There they launched their canoes and set out across the northeastern corner of Lake Ontario, by way of islands that gave them passages of no more than seven miles in open water. This ingenious route brought them to the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, south of today’s Sacket’s Harbor, below a cape called Pointe à la Traverse. The Indians carefully hid their canoes in deep woods, which was vital to the success of their mission. If they lost their canoes they would be trapped in enemy country. The canoes were cached with great skill.43
On October 5 or thereabouts, they started on the last leg of their long journey. Champlain wrote that they went due south by foot along a “sandy beach,” across “many small streams and two little rivers” that flowed into Lake Ontario. As always, Champlain studied the region, and wrote that the countryside was “very agreeable and handsome,” with many ponds and prairies, and “an endless variety of game.” He admired the “beautiful woods” with their “great number of chestnut trees (chastiaigners), and sampled the abundant chestnuts, and found them to be good eating (de bon goust).” With Champlain in command, even a military campaign had a way of becoming a triumphant tour gastronomique.44
They followed the coast of Lake Ontario to its southeastern corner. Here, very near the present Selkirk Shores State Park, they crossed the Salmon River (more good eating), and turned away from the lakeshore into the forest. They made another long march along the line of today’s New York Highway 11 and Interstate Route 81, into the heart of Iroquoia. It was a dangerous place for them. This part of the journey took four days to go about forty miles, over several large creeks and the Oneida River, which they crossed near the present town of Brewerton. They were marching through the country of the Oneida to the land of the Onondaga nation.45
When they entered the Onondaga country, Champlain’s Indian allies changed their march discipline. They began to move forward in silence and great stealth. In deep woods, their scouts surprised a small Onondaga party of three men, four women, and four children who were “going to catch fish.” They were taken prisoner and brought to the main body. An Algonquin warrior of the Petite nation ran up, seized a woman, and cut off her finger, “for a beginning of their usual torture.”
Champlain rushed to her defense. “I came at once,” he wrote, “and reprimanded the chief,” who was his friend Iroquet. Champlain was very angry. He said to Iroquet, “This is not the act of a warrior, as he calls himself, to behave cruelly toward women who have no other defence but tears, and whom by reason of their weakness and helplessness we should treat with humanity.” Those were his words: on doibt traicter humainement. He told Iroquet that the torture of women would be judged as coming from a “base and brutal disposition,” and if any more of this cruelty followed, the French would not assist them in their war. Iroquet replied that the enemies did the same to them, but if it was displeasing to Champlain, nothing more would be done to the women. He promised to torture only the men.46
But that response was not the end of it. According to a later account by Jesuit father Paul Le Jeune, another Algonquin warrior of the Morrison Island nation heard Champlain’s words and was enraged by the interference of this meddlesome Frenchman. He turned defiantly on Champlain and said, “See what I shall do, since you speak of it.” He seized an Iroquois infant who had been nursing at the breast of its mother, took it by the foot, and smashed its head against a rock or a tree. The French were appalled by the murder of this innocent baby—and still more by the way that “these proud spirits (ces superbes) spoke to a captain who had arms in hand.” The alliance between the French and the Indians threatened to fly apart—in the middle of Iroquoia.47
Then suddenly another crisis came upon them. The scouts at the head of the column came in sight of their target—a large fortified town of the Onondaga nation. It lay on a good-sized stream that flowed into the southern end of Lake Onondaga in what is now the city of Syracuse, New York.48 Champlain had already worked out a careful plan of attack. He proposed that his arquebusiers remain out of sight and wait for a battle to develop. When the Onondaga warriors emerged from the fort, the French would intervene at the critical moment, some of them from the flanks, as they had done twice against the Mohawk.
At first contact with the enemy the plan came apart. As his Indian allies came within sight of the fort, a small group of Onondaga warriors rushed out to fight them. Some of the allies raced forward in quest of captives. The operation dissolved into a chaos of small fights, and the Iroquois began to get the upper hand. Champlain watched with concern as more Indians from both sides joined the fight and the tide of battle turned against his allies. He called to his arquebusiers and led them forward. They opened fire, and the Onondaga recoiled in shock. Champlain thought that many of them had never seen European soldiers armed with “thundersticks.”
