CHAPTER XII

1686-1687

PIERRE LE MOYNE D’IBERVILLE SWEEPS THE BAY

WithCaptain Outlaw’s crew adding strength to Albany, and Governor Bridgar’s crew wintering at Rupert River, the Adventurers on Hudson Bay once more felt secure. Like a bolt from the blue came the French raiders into the midst of this security.

It was one of the long summer nights on the 18th of June, 1686, when twilight of the North merges with dawn. Fourteen cannon in all protruded from the embrasures of the four stone bastions round Moose Factory—the southwest corner of the bay; and the eighteen-foot pickets of the palisaded square wall were everywhere punctured with holes for musketry. In one bastion were three thousand pounds of powder. In another, twelve soldiers slept. In a third were stored furs. The fourth bastion served as kitchen. Across the middle of the courtyard was the two-story storehouse and residence of the chief factor. The sentinel had shot the strongiron bolts of the main gate facing the waterway, and had lain down to sleep wrapped in a blanket without loading the cannon it was his duty to guard. Twilight of the long June night—almost the longest day in the year—had deepened into the white stillness that precedes dawn, when two forms took shape in the thicket of underbrush behind the fort, and there stepped forth clad in buckskincap-à-pie, musket over shoulder, war hatchet, powderhorn, dagger, pistol in belt and unscabbarded sword aglint in hand, two French wood-lopers, the far-famedcoureurs des bois, whose scalping raids were to strike terror from Louisiana to Hudson Bay.

At first glance, the two scouts might have been marauding Iroquois come this outrageous distance through swamp and forest from their own fighting ground. Closer scrutiny showed them to be young French noblemen, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville, age twenty-four, and his brother, Sainte Hélène, native to the roving life of the bushranger, to pillage and raid and ambuscade as the war-eagle to prey. Born in Montreal in 1661 and schooled to all the wilderness perils of the struggling colony’s early life, Pierre le Moyne, one of nine sons of Charles le Moyne, at Montreal, became the Robin Hood of American wilds.

Sending his brother Ste. Hélène round one side ofthe pickets to peer through the embrasures of the moonlit fortress, Pierre le Moyne d’Iberville skirted the other side himself and quickly made the discovery that not one of the cannon was loaded. The tompion was in every muzzle. Scarcely a cat’s-paw of wind dimpled the waters. The bay was smooth as silk. Not a twig crunched beneath the moccasined tread of the two spies. There was the white silence, the white midnight pallor of Arctic night, the diaphanous play of Northern lights over skyey waters, the fine etched shadows of juniper and fir and spruce black as crayon across the pale-amber swamps.

With a quick glance, d’Iberville and his brother took in every detail. Then they melted back in the pallid half-light like shadows. In a trice, a hundred forms had taken shape in the mist—sixty-six Indians decked in all the war-gear of savage glory from head-dress and vermilion cheeks to naked red-stained limbs lithe as tiger, smooth and supple as satin—sixty-six Indians and thirty-three half-wild French soldiers gay in all the regimentals of French pomp, commanded by old Chevalier de Troyes, veteran of a hundred wars, now commissioned to demand the release of Monsieur Péré from the forts of the English fur traders. Beside De Troyes, stood De la Chesnay, head of the Northern Company of Fur Traders in Quebec, only too glad of this chance toraid the forts of rivals. And well to the fore, cross in hand, head bared, the Jesuit Sylvie had come to rescue the souls of Northern heathendom from hell.

Impossible as it may seem, these hundred intrepid wood-runners had come overland from Montreal. While Grimmington and Smithsend were still in prison at Quebec, d’Iberville and his half-wild followers had set out in midwinter on a voyage men hardly dared in summer. Without waiting for the ice to break up, leaving Montreal in March, they had followed the frozen river bed of the Ottawa northward, past the Rideau and Chaudiere Falls tossing their curtains of spray in midair where the city of Ottawa stands to-day, past the Mattawa which led off to the portages of Michilimackinac and the Great Lakes, up the palisaded shores of the Temiscamingue to Lake Abbittibbi, the half-way watershed between the St. Lawrence and Hudson Bay. French silver mines, which the English did not rediscover to the present century, were worked at Temiscamingue. At Abbittibbi, a stockade was built in the month of May, and three Canadians left to keep guard. Here, too, pause was made to construct canoes for the voyage down the watershed of Moose River to James Bay. Instead of waiting for the ice of the Ottawa to break up, the raiders had forced theirmarch to be on time to float down on the swollen currents of the spring thaw to Moose Factory, four-hundred miles from the height of land.

