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At Guy Park, even, I had never seen an Iroquois relax in dignity and hauteur, though, of course, it was also true that Guy Johnson was never a man to inspire personal confidence or any intimacy. Nor was Walter Butler either; and Brant and his Mohawks detested and despised him.
I myself thought that this was the truth, for no Iroquois ever forgave us Oriskany; and what we were now about to do to them must forever leave an implacable and unquenchable hatred between the Long House and the people of New York.
On the 16th of March the inhabitants of St Ignace had no thought of impending disaster. The Iroquois might be on the war-path, but they would not come while yet ice held the rivers and snow lay in the forests. But that morning, just as the horizon began to glow with the first colours of the dawn, the sleeping Hurons woke to the sound of the dreaded war-whoop.
Mohawks and Senecas remained in the forests near by, ready to pounce on any who ventured to the mainland. When winter bridged with ice the channel between the island and the main shore, it was necessary for the soldiers of the mission to stand incessantly on guard. And now another enemy than the Iroquois stalked among the fugitives.
The White Minquas lived further east, round Chesapeake and Delaware bays, and, though spoken of as belonging by language to the great Iroquois or Six Nation stock, were themselves conquered and pretty much exterminated by the Six Nations. The Black Minquas, believed to be the same as the Eries of the Jesuit Relations, were also practically exterminated by the Six Nations. *
These villages were protected by stockades or palisades, and by some natural features of their situation a river, a lake, or a hill. Neither the long houses nor the fortifications were as strongly or as cleverly constructed as those of the Iroquois. Maize, pumpkins, and tobacco were the principal plants cultivated.
It was when he asked me to apply my taste for genealogical work to his own obscure family history that I made the discovery that he had in him a share of the blood of the Iroquois chief Montour and his French wife, a terrible woman who ruled the savage politics of the tribes of the Wilderness two hundred years ago.
La Motte-Cadillac wrote that matters grew worse and worse, and that the Ottawas had been made to believe that the French neither would nor could protect them, but meant to leave them, to their fate. They thought that they had no hope except in peace with the Iroquois, and had actually gone to meet them at an appointed rendezvous.
He was beaten, his army was scattered like sand before the wind, and the army of the Long Knives trod out the Iroquois country.
"And a good cook will catch his hare before he talks of putting it in the pot. Where is your Iroquois hare, Monsieur de la Mothe-Cadillac?" The commandant shook his head. "My hare is still at large," he confessed. "Though just now Come, Monsieur de Montlivet, let us to plain speech. We are talking as slantingly as savages. I have a Huron messenger at my quarters. Come with me, and interpret."
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