1687.] VICTORY. 153 



on whatever looked like an enemy. He was 

 bravely seconded by Callieres, La Valterie, and 

 several other officers. The Christian Iroquois 

 fought well from the first, leaping from tree to 

 tree, and exchanging shots and defiance with their 

 heathen countrymen ; till the Senecas, seeing 

 themselves confronted by numbers that seemed 

 endless, abandoned the field, after heavy loss, 

 carrying with them many of their dead and all of 

 their wounded. 1 



Denonville made no attempt to pursue. He 

 had learned the dangers of this blind warfare of 

 the woods; and he feared that the Senecas would 

 waylay him again in the labyrinth of bushes that 

 lay between him and the town. " Our troops," he 

 says, " were all so overcome by the extreme heat 

 and the long; march that we were forced to remain 

 where we were till morning. We had the pain of 

 witnessing the usual cruelties of the Indians, who 

 cut the dead bodies into quarters, like butchers' 

 meat, to put into their kettles, and opened most of 

 them while still warm to drink the blood. Our 

 rascally Ottawas particularly distinguished them- 

 selves by these barbarities, as well as by cowardice ; 

 for they made off in the fight. We had five or six 

 men killed on the spot, and about twenty wounded, 

 among whom was Father Engelran, who was badly 

 hurt by a gun-shot. Some prisoners who escaped 

 from the Senecas tell us that they lost forty men 

 killed outright, twenty-five of whom we saw butch- 



1 For authorities, see note at the end of the chapter. The account 

 of Charlevoix is contradicted at several points by the contemporary 

 writers. 



