118 DENONVILLE AND DONGAN. [1685. 



high repute, not only for piety, but for probity and 

 honor. He was devoted to the Jesuits, an ardent 

 servant of the king, a lover of authority, filled with 

 the instinct of subordination and order, and, in 

 short, a type of the ideas, religious, political, and 

 social, then dominant in France. He was greatly 

 distressed at the disturbed condition of the colony ; 

 while the state of the settlements, scattered in 

 broken lines for two or three hundred miles 

 along the St. Lawrence, seemed to him an invita- 

 tion to destruction. " If we have a war," he wrote, 

 " nothing can save the country but a miracle of 

 God." 



Nothing was more likely than war. Intrigues 

 were on foot between the Senecas and the tribes 

 of the lakes, which threatened to render the appeal 

 to arms a necessity to the French. Some of the 

 Hurons of Michillimackinac were bent on allying 

 themselves with the English. " They like the 

 manners of the French," wrote Denonville ; "but 

 they like the cheap goods of the English better." 

 The Senecas, in collusion with several Huron chiefs, 

 had captured a considerable number of that tribe 

 and of the Ottawas. The scheme was that these 

 prisoners should be released, on condition that the 

 lake tribes should join the Senecas and repudiate 

 their alliance with the French. 1 The governor of 

 New York favored this intrigue to the utmost. 



Denonville was quick to see that the peril of the 

 colony rose, not from the Iroquois alone, but from 

 the English of New York, who prompted them. 



1 Denonville au Mlnistre, 12 Juin, 1686. 



