In the spring of 1609 a reinforcement for the shrunken colony was brought out by Pontgrave. It was in the summer of that year that Champlain, with little thought of the consequences his action would entail, carried out a promise previously made to the Algonquins and Hurons to assist them in their feud with the Iroquois. Taking eleven Frenchmen with him in a ship's boat, and accompanied by about three hundred savages in their canoes, he proceeded as far as the mouth of the Richelieu River. There most of the savages changed their minds, and deserted the party. Finding that the boat was not suited to the navigation of the Richelieu River up which the route to the enemy's country lay, Champlain sent it back to Quebec and nine men with it. He with two Frenchmen and sixty Indians proceeded in canoes, and on the 30th of July a band of Iroquois on the war-path was encountered on the shore of what has since been known as Lake Champlain. The story is briefly told. Champlain, who had loaded his arquebus with four balls, brought down at the first shot three Iroquois chiefs, two instantly killed, and the third mortally wounded. His men did further execution. The Iroquois, astounded at such swift death, turned and fled. In the pursuit others were killed. Commenting on this campaign, and a somewhat similar one of the year following, the Abbe Faillon observes that if Champlain, instead of siding with the Algonquins and Hurons against the Iroquois, had declared himself the friend of all the tribes, he would not only have done more honour to the French name, but would have gained access for himself and for the missionaries who were to follow him to all the Indian communities. By the course he actually followed he inspired the most powerful and best organized of the Indian tribes with a hatred for the French race and for the religion they professed, which during a long series of years wreaked itself in countless deeds of blood, and more than once brought the colony of New France to the verge of extinction. The massacre of Lachine (1689) was a late harvest of the blood sown on the shores of Lake Champlain eighty years before.