The White and the Gold (65 page)

It was soon apparent that the tongues of the Iroquois had been in their cheeks all the time. One of the first proofs of amity they supplied was to attack and capture a convoy of French boats on their way to the upper lakes. It so happened that the boats belonged
to La Barre and his associates and that they were filled with goods for trading with the northwestern tribes. The goods were valued at fifteen thousand livres and the governor was furious at this costly breach of the peace; a condition of mind which was not improved when the explanation was forthcoming that the Iroquois had thought the shipment belonged to La Salle, who could be attacked with impunity. La Barre seems to have been convinced by this episode that war with these belligerent and insolent people was inevitable.

On first arriving in Canada, Monsieur le Général had written to the King: “The Iroquois have twenty-six hundred warriors but I will attack them with twelve hundred men. They know how roughly I handled the English in the West Indies.” Now the strain of bombast disappeared from his official communications. He did not like the situation at all and he wrote repeatedly to the King and to Seignelay, urging that trained soldiers be sent out to strengthen his hand.

The situation at home was not favorable for the carrying out of a strong and consistent policy. The great Colbert had died in 1683. During the last stages of his tenure of office and of his life he had been an unhappy man. Always a believer in peace, he had seen the warlike ambitions of Louis the Victorious mount as he listened to his war minister, the Marquis de Louvois. The funds which Colbert had accumulated by his sound policies over the long years were being handed to Louvois for use in the building of a great war machine. After a victory at Strassburg, the sun of Louvois rose high in the heavens and that of Colbert declined until it could hardly be discerned on the horizon. His spirit seems to have been crushed by a comparison the King made between what he, Colbert, was accomplishing about the rebuilding of Versailles and the success of Louvois with some construction work in Flanders. The great minister took to his bed and in a rankling of spirit refused thereafter to receive any message from the fickle King.

The news of his death was joyfully received by the public, and he had to be buried in secrecy to avoid hostile demonstrations. The French people had always hated him. They seem to have had a
habit, in fact, of resenting the collectors of taxes while at the same time they took to their hearts the unscrupulous spendthrifts who dissipated the revenue in showy ways.

With Colbert gone and his much less capable son in the colonial ministry, it was difficult to get things done. Finally, however, the piteous appeals of La Barre resulted in the dispatching of three companies of regular soldiers to Canada, each being made up of fifty-two men. They were veterans of the Dutch wars, tired and disillusioned fellows who had no stomach left for further fighting and who embarked without enthusiasm. Nevertheless, they were welcomed at Quebec with the utmost acclaim, the shouts of the relieved populace merging with the not too brisk rat-tat of the army drums.

La Barre had no excuse now for postponing the punishment he had promised to mete out to the insolent Iroquois. He began to organize his forces for a drive against the Senecas, the most numerous and powerful of the Five Nations. As a first step he wrote to the English governor at New Amsterdam, which was now called New York because the colony had been handed over to the Duke of York, afterward James II, by his brother Charles II. He informed the English that he intended to attack the Iroquois and that no guns were to be supplied them in the meantime. This bit of absurdity was tantamount to saying to a fencing opponent, “Monsieur, my next thrust will be straight at your midriff, so place yourself on guard.” The English governor answered that the Iroquois were subjects of King Charles and that he, La Barre, must not set foot on English territory. The threat had the result also of inciting the Iroquois to furious preparations. They were delighted, being sure they could cope with this new French leader who had failed so lamentably to impress them. Father de Lamberville, who was still at his post in the Iroquois country, saw what was happening at first hand and he sent a gloomy letter to La Barre, advising him to exercise caution. He declared that the Senecas were filled with joy and that they expected to strip, roast, and eat every Frenchman in the country.