And a march forced against the very powers of the elements, it had proved. No tents were carried; only the blanket, knapsack fashion, tied to each man’s back. Bivouac was made under the stars. No provisions but what each blanket carried! No protection but the musket over shoulder, the war axe and powderhorn, and pistol in belt! No reward but the vague promise of loot from the English wigwamming—as the Indians say—on the Northern Bay! Do the border raids of older lands record more heroic daring than this? A march through six-hundred miles of trackless forest in midwinter, then down the maelstrom sweep of torrents swollen by spring thaw, for three-hundred miles to the juniper swamps of rotting windfall and dank forest growth around the bay?

If the march had been difficult by snowshoe, it was ten-fold more now. Unknown cataracts, unknown whirlpools, unknown reaches of endless rapids dashed the canoes against the ice jam, under huge trunks of rotting trees lying athwart the way, so that Pierre d’Iberville’s canoe was swamped, two of his voyageurs swept to death before his eyes, and two others only saved by d’Iberville, himself, leapingto the rescue and dragging them ashore. In places, the ice had to be cut away with hatchets. In places, portage was made over the ice jams, men sinking to their armpits in a slither of ice and snow. For as long as eleven miles, the canoes were tracked over rapids with the men wading barefoot over ice-cold, slippery river bed.

It had been no play, this fur-trade raid, and now Iberville was back from his scouting, having seen with his own eyes that the English fur traders were really wigwamming on the bay—by which the Indians meant “wintering.” Hastily, all burdens of blanket and food and clothes were cast aside andcached. Hastily, each raider fell to his knees invoking the blessing of Ste. Anne, patron saint of Canadian voyageur. Hastily, the Jesuit Sylvie passed from man to man absolving all sin; for these men fought with all the Spartan ferocity of the Indian fighter—that it was better to die fighting than to suffer torture in defeat.

Then each man recharged his musket lest the swamp mists had dampened powder. Perhaps, Iberville reminded his bush-lopers that the Sovereign Council of Quebec had a standing offer of ten crowns reward for every enemy slain, twenty crowns for every enemy captured. Perhaps, old Chevalier de Troyes called up memories of Dollard’s fight onthe Long Sault twenty years before, and warned his thirty soldiers that there was no retreat now through a thousand miles of forest. They must win or perish! Perhaps Dechesnay, the fur trader, told these wood-rovers that in at least one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s forts were fifty-thousand crowns’ worth of beaver to be divided as spoils among the victors. De Troyes led his soldiers round the fore to make a feint of furious onslaught from the water front. Iberville posted his Indians along each flank to fire through the embrasures of the pickets. Then, with a wild yell, the French raiders swooped upon the sleeping fort. Iberville and his brothers, Ste. Hélène and Maricourt, were over the rear pickets and across the courtyard, swords in hand, before the sleepy gunner behind the main gate could get his eyes open. One blow of Ste. Hélène’s saber split the fellow’s head to the collar bone. The trunk of a tree was used to ram the main gate. Iberville’s Indians had hacked down the rear pickets, and he, himself, led the way into the house. Before the sixteen terrified inmates dashing out in their shirts had realized what was happening, the raiders were masters of Moose. Only one man besides the gunner was killed, and he was a Frenchman slain by the cross-fire of his comrades. Cellars were searched, but there was small loot. Furs were evidentlystored elsewhere, but the French were the richer by sixteen captives, twelve portable cannon, and three-thousand pounds of powder. Flag unfurled, muskets firing, sod heaved in air, Chevalier de Troyes took possession of the fort for the Most Redoubtable, Most Mighty, Most Christian King of France, though a cynic might wonder how such an act was accomplished in time of peace, when the sole object of the raid had been the rescue of Monsieur Péré, imprisoned as a spy.

Eastward of Moose, a hundred and thirty miles along the south coast of the bay on Rupert’s River, was the other fort, stronger, the bastions of stone, with a dock where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships commonly anchored for the summer. Northwestward of Moose, some hundred miles, was a third fort, Albany, the citadel of the English fur traders’ strength, forty paces back from the water. Unassailable by sea, it was the storehouse of the best furs. It was decided to attack Rupert first. Staying only long enough at Moose to build a raft to carry Chevalier de Troyes and his prisoners along the coast, the raiders set out by sea on the 27th of June.

Petition to the H. B. C. signed by Churchill, or Marlborough.

Iberville led the way with two canoes and eight or nine men. By sailboat, it was necessary to round a long point of land. By canoe, this land could be portaged, and Iberville was probably the first manto blaze the trail across the swamp, which has been used by hunters from that day to this. By the first of July, he had caught a glimpse of Rupert’s bastions through the woods. Concealing his Indians, he went forward to reconnoiter. To his delight, he espied the Company’s ship with the H. B. C. ensign flying that signified Governor Bridgar was on board. Choosing the night, as usual, for attack, Iberville stationed his bandits where they could fire on the decks if necessary. Then he glided across the water to the schooner.

