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Updated: May 7, 2025
The object of Viele was to confirm the Iroquois in their very questionable attitude of subjection to the British crown, and persuade them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through the intervention of Dongan, or at least with his consent. The envoy found two Frenchmen in the town, whose presence boded ill to his errand.
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.
The hatred of the Five Nations for the French, stimulated by the British colonists of New York, under its governor, Colonel Dongan, was due to French forays on the Seneca tribes, and to the capture and forwarding to the royal galleys in France of many of the betrayed Iroquois chiefs.
Denonville, on his side, with like feelings, could not give up the claim to suzerainty over the land of the Iroquois. The domain of the Five Nations was not the only part of America where French and English clashed. The presence of the English in Hudson Bay excited deep resentment at Quebec and Montreal. Here Denonville ventured to break the peace as Dongan had not dared to do.
Concurrently with this step, Andros wrote to Denonville that the Iroquois territory was a dependency holden of the British, and that he would not permit its people to treat upon those conditions already proposed by Dongan. This transaction took place in 1688; but before that year concluded, Andros' "royal master" was himself superseded, and living an exile in France.
Nothing can save us but the sending out of troops and the building of forts and blockhouses. Yet I dare not begin to build them; for, if I do, it will bring down all the Iroquois upon us before we are in a condition to fight them." Nevertheless, he made what preparations he could, begging all the while for more soldiers, and carrying on at the same time a correspondence with his rival, Dongan.
In reply Denonville disclaimed the intention, at the same time alleging that Dongan was giving shelter at Albany to French deserters. A little later they reach the point of sarcasm. Denonville taxes Dongan with selling rum to the Indians. Dongan retorts that at least English rum is less unwholesome than French brandy.
Dongan was a thorn in his side from the first, although their correspondence opened, on both sides, with the language of compliment. A few months later its tone changed, particularly after Dongan heard that Denonville intended to build a fort at Niagara. Against a project so unfriendly Dongan protested with emphasis.
Denonville wrote to the minister: "I send you copies of his letters, by which you will see that the spirit of Dongan has entered into the heart of his successor, who may be less passionate and less interested, but who is, to say the least, quite as much opposed to us, and perhaps more dangerous by his suppleness and smoothness than the other was by his violence.
A letter from him to Sir Richard Fanshawe, dated at Xeres, 1st June 1664, occurs among the Original Letters of Sir Richard Fanshawe, printed in 1701, page 102; and in his correspondence with Lord Arlington, in the British Museum, he thus alluded to him: MADRID, 3rd June, 1666, stilo loci. "Lord Dongan intends to set forth from this Court to England upon Friday next." Harl. MS. 7010, f. 274.
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