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Without doubt, Denonville was right in thinking that the chastising of the Iroquois, or at least the Senecas, the head and front of mischief, was a matter of the last necessity. A crushing blow dealt against them would restore French prestige, paralyze English intrigue, save the Illinois from destruction, and confirm the wavering allies of Canada. Meanwhile, matters grew from bad to worse.
"It shall be seen to, good father, it shall be seen to," said the officer impatiently, in answer to one of these whispered injunctions. "I am as zealous a servant of Holy Church as you are." "I trust that you are, Monsieur de Bonneville. With so devout a governor as Monsieur de Denonville, it might be an ill thing even in this world for the officers of his household to be lax."
Rancour is the most deeply-rooted defect in the Indian, and it was madness to think that the Iroquois could have forgotten so soon the insult inflicted on their arms by the expedition of M. de Denonville, or the breach made in their independence by the abduction of their chiefs sent to France as convicts.
Christophe man-of-war, conveying Marquis de Denonville, the new Governor-General of Canada, to take over his duties. A singular colony it was of which the shipwrecked party found themselves now to be members. The St. Christophe had left Rochelle three weeks before with four small consorts conveying five hundred soldiers to help the struggling colony on the St. Lawrence.
"In spite of the king's edicts," pursues Denonville, "the coureurs de bois have carried a hundred barrels of brandy to Michillimackinac in a single year; and their libertinism and debauchery have gone to such an extremity that it is a wonder the Indians have not massacred them all to save themselves from their violence and recover their wives and daughters from them.
The great question lay between New York and Canada. Which of these two should gain mastery in the west? Denonville, like Frontenac, was a man of the army and the court. As a soldier, he had the experience of thirty years of service; and he was in high repute, not only for piety, but for probity and honor.
Louis. La Barre sailed for home; and the Marquis de Denonville, a pious colonel of dragoons, assumed the vacant office. Sir John Werden to Dongan, 4 Dec., 1684; N. Y. Col. Docs., III. 353. Werden was the duke's secretary. Dongan has been charged with instigating the Iroquois to attack the French. Lamberville a La Barre, 10 Fev., 1684.
These lake tribes, disgusted with the French, who, under Denonville, had left them to the mercy of the Iroquois, had been impelled, both by their fears and their interests to make new advances to the confederacy, and had first addressed themselves to the Senecas, whom they had most cause to dread.
By equally shortsighted methods, La Barre so weakened the ties that bound the northern allies, and so increased the arrogance of the Iroquois, that when Governor Denonville took up the task, most of the allies, always looking to the stronger party, were on the point of going over to the Iroquois. This would give the fur trade to the English, and ruin New France.
He kept the peace by moral ascendancy, and to see that this was no light task one need only compare the events of his régime with those which marked the period of his successors, La Barre and Denonville. This we shall do in the next chapter. For the present it is enough to say that throughout the full ten years 1672-82 Canada was free from fear of the Iroquois.
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