The Onondaga retreated into the fort with their dead and wounded. Champlain also fell back, with wounded Indians whom he had rescued from the field. He was in a state of fury. To protect a few impetuous warriors, he had lost the vital element of tactical surprise that had worked so well against the Mohawk. He remembered that he used “hard and unpleasant words” and warned the Indian war chiefs that “if every thing went according to caprice … evil alone would result, to their loss and ruin.”49
• • •
Champlain studied the Onondaga town, which was more a castle than a fort. It was surrounded by four massive palisades of heavy interlocked timbers thirty feet high. On the top were galleries or parapets protected by double timbers that were proof against French musketry. The castle had an ample supply of water, and a system of gutters and waterspouts that could be used to put out fires along its wooden walls. Altogether Champlain thought that the Onondaga fort was stronger than the towns of the Huron.
Champlain invited his Indian allies to a council of war and recommended a new plan. Drawing on his experience of European siegecraft, he proposed that they construct a “siege engine” called a cavalier. This was a protected platform on stilts, higher than the palisades, with loopholes for firearms. Then he suggested that they build large shielded enclosures called mantelets, and use them to approach the palisades and set the walls ablaze.
It was agreed. With incredible speed the Indians and the French built a big cavalier. Two hundred men pushed it forward, within a “pike’s length,” about sixteen feet, of the palisade. From its high platform, French arquebusiers began to fire into the town, loading their weapons with three or four balls at each discharge. They had an abundance of ammunition, and they raked the interior of the crowded Onondaga fort for three hours, inflicting heavy losses on the defenders. Champlain wrote, “Those on the Cavalier killed and maimed many of them.”50
Champlain started the next maneuver. Other Indians came forward under cover of the mantelets. They piled kindling against the palisades and started fires. But they did it on a side of the fort where the wind was against them, and the defenders used their gutters to pour water on the flames. The attackers ran short of kindling, the fires went out, and the frustrated attackers emerged from their mantelets. They fired arrows that had little effect, screaming defiance at the enemy. Champlain wrote, “One could not make oneself heard, which troubled me greatly. In vain I shouted in their ears…. They heard nothing, on account of the great noise they were making.”51
Champlain observed that the Onondaga “took advantage of our confusion” and returned in strength to their ramparts. The defenders aimed great numbers of arrows at their attackers. The French fired back and inflicted severe losses, but more Onondaga warriors replaced their fallen comrades. Champlain wrote that the arrows “fell upon us like hail.” Two of the three leading Huron chiefs were wounded. Then Champlain went down, hit by several arrows. One penetrated an unprotected spot on his leg. Another went into his knee. He fell to the ground, unable to walk, and wrote that the wound caused “extreme pain.” Despite his injury, he believed that victory was in reach and urged his allies to “turn against the enemy again.” The Indians refuse
d. Champlain said, “My discourses availed as little as if I had been silent.” He observed that “the chiefs have no absolute control over their men, who follow their own wishes and act as their fancy suggests, which is the cause of their confusion and spoils all their enterprises.”52
Champlain’s sketch of his attack on the Onondaga fort in 1615, at Lake Onondaga. He tried to capture it with a European siege engine called a “cavalier,” while his allies tried to burn the palisade. Champlain thought the attack a failure, but Indians on both sides judged it a highly successful revenge raid. It led to a long period of peace.
