The description above appears quite brutal. But, of course, because most of the penned accounts of the attack were written by surviving French settlers, and there appears to be no written accounts from the Haudenosaunee perspective, one must consider them to be biased.
The Great Earthquakes
At approximately 11:00 a.m. on September 16, 1732, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake destroyed major parts of Montreal. Nearly 190 buildings and 300 homes were damaged in both the initial quake and the fires that followed. According to one report (which can’t be confirmed), despite all this destruction only a single person, a young girl, perished.
In an attempt to further investigate this great earthquake, the authors encountered the description of what appears to be a tremendous earthquake that occurred in the same area perhaps fifty years earlier. The following excerpt from Alfred Sandham’s 1870 book Ville-Marie, Or, Sketches of Montreal: Past and Present describes what appears to be a different earthquake that occurred around the year 1663. The detail is taken from an account by the local Jesuits. We found this particular excerpt to be quite the vivid description, without any concern for overstatement or hyperbole.
About half-past five in the evening of 5th February a great noise was heard throughout all Canada, which terrified the inhabitants so much that they ran out of their houses. The roofs of the buildings were shaken with great violence, and the houses appeared as if falling to the ground. There were to be seen animals flying in every direction; children crying and screaming in the streets; men and women seized with affright, stood horror-struck with the dreadful scene before them, unable to move, and ignorant where to fly for refuge from the danger. Some threw themselves upon their knees on the snow, crossing their breasts, and calling on the saints to deliver them from the dangers by which they were surrounded. Others pass the rest of the dreadful night in prayer; for the earthquake ceased not, but continued at short intervals, with a certain undulating impulse, resembling the waves of the ocean; and the same sensations, or sickness at the stomach, was felt during the shocks, as is experienced in a vessel at sea.
The violence of the earthquake was greatest in the forests, where it appeared as if there was a battle raging between the trees; for not only their branches were destroyed, but even their trunks are said to have been detached from their places, and dashed against each other with great violence and confusion — so much so that the Indians declared that all the trees were drunk. The war also seemed to be carried on between the mountains, some of which were torn from their beds and thrown upon others, leaving immense chasms in the places from whence they had issued, and the very trees with which they were covered sunk down, leaving only their tops above the surface of the earth; others were completely overturned, their branches buried in the ground, and the roots only remaining above ground. During this wreck of nature, the ice, upwards of six feet thick, was rent and thrown up in large pieces, and from the openings, in many parts, there issued thick clouds of smoke, or fountains of dirt and sand, which spouted to a considerable height. The springs were either choked up or impregnated with sulphur; many rivers were totally lost; others were diverted from their course; and their waters entirely corrupted. Some of them became yellow, some red, and the St. Lawrence appeared entirely white, as far down as Tadoussac. This extraordinary phenomenon must astonish those who know the size of the river, and the immense body of water in various parts, which must have required such an abundance of matter to whiten it. They write from Montreal, that during the earthquake, they plainly saw the stakes of the palisades jump up as if they had been dancing; and that of two doors in the same room, one opened and the other shut of their own accord; that the chimneys and tops of the houses bent like branches of trees agitated by the wind; that when they went to walk they felt the earth following them, and rising at every step they took.
From Three Rivers they write, that the first shock was the most violent, and commenced with a noise resembling thunder. The houses were agitated in the same manner as the tops of trees during a tempest, with a noise as if fire was crackling in the garrets. The shock lasted half an hour, or rather better, though its greatest force was properly not more than a quarter of an hour; and we believe there was not a single shock which did not cause the earth to open more or less.
As for the rest, we have remarked, that though the earthquake continued almost without intermission, yet it was not always of an equal violence. Sometimes it was like the pitching of a large vessel which dragged heavily at her anchors; and it was this motion which occasioned many to have a giddiness in their heads. At other times, the motion was hurried and irregular, creating sudden jerks, some of which were exceedingly violent; but the most common was a slight, tremulous motion, which occurred frequently with little noise.
At Tadousac the effect of the earthquake was not less violent than in other places: and such a heavy shower of volcanic ashes fell in that neighbourhood, particularly in the River St. Lawrence, that the waters were as violently agitated as during a tempest. Lower down, towards Point Alouettes, an entire forest of considerable extend, was loosened from the shore, and slid in the St. Lawrence.
There are three circumstances which rendered this earthquake quite remarkable; the first, its duration, it having continued from February to August. It is true the shocks were not always equally violent. The second circumstance relates to the extent of the earthquake. It was universal throughout the whole of New France from Gaspé, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, to beyond Montreal, also in New England, Acadia, and other places more remote. It must, therefore, have extended more than 600 miles in length, and 800 in breadth. Hence, 180,000 square miles of land were convulsed in the same day, and at the same moment. The third circumstance, which appears the most remarkable of all, regards the extraordinary protection of Divine Providence, which was extended to the inhabitants, for while large chasms were opened in various places, and the whole face of the country was convulsed, yet there was not a single life lost, nor a single person harmed in any way.
We found it interesting that both historic accounts, though they each discuss what appear to be different earth-shattering incidents, include references to significantly far-reaching damage, and yet no (or perhaps only a single) human casualty. Could this seeming miracle have anything to do with the cross erected in 1643?
Cholera and Typhus Epidemics (1832 and 1847)
Most of Lower Canada experienced a large scale Cholera epidemic that began in the summer of 1832 (as also described in the chapter “Cholera Ghosts and Un-Ghosts”). In just a matter of days, the reported death toll was more than two hundred and sixty people, and the final death toll is said to have reached approximately two thousand in Montreal.
But that particular epidemic was perhaps just a warm-up for a disease that struck in the following decade. The typhus epidemic of 1847 was linked with the Great Famine, which was caused by potato blight in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. A large-scale Irish emigration on over-crowded, disease-ridden ships led to the death of more than 20,000 people in Canada, including an estimated 3,500 to 6,000 immigrants, who died of this “ship fever” in Montreal’s fever sheds on Windmill Point. (See more about the fever sheds in the chapter “The Heroic Death of John Easton Mills.”)
The Great Fire of 1852
No sooner had Montreal recovered from the mass typhus deaths than a fire that originated at Brown’s Tavern on St. Lawrence broke out, leaving more than ten thousand people homeless (almost one fifth of the city’s