Hand over fist, he was up the ship’s sides when the sleeping sentinel awakened with a spring at his throat. One cleft of Iberville’s sword, and the fellow rolled dead at the Frenchman’s feet. Iberville then stamped on the deck to call the crew aloft, and sabered three men in turn as they tumbled up the hatchway, till the fourth, Governor Bridgar, himself, threw up his hands in unconditional surrender of the ship and crew of fourteen. Twice in four years, Bridgar found himself a captive. The din had alarmed the fort. Though the bastions were dismantled for repairs, gates were slammed shut and musketry poured hot shot through the embrasures, that kept the raiders at a distance. Again, it was the Le Moyne brothers who led the fray. The bastions served the usual two-fold purpose of defense andbarracks. Extemporizing ladders, Iberville went scrambling up like a monkey to the roofs, hacked holes through the rough thatch of the bastions and threw down hand grenades at the imminent risk of blowing himself as well as the enemy to eternity. “It was,” says the old chronicle, “with an effect most admirable”—which depends on the point of view; for when the defenders were driven from the bastions to the main house inside, gates were rammed down, palisades hacked out, and Iberville with his followers, was on the roof of the main house throwing down more bombs. As one explosive left his hand, a terrified English woman dashed up stairs into the room directly below. Iberville shouted for her to retire. The explosion drowned his warning, and the next moment he was down stairs dashing from hall to hall, candle in hand, followed by the priest, Sylvie. A plaintive cry came from the closet of what had been the factor’s room. Followed by his powder-grimed, wild raiders, Iberville threw open the door. With a scream, there fell at his feet a woman with a shattered hip. However black a record these raiders left for braining children and mutilating women, four years later in what is now New York State, they made no war on women here. Lifting her to a bed, the priest Sylvie and Iberville called in the surgeon, and barring the door from theoutside, forbade intrusion. The raid became a riot. The French possessed Rupert, though little the richer but for the ship and thirty prisoners.

The wild wood-rovers were now strong enough to attempt Albany, three hundred miles northwest. It was at Albany that the French spy Péré was supposed to be panting for rescue. It was also at Albany that the English fur traders had their greatest store of pelts. As usual, Iberville led off in canoes; De Troyes, the French fur traders, the soldiers and the captives following with the cannon on the ship. It was sunset when the canoes launched out from Rupert River. To save time by crossing the south end of the bay diagonally, they had sheered out from the coast when there blew down from the upper bay one of those bitter northeast gales, that at once swept a maelstrom of churning ice floes about the cockleshell birch canoes. To make matters worse, fog fell thick as night. A birch canoe in a cross sea is bad enough. With ice floes it was destruction.

Some made for the main shore and took refuge on land. The Le Moynes’ two canoes kept on. A sea of boiling ice floes got between the two. There was nothing to do for the night but camp on the shifting ice, hanging for dear life to the canoe held high on the voyageurs’ heads out of danger, clinging hand to hand so that if one man slithered through the iceslushthe human rope pulled him out. It was a new kind of canoe work for Iberville’s Indians. When daylight came through the gray fog, Iberville did not wait for the weather to clear. He kept guns firing to guide the canoe that followed and pushed across the traverse, portaging where there was ice, paddling where there was water. Four days the traverse lasted, and not once did this Robin Hood of Canadian wildwoods flinch. The first of August saw his Indians and bush-lopers below the embankments of Albany. A few days later came De Troyes on the boat with soldiers and cannon.

Governor Sargeant of Albany had been warned of the raiders by Indian coureurs. The fort was shut fast as a sealed box. Neither side gave sign. Not till the French began trundling their cannon ashore by all sorts of clumsy contrivances to get them in range of the fort forty yards back, was there a sign of life, when forty-three big guns inside the wall of Albany simultaneously let go forty-three bombs in midair that flattened the raiders to earth under shelter of the embankment. Chevalier De Troyes then mustered all the pomp and fustian of court pageantry, flag flying, drummers beating to the fore, guard in line, and marching forward demanded of the English traders, come half-way out to meet him, satisfaction for and the delivery of Sieur Péré, aloyal subject of France suffering imprisonment on the shores of Hudson Bay at the hands of the English. One may wonder, perhaps, what these raiders would have done without the excuse of Péré. The messenger came back from Governor Sargeant with word that Péré had been sent home to France by way of England long ago. (That Péré had been delayed in an English prison was not told.) De Troyes then pompously demanded the surrender of the fort. Sargeant sent back word such a demand was an insult in time of peace. Under cover of night the French retired to consider. With an extravagance now lamented, they had used at Rupert the most of their captured ammunition. Cannon, they had in plenty, but only a few rounds of balls. They had thirty prisoners, but no provisions; a ship, but no booty of furs. Between them and home lay a wilderness of forest and swamp. They must capture the fort by an escalade, or retreat empty-handed.