The Iroquois front was better organized at this stage than it had ever been. The costly wars with the Andastes were ended and so the heavy drain on their man power had ceased. For years they had been enrolling the youngest and strongest men of the tribes they had attacked and beaten, training them in Iroquois philosophy and drilling them in new ways of fighting. The alliance with the English had been cemented, and the latter had a shrewd and aggressive
leader in Colonel Thomas Dongan as governor at New York. Dongan was a realistic Irishman who saw that conflict between the English and the French was inevitable and that it behooved him to take full advantage of the strength of the Five Nations.

La Barre, having deprived himself of all the advantages of a surprise move, set out for Fort Frontenac with the army he had gathered about him. In addition to the hundred-odd soldiers from France, he had seven hundred Canadian volunteers and a few hundred mission Indians. The regulars had not fully recovered from the rigors of the voyage across the Atlantic and were as soft as putty. The mission Indians had about as much martial ardor as could be brewed at an afternoon tea party. “My purpose,” wrote Monsieur le Général to the King, “is to exterminate the Senecas.”

The governor proceeded to handle the affair with all the military skill that might have been expected from a leader who had spent most of his life in a law office. After encountering great difficulties on the way, the troops reached Fort Frontenac, and La Barre selected a damp stretch of ground for pitching his camp. The mosquitoes made the nights miserable for the unhappy French soldiers, and noxious mists rose from the dank soil and the stagnant water, spreading malarial fevers. Many of the men died, and the governor himself was reduced to a sickly condition. The supplies of food proved inadequate, and in a very short period of time the force was reduced to a condition of martial impotence. La Barre saw no way out of it but to invite the Onondagas to a peace conference, sending the ever-reliable Charles le Moyne to arrange it, hoping that they would induce the Senecas to join the proceedings. To await their coming, the governor selected the most healthy-appearing of his men and moved them to the other side of the water, stopping at a spot most appropriately called La Famine.

The Onondagas responded to the invitation by sending a delegation headed by an orator whose fame had almost obscured the memory of the Flemish Bastard. He was called Big Mouth and he had such a flow of words that white men fell under his spell as readily as his own people.

Squatting in a dignified semicircle with his fellow chiefs, Big Mouth listened to the speech with which La Barre opened the discussions. When the governor had finished, the spellbinder rose to his feet. For a few moments he paced up and down in silence, then he stopped, struck an attitude, and began to speak. His manner
exuded confidence; and well it might, because there had been fraternizing between the rank and file on each side and it had not needed much craft on the part of the red men to discover the weakness of the French force.

“Listen, Onontio,” orated Big Mouth in a voice as deep and full as the chords of an organ. “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 he has come to smoke the pipe of peace with the Onondagas; but I see that he came to knock them on the head,
if so many of his Frenchmen were not too weak to fight
.… Listen, Onontio. My voice is the voice of the Five Tribes of the Iroquois.” On and on it went. Every sentence, punctuated with sweeping gestures, was an attack on the pride of the French.

La Barre retired to his tent in a rage. There was no answer he could give. He
was
too weak to fight. He had no strength to fall back upon, no tricks up his sleeve. The next day there was a shorter session and a peace of sorts was patched up. There was to be a cessation of hostilities between the French and the Iroquois. The latter would pay for the damage they had done to French trade (they later refused to do this). The red men asserted their determination to fight the Illinois to the death; and La Barre could find no words to say in support of the allies who were thus condemned to extinction. As a final gesture of defiance the Five Nations demanded that any future talks be held at La Famine, on Iroquois soil, and not on the French side. Frontenac would never have assented to such a humilition as this; he would have hurled the suggestion back in their teeth with fitting scorn. La Barre weakly agreed.

This concluded the open talks. La Barre returned to Quebec, leaving his forces to negotiate the long water trip as best they could. His great gesture had done no more than avert an open breach for a short spell. The peace had been purchased at too high a price, as subsquent events would show. Big Mouth had flaunted the power of the Iroquois and had told the French leader that he was too weak to attack them. There had been no thunderbolts from the skies to punish him for his audacity, and for many moons thereafter laughter would be heard about campfires where the orotund passages of the daring orator were repeated.

