United States or Paraguay ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


"Let us eat. It may be the last time, for we will have to die instead of run." After they had eaten, they saw two canoes making straight for the island. Each canoe held seven Iroquois. That counted up fourteen, or two to one. However, the Piskaret party had the advantage of position. They hid in the bushes at the place for which the canoes were heading.

"Let us each choose a man in the first canoe," directed Piskaret, "and take sure aim, and fire together." The volley by the Algonkins was so deadly that every one of the six balls killed an Iroquois. The seventh warrior dived overboard, and escaped by swimming to the other canoe. That had been swift work. But the Iroquois were brave. Of the Mohawk tribe, these.

His name was Piskaret; and he dwelt on that great island in the Ottawa of which Le Borgne was chief. Once, it is said, he entered an Iroquois town on a dark night. In the morning a howl of lamentation and fury rose from the astonished villagers.

Piskaret, seeing a hollow tree, crept into it like a bear, and hid himself; while the Iroquois, losing his traces in the dark, lay down to sleep near by. Both Parrot and La Potherie recount traditions of the ancient superiority of the Algonquins over the Iroquois, who formerly, it is said, dwelt near Montreal and Three Rivers, whence the Algonquins expelled them.

The noun Algonkin, meaning an Indian, is also spelled Algonquin. But the adjective from this noun is spelled Algonquian when applied to Indians, and Algonkian when applied to a time or period in geology. Piskaret was a hero.

Here a number of Algonkins had erected a village of log huts, on a flat beside the river, under the protection of a priests' house, church and hospital. As they approached Sillery, the Piskaret party raised their eleven scalps on eleven long poles. While they drifted, they chanted a song of triumph, and beat time to it by striking their paddles, all together, upon the gunwales of their canoes.

One day they heard a distant shot. "Come, friends," said Piskaret, "let us get our dinner: perhaps it will be the last, for we must dine before we run." Having dined to their contentment, the philosophic warriors prepared for action. One of them went to reconnoitre, and soon reported that two canoes full of Iroquois were approaching the island.

Every thicket along its banks and every curve in its course was likely to be an ambush; but the fearless Piskaret party ascended clear to Lake Champlain itself. Here they landed upon an island, concealed themselves and their canoes in the wintry forest, and waited. One day they heard a gun-shot. Some Iroquois were about, upon the lake or upon the mainland. "Come," spoke Piskaret, to his party.

On the next day, Montmagny came to Sillery, and there was a grand council in the house of the Jesuits. Piskaret, in a solemn harangue, delivered his captives to the Governor, who replied with a speech of compliment and an ample gift.

This night Piskaret again waited until all was quiet; again he ventured forth, slipped inside a lodge, killed and scalped, and retreated to his wood-pile. And again, with the morning arose that shrill uproar of grief and vengeance and the warriors scurried into the forest. By evening the Iroquois were not only mystified but much alarmed.