CHAPTER 6
1684.
LA BARRE AND THE IROQUOIS.
DONGAN, NEW YORK AND ITS INDIAN NEIGHBORS, THE RIVAL GOVERNORS,  DONGAN AND THE IROQUOIS, MISSION TO ONONDAGA, AN IROQUOIS POLITICIAN, WARNINGS OF LAMBERVILLE, IROQUOIS BOLDNESS, LA BARRE TAKES THE FIELD, HIS MOTIVES, THE MARCH, PESTILENCE, COUNCIL AT LA FAMINE, THE IROQUOIS DEFIANT, HUMILIATION OF LA BARRE, THE INDIAN ALLIES, THEIR RAGE AND DISAPPOINTMENT, RECALL OF LA BARRE.
The Dutch colony of New Netherland had now become the English colony of New York.  Its proprietor, the Duke of York, afterwards James II of England, had appointed Colonel Thomas Dongan its governor.  He was a Catholic Irish gentleman of high rank, nephew of the famous Earl of Tyrconnel, and presumptive heir to the earldom of Limerick.  He had served in France, was familiar with its language, and partial to its king and its nobility; but he nevertheless gave himself with vigor to the duties of his new trust.

The Dutch and English colonists aimed at a share in the western fur trade, hitherto a monopoly of Canada; and it is said that Dutch traders had already ventured among the tribes of the Great Lakes, boldly poaching on the French preserves.  Dongan did his utmost to promote their interests, so far at least as was consistent with his instructions from the Duke of York, enjoining him to give the French governor no just cause of offence.  

For several years past, the Iroquois had made forays against the borders of Maryland and Virginia, plundering and killing the settlers; and a declared rupture between those colonies and the savage confederates had more than once been imminent.  The English believed that these hostilities were instigated by the Jesuits in the Iroquois villages.  There is no proof whatever of the accusation; but it is certain that it was the interest of Canada to provoke a war which might, sooner or later, involve New York.  In consequence of a renewal of such attacks, Lord Howard of Effingham, governor of Virginia, came to Albany in the summer of 1684, to hold a council with the Iroquois.

The Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas were the offending tribes.  They all promised friendship for the future.  A hole was dug in the court-yard of the council house, each of the three threw a hatchet into it, and Lord Howard and the representative of Maryland added two others; then the hole was filled, the song of peace was sung, and the high contracting parties stood pledged to mutual accord.  The Mohawks were also at the council, and the Senecas soon after arrived; so that all the confederacy was present by its deputies.  Not long before, La Barre, then in the heat of his martial preparations, had sent a messenger to Dongan with a letter, informing him that, as the Senecas and Cayugas had plundered French canoes and assaulted a French fort, he was compelled to attack them, and begging that the Dutch and English colonists should be forbidden to supply them with arms.  This letter produced two results, neither of them agreeable to the writer: first, the Iroquois were fully warned of the designs of the French; and, secondly, Dongan gained the opportunity he wanted of asserting the claim of his king to sovereignty over the confederacy, and possession of the whole country south of the Great Lakes.  He added that, if the Iroquois had done wrong, he would require them, as British subjects, to make reparation; and he urged La Barre, for the sake of peace between the two colonies, to refrain from his intended invasion of British territory.  

Dongan next laid before the assembled sachems the complaints made against them in the letter of La Barre.  They replied by accusing the French of carrying arms to their enemies, the Illinois and the Miamis.  "Onontio," said their orator, "calls us his children, and then helps our enemies to knock us in the head." They were somewhat disturbed at the prospect of La Barre's threatened attack; and Dongan seized the occasion to draw from them an acknowledgment of subjection to the Duke of York, promising in return that they should be protected from the French.  They did not hesitate.  "We put ourselves," said the Iroquois speaker, "under the great sachem Charles, who lives over the Great Lake, and under the protection of the great Duke of York, brother of your great sachem." But he added a moment after, "Let your friend (King Charles) who lives over the Great Lake know that we are a free people, though united to the English." They consented that the arms of the Duke of York should be planted in their villages, being told that this would prevent the French from destroying them.  Dongan now insisted that they should make no treaty with Onontio without his consent; and he promised that, if their country should be invaded, he would send four hundred horsemen and as many foot soldiers to their aid.

