Having attempted “by all acts of kindness to persuade” their relatives “to come and join them and to unite with them in prayer,” and having experienced the increasingly aggressive and intractable approach of their eastern Iroquois kinsfolk over the previous year, the Kahnawakes reached the conclusion that an attack against their villages was in order. Meeting with Frontenac and Callière, they “demanded permission to organize this expedition,” requesting the assistance of regular troops and militiamen, and going so far as to specify which officers should accompany them (Nicolas d’Ailleboust de Manthet, a veteran of the raid on Schenectady, Augustin Le Gardeur de Courtemanche, and Zacharie Robutel de Lanoue, the three of whom had been at Kahnawake during the recent siege). Together the chiefs and governors agreed that the campaign’s objective would be the complete destruction of the Mohawk villages, and that all women and children were to be captured “to populate the two Christian villages of their nation.” The Christian Iroquois’s initiative, firmly grounded in traditional patterns of war, meshed conveniently with Frontenac’s own determination to launch a campaign against the Five Nations.26
The small army raised as a result of these discussions numbered some 600 men, including between 100 and 200 warriors from Kahnawake and Kanehsatake, led by Tatakwiséré among others, joined by a few Wendats of Lorette, Wabanakis from Néssawakamighé on the Chaudière, as well as Algonquins and Sokokis from the vicinity of Trois Rivières. Reaching the three Mohawk villages in mid-February, at a time when most of their inhabitants had dispersed for the winter hunt, the forces rapidly overcame those who had remained behind: between 220 and 350 Mohawk captives were taken. The Christian Iroquois were satisfied when these captives asked for clemency by volunteering to emigrate to the missions, claiming that they had been for some time intending to do so. While the French officers expressed their desire to press on to Albany, the Christian Iroquois war chiefs flatly refused and compelled the army’s return to Montreal.27
During the attack and the return journey, the warriors of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake made it clear that “they alone were masters” of the prisoners. Well aware that the escorting of over two hundred captives from Mohawk country to Canada would slow down the force and facilitate an enemy pursuit, these masters released some of their captives with warnings that they would kill all those who remained in their custody should they find themselves pursued, and allowed many to flee. There happened to be among the captives a prominent Oneida man, a brother of Tatakwiséré. This man protested that his people were “very tired of the war” and that they would have proposed peace to the French if they had thought that they would be well received. In light of this, Tatakwiséré urged the French officers to agree to open negotiations. The latter declined, explaining that the governor had instructed them to make war and not peace, but nonetheless encouraged Tatakwiséré to respond on his own behalf. He immediately dispatched a message reinforced with a wampum belt to the Oneidas. “The natural affection that I have for my homeland [patrie] is not yet extinguished,” his message declared, going on to blame its people for having responded with “treason and perfidy” to the affection that the Christian Iroquois had displayed towards them on numerous occasions, and to invite them to send a formal embassy to discuss the peace.28
Other prisoners, burdened with their children and provisions, feeling that they could not go on anymore, begged to be freed and promised that they would come to Kahnawake by themselves in the spring. The Christian Iroquois warriors, needing to hunt because they were running short on food, accepted. In the end only 64 or 70 prisoners out of the initial 220 to 350 reached Montreal, almost all women and children. Colonial commentators who had not taken part in the expedition were quick to cast aspersions on the loyalty of their allies for having failed to bring back more than that – conveniently forgetting that it was the Christian Iroquois who had initiated the campaign in the first place. From the latter’s perspective, it had been a resounding success: they had taken many captives, and could expect that many would follow willingly.29
***
Sure enough, as in 1666, the destruction of the Mohawk villages initiated a significant northward migration. During that summer of 1693, many Mohawks voluntarily relocated to the mission settlements.30 The show of force proved an equally powerful motivator for the Mohawks’ closest neighbours. The Oneidas followed up on Tatakwiséré’s invitation. That June one of their headmen named Taréha led a delegation of seven of his people to Canada, with the intention of obtaining the release of two boys belonging to his family who were captives at Kahnawake, and more ambitiously of meeting with Frontenac to explore the possibility of negotiating a solid peace. Offering to act as a mediator, Taréha allowed some ambiguity to persist about whom, exactly, he was representing. In one account, he was described as speaking on behalf of “the three principal families [clans] of Oneida,” but in another it was said that “he came on behalf of his family and a portion of his village.” An escaped captive who reached the colony shortly thereafter alternatively revealed to the governor that Taréha “was acting in good faith, but his adherents were not considerable.” In any case, Taréha declared to Frontenac that if he was fortunate enough to reconcile his own nation with the French, his design was “to come among them and spend the rest of his days with his brothers of Sault S. Louis.” Over the next few years, he carried out several more diplomatic journeys between Iroquoia and Canada.31
