194 RETURN OF FRONTENAC, [1689. 



This gleam of sunshine passed, and all grew black 

 again. On a snowy November day, a troop of 

 Iroquois fell on the settlement of La Chesnaye, 

 burned the houses, and vanished with a troop of 

 prisoners, leaving twenty mangled corpses on the 

 snow. 1 " The terror," wrote the bishop, " is in- 

 describable." The appearance of a few savages 

 would put a whole neighborhood to flight. 2 So 

 desperate, wrote Frontenac, were the needs of 

 the colony, and so great the contempt with which 

 the Iroquois regarded it, that it almost needed a 

 miracle either to carry on war or make peace. 

 What he most earnestly wished was to keep the 

 Iroquois quiet, and so leave his hands free to deal 

 with the English. This was not easy, to such a 

 pitch of audacity had late events raised them. 

 Neither his temper nor his convictions would allow 

 him to beg peace of them, like his predecessor; 

 but he had inordinate trust in the influence of his 

 name, and he now took a course which he hoped 

 might answer his purpose without increasing their 

 insolence. The perfidious folly of Denonville in 

 seizing their countrymen at Fort Frontenac had 

 been a prime cause of their hostility ; and, at the 

 request of the late governor, the surviving captives, 

 ' thirteen in all, had been taken from the galleys, 

 gorgeously clad in French attire, and sent back 

 to Canada in the ship which carried Frontenac. 

 Among them was a famous Cayuga war-chief called 



1 Belmont, Histoire du Canada ; Frontenac a , 17 Nov., 1689 ; 



Champigny an Ministre, 16 Nov., 1689. This letter is not the one just 

 cited. Champigny wrote twice on the same day. 



2 N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 435. 



