Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico in the Years 1599-1602Champlain, Samuel de
History
Narrative of a Voyage to the West Indies and Mexico in the Years 1599-1602
Champlain, Samuel de
Mexico -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; West Indies -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800
On the 24th of April, 1615, Champlain left Honfleur with four
missionaries (Jesuits) on board his vessel, and arrived without
accident at Tadoussac on the 25th May. He proceeded immediately to the
Sault St. Louis, when his first care was to arrange a treaty with the
friendly Indians to assist them in their wars, on condition of their
facilitating his enterprises of discovery, and with the view of
advancing the progress of Christianity among them. By helping them to
slay their enemies, he hoped to induce them to worship his God!
The Indians were to furnish two thousand five hundred warriors; and
Champlain was to take as many men as he could, and besides, to give his
allies some instruction in discipline, etc., which they received with
great satisfaction, but, as by and by will be seen, by which they
profited little.
Having arranged this matter, Champlain returned to the settlement to
provide for the good conduct of all affairs during his proposed
absence, and, on the 9th of June, started with an interpreter and
another European, "myself third," he says, and ten savages, and by the
Rivière des Prairies pursued his route to the Algenquin country; from
thence he continued by land to the lake of the Nipiserini (Lake
Nipissing) in 45-1/4° of latitude, where he arrived on the 26th of the
same month, and remained two days; from thence he descended a river
(Rivière des François) to the great Lake Attigouantan (Lake Huron),
where he met some three hundred natives, with whom he "contracted
friendship," making the chief a present of a hatchet, "with which he
was as contented and joyful as if I had given him some rich present."
The next day he continued his route along the shores of the lake to a
village called Cahiagué, where the "army" was to rendezvous, having
overtaken on the way thirteen or fourteen Frenchmen who had started
before him from the Rivière des Prairies. He arrived at Cahiagué on the
17th of August, and was received with great gratitude and rejoicing by
the Indians, who informed him that another and very warlike nation, the
Entouhoronins(?), would join them with five hundred fighting men
against the common enemy,--the Iroquois. The greater part of the "army"
being assembled, they started together from the village on the 1st of
September, and pursued their route, hunting as they went. On the 9th of
October their scouts took eleven prisoners, "four women, one girl,
three boys, and three men;" whereupon one of the chiefs began
tormenting a female prisoner by cutting off one of her fingers; at
which Champlain indignantly interfered, and blamed the chief, "Captain
Yroquet," severely, representing that it was unworthy of a warrior, as
he called himself, to behave cruelly to women, "who have no defence but
their tears, and who, on account of their '_like those of families_'
should be humanely treated," and that if such cruelties were continued,
he could neither assist nor favour them in the war; so seeing that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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