CHAPTER II

CHAMPLAIN ON THE GREAT LAKES

On the 28th of July, 1615, Samuel de Champlain paddled out of the mouth of the French River into the waters of Georgian Bay, an arm of Lake Huron; or, as he named it from its great expanse, the “Mer Douce,” or “Freshwater Sea.” With him was a young interpreter, Étienne Brulé, who had been sent by Champlain when a mere lad to winter in the Huron country, and to learn from the Indians their languages and customs. As a member of this Huron party, in 1610, he had been the first white man to look upon the waters of Lake Huron, the central of the five Great Lakes. Now Champlain himself had come, journeying from Montreal with a trading party of Indians. Some of the Indians had slipped away before the rest of the expedition was ready, taking with them a missionary. Father Joseph Le Caron had, therefore, made the journey a few days before his leader, but at last Champlain had reached the marvellous sea of Indian story, and was on the point of exploring the region of the Great Lakes.

He found the lands bordering the lakes occupied by three groups of Indians: the Iroquois, who were closely banded together into a league known as the Five Nations; the Hurons, who were related to them, but were always at war with them; and the Algonquins, who belonged to one great family, but were now divided into many widely scattered and independent tribes.

The Five Nations of the Iroquois were joined in a loose but effective confederacy. Originally they had formed one great tribe, but internal dissension had split them into five,--the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. Legend states that Hiawatha had counselled union and had thus brought about the League of the Iroquois, which was the most important Indian organization north of Mexico. The confederation was governed by fifty sachems, ten from each nation, who made up a grand council. Unanimity was required in all decisions, but when these were once arrived at the tribes were obedient. The Iroquois lived in a wide strip of country extending from Lake Erie and Lake Ontario eastward across central New York. They called this section of country “The Long House” from its resemblance in shape to one of their oblong dwellings.

[Illustration: Map of Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario, also depicting connecting waterways and a number of smaller lakes in the region.]

The Algonquins occupied the greater part of the country from the St. Lawrence to Lake Superior and the Mississippi, and included the Illinois, Wisconsin, Chippewa, Ottawa, and other tribes of the lake region. In the centre of the Algonquin country, in a narrow district extending eastward from Georgian Bay toward Lake Ontario, lived the Huron nation, a strong and prosperous tribe. Between them and the Iroquois there was constant enmity, and for a time after the coming of the whites it was by no means certain which group of Indians would come out victorious. It was while this contest was at its height that Samuel de Champlain came to the St. Lawrence and in 1608 founded Quebec. It was to the Huron settlements he was journeying in the summer of 1615.

Champlain was born in southern France and had already won fame as an explorer. He had visited the West Indies, Mexico, and Central America, and had suggested the building of a ship canal at Panama. He had coasted the shores of New England and had been one of the first French colonists at the Bay of Fundy. After the founding of Quebec he had traversed the lake which now bears his name and had journeyed far and wide in the surrounding region. In these expeditions he had allied himself with the Indians of the St. Lawrence and had supported them in their battles with the Iroquois.

In the summer of 1615, yielding to the clamors of the Hurons gathered at Montreal for their yearly traffic with the French, Champlain agreed to accompany them on an inroad into the Iroquois country. He departed for Quebec to make needful preparations, but when he returned after a delay of a few days he found that the impatient Indians had set out for their villages, taking with them Father Joseph Le Caron, a Recollect friar who had come out with him from France that spring as a missionary to the Indians. Champlain embarked immediately with ten natives, Brulé, and another Frenchman on the journey to the Huron villages. He approached Lake Huron by the hard northern route, travelling up the Ottawa River, along the portage path to Lake Nipissing, across which he sailed, and down the French River. Indian tribes along the way encouraged the voyagers, telling them that the Lake of the Hurons was at hand. At length they came out from between the banks of the river into the waters of the lake. For more than a hundred miles they coasted southward along its eastern shores, working their way in and out among countless islands, till they reached the lower end of Georgian Bay. There they landed and proceeded by a well-beaten trail into the heart of the Huron country.

From the moment when he entered the first Huron village Champlain recognized that this was an Indian community different from any that he had heretofore seen. He had come upon one of the most remarkable savage settlements on the continent. The people lived in permanent villages protected by palisades of crossed and intersecting trunks of trees. Not only was the land naturally fertile, but in the clearings between the stretches of heavy forests were cultivated fields of maize and pumpkins, and gay patches of sunflowers from the seeds of which the Indians made oil for their hair. To Champlain coming from the roving Algonquins of the St. Lawrence and the barren country along the Ottawa, where the Indian population lived by hunting and fishing, the social advancement of this group of tribes seemed very great.

