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Updated: May 28, 2025
These measures would ensure safe communication between the colony and the Outaouais country, keep the Iroquois aloof, and favour the opening of new roads to the south. It was a broad and bold scheme. But could it be executed over the head of M. de Courcelle? Talon had foreseen this objection and had begged that the governor should be instructed to give support and assistance.
He cajoled the Iroquois and prevented war. He was the founder, but not the builder of Fort Cataraqui or Kingston, on Lake Ontario. He settled Hurons at Michillimacinac. Both fort and settlement were intended to benefit the fur trade. The new settlement was in fact a new hunting ground, and the new fort was for the protection of the hunters. De Courcelle visited personally Cataraqui.
Courcelle had asked for his own recall; his request was also granted and the Comte de Frontenac was named in his stead. No intendant was appointed to fill Talon's place. One of Talon's last official acts was the allotment, under authority of a decree of the King's Council of State, of a large number of seigneuries a matter of the highest importance for the development of the colony.
This was a task calling for the earnest care and the most energetic activity of Tracy, Courcelle, and Talon. One of the first matters to receive their attention was the reorganization of the Canadian administration. We have seen that in 1663 the Sovereign Council had been created, to consist of the high officials of the colony and five councillors.
It is more than probable that in writing these lines Talon was thinking of the vexed question of the liquor traffic, always a source of strife between the civil and the spiritual authorities. Talon and his colleagues, Tracy and Courcelle, had to deal with the question of tithes.
He sentenced to death a Mohawk who had the boldness to boast of having tomahawked a Frenchman, and dismissed the ambassadors with angry words. The Indians, discomfited, returned to their strongholds. At their heels followed Tracy and Courcelle with thirteen hundred men. At the approach of this army the Mohawks deserted their villages and escaped death.
Evidently the Iroquois were terrified, for a third village was taken in the same way, without a show of defence. It was thought that the invaders' task was finished, when an Algonquin squaw, once a captive of the Iroquois, informed Courcelle that there were two other villages.
But meanwhile the Oneidas did not cease from hostilities, and the Mohawks also continued their bloody raids against the French settlements. Courcelle therefore decided to march at once against their villages beyond Lake Champlain, in what is now New York state and to teach them a lesson. But he did not know the nature of a winter expedition in this northern climate.
Courcelle, always impetuous, was the first to leave the fort; he led a vanguard of four hundred men which included those from Montreal. The main body of the army under Tracy set out on October 3. Captains Chambly and Berthier were to follow four days later with the rear-guard. The journey by water was uneventful; but the portage between the two lakes was hard and trying.
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