As for the acknowledgment of subjection to the king and the Duke of York, the Iroquois neither understood its full meaning nor meant to abide by it.  What they did clearly understand was that, while they recognized Onontio, the governor of Canada, as their father, they recognized Corlaer, the governor of New York, only as their brother.  Dongan, it seems, could not, or dared not, change this mark of equality.  He did his best, however, to make good his claims, and sent Arnold Viele, a Dutch interpreter, as his envoy to Onondaga.  Viele set out for the Iroquois capital, and thither we will follow him.

He mounted his horse, and in the heats of August rode westward along the valley of the Mohawk.  On a hill a bow-shot from the river, he saw the first Mohawk town, Kaghnawaga, encircled by a strong palisade.  Next he stopped for a time at Gandagaro, on a meadow near the bank; and next, at Canajora, on a plain two miles away.  Tionondogue, the last and strongest of these fortified villages, stood like the first on a hill that overlooked the river, and all the rich meadows around were covered with Indian corn.  The largest of the four contained but thirty houses, and all together could furnish scarcely more than three hundred warriors.  

When the last Mohawk town was passed, a ride of four or five days still lay before the envoy.  He held his way along the old Indian trail, now traced through the grass of sunny meadows, and now tunnelled through the dense green of shady forests, till it led him to the town of the Oneidas, containing about a hundred bark houses, with twice as many fighting men, the entire force of the tribe.  Here, as in the four Mohawk villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and, still advancing, came at length to a vast open space where the rugged fields, patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a broad, low hill, crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga.  There were from one to two hundred of these large bark dwellings, most of them holding several families.  The capital of the confederacy was not fortified at this time, and its only defence was the valor of some four hundred warriors.  In this focus of trained and organized savagery, where ferocity was cultivated as a virtue, and every emotion of pity stifled as unworthy of a man; where ancient rites, customs, and traditions were held with the tenacity of a people who joined the extreme of wildness with the extreme of conservatism,—here burned the council fire of the five confederate tribes; and here, in time of need, were gathered their bravest and their wisest to debate high questions of policy and war.

The object of Viele was to confirm the Iroquois in their very questionable attitude of subjection to the British crown, and persuade them to make no treaty or agreement with the French, except through the intervention of Dongan, or at least with his consent.  The envoy found two Frenchmen in the town, whose presence boded ill to his errand.  The first was the veteran colonist of Montreal, Charles le Moyne, sent by La Barre to invite the Onondagas to a conference.  They had known him, in peace or war, for a quarter of a century; and they greatly respected him.  The other was the Jesuit Jean de Lamberville, who had long lived among them, and knew them better than they knew themselves.  Here, too, was another personage who cannot pass unnoticed.  He was a famous Onondaga orator named Otreonati, and called also Big Mouth, whether by reason of the dimensions of that feature or the greatness of the wisdom that issued from it.  His contemporary, Baron La Hontan, thinking perhaps that his French name of La Grande Gueule was wanting in dignity, Latinized it into Grangula; and the Scotchman, Colden, afterwards improved it into Garangula, under which high-sounding appellation Big Mouth has descended to posterity.  He was an astute old savage, well trained in the arts of Iroquois rhetoric, and gifted with the power of strong and caustic sarcasm, which has marked more than one of the chief orators of the confederacy.  He shared with most of his countrymen the conviction that the earth had nothing so great as the league of the Iroquois; but, if he could be proud and patriotic, so too he could be selfish and mean.  He valued gifts, attentions, and a good meal, and would pay for them abundantly in promises, which he kept or not, as his own interests or those of his people might require.  He could use bold and loud words in public, and then secretly make his peace with those he had denounced.  He was so given to rough jokes that the intendant, Meules, calls him a buffoon; but his buffoonery seems to have been often a cover to his craft.  He had taken a prominent part in the council of the preceding summer at Montreal; and, doubtless, as he stood in full dress before the governor and the officers, his head plumed, his face painted, his figure draped in a colored blanket, and his feet decked with embroidered moccasins, he was a picturesque and striking object.  He was less so as he squatted almost naked by his lodge fire, with a piece of board laid across his lap, chopping rank tobacco with a scalping-knife to fill his pipe, and entertaining the grinning circle with grotesque stories and obscene jests.  Though not one of the hereditary chiefs, his influence was great.  "He has the strongest head and the loudest voice among the Iroquois," wrote Lamberville to La Barre.  "He calls himself your best friend….  He is a venal creature, whom you do well to keep in pay.  I assured him I would send him the jerkin you promised." Well as the Jesuit knew the Iroquois, he was deceived if he thought that Big Mouth was securely won.