The Hurons welcomed him with eager hospitality and took him from village to village, entertaining him with lavish feasting and celebration, for he was the champion who was to lead them to victory against their hated foe the Iroquois. At the principal Huron village Carhagouha, a settlement of two hundred bark lodges enclosed in a palisade thirty-five feet high, Champlain found Father Le Caron.

The priest had feared that his leader would not follow the Hurons, or that if he did he would be captured by the Iroquois. When he looked up one morning and saw Champlain standing in the doorway of his dwelling his joy knew no bounds. He showed him the bark wigwam which the Indians, to prove the joy that they felt at his coming, were building for him. They had offered at first to lodge him in one of their common cabins, but Father Le Caron had remonstrated with them, representing that “to negotiate with God affairs so important, involving the salvation of their whole nation,” he needed a place where he could be alone, far from the tumult of their families. So they had brought poles and bark and erected this lodge at the edge of the forest. Here he had raised an altar, and here on the 12th of August was celebrated the first mass ever held in the country of the Hurons. Curious Indians crowded about as the priest stood before his rude altar and led the devotions of the kneeling band of Frenchmen with Champlain at their head. For the first time the solemn chant of the “Te Deum Laudamus” rang out on the listening air, and a volley of muskets proclaimed the planting of a cross outside the priest’s lodge. The symbol of Christianity had been raised in the country of the heathen!

Before they set out on the war-path the Huron chiefs insisted on a weary succession of feastings and dancings, rejoicing in their serene conviction of victory to come. Champlain spent the time going from village to village, gratifying his insatiable curiosity over everything which he saw. At last the savage war-party was ready to set out. They crossed Lake Simcoe and paddled, making the necessary portages, down the chain of intervening lakes to the river Trent, which flowed into Lake Ontario. The country through which the long line of canoes passed was singularly beautiful. Champlain found it hard to believe that the groves of walnut trees, whose branches were twined with hanging grapevines, had not been set out by the hand of man to form a beautiful artistic picture. The party stopped once and encamped for a grand deer-hunt, and then proceeded on its way, well-stocked with provisions for the first days in the enemies’ country. Out upon Lake Ontario the frail canoes ventured, and crossed it in safety, landing on the eastern side of the lake, thirty miles or so from Oswego.

Now a change came over the warriors. Silently they hid their canoes in the woods, and with stealthy and rapid steps they filed in silence through the borders of this hostile country. For four days they marched inland through the forest, crossing the Oneida River at the western end of the lake, and on the 9th of October some of their scouts brought in a captured fishing party of eleven Iroquois, men, women, and children. A Huron chief took possession of the prisoners and began to torture them, cutting off a finger of one of the women. Champlain met this method of celebration with angry protest, declaring that it was not the act of a warrior to treat helpless women with cruelty. The chief agreed, since it was displeasing to Champlain, to do nothing more to the women, but added that he would do to the men what he pleased. It was a curious position in which Champlain had placed himself, aiding one group of savages against another, nor did he find it to his liking.

The next day the war-party came out into a clearing in the forest, from which they could see the Iroquois fort. A number of Iroquois were gathering corn and pumpkins in the adjoining fields. With a rush the impetuous young Hurons who were in advance screamed their war-cry and fell upon them. The Iroquois seized their arms and defended themselves with such success that their assailants began to fall back. Only the timely aid of Champlain and the Frenchmen with their terrifying muskets saved the invaders from defeat.

