"I marched twenty paces in advance of the rest" (wrote Champlain) "till I was within about thirty paces of the Iroquois. … 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 afterwards. I had loaded my musket with four balls. When they saw I had shot so favourably for them, they (the Algonkins and Hurons) raised such loud cries that one could not have heard it thunder.
"Meantime the arrows flew on both sides. The Iroquois were greatly astonished that two men had been so quickly killed, though they were equipped with armour woven from copper thread and with wood, which was proof against their arrows."
Whilst Champlain was loading to fire again one of his two companions fired a shot from the woods, whereupon the Iroquois took to flight, abandoning their camp and fort. As they fled they threw off their armour of wooden boards and cotton cloth.
As to the way in which the Hurons tortured their Iroquois prisoners, Champlain writes of one instance.
"They commanded him (the prisoner) to sing, if he had courage, which he did, but it was a very sad song." The Hurons kindled a fire, and when it was well alight they each took a brand from the blaze, the end of which was red-hot, and with this burnt the bodies of their prisoners tied to stakes. Every now and then they stopped and threw water over them to restore them from fainting. Then they tore out their finger nails and applied fire to the extremities of the fingers. After that they tore the scalps off their heads, and poured over the raw and bleeding flesh a kind of hot gum. Then they pierced the arms of the prisoners near the wrists, and drew up their sinews with sticks inserted underneath, trying to tear them out by force, and, if failing, cutting them. One poor wretch "uttered such terrible cries that it excited my pity to see him treated in this manner, yet at other times he showed such firmness that one would have said he suffered scarcely any pain at all".
In this case Champlain, seeing that the man could not recover from his injuries, drew apart and shot him dead, "thus putting an end to all the tortures he would have suffered".
But the savage Hurons were not yet satisfied. They opened the corpse and threw its entrails into the lake. Then they cut off head, arms, and legs, and cut out the heart; this they minced up, and endeavoured to force the other prisoners to eat it.
With those of his allies who were Montagnais Indians from Tadoussac, Champlain returned to that place. As they neared the shore the Montagnais women undressed themselves, jumped into the river, and swam to the prows of the canoes, from which they took the heads of the slain Iroquois. These they hung about their necks as if they had been some costly chain, singing and dancing meanwhile.
However, in spite of these and other horrors, Champlain had "separated from his Upper Canadian allies with loud protestations of mutual friendship", promising to go again into their country and assist them with continued "fraternal" relations.
From this expedition Champlain learned much regarding the geography of eastern North America, and he brought back with him to France, to present to King Henry IV, two scarlet tanagers—one of the commonest and most beautiful birds of the eastern United States—a girdle of porcupine quills made from the Canadian porcupine, and the head of a gar-pike caught in Lake Champlain.[23]
On Champlain's return from France in 1610 (he and other Frenchmen and Englishmen of the time made surprisingly little fuss about crossing the North Atlantic in small sailing vessels, in spite of the storms of spring and autumn) he found the Iroquois question still agitating the minds of the Algonkins, Montagnais, and Hurons. Representatives of these tribes were ready to meet this great captain of the Mistigosh or Matigosh[24] (as they called the French), and implored him to keep his promise to take part in another attack on the dreaded enemy of the Adirondak heights. Apparently the Iroquois (Mohawks) this time had advanced to meet the attack, and were ensconced in a round fortress of logs built near the Richelieu River.[25] The Algonkins and their allies on this expedition were armed with clubs, swords, and shields, as well as bows and arrows. The swords of copper(?) were really knife blades attached to long sticks like billhooks. Before the barricade, as usual, both parties commenced the fight by hurling insults at each other till they were out of breath, and shouting "till one could not have heard it thunder". The circular log barricade, however, would never have been taken by the Algonkins and their allies but for the assistance of Champlain and three or four Frenchmen, who with their musketry fire at short range paralysed the Iroquois. Champlain and one other Frenchman were wounded with arrows in the neck and arm, but not seriously. The victory of the allies was followed by the usual torture of prisoners, which Champlain made a slight—only slight—attempt to prevent.
But results far more serious arose from these two skirmishes with the Iroquois in 1609 and 1610. The Confederacy of the Five Nations (afterwards six) realized that they had been attacked unprovoked by the dominant white men of the St. Lawrence, called by the Montagnais Mistigosh, and by the Iroquois Adoresetūi ("men of iron", from their armour). They became the bitter enemies of the French, and tendered help first to the Dutch to establish themselves in the valley of the Hudson, and secondly to the English. In the great Colonial wars of the early eighteenth century the Iroquois were invaluable allies to the British forces, Colonial and Imperial, and counted for much in the struggle which eventually cost France Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Maine, the two Canadas, and Louisiana. On the other hand, the French alliance with the Hurons, Algonkins, and Montagnais, begun by this brotherhood-in-arms with Champlain, secured for France and the French such widespread liking among the tribes of Algonkin speech, and their allies and friends, that the two Canadas and much of the Middle West, together with Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, became French in sympathy without any war of conquest. When the French dominion over North America fell, in 1759, with the capture of Quebec by Wolfe's army, tribes of Amerindians went on fighting for five years afterwards to uphold the banner and the rule of the beloved French king.
On Champlain's next visit to Canada, in 1610, he handed over to the Algonkin Indians a French youth named Étienne Brulé (see p. 88), to be taught the Algonkin language (the use of which was spread far and wide over north-east America), and, further, sent a Huron youth to France to be taught French. Between 1611 and 1616 he had explored much of the country between Montreal (the foundations of which city he may be said to have laid on May 29, 1611, for his stockaded camp is now in the centre of it) and Lakes Huron and Ontario, especially along the Ottawa River, that convenient short cut (as a water route) between the St. Lawrence at Sault St. Louis (Montreal) and Lakes Huron and Superior. With short portages you can get in canoes from Montreal to the waters of Hudson Bay, or to Lake Winnipeg and the base of the Rocky Mountains.
In exploring this "River of the Algonkins" (as he called it), Champlain was nearly drowned between two rocks, and much hurt, from over bravery and want of knowledge of how to deal with a canoe on troubled water; but on June 4, 1613, he stood on the site of the modern city of Ottawa—the capital of the vast Canadian Dominion—and gazed at the marvellous Rideau or Curtain Fall, where the Rideau River enters the Ottawa. But the air was resonant with the sound of falling water. Three miles above the falls of the Gatineau and the Rideau, the main Ottawa River descended with a roar and a whirl of white foam and rainbow-tinted mist into the chasm called the Chaudière or Kettle. On a later occasion he describes the way in which the Algonkins propitiated the Spirit of the Chasm:
"Continuing our way, we came to the Chaudière Falls, where the savages carried out their customary ceremony. After transporting their canoes to the foot of the fall they assemble in one spot, where one of them takes up a collection on a wooden platter, into which each person puts a bit of tobacco. The collection having been made, the plate is placed in the midst of the troop, and all dance about it, singing after their style. Then one of the captains makes an harangue, setting forth that for a long time they have been accustomed to make this offering, by which means they are ensured protection against their enemies, that otherwise misfortune would befall them from the evil spirit. This done, the maker of the harangue takes the plate and throws the tobacco into the midst of the cauldron