Lamberville's constant effort was to prevent a rupture.  He wrote with every opportunity to the governor, painting the calamities that war would bring, and warning him that it was vain to hope that the league could be divided, and its three eastern tribes kept neutral, while the Senecas were attacked.  He assured him, on the contrary, that they would all unite to fall upon Canada, ravaging, burning, and butchering along the whole range of defenceless settlements.  "You cannot believe, Monsieur, with what joy the Senecas learned that you might possibly resolve on war.  When they heard of the preparations at Fort Frontenac, they said that the French had a great mind to be stripped, roasted, and eaten; and that they will see if their flesh, which they suppose to have a salt taste, by reason of the salt which we use with our food, be as good as that of their other enemies." Lamberville also informs the governor that the Senecas have made ready for any emergency, buried their last year's corn, prepared a hiding place in the depth of the forest for their old men, women, and children, and stripped their towns of every thing that they value; and that their fifteen hundred warriors will not shut themselves up in forts, but tight under cover, among trees and in the tall grass, with little risk to themselves and extreme danger to the invader.  "There is no profit," he says, "in fighting with this sort of banditti, whom you cannot catch, but who will catch many of your people.  The Onondagas wish to bring about an agreement.  Must the father and the children, they ask, cut each other's throats?"

The Onondagas, moved by the influence of the Jesuit and the gifts of La Barre, did in fact wish to act as mediators between their Seneca confederates and the French; and to this end they invited the Seneca elders to a council.  The meeting took place before the arrival of Viele, and lasted two days.  The Senecas were at first refractory, and hot for war, but at length consented that the Onondagas might make peace for them, if they could; a conclusion which was largely due to the eloquence of Big Mouth.

The first act of Viele was a blunder.  He told the Onondagas that the English governor was master of their country; and that, as they were subjects of the king of England, they must hold no council with the French without permission.  The pride of Big Mouth was touched.  "You say," he exclaimed to the envoy, "that we are subjects of the king of England and the Duke of York; but we say that we are brothers.  We must take care of ourselves.  The coat of arms which you have fastened to that post cannot defend us against Onontio.  We tell you that we shall bind a covenant chain to our arm and to his.  We shall take the Senecas by one hand and Onontio by the other, and their hatchet and his sword shall be thrown into deep water." 

Thus well and manfully did Big Mouth assert the independence of his tribe, and proclaim it the arbiter of peace.  He told the warriors, moreover, to close their ears to the words of the Dutchman, who spoke as if he were drunk; and it was resolved at last that he, Big Mouth, with an embassy of chiefs and elders, should go with Le Moyne to meet the French governor.

While these things were passing at Onondaga, La Barre had finished his preparations, and was now in full campaign.  Before setting out, he had written to the minister that he was about to advance on the enemy, with seven hundred Canadians, a hundred and thirty regulars, and two hundred mission Indians; that more Indians were to join him on the way; that Du Lhut and La Durantaye were to meet him at Niagara with a body of coureurs de bois and Indians from the interior; and that, "when we are all united, we will perish or destroy the enemy." On the same day, he wrote to the king: "My purpose is to exterminate the Senecas; for otherwise your Majesty need take no farther account of this country, since there is no hope of peace with them, except when they are driven to it by force.  I pray you do not abandon me; and be assured that I shall do my duty at the head of your faithful colonists." A few days after writing these curiously incoherent epistles, La Barre received a letter from his colleague, Meules, who had no belief that he meant to fight, and was determined to compel him to do so, if possible.  "There is a report," wrote the intendant, "that you mean to make peace.  It is doing great harm.  Our Indian allies will despise us.  I trust the story is untrue, and that you will listen to no overtures.  The expense has been enormous.  The whole population is roused." Not satisfied with this, Meules sent the general a second letter, meant, like the first, as a tonic and a stimulant.  "If we come to terms with the Iroquois, without first making them feel the strength of our arms, we may expect that, in future, they will do every thing they can to humiliate us, because we drew the sword against them, and showed them our teeth.  I do not think that any course is now left for us but to carry the war to their very doors, and do our utmost to reduce them to such a point that they shall never again be heard of as a nation, but only as our subjects and slaves.  If, after having gone so far, we do not fight them, we shall lose all our trade, and bring this country to the brink of ruin.  The Iroquois, and especially the Senecas, pass for great cowards.  The Reverend Father Jesuit, who is at Prairie de la Madeleine, told me as much yesterday; and, though he has never been among them, he assured me that he has heard everybody say so.  But, even if they were brave, we ought to be very glad of it; since then we could hope that they would wait our attack, and give us a chance to beat them.  If we do not destroy them, they will destroy us.  I think you see but too well that your honor and the safety of the country are involved in the results of this war." 

