594 THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
Island, were driven to a high bluff and starved to death, though not 
until they had found means to “ dig a trench around them, toward the 
land, to defend them from the arrows of their enemies.”* In 1637 the 
Algonquins, living at Trois Rivieres, Canada, being alarmed at the 
rumor of an Iroquois attack, strengthened their fort by erecting a sec- 
and row of palisades, distant from the first about a foot and a half, and 
filling the intervening space with fascines and earth.t According to 
Charlevoix, the Outagamis (Foxes), in 1712, made an attack upon the 
French post at Detroit, and having been repulsed, took refuge in a fort 
where they were well entrenched (retranchés). The fire upon them, how- 
ever, was so steady that they were obliged to get into a ditch 4 or 5 
feet deep (se mettre a quatre ot cing pieds en terre). Taking advantage 
of a lull in the firing, they made themselves masters of a house that 
was left standing near their fort and raised a redoubt (redoute).¢ Being 
eventually driven from this stronghold, they retired to a peninsula that 
jutted into the lake, where, to the number of five hundred men and 
three thousand women and children, they shut themselves up in a fort, 
surrounded by ‘three rows of oak palisades with a deep ditch behind.” § 
Elsewhere, as we have seen, tribes in Illinois and Indiana belonging to 
this same family have defended themselves in a similar manner within 
comparatively recent times; and in the narrative of Conrad Wiser, the 
interpreter, we are told of a place in Pennsylvania where ‘the Indians, 
in former times, had a strong fortification on a height. It was sur- 
rounded by a deep ditch; the earth was thrown up in the shape of a 
wall, about 9 or 10 feet high, and as many broad. But it is now (1741) 
in decay, as from appearance it had been deserted beyond the memory 
of man.” || 
In Virginia the Indians, according to Capt. Smith, had ‘ pallizadoed 
towns, mantelled with the barkes of trees, with scaffolds like mounts.” {] 
There is no mention of a ditch or of an embankment, and as a rule 
there seems to have been but one row of palisades, though when they 
would be very safe “ they treble the pales.” Sometimes they “ encom- 
passed their whole town, but for the most part only their kings’ houses, 
and as many others as they judge sufficient to harbor all their people, 
when the enemy comes against them.” ** This mode of defense was kept 
up in Carolina until the final expulsion of the Indians, as we are told that 
the 'Tuscaroras (171215) built their forts in this manner, and upon one 
occasion, when besieged by the whites, they refused to surrender until 
* Mass. Hist. Coll., third series, vol. v1, p. 197. 
+ Le Jeune, Relation, 1637, p. 83. In the original it reads: ‘‘Avec dessein de rem- 
plir ce vuide de fascines et de terre.” 
¢ Nouvelle I’vance, vol. Iv, pp. 97 and 98. 
§ Ibid., p. 156. 
|| Published in vol. 1v, Schooleraft, Indian Tribes, p. 326. 
q Purchas Pilgrims, vol. tv, p. 1715. 
** Beverly, book 111, p. 12. 
