The Mohawk were stunned. Champlain wrote that they “were much astonished that two men should have been killed so quickly, even though they were provided with shields made of cotton thread woven together and wood which was proof against their arrows. This greatly frightened them.” Even so, the Mohawk fought back bravely. Both sides fired clouds of arrows and Champlain reloaded his weapon. As he did so, his two French companions emerged on the edge of the forest. They appear to have been veteran soldiers—skilled arquebusiers, and highly disciplined men. Using the trees for cover, they knelt side by side, steadied their weapons, and took aim. Champlain wrote, “As I was reloading my arquebus, one of my companions fired a shot from the woods.” This second blow was delivered into the flank of the Mohawk formation and it had a devastating effect. A third chief went down. The tight Mohawk formation shuddered in a strange way and suddenly came apart. Champlain wrote, “It astonished them so much that, seeing their chiefs dead, they lost courage, took to their heels, and abandoned the field and their fort, fleeing into the depth of the forest.” Champlain led his Indian allies in a headlong charge. “I pursued them, and laid low still more of them,” he wrote.
These Mohawk warriors, famed for valor in battle, were shattered by that sudden turn of events. It was a victory for the Montagnais, Algonquin, and Huron allies. Champlain noted, “Our Indians also killed several, and took ten or twelve prisoners. The remainder fled with the wounded.” Altogether the Mohawk were thought to have lost about fifty warriors. On the other side, Champlain and his arquebusiers were unscathed. His Indian allies suffered “fifteen or sixteen arrow wounds, which soon healed.”54
Champlain may have been the first European to join a battle between two North American Indian armies. What he observed was very different from what he expected. In 1609, these northern Indians fought major engagements in tight formations. They wore hardwood armor and carried shields, which Champlain observed to be highly effective against stone-age spears and arrows. In those massed battles, casualties were not heavy.
All that changed when Champlain and his two arquebusiers went into action. Wooden armor and shields offered no protection against firearms, and the close formation of the Mohawk made them vulnerable to French marksmen with quadruple-loaded weapons. In this battle, Europeans fought in open order and used forest cover effectively. The Indians fought in close formation. In the face of a new reality, the Indians learned quickly, and changed to what would later be called a “skulking way of war.” This was a pivotal event in the history of Indian warfare.
After the battle, Champlain’s allies looted the Mohawk camp, and took “a large quantity of Indian corn and meal belonging to the enemy, as well as their shields, which [the Mohawk] left behind, the better to run.” Then there was the ritual feast, with singing and dancing to propitiate the spirits of the living and the dead.55
While the Indians conducted their sacred ceremonies, Champlain returned to his role as explorer. He got out his astrolabe and calculated the latitude of the battlefield at 43 degrees and several minutes.56 His allies had told him of the chute where water flowed from Lake George into Lake Champlain.57 It was very near the battlefield, and he seized the opportunity to go there. In only a few hours, he followed the shore of the lake, found the chute, and explored part of it.58
Indians also told him of a mighty river beyond the lakes, flowing to the south. Champlain quizzed the Mohawk captives “with the help of some Algonquin interpreters who knew the Iroquoian language.” The prisoners said that they could reach that river by canoe in two days.59 By coincidence in that high summer of 1609, while Champlain was moving south on the lake that bears his name, the English seaman Henry Hudson was sailing north on the river named in his honor. Hudson reached the present sites of Albany and Troy on September 19, 1609. These two great explorers came within a few miles and a few months of meeting each other on the ground between Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the Hudson River.60
All this exploring, looting, and feasting was crowded into a few busy hours after the battle. Champlain and his allies wanted to be away as quickly as possible, knowing that the Mohawk could muster a much larger force against them. Three hours after the battle, the victors climbed into their canoes and departed at high speed with their Mohawk captives securely bound.61 They went about sixteen miles from the battlefield, heading north on the lake toward the river of the Iroquois that would carry them home. As night fell, they made camp, probably on the eastern shore of the lake where they would be safe from pursuit. The victors turned to their captives and began a “harangue,” in Champlain’s word, about the cruelty of the Iroquois toward their prisoners. They made it clear that the same fate was in store for them, and ordered one of their captives to sing. Champlain remembered that “it was a very sad song.”62