There existed powerful bonds of biological and spiritual kinship between the Oneidas and the residents of the mission settlements, Kahnawake in particular. As outlined in chapter 5, the founding core of that community had come from the village of Oneida, and although Mohawks now predominated, a regular influx from there had continued through the late 1670s. Tatakwiséré, who emerged as one of the most influential men at Kahnawake in the decade following the death of Togouirout, was of Oneida origin, and it is not impossible that he was a clan relative of Taréha.32 The continued presence and influence at Oneida of the Jesuit Pierre Millet further contributed to this privileged relationship between the two communities. In charge of the mission at Oneida between 1672 and 1684, Millet had returned there as a war captive in 1689 only to be invited to take on the name of Otaseté and made into a hereditary chief of the Wolf Clan. Until his release in 1694, he continued to wield considerable moral authority at Oneida. His adoptive relatives of the Wolf Clan played a central role in the negotiation of a Franco-Iroquois settlement, and numbered among those most willing to contemplate the possibility of relocating to Canada. Behind the scenes, we can sense the influence of Suzanne Gouentagrandi, the clan mother who had adopted Millet and subsequently accepted baptism from him. She had shown herself to be one of the best friends of the French in all of Iroquoia. A sister of Taréha, it is all but certain that the latter’s diplomatic activity during these years was an expression of policy that she, as clan mother, had a large role in shaping. Her name itself, meaning “they put things down before her” or perhaps more freely “they prostrate themselves before her,” seems indicative of the high regard in which she was held.33
As Frontenac sent Taréha to Onondaga to mobilize a peace delegation that would be more representative of all Five Nations, the Christian Iroquois pressed the advantage. Having asserted themselves as a military power to be reckoned with by humbling the Mohawks, they returned to diplomacy as a means of establishing peace on their own terms. In the fall, Tatakwiséré dispatched a messenger to warn the Five Nations “to come speedily before the French destroyed them.” The Onondagas took this threat sufficiently seriously to call back their dispersed hunting bands and to promise that a League delegation would meet with Onontio in the spring. But in February of 1694 two Mohawk elders arrived at Kahnawake to explain that no delegation would be coming, and that “if the Karigouistes [i.e. Garihwioston or Christian Iroquois] or the French have something to propose to the Five Nations” they would be welcome at an upcoming conference in Albany. The Christian Iroquois made their displeasure manifest. Befor
e the two emissaries and Callière, in whose presence the Kahnawake headmen insisted on speaking, the Kahnawakes rejected these overtures and placed their full diplomatic weight behind the French. “We will have no correspondence with the Five Nations, but by order of the Governor of Canada our Father,” went their ultimatum, and unless the League’s deputies came before the Feast of Saint John on 24 June, “the way will be shut up for ever after, and our Father’s ears will be stopped. We however assure you, that if the deputies come in that time the path shall be safe both coming and going.”34
That a delegation headed by Teganissorens, one of the more prominent Onondaga chiefs and diplomats, did reach Kahnawake and then Quebec in early May must be interpreted not only as an indication of the Five Nations’ willingness to entertain peace with the French in spite of English interference, but also of the Kahnawakes’ considerable diplomatic weight. Further evidence of this was given during the conference held at Quebec, which was attended by all the leading men of Kahnawake and of Kanehsatake. At one point, Teganissorens addressed the Kahnawakes, “whom in former times I called Iroquois” (no doubt here a translation of Haudenosaunee, i.e. People of the Longhouse) but whom he now recognized as the children of Onontio and Christians, to act as mediators. Explaining that “you know us and know our ways of doing things,” he prayed that they would foster thoughts of peace among both the French and the Iroquois, and that they would stifle all occasions for quarrelling. He said as much to the Kanehsatakes before addressing the people of the two mission settlements: “We have killed one another. Forget what has passed, as we intend to do on our side.”35
The conference yielded constructive results, with Frontenac promising a temporary cessation of raids and guaranteeing the safety of any emissaries who would travel to the colony. In the weeks that followed, a second council was held at Montreal during which the headmen of Kahnawake and Kanehsatake answered the speeches addressed to them at Quebec. Reiterating their attachment to the French, they reproached Teganissorens for the fact that Mohawk war parties were still reported to be on the move. When the Onondaga diplomat attempted to transmit a secret wampum belt to two of the main chiefs of Kahnawake, as further encouragement to work towards peace and to keep the people of Iroquoia informed of the governor’s dispositions, they refused to accept and promptly informed Callière of it – just as their predecessors had done three years earlier. By way of response to Teganissorens, they merely reiterated that the Five Nations should trust and conform to what their representatives had pledged at Quebec.36
Though at times they acted as colonial agents, relaying messages between the French and the Five Nations, and generally reinforcing the authority of Onontio, it is clear that the Christian Iroquois strove to mediate a peace on their own terms. When, in September 1694, Frontenac declared to Cayuga and Seneca delegates that he had placed “the hatchet in their [his allies’] hands again” until representatives of all Five Nations sued for peace, many of the Christian Iroquois in attendance expressed reluctance. While they had made unqualified declarations of compliance with the governor’s will in May, when the issue at hand was peace, they now showed themselves unwilling to take up arms at his whim. Instead, they reportedly challenged Frontenac, drawing his attention to the fact that the imperial conflict between France and England was the persistent stumbling block to peace: “If we take up the hatchet again, let us go and kill Cayenquiragoe [Governor Fletcher, and by extension the New Yorkers], for the sooner the better then there is an end.”37