Inside the fort such bedlam reigned as might have delighted the raiders’ hearts. Sargeant, the sturdy old governor, was for keeping his teeth clinched to the end, though the larder was lean and only enough powder left to do the French slight damage as they landed their cannon. When a servant fell dead from a French ball, Turner, the chief gunner, dashed from his post roaring out he was going to throwhimself on the mercy of the French. Sargeant rounded the fellow back to his guns with the generous promise to blow his brains out if he budged an inch. Two English spies sent out came back with word the French were mounting their battery in the dark. Instantly, there was a scurry of men to hide in attics, in cellars, under bales of fur, while six worthies, over signed names, presented a petition to the sturdy old governor, imploring him to surrender. Declaring they would not fight without an advance of pay anyway, they added in words that should go down to posterity, “for if any of us lost a leg, the company could not make it good.” Still Sargeant kept his teeth set, his gates shut, his guns spitting defiance at the enemy.

For two days bombs sang back and forward through the air. There was more parleying. Bridgar, the governor captured down at Rupert, came to tell Sargeant that the French were desperate; if they were compelled to fight to the end, there would be no quarter. Still Sargeant hoped against hope for the yearly English vessel to relieve the siege. Then Captain Outlaw came from the powder magazines with word there was no more ammunition. The people threw down their arms and threatened to deserten masseto the French. Sargeant still stubbornly refused to beat a parley; so Dixon, theunder factor, hung out a white sheet as flag of truce, from an upper window. The French had just ceased firing to cool their cannon. They had actually been reduced to melting iron round wooden disks for balls, when the messenger came out with word of surrender. Bluff and resolute to the end, Sargeant marched out with two flagons of port, seated himself on the French cannon, drank healths with De Troyes, and proceeded to drive as hard a bargain as if his larders had been crammed and his magazines full of powder. Drums beating, flags flying, in full possession of arms, governor, officers, wives and servants were to be permitted to march out in honor, to be transported to Charlton Island, there to await the coming of the English ship.

Barely had the thirty English sallied out, when the bush-lopers dashed into the fort, ransacking house and cellar. The fifty-thousand-crowns’ worth of beaver were found, but not a morsel of food except one bowl of barley sprouts. Thirteen hundred miles from Canada with neither powder nor food! De Troyes gave his men leave to disband on August 10, and it was a wild scramble for home—sauve qui peut, as the old chronicler relates, some of the prisoners being taken to Quebec as carriers of the raided furs, others to the number of fifty, being turned adrift in the desolate wilderness of the bay! It wasOctober before Iberville’s forest rovers were back in Montreal.

From Charlton Island, the English refugees found their way up to Port Nelson, there to go back on the annual ship to England. Among these were Bridgar and Outlaw, but the poor outcasts, who were driven to the woods, and the Hudson’s Bay servants, who were compelled to carry the loot for the French raiders back to Quebec—suffered slim mercies from their captors. Those round Albany were compelled to act as beasts of burden for the small French garrison, and received no food but what they hunted. Some perished of starvation outside the walls. Others attempted to escape north overland to Nelson. Of the crew from Outlaw’s shipSuccess, eight perished on the way north, and the surviving six were accused of cannibalism. In all, fifty English fur traders were set adrift when Albany surrendered to the French. Not twenty were ever heard of again.

Notes on Chapter XII.—The contents of this chapter are drawn from the documents of Hudson’s Bay House, London, and the State Papers of the Marine, Paris, for 1685-87. It is remarkable how completely the State papers of the two hostile parties agree. Those in H. B. C. House are the Minutes, Governor Sargeant’s affidavit, Bridgar’s report, Outlaw’s oath and the petition of the survivors of Outlaw’s crew—namely, John Jarrett, John Howard, John Parsons, William Gray, Edmund Clough, Thomas Rawlin, G. B. Barlow, Thomas Lyon. As the raids now became an international matter, duplicates of most of these papers are to be found in the Public Records Office, London. All French historians give some account of this raid ofIberville’s; but all are drawn from the same source, the account of the Jesuit Sylvie, or from one De Lery, who was supposed to have been present. Oldmixon, the old English chronicler, must have had access to Sargeant’s papers, as he relates some details only to be found in Hudson’s Bay House.

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