242 THE lEOQUOIS. |1642. 



Huron country w^as cut off; and three times the 

 annual packet of letters sent thither to the mission- 

 aries fell into the hands of the Iroquois. 



It was towards the close of the year 1640 that 

 the scourge of Iroquois war had begun to fall 

 heavily on the French. At that time, a party of 

 their warriors waylaid and captured Thomas Gode- 

 froy and Fran9ois Marguerie, the latter a young 

 man of great energy and daring, familiar with the 

 woods, a master of the Algonquin language, and a 

 scholar of no mean acquirements.^ To the great 

 joy of the colonists, he and his companion were 

 brought back to- Three Rivers by their captors, and 

 given up, in the vain hope that the French would 

 respond mth a gift of fire-arms. Their demand for 

 them being declined, they broke off the parley in a 

 rage, fortified themselves, fired on the French, and 

 withdrew under cover of night. 



Open war now ensued, and for a time all was be- 

 wilderment and terror. How to check the inroads 

 of an enemy so stealthy and so keen for blood was 

 the problem that taxed the brain of Montmagny, 

 the Governor. He thought he had found a solution, 

 when he conceived the plan of building a fort at 

 the mouth of the Eiver Richelieu, by which the 

 Iroquois always made their descents to the St. 

 Lawrence. Happily for the perishing colony, the 

 Cardinal de Richelieu, in 1642, sent out thirty or 

 forty soldiers for its defence.^ Ten times the num- 



1 During his captivity, he wrote, on a beaver-skin, a letter to the 

 Dutch in French, Latin, and English. 



2 Faillon, Colonie Franraise, II. 2 ; Vimont, Relation, 1642, 2, 44. 