While Meules thus wrote to the governor, he wrote also to the minister, Seignelay, and expressed his views with great distinctness.  "I feel bound in conscience to tell you that nothing was ever heard of so extraordinary as what we see done in this country every day.  One would think that there was a divided empire here between the king and the governor; and, if things should go on long in this way, the governor would have a far greater share than his Majesty.  The persons whom Monsieur la Barre has sent this year to trade at Fort Frontenac have already shared with him from ten to twelve thousand crowns." He then recounts numerous abuses and malversations on the part of the governor.  "In a word, Monseigneur, this war has been decided upon in the cabinet of Monsieur the general, along with six of the chief merchants of the country.  If it had not served their plans, he would have found means to settle every thing; but the merchants made him understand that they were in danger of being plundered, and that, having an immense amount of merchandise in the woods in nearly two hundred canoes fitted out last year, it was better to make use of the people of the country to carry on war against the Senecas.  This being done, he hopes to make extraordinary profits without any risk, because one of two things will happen: either we shall gain some considerable advantage over the savages, as there is reason to hope, if Monsieur the general will but attack them in their villages; or else we shall make a peace which will keep every thing safe for a time.  These are assuredly the sole motives of this war, which has for principle and end nothing but mere interest.  He says himself that there is good fishing in troubled waters.  

"With all our preparations for war, and all the expense in which Monsieur the general is involving his Majesty, I will take the liberty to tell you, Monseigneur, though I am no prophet, that I discover no disposition on the part of Monsieur the general to make war against the aforesaid savages.  In my belief, he will content himself with going in a canoe as far as Fort Frontenac, and then send for the Senecas to treat of peace with them, and deceive the people, the intendant, and, if I may be allowed with all possible respect to say so, his Majesty himself.

"P.  S, I will finish this letter, Monseigneur, by telling you that he set out yesterday, July 10th, with a detachment of two hundred men.  All Quebec was filled with grief to see him embark on an expedition of war tete-a-tete with the man named La Chesnaye.  Everybody says that the war is a sham, that these two will arrange every thing between them, and, in a word, do whatever will help their trade.  The whole country is in despair to see how matters are managed." 

After a long stay at Montreal, La Barre embarked his little army at La Chine, crossed Lake Saint Louis, and began the ascent of the upper Saint Lawrence, In one of the three companies of regulars which formed a part of the force was a young subaltern, the Baron la Hontan, who has left a lively account of the expedition.  Some of the men were in flat boats, and some were in birch canoes.  Of the latter was La Hontan, whose craft was paddled by three Canadians.  Several times they shouldered it through the forest to escape the turmoil of the rapids.  The flat boats could not be so handled, and were dragged or pushed up in the shallow water close to the bank, by gangs of militia men, toiling and struggling among the rocks and foam.  The regulars, unskilled in such matters, were spared these fatigues, though tormented night and day by swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, objects of La Hontan's bitterest invective.  At length the last rapid was passed, and they moved serenely on their way, threaded the mazes of the Thousand Islands, entered what is now the harbor of Kingston, and landed under the palisades of Fort Frontenac.

Here the whole force was soon assembled, the regulars in their tents, the Canadian militia and the Indians in huts and under sheds of bark.  Of these red allies there were several hundred: Abenakis and Algonquins from Sillery, Hurons from Lorette, and converted Iroquois from the Jesuit mission of Saut Saint Louis, near Montreal.  The camp of the French was on a low, damp plain near the fort; and here a malarious fever presently attacked them, killing many and disabling many more.  La Hontan says that La Barre himself was brought by it to the brink of the grave.  If he had ever entertained any other purpose than that of inducing the Senecas to agree to a temporary peace, he now completely abandoned it.  He dared not even insist that the offending tribe should meet him in council, but hastened to ask the mediation of the Onondagas, which the letters of Lamberville had assured him that they were disposed to offer.  He sent Le Moyne to persuade them to meet him on their own side of the lake, and, with such of his men as were able to move, crossed to the mouth of Salmon River, then called La Famine.