Champlain saw that this irregular way of fighting, each person according to his whim, would result in utter ruin. The Hurons withdrew into the forest to encamp for the night, and there he addressed them angrily, showing them their foolishness and instructing them in the best methods of war. He found the Iroquois village to be far more strongly defended than any that he had seen among the Indians. Four rows of palisades, made of trees thirty feet high, supported a kind of gallery, which was provided with wooden gutters for quenching fire and piled high with a goodly supply of stones to hurl at the enemy. This was a stronghold that could not be captured by the haphazard methods of the Hurons. Champlain set the Indians to work the next morning building a wooden tower, high enough to overlook the palisades and large enough to shelter four or five marksmen. In four hours the work was done, and two hundred of the strongest warriors dragged it forward to a position from which the musketeers could pour a deadly fire into the crowded galleries. The rank and file of the Hurons were meanwhile equipped with huge wooden shields to protect themselves against the arrows and stones of the enemy. As the deadly bullets fell among them the Iroquois rushed headlong from the gallery, and the result of the battle would have been very different had the Hurons followed out Champlain’s well-conceived plans; but they were ungovernable. With reckless fury they threw away their shields, and yelling their war-cry so shrilly that no command could be heard, they poured out into the open field, discharging their own arrows but exposing themselves meanwhile to a rain of stones and arrows from the Iroquois. One Huron, bolder than the rest, ran forward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and others followed him with the dry wood which they had gathered for the purpose. But they set the fire on the leeward side of the fort, where the wind was against it, and torrents of water poured down from above soon put it out. In vain Champlain shouted commands and made every effort to restore order. He soon decided that his shouting would only “burst his own head” and have no effect on any one else. So he and his Frenchmen set to work picking the Iroquois off the rampart with their shots. After three hours of this kind of fighting the Hurons fell back.

Only eighteen men had been wounded, but among them were two chiefs and Champlain himself. He had received one arrow in the knee and another in the leg. He urged the Indians to renew the attack, but they refused. From extreme overconfidence the warriors had passed to the deepest discouragement. The next day a violent wind offered them an opportunity to set fire to the fort, but the Hurons sat silent in their camp. For five days they waited to see if the five hundred allies which Brulé and twelve Hurons had started a month ago to fetch would appear. During this time they ventured out occasionally for imprudent skirmishes, each time running back under the cover of the French musket fire, amid taunts from the Iroquois on the palisade that the Hurons had very little courage to require French assistance. Then they hastily began to retreat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while the Iroquois harassed the flanks and rear of the company. The wounded, Champlain among them, were packed in rude baskets made on the spot, and bound on the backs of stout warriors. Champlain gives a vivid picture of the suffering he endured, while he was thus “bundled in a heap, and doubled and strapped together in such a fashion that it was as impossible to move as for an infant in swaddling-clothes.” The torment from the cramped position and constant jolting was so much worse than even the pain of his wound that as soon as he could possibly bear his weight on his leg he got out of “this prison.”

Snow and hail overtook the party on their dismal march to the lake. They were relieved to find their hidden canoes safe, and embarked once more on Lake Ontario. In his vain efforts to get the Indians to renew the attack after their first defeat, Champlain had come to see that he had lost some of his peculiar influence over them. They had fancied that his presence would ensure victory. Now they saw him wounded, and by Indian weapons. Their superstitious reverence for the “man with the iron breast” was weakened. Here on the shores of Lake Ontario he was to experience a very practical consequence of his loss of prestige. The Hurons had promised him an escort to Quebec; but each warrior found a reason why he should not be able to lend his canoe for the journey. The chiefs who had made the promises had little control over their men, and Champlain found that he must winter with the natives. The great war-party broke up. Some went to hunt deer and bears, others to trap beavers, others to fish in the frozen lakes and streams, and still others returned to their villages. One of the chiefs offered Champlain the shelter of his cabin, which he was glad to accept, and he settled down to get what comfort and information he could from his forced visit.

Fifty pages of Champlain’s minute and wonderfully illustrated account testify to the fact that he was not idle during the winter months. He records many interesting customs of his Indian hosts. He watched their deer-hunts, visited their villages and those of neighboring tribes, was umpire in their disputes, and at last turned his face homeward in the early spring. With him went Darontal, his Huron host. At Quebec Champlain was welcomed as one risen from the dead, for the Indians had long since brought in word that he had been killed. A solemn service was held, and all united in rendering thanks to God for protecting the travellers in their many perils and dangers. Upon this service and the various acts of welcome Darontal gazed in bewildered astonishment. Champlain showed him all the marvellous details of civilization. With the usual Indian stolidity he observed everything carefully and calmly; but at last his wonder broke down his reserve. Before he departed he told Champlain that he should never die contented until he had told his friends of the French way of living and seen them adopt it. With valuable presents and a warm invitation to come again with some of his friends, Darontal paddled back to his lodge in the woods with a story that must have taken months in the telling.

This was Champlain’s last long trip of exploration. For the remaining years of his life the needs of the colony at Quebec held him fast. His writings, sold in the book-stalls of France, inspired others to cross the seas and to continue the exploration and settlement of the wilderness.