DENONYILLx’s EXPEDITION TO THE GENESEE COUNTRY AND NIAGARA.
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MEMOIR FOR THE MARQUIS OF SEIGNELAY
REGARDING THE DANGERS THAT THREATEN CANADA , THE MEANS OF REMEDYING THEM, AND OF FIRMLY
ESTABLISHING RELIGION COMMERCE AND THE KING’S POWER IN NORTH AMERICA . JANUARY 1687.
[ Paris Doc. III. ]
Canada is encompassed by many powerful English Colonies who labour incessantly to ruin it, byexciting all our savages, and drawing them away with their peltries for which the English give thema great deal more merchandize than the French , because they pay no duty to the King of England.This profit attracts towards the English, also, all our Bush rangers (Coureurs de bois) and French libertines who carry their peltries to them, deserting our Colony and establishing themselves in thoseof the English who take great pains to attract them.
They advantageously employ those French deserters to bring the far savages to them who formerlybrought their peltries into our Colony which wholly destroys its trade.
The English began by the most powerful and best disciplined [Indians] of all America . Theyhave excited them entirely against us by the avowed protection they afford them, and the manifestusurpation they claim to the sovereignty of their country, which belongs beyond contradiction to theKing for nearly a century without the English having up to this present time had any pretensionto it.
They also employ the Iroquois to incite all our other Indians against us. They set them last yearto attack the Hurons and the Outawas, our most ancient subjects; swept by surprise from themmore than 75 prisoners among whom were some of their principal Chiefs, killed several others, andfinally offered them peace and the restitution of their prisoners, if they would quit the French andacknowledge the English .
They sent the same Iroquois to attack the Illinois and the Miamis our allies who are in the neigh-borhood of Fort St. Louis, built by Mons r de la Salle on the Illinois River which empties into theRiver Colbert or Mississippi ; massacred and burnt a great number of them and carried off manyprisoners with threats of entire extermination if they would not unite with them against the French .
Colonel Dongan, Governor of New York, has pushed this usurpation to the point of sendingEnglishmen to take possession, in the King of England’s name, of the post of Mislimakinac which isa Strait communicating between lake Huron and lake des Illinois , and has even declared that allthose lakes including the river St. Lawrence which serves as an outlet to them and on which ourColony is settled, belong to the English .
The Reverend Father Lamberville, a French Jesuit who has been 18 years a Missionary amongthe Iroquois in company with one of his brothers also a Jesuit , wrote on the first of November toChevalier de Callieres, Governor of Montreal , who informed the Governor General that ColonelDongan has assembled the Five Iroquois Nations at Manatte where he resides, and declared to themas follows:
1. That he forbids them to go to Cataracouy or Fort Frontenac and to have any more intercoursewith the French .
2. That he orders them to restore the prisoners they took from the Hurons and Outawacs, in orderto attract them to himself.
3. That he sends thirty English to take possession of Missilimakinak and the lakes, rivers andadjoining lands and orders the Iroquois to escort them and to afford them physical assistance.
4. That he has sent to recall the Iroquois Christians belonging to the Mohawk tribe, who havesettled a long time ago at Saut St. Louis, adjoining the Island of Montreal , where they have beto