Perched high above the St.Lawrence, on a noble site where now is a public terrace and a great hotel, stood the Chateau St.Louis, the scene of Frontenac's rule as head of the colony.No other spot in the world commanded such a highway linking the inland waters with the sea.The French had always an eye for points of strategic value; and in holding Quebec they hoped to possess the pivot on which the destinies of North America should turn.For a long time it seemed, indeed, as if this glowing vision might become a reality.The imperial ideas which were working at Quebec were based upon the substantial realities of trade.The instinct for business was hardly less strong in these keen adventurers than the instinct for empire.In promise of trade the interior of North America was rich.Today its vast agriculture and its wealth in minerals have brought rewards beyond the dreams of two hundred years ago.The wealth, however, sought by the leaders of that time came from furs.In those wastes of river, lake, and forest were the richest preserves in the world for fur-bearing animals.
This vast wilderness was not an unoccupied land.In those wild regions dwelt many savage tribes.Some of the natives were by no means without political capacity.On the contrary, they were long clever enough to pit English against French to their own advantage as the real sovereigns in North America.One of them, whose fluent oratory had won for him the name of Big Mouth, told the Governor of Canada, in 1688, that his people held their lands from the Great Spirit, that they yielded no lordship to either the English or the French, that they well understood the weakness of the French and were quite able to destroy them, but that they wished to be friends with both French and English who brought to them the advantages of trade.In sagacity of council and dignity of carriage some of these Indians so bore themselves that to trained observers they seemed not unequal to the diplomats of Europe.They were, however, weak before the superior knowledge of the white men.In all their long centuries in America they had learned nothing of the use of iron.Their sharpest tool had been made of chipped obsidian or of hammered copper.Their most potent weapons had been the stone hatchet or age and the bow and arrow.
It thus happened that, when steel and gunpowder reached America, the natives soon came to despise their primitive implements.More and more they craved the supplies from Europe which multiplied in a hundred ways their strength in the conflict with nature and with man.To the Indian tribes trade with the French or English soon became a vital necessity.From the far northwest for a thousand miles to the bleak shores of Hudson Bay, from the banks of the Mississippi to the banks of the St.Lawrence and the Hudson, they came each year on laborious journeys, paddling their canoes and carrying them over portages, to barter furs for the things which they must have and which the white man alone could supply.
The Iroquois, the ablest and most resolute of the native tribes, held the lands bordering on Lake Ontario which commanded the approaches from both the Hudson and the St.Lawrence by the Great Lakes to the spacious regions of the West.The five tribes known as the Iroquois had shown marked political talent by forming themselves into a confederacy.From the time of Champlain, the founder of Quebec, there had been trouble between the French and the Iroquois.In spite of this bad beginning, the French had later done their best to make friends with the powerful confederacy.They had sent to them devoted missionaries, many of whom met the martyr's reward of torture and massacre.But the opposing influence of the English, with whom the Iroquois chiefly traded, proved too strong.
With the Iroquois hostile, it was too dangerous for the French to travel inland by way of Lake Ontario.They had, it is true, a shorter and, indeed, a better route farther north, by way of the Ottawa River and Lake Nipissing to Lake Huron.In time, however, the Iroquois made even this route unsafe.Their power was far-reaching and their ambition limitless.They aimed to be masters of North America.Like all virile but backward peoples, they believed themselves superior to every other race.Their orators declared that the fate of the world was to turn on their policy.
On Frontenac's return to Canada he had a stormy inheritance in confronting the Iroquois.They had real grievances against France.Devonvine, Frontenac's predecessor, had met their treachery by treachery of his own.Louis XIV had found that these lusty savages made excellent galley slaves and had ordered Denonville to secure a supply in Canada.In consequence the Frenchman seized even friendly Iroquois and sent them over seas to France.The savages in retaliation exacted a fearful vengeance in the butchery of French colonists.The bloodiest story in the annals of Canada is the massacre at Lachine, a village a few miles above Montreal.On the night of August 4, 1689, fourteen hundred Iroquois burst in on the village and a wild orgy of massacre followed.All Canada was in a panic.Some weeks later Frontenac arrived at Quebec and took command.To the old soldier, now in his seventieth year, his hard task was not uncongenial.He had fought the savage Iroquois before and the no less savage Turk.He belonged to that school of military action which knows no scruple in its methods, and he was prepared to make war with all the frightfulness practised by the savages themselves.His resolute, blustering demeanor was well fitted to impress the red men of the forest, for an imperious eye will sometimes cow an Indian as well as a lion, and Frontenac's mien was imperious.In his life in court and camp he had learned how to command.
