonds with a superhuman effort, seized a flaming
brand from the fire below and drove them from the scaffold.
How a True Chief Dies
He held them at bay for a moment while stones, clubs and live coals rained upon
him from the crowd. Presently a false step threw him to the ground, where his
captors picked him up and threw him full into the fire. Covered with blood,
cinders and ashes, he leaped out and upon them, brandishing a blazing brand
in each hand. Cowed for an instant they fell back before such a terrible sight,
and he rushed toward the town as if to set it on fire. In a trice a warrior
tripped him with a pole, bringing him headlong to the earth, where they fell
upon him, cut off his hands and his feet and again tossed him into the fire.
Again he rolled himself out, crawling forward on his knees and the stumps of
his arms, glaring upon his enemies with such unutterable ferocity that they
recoiled once more. Then, seeing that he was helpless, they knocked him over
and cut off his head, and hastened to feast upon the body of so courageous an
adversary. One of his severed hands was thrown to the Jesuits, who buried it
in their chapel.
Such was an incident of an Iroquois defeat. Their never-ending wars might have
entirely wiped out the comparatively small numbers of their warrior, even though
they were victorious in every battle, had they not resorted to an expedient
mentioned in the Relations. They made a practice of adopting many of their prisoners,
especially the youths. These nearly always became loyal members of the Five
Nations, often outdoing the native Iroquois in committing atrocities upon their
former relatives and tribesmen.
An Invasion That Failed
The remnants of the Hurons and the Tobacco Nations having fled northward, the
triumphant Iroquois to the number of about one thousand embarked in war canoes
and proceeded through the Michilimackinac Straits to attack the survivors and
their Winnebago allies at Green Bay. The latter successfully defended their
fort, and some of the retreating Iroquois were lost in a great storm at the
entrance to the Bay, which is known since as "Death's Door."
Here the invaders divided, and half their number ascended Gitchi Gumi Sippi
or St. Mary's River to Bowating, driving our resident Chippewas from the village
at the rapids and taking many prisoners. Portaging around the rapids they embarked
on the bay above, landing at Point Iroquois to torture and eat their victims
after their accustomed fashion; while the Chippewa Chief Nin gau be on rallied
his somewhat demoralized forces under the shadow of Gros Cap's lofty headline
across the bay.
The night was foggy, and favorable for surprise attack. The Chippewas crossed
the bay undiscovered and fell upon their gorged and sleeping enemies at the
hour of dawn. There was a great slaughter and the sandy beach was soaked with
Iroquois blood. the Chippewas placed the enemy skulls in a line along the shore,
said to have been nearly a mile in length. The headless bodies were left unburied
on the beach, prey to the wild beast and the birds, and many years after bones
were still to be found there. Tradition says that but one Chippewa warrior was
killed, and that one Iroquois was sent back home alive, minus nose and ears,
with the jeering admonition to his nation to send out men and not women the
next time it desired to fight the Chippewas.
Never Molested Again
Thus did our Saulteur Chippewas hold their lands against the farthest north
assault of their renowned antagonists, and they never were molested by the Five
Nations afterwards. To this day the whites call the place of the famous fight
"Point Iroquois" and the Chippewas know it as "Nad o way an ing, or the Place
of the (Iroquois) Snakes."
Occasionally there is an echo of that epochal occasion on the streets of Sault
Ste. Marie. Indians from the east sometimes visit us, and often as not they
are accosted by a local Indian:
"How do, Iroquois?"
"Huh, how do you know we're Iroquois?"
"Oh, we know the Iroquois well. There are hundreds of them here."
"What, Iroquois here?"
"Yes, plenty. They came here to see us nearly three hundred years ago and they
are here yet. They were looking for trouble, and we gave them such fine entertainment
that they never went back."
This, you understand, helps to keep those pesky eastern Indians where they
belong.
The other half of the invading Iroquois forces turned southward down the western
shore of Lake Michigan to the land of the Illini. Read what happened there,
in the words of the ancient chronicler:
"The Iroquese embarqu'd upon the Mississippi and were discover'd by another
Fleet that was sailing down the other side of the same river. The Iroquese cross'd
over immediately to that island which is since call'd Aux Recontres. The Nadouessis,
i. e., the other little Fleet, being suspicious of some ill design, without
knowing what people they were (for they had no knowledge of the Iroquese but
by Hear-say); upon this Suspicion, I say, they tug'd hard to come up with 'em.
"The two armies posted themselves upon the Point of the Island, where the two
Crosses are put down on the Map; and as soon as the Nadouessis came in sight,
the Iroquese cry'd out in the Illinese Language, Who are ye? To which the Nadouessis
answer'd, Somebody; And putting the like Question to the Iroquese, receiv'd
the same Answer.
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