Everyone knew what was coming. A fire was built and Champlain watched in horror as many warriors came forward and claimed the victor’s role of torturer. He wrote: “Each took a brand and burned this poor wretch a little at a time, so as to make him suffer more torment. They stopped from time to time, and threw water on his back. Then they tore out his nails and applied fire to the tips of his fingers and his penis. After that, they scalped him, slowly poured very hot gum on the crown of his head, pierced his arms near the wrists, and with sticks they tried to pull out his sinews by brute force. When they could not get them out, they cut them off. This poor wretch uttered strange cries, and I felt pity to see him treated in this way. Still he bore it so firmly that sometimes one would have said that he felt scarcely any pain.”63
The Indians invited Champlain to join in. He refused. “We do not commit such cruelties,” he responded, but “if they wished me to shoot him with the arquebus I would be willing to do so. They said no, that he would not feel pain. I went away from them as if angry to see them practice so much cruelty on his body. When they saw that I was not pleased, they called me back, and told me to shoot him with my arquebus. I did so without his perceiving anything, and with one shot caused him to escape all the tortures he would have suffered, rather than see him brutally treated.”64
Even that was not the end of it. Champlain wrote: “When he was dead they were not satisfied. They opened his body and threw his entrails into the lake. After that they cut off his head, arms and legs, which they scattered about, but they kept the scalp, which they flayed, as they did with the scalps of all the others whom they had killed in their attack. They committed another atrocity, which was to cut his heart in several pieces and to give it to his brother to eat, and to other companions who were prisoners. They took it and put in their mouths but would not swallow it. Some of the Algonquin Indians who were guarding the prisoners made them spit it out and throw it into the water. This is how these people act with regard to those whom they capture in war…. When this execution was over, we set out upon our return with the rest of the prisoners, who went along continually singing, without any expectation other than to be tortured.”65
Champlain sketched this scene of Indian torture (1619). Women appear among the torturers, and he observed they were the most ingenious in their cruelty. He tried in vain to stop torture and wrote that Indian nations had no true system of law—only a customary lex talionis, which punished a wrongful act by a greater wrong.
Torture and cannibalism of captives was an ancient custom among these nations. Not all Indians in the northeast practiced it. Acadian nations did not usually treat warrior-captives that way. But the evidence of archaeology indicates that the Iroquois and their northern neighbors had used torture for centuries. Scholars have explained this ancient custom as a ceremony or ritual, rooted in cultural practice and religious belief. Everyone was required to play a role: the audience, the torturers, and most of all the victim, who was expected to endure his torment with courage, dignity, and stoic calm. Many did so with amazing strength and resolve.66
Champlain understood this ritual atrocity better than some ethnographers have done, and he refused to accept any part of it. He hated Ind
ian torture. It offended his deepest ideals and created a major obstacle to his grand design. He observed that the explicit purpose of torture was to commit an act of vengeance and retribution, designed to exceed the horror of tortures past.67 This was the foundation of Champlain’s judgment that the Indians had no law. He meant that their conception of justice was to punish a wrong by a greater wrong. That way of thinking was very different from an idea of law and justice as the rule of right.
He also recognized that Indian torture was also rational and functional in a very dark way. In the warrior cultures of North America, the continuing practice of torture was a way of guaranteeing a state of perpetual war. It meant that the work of retribution would always need to be done, and warriors would be needed to do it. For Champlain it was utterly destructive of peace and universal justice.
