Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In December fifty of the Stadacona Indians died, and by the middle of February, of the hundred and ten men that made up Cartier's expedition, only three or four remained in health. Eight were already dead, and their bodies, for want of burial, lay frozen stark beneath the snowdrifts of the river, hidden from the prying eyes of the savages.
All were going toward the northeast and that way the course of himself and his comrades lay. If Manitou prospered them, they would come to the Quebec of the French, which beforetime had been the Stadacona of old Indian tribes. That name, Quebec, was full of significance to him. Standing upon its mighty rock, it was another Gibraltar.
The short and imperfect vocabulary of Indian words which Cartier left behind, his account of Hochelaga, the intimacy of the two Gaspé Indians with the inhabitants of Stadacona these and other facts go to show that the barbarous tribes he met were of the Iroquois stock. The Indians have never had any written records, in the European sense, to perpetuate the doings of their nations or tribes.
His journey had been in vain; and with a heavy heart he set about retracing once more all those weary miles which lay between him and the woman he loved. Having left his niece and her companions on the Isle of Demons, Roberval had steered his course for the Hochelaga, and about the middle of June the rocky heights of Stadacona loomed up before him.
Champlain and Frontenac have been gone long, but their shadows still stand between the French and the Hodenosaunee, and there is Quebec, the lost Stadacona of the Ganegaono, whom you call the Mohawks. As long as the sun and stars stand in the heavens the Keepers of the Eastern Gate are the enemies of the French. Even now, as you know, they fight by the side of the Americans and the English."
This was not the Quebec of the French, it was the Stadacona of the Mohawks, the great brother nation of the Onondagas, and the French here were but interlopers and robbers.
I take this place to be toward Florida, as farre as I could perceiue and vnderstand by their signes and tokens. Chap. 13. Of a strange and cruell disease that came to the people of Stadacona, wherewith because we did haunt their company, we were so infected, that there died 25 of our company.
He had a fine scorn for such baubles; and, as if to impress us with their worthlessness, stood on the heights of Stadacona, and pointed with pride to the wigwams of his tribe clustering at the foot of the cliff: 'But, he said, 'the men who wrought the metal are no more. Mighty oaks grow from the earth in which they toiled." Roberval seemed scarcely to heed this long harangue.
But as winter was near Cartier found it necessary to hurry back to Stadacona, where the remaining members of his expedition had built a small fort or habitation during his absence. Everything was made ready for the long season of cold and snow, but the winter came on with unusual severity. The neighboring Indians grew so hostile that the French hardly dared to venture from their narrow quarters.
"If you had not said over and over again that the Quebec of the French was once the Stadacona of the Mohawks they would not have been here tonight to save us. They say that deeds speak louder than words, but when the same man speaks with both words and deeds people have got to hear." "You give me too much credit, Dave. The time was ripe for a Mohawk attack upon the French."
Word Of The Day