The Indians fell back from the fort, but under heavy pressure from Champlain, they agreed to wait four or five days in hope that the Susquehannock might join them. The next day a great wind came up, and Champlain saw another opportunity to burn the wooden castle. Once again the Indians did not agree, and “would do nothing.” They continued in their camp around the fort for a few days, waiting for word of the Susquehannock. Onondaga war parties came out of the fort and small skirmishes took place. Champlain wrote that the Onondaga again got the upper hand in these engagements, and withdrew only when Champlain sent forward his arquebusiers, “which the enemy greatly feared and dreaded.”53
Finally, on October 16, the Huron and Algonquin would wait no longer for the Susquehannock, and decided to go home. Champlain, for all his frustration, sympathized with them. “They must be excused,” he wrote, “for they are not trained soldiers (gens de guerre) and moreover they do not submit to discipline or correction, and do only what they think right.” The siege of the Onondaga fort was at an end.54
Champlain judged the battle by the measure of his intention, and believed that he had been defeated. His object had been to capture the Onondaga “castle,” and in this he failed completely. He succeeded only in charring a small part of the outer palisade, did no damage to its structure, and was compelled to retreat. Champlain always wrote of this battle as a defeat, and he regarded the entire mission as a failure. For many years most scholars, including this historian, shared that view. Marcel Trudel went further and concluded that the assault on the fort was not merely a defeat but a disaster for New France. He believed that it marked the beginning of the great expansion in Iroquois power.55
More recently, historical ethnographers have approached the same question in a different way. Working from their familiarity with Indian cultures, they studied the campaign by the standards of Indian warfare and came to a surprising conclusion. Bruce Trigger, a leading ethnohistorian of the Huron, found that “none of the Indians involved regarded the campaign of 1615 as a defeat for Champlain or his allies.” After this battle and the two fights against the Mohawk, Trigger observed that the Iroquois Five nations “did not wish to fight the French.” He added: “The question that must be asked is why, after the French had played a leading role in killing about 160 Mohawks in 1609 and 1610, and attacking the Oneida [Onondaga] settlement in 1615, these tribes were not more vindictive.”
Trigger’s answer was complex, involving relations between the Iroquois and the Dutch, and other opportunities to the south and west. An important factor was the high cost to the Iroquois of hostilities against the French. In the attack on the Onondaga castle, Champlain’s arquebusiers killed and wounded many Indian defenders of the fort. We have no count of casualties, but the firing was heavy and prolonged, the range was point-blank, and the cost must have been severe to this small Iroquois nation. Champlain’s allies withdrew successfully with few losses of their own. Trigger concluded that Indians on both sides regarded such an attack as a success.56
An ethnohistorian of the St. Lawrence Indians agreed with Trigger. José António Brandao also wrote that the campaign succeeded by the standards of Indian warfare. The attackers made a bold march into the heartland of the Iroquois League, launched a major assault on one of its most formidable strongholds, and inflicted heavy casualties on Onondaga warriors who had been raiding the St. Lawrence Valley. From the perspective of Indian culture, the attack was brilliantly effective as a revenge-raid, and it appears to have been regarded that way by Indians of many nations.
Brandao observed that it was also a success when measured against another of Champlain’s larger purposes, which was to deter Iroquois attacks to the north. After his campaign, “none of these groups, nor the [Iroquois] confederacy as a whole, was eager to wage war against the new French settlers and their native allies. Instead, the Iroquois tried to make peace with their native foes.” He added, “Even though he had aided the Algonquins, Hurons and Montagnais against the Iroquois, Champlain did not appear to rule out the hope of peace among these groups. Indeed, at first Champlain looked favorably on peace efforts between the Iroquois and his native allies.”57
William Fenton, an ethnohistorian of the Iroquois, also agreed with Trigger and Brandao. He wrote that after the battle of the Onondaga fort, Iroquois raids to the north were much reduced. For twenty years, the Onondaga and Mohawk were careful not to fight the French. Fenton observes that major Iroquois hostilities did not revive until 1640, by his reckoning. Champlain’s campaign against the Onondaga was a successful example of limited war for purposes of peace and stability.58
After the battle, Champlain was immobilized by his wounds. His Indian allies took command and organized the withdrawal with practiced skill. The Onondaga came after them, urgently seeking prisoners for their own ceremonies of revenge. They got none. Champlain wrote, “The enemy followed us about half a league, but at a distance, to try to capture some of those who formed the rear-guard, but their efforts proved vain, and they withdrew.” Champlain was much impressed by the conduct of the withdrawal, which showed a discipline that had been lacking in the attack. He wrote of his allies that “they conduct their retreats very securely, putting the wounded and the elderly in the middle, and strong forces on the front, flanks and rear, without breaking ranks until they reach a place of safety.”