After the torture, Champlain and his allies resumed their journey, heading north on the river of the Iroquois. He wrote that they moved with “such speed that each day we made twenty-five or thirty leagues,” at least fifty or sixty miles.68 The Indians were driven by their fear, which appears to have been deepened by the torture of their captive. In the dark nights along the lake, the torturers dreamed terrible dreams. Then in the morning they acted upon them. Champlain wrote: “When we reached the entrance to the river of the Iroquois, some of the Indians dreamed that their enemies were pursuing them. This dream made them shift their camp, and they spent the entire night among the high bulrushes in Lac Saint-Pierre, because of the fear that they had of their enemies.”69
At last they made their way down the Rivière des Iroquois and reached the St. Lawrence. The Algonquin and Huron warriors went west to their country with some of the captives. Champlain and the Montagnais turned east, running down the river. They made incredibly good time, and reached Quebec in two days. The Montagnais insisted that Champlain go with them to their villages for more ceremonies of another kind. They decorated the scalps of their victims and put them on sticks in their canoes. As they approached their villages, singing a victory song, Champlain watched as the Montagnais women “stripped themselves quite naked, and threw themselves into the water, swam out to the canoes, took the scalps of their enemies which were at the end of long sticks in the bows of the canoes.” The women hung the scalps around their necks, “as if they had been precious chains, and they sang and danced.” They made Champlain a present of a scalp and a pair of shields, “to show the king.” Champlain wrote with a hint of shame, “to please them I said I would.”70
Once back in Quebec, Champlain obeyed his orders from the sieur de Mons, and made ready to pass his command to Pont-Gravé and return to France. But a problem arose. Pont-Gravé was not in good health, and too ill to spend the winter in America. Together he and Champlain decided to leave two officers in command at Quebec: Captain Pierre Chauvin de la Pierre, a seaman and soldier of Dieppe, was to remain until the sieur de Mons could “give orders on the subject.” With him was another very able young nobleman, Jean de Godet du Parc.71
Champlain left the colony in their good hands and departed for home. He made a fast eastward crossing, and reached France by October. Henri IV and the sieur de Mons were both at the palace of Fontainebleau, fifty miles southeast of Paris. Champlain instantly “took post” there, in his phrase, and was admitted to the presence of the king. As always, he had quick access to the Crown. “I at once waited upon His Majesty, to whom I told the story of my expedition wherein he took pleasure and satisfaction.” Champlain presented the king with gifts that were fit for a monarch. He brought a pair of scarlet tanagers, beautiful little birds with spectacular red and black plumage. He also gave the king a belt of porcupine quills, “very well woven, according to the fashion of the country, which His Majesty liked very much.”72
Equally successful was Champlain’s report of his adventures. The king offered encouragement and strong support. At Fontainebleau, Champlain began to flourish in another role, as a promoter of New France. He had a flair for that task, and a skill at the brutal blood sport of court politics. At the same time, he had a talent for reaching others through his maps and books. Champlain did not think in our terms of manipulating images, mainly because his generation did not separate images from objects. His efforts at promotion centered on the substance of the thing, not its shadow. His world was very distant from ours that way.73
At Fontainebleau Champlain also talked with the sieur de Mons. If there was any lingering concern about the younger man’s leadership, it left no traces in the record. Champlain wrote: “I informed him in detail of all that had taken place in the winter, and also the new explorations. And I spoke of hope for the future, touching the promises of the natives called Ochateguins [Huron].” Champlain called them the “good Iroquois.” “The other Iroquois, their enemies, live farther south,” he explained. “The former understand and do not differ much in language from the people recently discovered, and who hitherto had been unknown to us.”74
After their audience at Fontainebleau, Champlain and de Mons hastened to meet their investors at Rouen. They talked with two leading backers, le sieur Collier and Lucas Le Gendre, “in order to consider what they were to do the following year.” The meeting went well. Champlain tells us that both investors continued to support the settlement of Quebec and the exploration of the country. They also approved the alliance with the Huron, and supported Champlain’s promise “to assist them in their wars.” They agreed that Le Gendre would “take charge of the purchase of goods and provisions, and of the hiring of ships, men and other things necessary for the voyage.”75
