France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIVParkman, Francis
History
France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV
Parkman, Francis
Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France); Frontenac, Louis de Buade, comte de, 1620-1698
[12] Belmont, Histoire du Canada; Frontenac à------, 17 Nov., 1689;
Champigny au Ministre, 16 Nov., 1689. This letter is not the one just
cited. Champigny wrote twice on the same day.
[13] N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 435.
[14] Ourehaoué was not one of the neutrals entrapped at Fort Frontenac,
but was seized about the same time by the troops on their way up the St.
Lawrence.
[15] Frontenac au Ministre, 30 Avril, 1690.
When the deputation arrived at Onondaga and made known their errand, the
Iroquois magnates, with their usual deliberation, deferred answering
till a general council of the confederacy should have time to assemble;
and, meanwhile, they sent messengers to ask the mayor of Albany, and
others of their Dutch and English friends, to come to the meeting. They
did not comply, merely sending the government interpreter, with a few
Mohawk Indians, to represent their interests. On the other hand, the
Jesuit Milet, who had been captured a few months before, adopted, and
made an Oneida chief, used every effort to second the designs of
Frontenac. The authorities of Albany tried in vain to induce the
Iroquois to place him in their hands. They understood their interests
too well, and held fast to the Jesuit. [16]
[16] Milet was taken in 1689, not, as has been supposed, in 1690. Lettre
du Père Milet, 1691, printed by Shea.
The grand council took place at Onondaga on the twenty-second of
January. Eighty chiefs and sachems, seated gravely on mats around the
council fire, smoked their pipes in silence for a while; till at length
an Onondaga orator rose, and announced that Frontenac, the old Onontio,
had returned with Ourehaoué and twelve more of their captive friends,
that he meant to rekindle the council fire at Fort Frontenac, and that
he invited them to meet him there. [17]
[17] Frontenac declares that he sent no such message, and intimates that
Cut Nose had been tampered with by persons over-anxious to conciliate
the Iroquois, and who had even gone so far as to send them messages on
their own account. These persons were Lamberville, François Hertel, and
one of the Le Moynes. Frontenac was very angry at this interference, to
which he ascribes the most mischievous consequences. Cut Nose, or Nez
Coupé, is called Adarahta by Colden, and Gagniegaton, or Red Bird, by
some French writers.
"Ho, ho, ho," returned the eighty senators, from the bottom of their
throats. It was the unfailing Iroquois response to a speech. Then Cut
Nose, the governor's messenger, addressed the council: "I advise you to
meet Onontio as he desires. Do so, if you wish to live." He presented a
wampum belt to confirm his words, and the conclave again returned the
same guttural ejaculation.
"Ourehaoué sends you this," continued Cut Nose, presenting another belt
of wampum: "by it he advises you to listen to Onontio, if you wish to
live."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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