The name proved prophetic.  Provisions fell short from bad management in transportation, and the men grew hungry and discontented.  September had begun; the place was unwholesome, and the malarious fever of Fort Frontenac infected the new encampment.  The soldiers sickened rapidly.  La Barre, racked with suspense, waited impatiently the return of Le Moyne.  We have seen already the result of his mission, and how he and Lamberville, in spite of the envoy of the English governor, gained from the Onondaga chiefs the promise to meet Onontio in council.  Le Moyne appeared at La Famine on the third of the month, bringing with him Big Mouth and thirteen other deputies.  La Barre gave them a feast of bread, wine, and salmon trout, and on the morning of the fourth the council began.

Before the deputies arrived, the governor had sent the sick men homeward in order to conceal his helpless condition; and he now told the Iroquois that he had left his army at Fort Frontenac, and had come to meet them attended only by an escort.  The Onondaga politician was not to be so deceived.  He, or one of his party, spoke a little French; and during the night, roaming noiselessly among the tents, he contrived to learn the true state of the case from the soldiers.

The council was held on an open spot near the French encampment.  La Barre was seated in an arm-chair.  The Jesuit Bruyas stood by him as interpreter, and the officers were ranged on his right and left.  The Indians sat on the ground in a row opposite the governor; and two lines of soldiers, forming two sides of a square, closed the intervening space.  Among the officers was La Hontan, a spectator of the whole proceeding.  He may be called a man in advance of his time; for he had the caustic, sceptical, and mocking spirit which a century later marked the approach of the great revolution, but which was not a characteristic of the reign of Louis XIV.  He usually told the truth when he had no motive to do otherwise, and yet was capable at times of prodigious mendacity.  There is no reason to believe that he indulged in it on the present occasion, and his account of what he now saw and heard may probably be taken as substantially correct.  According to him, La Barre opened the council as follows:

"The king my master, being informed that the Five Nations of the Iroquois have long acted in a manner adverse to peace, has ordered me to come with an escort to this place, and to send Akouessan (Le Moyne) to Onondaga to invite the principal chiefs to meet me.  It is the wish of this great king that you and I should smoke the calumet of peace together, provided that you promise, in the name of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, to give entire satisfaction and indemnity to his subjects, and do nothing in future which may occasion rupture."

Then he recounted the offences of the Iroquois.  First, they had maltreated and robbed French traders in the country of the Illinois; "wherefore," said the governor, "I am ordered to demand reparation, and in case of refusal to declare war against you."

Next, "the warriors of the Five Nations have introduced the English into the lakes which belong to the king my master, and among the tribes who are his children, in order to destroy the trade of his subjects, and seduce these people from the obedience they owe him.  I am willing to forget this; but, should it happen again, I am expressly ordered to declare war against you."

Thirdly, "the warriors of the Five Nations have made sundry barbarous inroads into the country of the Illinois and Miamis, seizing, binding, and leading into captivity an infinite number of these savages in time of peace.  They are the children of my king, and are not to remain your slaves.  They must at once be set free and sent home.  If you refuse to do this, I am expressly ordered to declare war against you."

La Barre concluded by assuring Big Mouth, as representing the Five Nations of the Iroquois, that the French would leave them in peace if they made atonement for the past, and promised good conduct for the future; but that, if they did not heed his words, their villages should be burned, and they themselves destroyed.  He added, though he knew the contrary, that the governor of New York would join him in war against them.

During the delivery of this martial harangue, Big Mouth sat silent and attentive, his eyes fixed on the bowl of his pipe.  When the interpreter had ceased, he rose, walked gravely two or three times around the lines of the assembly, then stopped before the governor, looked steadily at him, stretched his tawny arm, opened his capacious jaws, and uttered himself as follows:—
"Onontio, I honor you, and all the warriors who are with me honor you.  Your interpreter has ended his speech, and now I begin mine.  Listen to my words.

"Onontio, when you left Quebec, you must have thought that the heat of the sun had burned the forests that make our country inaccessible to the French, or that the lake had overflowed them so that we could not escape from our villages.  You must have thought so, Onontio; and curiosity to see such a fire or such a flood must have brought you to this place.  Now your eyes are opened; for I and my warriors have come to tell you that the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks are all alive.  I thank you in their name for bringing back the calumet of peace which they gave to your predecessors; and I give you joy that you have not dug up the hatchet which has been so often red with the blood of your countrymen.