Then de Mons and Champlain went back to Paris, where they tried to obtain a monopoly of the fur trade “in the parts newly discovered by us.” On this question the king’s judgment went against them—one of the few instances when that happened.76 De Mons decided to stay at court and keep trying. “Although he saw it was hopeless to obtain this commission, he did not cease to pursue his project, from his desire for the welfare and honor of France.” Champlain also noted: “During this time the sieur de Mons had not yet informed me of his wishes concerning myself…. He left the entire question a matter of my choice.” Once more Champlain would continue as commandant in Quebec.77
Champlain remained in France for six months. In the spring of 1610, he returned quickly to New France, eager to pursue his plans there. He sailed from Honfleur in early March, and reached Tadoussac by April 26. There he found other ships that had arrived at the start of the season. With the new system of free trade, Basque, Norman, and Breton trading ships were lying at anchor in the little harbor, and Tadoussac was full of activity. The Montagnais were there in strength and in good health. The winter had been mild, with little ice in the harbor. Old men told him that such a thing had not been seen for sixty years.78
Champlain hurried upriver to Quebec. He met the leaders Pierre Chauvin de la Pierre and young Jean de Godet du Parc, who are little remembered in the history of Quebec but were vital to its survival. They told him that the entire garrison was well, and “only a few had been slightly ill.” Champlain wrote, “Having fresh meat, one’s health is as good there as in France.”79
Soon after Champlain arrived at Quebec a war party of sixty Montagnais appeared. They reported that many Basques and “Mistigoches” (Malouins and Normans) had said they would join them on the warpath.
“What do you think of that?” the Montagnais asked. “Do they speak the truth?”
“No,” said Champlain. “I know well what they have at heart. They say this only to get your goods.”
“You speak the truth,” the Montagnais replied. “They are women, who wish only to make war on our beavers.”80
Champlain assured the Montagnais that he would join them in a second campaign against their enemies the Iroquois as he had done before, and he asked something in return. He reminded the Montagnais that they had promised to help him explore the rivers to the north and west as far as the large sea, which we know as Hudson Bay. He also made another agreement with t
he Algonquin and Huron: that he would help them in their wars if they would take him to their own country and to the great lake beyond (Lake Huron), and show him copper mines and other things they had mentioned. “Hence,” Champlain wrote, “I had two strings to my bow; if one failed, the other might stay taut.”81
Champlain left Quebec on June 14. He had gone about forty miles up the river when he met a canoe with an Algonquin and a Montagnais who were looking for him. They urged him to push on as quickly as possible. Two hundred warriors were already waiting at the River of the Iroquois, and two hundred more would be coming.82 He moved on to Trois-Rivières where he found the Montagnais waiting for him. The date was June 19, 1610, a moonless period when Indian attacks were likely to happen.83
Suddenly a canoe approached at high speed. The paddlers shouted that the Algonquin and Huron had already arrived, and moved up the river of the Iroquois without waiting for the rest. They had run into a Mohawk war party of about a hundred men, who had “barricaded themselves well,” near the River of the Iroquois. A battle was in progress and the message was urgent: come quickly.
The Indians begged Champlain and the French to come with them. Champlain agreed, and climbed into a canoe with four French arquebusiers.84 They went about a mile, then hauled their canoes on the bank and gathered up their weapons. Some carried bows and arrows. Others had clubs and spears that Champlain described as swords fixed to long handles. They plunged into the forest and moved very quickly. Champlain and his four Frenchmen were wearing breastplates, backplates, and helmets. They could not keep up, and the Indians disappeared ahead. Champlain tried to follow their track, and often went astray. He and his French soldiers struggled through thick woods, marsh, and swamp, knee deep in water, weighed down with “a pikeman’s corselet which bothered us greatly.” They were assaulted by “hosts of mosquitoes, a strange sight, so thick that we could barely draw breath, so severely did they persecute us.”85
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