20 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and whose epitaph might be fitly taken Ironi the letter La Mère Marie 

 wrote home: Ma donee et angélique amie. 



In 16G0 Canada was apparently doomed. Only four yeare had 

 passed since the Iroquois had swooped down on their prey again, and 

 nearly killed out the last, palsied remnant of the Ilurons at the Island 

 of Orleans. The lines of war-canoes had glided snake-like down the 

 St. Lawrence to their vindictive massacre, under the very guns of Quebec, 

 the crews screaming savage defiance at the bewildered Governor, who 

 cowered behind the walls of Fort St. Louis. And now every- threatening 

 war-path was once more astir with painted Iroquois, wild for a final glut 

 of blood. The rumour ran that their grand council had decreed the 

 extermination of all the Christians in Canada, and that their w^hole 

 assembled horde was coming hot-foot down the valley of the Ottawa. 

 Night and day the shadow of death closed in from the vast encircling 

 forest, darkening the terror of suspense. All Quebec stood to arms. The 

 Ursuline convent was garrisoned by eight}- men and twelve huge watch 

 dogs, trained to hunt down and tear in pieces the hostile Indians. La 

 Mère Marie, resourceful as ever, told oil her nuns to different duties, 

 and reserved for herself the most dangerous of all — the carrying of 

 powder and shot in action. 



As Canada turned despairingly at bay, her necessity brought forth 

 a champion, the faithful, undauntable Daulac. He and sixteen others 

 in Montreal volunteered to go up the Ottawa and hold the Iroquois by a 

 life-and-death defence, long enough to let the colony have some time for 

 preparation. At the Long Sault, Daulac was Joined by a hundred 

 Christian Hurons under xinahotaha. The allies then took post in an 

 old Algonquin fort, which, unfortunately, was too far from water. Sym- 

 bol-loving souls aftenvards saw a mystical assurance of salvation in the 

 strange recurrence of the sacred number, seven. For seven days and 

 seven nights, seven hundred Iroquois furiously attacked the seventeen 

 Frenchmen who defended the stockade. The attackers fell in heaps 

 under the steady fire. A letter of La ]\ière Marie's tells how those seven- 

 teen fought for Christ and Canada: Dès que l'ennemi faisait trêve, ils 

 étaient à genoux; et sitôt qu'il faisait mine d'attaquer, ils étaient debout, 

 les armes à la main. Worn out by unceasing vigils and tortured by 

 thirst they still held out. But resounding war-cries anr>ounced the 

 arrival of another five hundred Iroquois ; and they then prepared to sell 

 their lives as dearly as they coulci. The enemy advanced and called a 

 parley, during which some apostate Ilurons persuaded most of their 

 Christian tribesmen that an inmiediate change of sides was the only 

 way of escaping cei'tain death by torture. This desertion reduced the 

 garrison to the seventeen Canadians with only eighteen Indians. In the 