"Listen, Onontio.  I am not asleep.  My eyes are open; and by the sun that gives me light I see a great captain at the head of a band of soldiers, who talks like a man in a dream.  He says that he has come to smoke the pipe of peace with the Onondagas; but I see that he came to knock them in the head, if so many of his Frenchmen were not too weak to fight.  I see Onontio raving in a camp of sick men, whose lives the Great Spirit has saved by smiting them with disease.  Our women had snatched war-clubs, and our children and old men seized bows and arrows to attack your camp, if our warriors had not restrained them, when your messenger, Akouessan, appeared in our village."

He next justified the pillage of French traders on the ground, very doubtful in this case, that they were carrying arms to the Illinois, enemies of the confederacy; and he flatly refused to make reparation, telling La Barre that even the old men of his tribe had no fear of the French.  He also avowed boldly that the Iroquois had conducted English traders to the lakes.  "We are born free," he exclaimed, "we depend neither on Onontio nor on Corlaer.  We have the right to go whithersoever we please, to take with us whomever we please, and buy and sell of whomever we please.  If your allies are your slaves or your children, treat them like slaves or children, and forbid them to deal with anybody but your Frenchmen.

"We have knocked the Illinois in the head, because they cut down the tree of peace and hunted the beaver on our lands.  We have done less than the English and the French, who have seized upon the lands of many tribes, driven them away, and built towns, villages, and forts in their country.

"Listen, Onontio.  My voice is the voice of the Five Tribes of the Iroquois.  When they buried the hatchet at Cataraqui (Fort Frontenac) in presence of your predecessor, they planted the tree of peace in the middle of the fort, that it might be a post of traders and not of soldiers.  Take care that all the soldiers you have brought with you, shut up in so small a fort, do not choke this tree of peace.  I assure you in the name of the Five Tribes that our warriors will dance the dance of the calumet under its branches; and that they will sit quiet on their mats and never dig up the hatchet, till their brothers, Onontio and Corlaer, separately or together, make ready to attack the country that the Great Spirit has given to our ancestors."

The session presently closed; and La Barre withdrew to his tent, where, according to La Hontan, he vented his feelings in invective, till reminded that good manners were not to be expected from an Iroquois.  Big Mouth, on his part, entertained some of the French at a feast which he opened in person by a dance.  There was another session in the afternoon, and the terms of peace were settled in the evening.  The tree of peace was planted anew; La Barre promised not to attack the Senecas; and Big Mouth, in spite of his former declaration, consented that they should make amends for the pillage of the traders.  On the other hand, he declared that the Iroquois would fight the Illinois to the death; and La Barre dared not utter a word in behalf of his allies.  The Onondaga next demanded that the council fire should be removed from Fort Frontenac to La Famine, in the Iroquois country.  This point was yielded without resistance; and La Barre promised to decamp and set out for home on the following morning.  

Such was the futile and miserable end of the grand expedition.  Even the promise to pay for the plundered goods was contemptuously broken.  The honor rested with the Iroquois.  They had spurned the French, repelled the claims of the English, and by act and word asserted their independence of both.

La Barre embarked and hastened home in advance of his men.  His camp was again full of the sick.  Their comrades placed them, shivering with ague fits, on board the flat-boats and canoes; and the whole force, scattered and disordered, floated down the current to Montreal.  Nothing had been gained but a thin and flimsy truce, with new troubles and dangers plainly visible behind it.  The better to understand their nature, let us look for a moment at an episode of the campaign.