Even so, it was a terrible ordeal, especially for Champlain himself. They had to march seventy-five miles to their canoes. Champlain was unable to walk, as were “many of their wounded.” To leave them behind was to condemn them to death by the unspeakable agony of Iroquois torture—and also to forfeit the victory of a revenge-raid. The Indians improvised large baskets, or paniers, as Champlain described them. The wounded warriors were put into the baskets and “bound in such a manner that it was impossible to move any more than a little child in its swaddling clothes.” The paniers were strapped to the backs of very strong Indians who carried them to safety.59
“It caused the wounded great and extreme pain,” Champlain later testified. “I can say this indeed with truth from my own case, having been carried for several days because I was unable to stand, chiefly because of the arrow in my knee. Never did I find myself in such a hell as during this time, for the pain I suffered from the wound in my knee was nothing in comparison with what I endured tied and bound on the back of one of our Indians. This made me lose patience, and as soon as I was able to stand, I got out of this prison or more accurately this hell that I was in.”60
If the wounded were “greatly fatigued,” so were their carriers. Able-bodied Indians took turns, and the way was long and hard. On October 18, just after the withdrawal began, they were overtaken by heavy snow, hail, and “a strong wind which caused us much trouble.” The Indians kept on with a stoic determination that Champlain admired. At last they reached Lake Ontario, and found their canoes still safely hidden.
Champlain asked to be taken back to Quebec, which the Indians had promised to do after the campaign. But the chiefs did not agree. Four individual Indians came forward and offered to take Champlain and his French arquebusiers to their settlement. The warriors did so in defiance of their chiefs and “of their own accord, for as I have said before, the chiefs have no authority over their companions.” But they needed canoes, and the Indian leaders insisted that there were none to spare. Champlain was very unhappy. The Indians were breaking a promise, and he was “badl
y equipped for spending the winter with them.” Gradually it dawned on him that the Indians had a complex purpose in mind. “I perceived that their plan was to detain me with my comrades in their country, both for their safety and out of fear of their enemies.” His allies worried that a small party might be intercepted by the Iroquois, with fatal results for the alliance. Further, they wanted Champlain to be part of their “councils and assemblies, and to join in decisions about what might be done for the future against their enemies.”61
It was soon clear that protests had no effect. Champlain wrote, “Not being able to do anything, I had to resign myself to be patient.” He decided to make the best of his situation and use the time to observe the ways of the Huron and their neighbors: “During the winter season, which lasted four months, I had leisure enough to study their country, their manners, customs, modes of life, the form of their assemblies, and other things which I should like to describe.”62
An ethnohistorian, Elisabeth Tooker, compared Champlain’s studies of the Huron with those of the Jesuits who followed him. She observed that the Jesuits were men of great learning who described the religion of the Huron in depth but were superficial on other aspects of their culture. Champlain’s studies were in her judgment “less cultivated but not less precise.” He had less interest in Huron religion but was “more attentive to other aspects of culture neglected by the Jesuits, in particular the life cycle, inheritance, and modes of subsistence.” He studied them as a participant-observer, “a man among men, who took part in military expeditions, hunted big game with them, and later wrote of his experiences.”63
The Huron treated Champlain very well. The chief named Atironta (Champlain called him Darontal) gave Champlain his cabin, with abundant supplies and furniture. He was invited to join a great deer hunt, which Champlain called their “noblest sport.” He hunted with the men of the nation as they drove the deer into an enclosure 1,500 paces on a side, made of wooden stakes eight or nine feet high. The Indians imitated wolf cries, drove the animals into the trap, and killed 120 deer. He was astounded by the skill of the Indian hunters, by their success in working together, and by their very elaborate forms of organization.64
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