A modest party of warriors from Kahnawake ventured south towards Albany in March of 1695, but in the absence of substantial French support there was to be no major expedition against Cayenquiragoe and his people. The Christian Iroquois’s diplomatic activity in the meantime continued unabated. Attending a council at Onondaga in February of 1695, a Mohawk from Kahnawake called Thioratarion and an Oneida from Kanehsatake named Ononsista ritually condoled the losses of the League and insisted that they comply with Frontenac’s desire to receive their ambassadors. The Onondaga speaker Aqueendera reciprocated the condolence rituals, but he and his people were unwilling to entertain the proposals of Onontio. Instead he asked Thioratarion and Ononsista, and the people of their respective villages, to use their influence to persuade the governor to begin by releasing his prisoners. Aqueendera entrusted a wampum belt to Thioratarion, addressed to himself and Tatakwiséré, which was to symbolically remain hidden underground (i.e. secret) for three years. With it, the League Iroquois exhorted the two men to “think much of the union that ought to exist between us, and not forget that here [in Iroquoia] is your ancient country; that you ought to advise us of the designs of Onontio without letting him know it. Fear not visiting us: you will be always welcome.”38
Throughout this period, the leading men and women in the Canadian Iroquois villages continued to privilege their relationship with the French, and their warriors continued to take part in Franco-Indigenous operations.39 In judging Tatakwiséré to be “our friend and the most influential at the Sault” and accordingly expecting him to be secretive, Aqueendera and the League chiefs were only half right, for he resolved, in conjunction with the other leading men at Kahnawake, to reveal the nature of the secret communication to Callière and to expose Thioratarion, who favoured continued diplomatic secrecy.40 Once again, League Iroquois efforts to short-circuit the relationship of the French and the Christian Iroquois were thwarted.
***
Wampum belts and mutual declarations of goodwill were circulating with unprecedented frequency between Iroquoia and the mission settlements of the Saint Lawrence valley, but reconciliation remained elusive. In response to the news of negotiations towards a separate peace settlement between the nations of the Great Lakes and the Five Nations, and fearing the English penetration in the interior that would unavoidably result from such an arrangement, colonial authorities proposed a new campaign for 1696. This time the Onondagas would be the target.41 Though rather little is known as to how allied warriors were mobilized on this occasion, there is no evidence that the Christian Iroquois played the same leading role as during the campaign three years prior – but there is no evidence either of any reluctance to take part. Some 500 Kahnawake, Kanehsatake, Wendat, Wabanaki, Sokoki, Algonquin, Nipissing, and Odawa warriors numbered among the approximately 2,150 men who left the staging point of Lachine under the nominal command of the elderly Frontenac on 4 July. Undisturbed in its progress, the army found the main Onondaga village abandoned and already smoldering a month later.42
As Frontenac’s army proceeded to loot and spoil the stores and crops of the villages, the governor sent a strong detachment under the command of Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil towards the Oneida villages; at the same time, the worried Oneidas dispatched a delegation of their own. Vaudreuil’s force reached the fields of the main Oneida village where they were met by Suzanne Gouentagrandi, the Wolf Clan mother, whom the French recognized as “the famous Christian woman of Onneiout who had saved Father Millet’s life.” Meeting with Vaudreuil, she offered to come with eighty of her people to join the Christian Iroquois near Montreal. Although accepting her terms, the French commander nevertheless saw fit to cruelly destroy the village and fields, explaining that “it was useless to think of preserving their grain […] as they should want for nothing when settled among us,” and likewise “that their fort and cabins would not be spared, either, as some were quite ready for their reception.”43
The Kahnawakes had good reason to desire and expect that this latest demonstration of Franco-Indigenous military superiority would precipitate their reconciliation with the Oneidas on terms that strengthened their mission community both politically and demo-graphically. Eager to ensure that the latter followed up on their pledge to join the fold in the Saint Lawrence valley, the Kahnawakes advised Frontenac to maintain a strong presence in Iroquoia through the winter of 1696–97 and made their displeasure manifest when he instead ordered the army to return to Montreal. A few months after the campaign, Tat
akwiséré travelled to Oneida to ensure that its inhabitants complied with their promises of resettlement. Returning to Montreal in January of 1697, he was glad to announce that two bands totalling sixty persons were now on the way.44
The first of these bands, numbering from thirty to forty individuals, reached Montreal on 5 February. Its leader, a certain Otacheté who like Taréha belonged to Millet’s adoptive Wolf Clan, explained to Callière that they had come to keep the promise made to “their Father” to join the ranks of his children and settle on his land. Asserting his followers’ desire to maintain a distinctive identity and a good measure of autonomy, he requested that they be provided with land and assistance in the preparation of a site for a new village, “so that the name of Oneida may be preserved,” and asked that Millet be assigned as their missionary. The remainder of the Oneidas expected to follow, he claimed, and had been prevented from doing so only by the Mohawks and the Onondagas who had retained them “each by an arm.”45
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