When La Barre sent messengers with gifts and wampum belts to summon the Indians of the Upper Lakes to join in the war, his appeal found a cold response.  La Durantaye and Du Lhut, French commanders in that region, vainly urged the surrounding tribes to lift the hatchet.  None but the Hurons would consent, when, fortunately, Nicolas Perrot arrived at Michillimackinac on an errand of trade.  This famous coureur de bois—a very different person from Perrot, governor of Montreal—was well skilled in dealing with Indians.  Through his influence, their scruples were overcome; and some five hundred warriors, Hurons, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawatamies, and Foxes, were persuaded to embark for the rendezvous at Niagara, along with a hundred or more Frenchmen.  The fleet of canoes, numerous as a flock of blackbirds in autumn, began the long and weary voyage.  The two commanders had a heavy task.  Discipline was impossible.  The French were scarcely less wild than the savages.  Many of them were painted and feathered like their red companions, whose ways they imitated with perfect success.  The Indians, on their part, were but half-hearted for the work in hand, for they had already discovered that the English would pay twice as much for a beaver skin as the French; and they asked nothing better than the appearance of English traders on the lakes, and a safe peace with the Iroquois, which should open to them the market of New York.  But they were like children with the passions of men, inconsequent, fickle, and wayward.  They stopped to hunt on the shore of Michigan, where a Frenchman accidentally shot himself with his own gun.  Here was an evil omen.  But for the efforts of Perrot, half the party would have given up the enterprise, and paddled home.  In the Strait of Detroit there was another hunt, and another accident.  In firing at a deer, an Indian wounded his own brother.  On this the tribesmen of the wounded man proposed to kill the French, as being the occasion of the mischance.  Once more the skill of Perrot prevailed; but when they reached the Long Point of Lake Erie, the Foxes, about a hundred in number, were on the point of deserting in a body.  As persuasion failed, Perrot tried the effect of taunts.  "You are cowards," he said to the naked crew, as they crowded about him with their wild eyes and long lank hair.  "You do not know what war is: you never killed a man and you never ate one, except those that were given you tied hand and foot." They broke out against him in a storm of abuse.  "You shall see whether we are men.  We are going to fight the Iroquois; and, unless you do your part, we will knock you in the head." "You will never have to give yourselves the trouble," retorted Perrot, "for at the first war-whoop you will all run off." He gained his point.  Their pride was roused, and for the moment they were full of fight.  

Immediately after, there was trouble with the Ottawas, who became turbulent and threatening, and refused to proceed.  With much ado, they were persuaded to go as far as Niagara, being lured by the rash assurance of La Durantaye that three vessels were there, loaded with a present of guns for them.  They carried their canoes by the cataract, launched them again, paddled to the mouth of the river, and looked for the vessels in vain.  At length a solitary sail appeared on the lake.  She brought no guns, but instead a letter from La Barre, telling them that peace was made, and that they might all go home.  Some of them had paddled already a thousand miles, in the hope of seeing the Senecas humbled.  They turned back in disgust, filled with wrath and scorn against the governor and all the French.  Canada had incurred the contempt, not only of enemies, but of allies.  There was danger that these tribes would repudiate the French alliance, welcome the English traders, make peace at any price with the Iroquois, and carry their beaver skins to Albany instead of Montreal.

The treaty made at La Famine was greeted with contumely through all the colony.  The governor found, however, a comforter in the Jesuit Lamberville, who stood fast in the position which he had held from the beginning.  He wrote to La Barre: "You deserve the title of saviour of the country for making peace at so critical a time.  In the condition in which your army was, you could not have advanced into the Seneca country without utter defeat.  The Senecas had double palisades, which could not have been forced without great loss.  Their plan was to keep three hundred men inside, and to perpetually harass you with twelve hundred others.  All the Iroquois were to collect together, and fire only at the legs of your people, so as to master them, and burn them at their leisure, and then, after having thinned their numbers by a hundred ambuscades in the woods and grass, to pursue you in your retreat even to Montreal, and spread desolation around it." La Barre was greatly pleased with this letter, and made use of it to justify himself to the king.  His colleague, Meules, on the other hand, declared that Lamberville, anxious to make favor with the governor, had written only what La Barre wished to hear.  The intendant also informs the minister that La Barre's excuses are a mere pretence; that everybody is astonished and disgusted with him; that the sickness of the troops was his own fault, because he kept them encamped on wet ground for an unconscionable length of time; that Big Mouth shamefully befooled and bullied him; that, after the council at La Famine, he lost his wits, and went off in a fright; that, since the return of the troops, the officers have openly expressed their contempt for him; and that the people would have risen against him, if he, Meules, had not taken measures to quiet them.  These, with many other charges, flew across the sea from the pen of the intendant.

The next ship from France brought the following letter from the king:—

MONSIEUR DE LA BARRE,—Having been informed that your years do not permit you to support the fatigues inseparable from your office of governor and lieutenant-general in Canada, I send you this letter to acquaint you that I have selected Monsieur de Denonville to serve in your place; and my intention is that, on his arrival, after resigning to him the command, with all instructions concerning it, you embark for your return to France.

Louis.
 La Barre sailed for home; and the Marquis de Denonville, a pious colonel of dragoons, assumed the vacant office.