1689.] A CRITICAL SITUATION. 177 



there was still good hope of peace. He little knew 

 his enemy. They conld dissemble and wait ; but 

 they neither believed the governor nor forgave 

 him. His supposed treachery at La Famine, and 

 his real treachery at Fort Frontenac, filled them 

 with a patient but unextinguishable rage. They 

 sent him word that they were ready to renew the 

 negotiation ; then they sent again, to say that 

 Andros forbade them. Without doubt they used 

 his prohibition as a pretext. Months passed, and 

 Denonville remained in suspense. He did not trust 

 his Indian allies, nor did they trust him. Like the 

 Eat and his Hurons, they dreaded the conclusion 

 of peace, and wished the war to- continue, that the 

 French might bear the brunt of it, and stand be- 

 tween them and the wrath of the Iroquois. 1 



In the direction of the Iroquois, there was a long 

 and ominous silence. It was broken at last by the 

 crash of a thunderbolt. On the night between 

 the fourth and fifth of August, a violent hail-storm 

 burst over Lake St. Louis, an expansion of the St. 

 Lawrence a little above Montreal. Concealed by 

 the tempest and the darkness, fifteen hundred war- 

 riors landed at La Chine, and silently posted them- 

 selves about the houses of the sleeping settlers, 

 then screeched the war-whoop, and began the 

 most frightful massacre in Canadian history. The 

 houses were burned, and men, women, and chil- 

 dren indiscriminately butchered. In the neigh- 

 borhood were three stockade forts, called Remy, 

 Roland, and La Presentation ; and they all had 



1 Denonville au Ministre, 9 Nov., 1688. 

 12 



