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The snow had scarcely been enough at any time to permit the Indians to track the deer; in fact, all the game had been driven off by the troops and war-parties scouring the country through the preceding summer. We heard of their dying by companies from mere inanition, and lying stretched in the road to the Portage, whither they were striving to drag their exhausted frames.
"Iroquois on the trail do nothing without an object. They have an object then in showing that smoke. If their war-parties were over yonder there would be no object. Therefore their braves must have crossed the river. And they could not get over to the north without being seen from the fort. They have got over on the south then." Amos nodded with intense appreciation.
But soon after the organization of these companies, the tide began to turn. The ranger was at least a match for the savage in his own mode of warfare; and he had, moreover, the advantages of civilized weapons, and a steadiness and constancy, unknown to the disorderly war-parties of the red men.
He takes credit to himself for the number of war-parties that his officers kept always at work, and fills page after page with details of the coups they had struck; how one brought in two English scalps, another three, another one, and another seven.
In its original form this plan of campaign was never carried out, for on account of head winds Frontenac reached Quebec too late in the autumn. However, the central idea remained in full view and suggested the three war-parties which were sent out during the winter of 1690 to attack the English colonies.
War-parties of Indians from Canada, set on, it was thought, by the Governor, were already burning and murdering among the border settlements of New York and New Hampshire. In the south Dinwiddie grew more and more alarmed, "for the French are like so many locusts; they are collected in bodies in a most surprising manner; their number now on the Ohio is from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred."
A settlement here would be a perilous outpost, a hand thrust into the jaws of the tiger. It would provoke attack, and lie almost in the path of the war-parties. The associates could gain nothing by the fur-trade; for they would not be allowed to share in it. On the other hand, danger apart, the place was an excellent one for a mission; for here met two great rivers: the St.
He failed to appear; but in January a deserter said that he had prepared scaling-ladders, and was training his men to use them by assaults on mock ramparts of snow. There was more tangible evidence that the enemy was astir. Murray had established two fortified outposts, one at Ste.-Foy, and the other farther on, at Old Lorette. War-parties hovered round both, and kept the occupants in alarm.
In fact, such service had not been demanded of them, and they would have lived in virtual neutrality, had not many of them broken their oaths and joined the French war-parties. For this reason Cornwallis thought it necessary that, in renewing the pledge, they should bind themselves to an allegiance as complete as that required of other British subjects. This spread general consternation.
Having settled their plans, the chiefs begged their white friends not to abandon them; and the younger of the two, the Chevalier, consented to join the warriors, and aid them with advice, though not with arms. The tribes of the Western plains rarely go on war-parties in winter, and this great expedition must have been the result of unusual exasperation.
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