270 VILLEMAEIE. [1644. 



St. Louis, and a few miles above Villemarie, they 

 were amazed at finding a large Iroquois war-party 

 in a fort hastily built of the trunks and boughs of 

 trees. Surprise and fright seem to have infatuated 

 tliem. They neither fought nor fled, but greeted 

 their inveterate foes as if they were friends and 

 allies, and, to gain their good graces, told them all 

 tliey knew of the French settlement, urging them 

 to attack it, and promising an easy victory. Accor- 

 dingly, the Iroquois detached forty of their war- 

 riors, who surprised six Frenchmen at work hewing 

 timber within a gunshot of the fort, killed three 

 of them, took the remaining three prisoners, and 

 returned in triumph. The captives were bound 

 with the usual rigor ; and the Hurons taunted and 

 insulted them, to please their dangerous compan- 

 ions. Their baseness availed them little ; for at 

 night, after a feast of victory, when the Hurons 

 were asleep or off their guard, their entertainers 

 fell upon them, and killed or captured the greater 

 part. The rest ran for Villemarie, where, as their 

 treachery was as yet unknown, they were received 

 with great kindness.^ 



The next morning the Iroquois decamped, car- 

 rying with them their prisoners, and the furs plun- 



1 I have followed Dollier de Casson. Vimont's account is different. 

 He says that the Iroquois fell upon the Hurons at the outset, and took 

 twenty-three prisoners, killing many others ; after which they made the 

 attack at Villemarie. — Relation, 1643, 62. 



Faillon thinks that Vimont was unwilling to publish the treachery of 

 the Hurons, lest the interests of the Huron mission should suffer in conse- 

 quence. 



Belmont, Histoire du Canada, 1643, confirms the account of the Huron 

 treachery. 



