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On the one hand, Dongan showed great intelligence and activity in making the most of the fact that Albany was nearer to the land of the Five Nations than Quebec, or even Montreal. On the other, the French had envoys who stood high in the esteem of the Iroquois notably Charles Le Moyne, of Longueuil, and Lamberville, the Jesuit missionary.
While he was curiously surveying this antique bit, a loud voice sounded through the open door, and the heavy form of the "Yankee from Longueuil" precipitated itself proudly, though a trifle unsteadily, forward down the steps and along the middle of the street, swearing, boasting and heading a swarm of men and boys, and loudly drawling a line of Connecticut notions in blasphemy.
These labours are not sufficient for his apostolic zeal; he betakes himself to the house of the Jesuit Fathers at Laprairie, then to their Indian Mission at the Sault St. Louis, finally to the parish of St. François de Sales, in the Ile Jésus. Descending the St. Lawrence River, he sojourns successively at Longueuil, at Varennes, at Lavaltrie, at Nicolet, at Bécancourt, at Gentilly, at Ste.
Longueuil informed the Minister that the Miamis had scalped two soldiers; that the Piankishaws had killed seven Frenchmen; and that a squaw who had lived with one of the slain declared that the tribes of the Wabash and Illinois were leaguing with the Osages for a combined insurrection. Every letter brought news of murder. Small-pox had broken out at Detroit.
In 1698 the governor and the intendant joined in bringing Le Moyne's services to the favourable notice of the minister, with the suggestion that it should receive suitable acknowledgment. Two years later this recognition came in the form of a royal decree which elevated the seigneury of Longueuil to the dignity of a barony, and made its owner the Baron de Longueuil.
He and his brothers, Longueuil, Serigny, Assigny, Maricourt, Sainte-Helene, the two Chateauguays, and the two Bienvilles, were, one and all, children worthy of their father, Charles Le Moyne of Montreal, and favorable types of that Canadian noblesse, to whose adventurous hardihood half the continent bears witness.
But Le Moyne's ambition to provide for a rapidly growing family led him to petition the intendant for an enlargement of his holdings, and in 1672 the intendant Talon gave him the land which lay between the seigneuries of Varennes and La Prairie de la Magdelaine. This with his other tract was united to form the seigneury of Longueuil.
The matter was, of course, submitted to the law officers of the crown, and their decision ruled the claim to be well grounded. The barony of Longueuil at one time included an area of about one hundred and fifty square miles, much of it heavily timbered and almost all fit for cultivation. The thriving towns of Longueuil and St Johns grew up within its limits in the century following the conquest.
Arriving on the opposite bank of the river, just below the town, with about one hundred and fifty men, he crossed over from Longueuil and reached the eastern suburbs at about ten o'clock p.m., when he proceeded to billet his men in private houses. That was before the days of telephones, so it was some time before the news reached the city and the gates were closed.
It stood partly on the ground now occupied by the front of the present parish church of Longueuil, and partly across the highway, at a corner of the Chambly road. The north-west tower was located as late as 1835, but was covered with earth by the excavation for the new church.
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