The French lost face also with their allies in the West. Owing largely to the efforts of the resourceful Nicolas Perrot, a band of
five hundred warriors had gathered to come down the lakes and join La Barre in his attack on the Senecas. The armada of canoes which brought this powerful band had reached the point where the Niagara empties into Lake Ontario when a messenger reached them with a letter from La Barre. It said, in brief:

“Go home. We have made peace.”

The resentment with which the allied warriors returned to their hunting grounds was echoed all over the land. La Barre might declare that he had scored a victory. Everyone else knew that the peace was a sham to be broken at the will of the Five Nations.

The King was not deceived by the protestations of the governor. He wrote an immediate letter of recall and appointed the Marquis de Denonville to succeed him.

While the tenure in office of La Barre was thus being brought to an inglorious finish, the intendant Meules had been writing letters home. He had kept the King and the Marquis de Seignelay well informed of everything the governor was doing, particularly the profits he had been taking out of the fur trade. His tart epistles had played their part in bringing about La Barre’s recall.

The record of Meules himself in Canada is limited to one noteworthy achievement. What he did, considered in the light of its consequences, was quite remarkable. It had nothing to do with the Indian wars and their barbarities nor with the troubled state of trade. It had to do entirely with money, and it came about in this way.

The colony was always short of currency. A supply would be sent over each spring, mostly in the form of the fifteen-
sol
and five-
sol
pieces which had been minted exclusively for use in Canada. As the settlers depended on France for all the goods they purchased and used, the silver and copper pieces invariably found their way back. The colonists had, on this account, fallen into the barter habit. Wheat and moose skins served as legal tender, and sometimes debts would be paid in beaver skins, wildcat skins, and even in liquor. The merchants preferred the barter system and certain price standards had been established. A blanket, for instance, cost eight
cats
.

It happened that the usual supply of financial ammunition was overlooked in the spring of 1685. The soldiers who were to have
aided La Barre in his extermination of the Senecas were still in Quebec and had fully recovered their health and appetites. With no funds available, the intendant could not dole them out their little bits of pay, and he found the frugal inhabitants opposed to the idea of feeding three companies of hungry soldiers on credit. Faced with this difficulty, Meules had an inspiration. He would issue pieces of paper as pay and redeem them later when real money was available.

Some writers have contended that this was the start of paper money in the Western world, but this is giving rather too much credit to Monsieur de Meules. The Chinese, of course, had used paper currency; to quite good advantage in the reign of Kublai Khan. Before that the Egyptians had experimented with parchment currency. “Leather” money, which may have been parchment, had been in circulation in Greece and Rome. There had been in England, as early as the period of the first Norman kings, paper acknowledgments of private deposits with the goldsmiths, who were the first bankers, and these had been exchangeable. There had also been bills of exchange and lading. It must be conceded, however, that Meules had no immediate precedents for the step he proposed to take and that he deserves to be remembered.

He encountered a great deal of difficulty in connection with his plan. There were no available supplies of paper in the country and, of course, no printing presses. As a way out, he conceived the idea of collecting all the playing cards he could find and using them for money.

Most of the cardplaying in the colony was done by the unpaid soldiers themselves. In France card games had become a fashionable obsession and the cards used were glossy and of good quality. As in England, four suits had come into general practice, although of course they were called
coeur
(heart),
carreau
(diamond),
trèfle
(club), and
pique
(spade). The popular game almost certainly was maw, which had become established as the favorite on the continent. Having nothing else to do, the soldiers played at maw continuously in the rooms where they lived in the small frame houses in the suburbs. The destruction of Lower Town by fire had made it necessary for everyone to move out from under the comfortable shelter of the town walls. La Barre resided in the château, but the intendant had been compelled to content himself with a very small outside house. Being a man of timorous disposition, he had existed there in much discomfort of mind, often waking in the hours of darkness
and shivering for fear that the Iroquois might be skulking outside.