LAHONTAN. 313 



of the Sauteurs or OutcMpoues as lie calls tliem, to ioin him in an 

 expedition against the Iroquois. " Forty young "warlike fellows " are 

 persuaded to do so. They start together for the Fort St. Joseph, 

 coasting the north and east sides of Lake Huron, after being joined 

 by the soldiers -whom he had left at Mackinac and a party of Ottawas. 

 The forty young Chippeways occupied five canoes, each of which 

 held eight men. They departed from the Sault on the 1 3th of Juno 

 and reached Fort St. Joseph on the 1st of July. " We coasted the 

 Manitoualin island," he says, " a whole day, and being favoured by a 

 calm, crossed from isle to isle till we made the east side of the Lake. 

 In this passage we crossed between two islands that were six leagues 

 distant the one from the other ; and upon that occasion our canoe 

 men, who were not iised to venture so far out in their boats, were 

 fain to tug hard at their oars. The savages stood out at first and 

 refused to venture so far from land, for they would have rather gone 

 fifty leagues about ; but at last I overpersuaded them by representing 

 that I would have been very loth to venture my own person if I had 

 not been siifiiciently provided against all danger by an exact know- 

 ledge of the winds and the storms. The calm continuing we made 

 the River Theonontate on the 25th." The two islands six leagues 

 asunder were probably those known at the present day as Fitzwilliam 

 island and the isle of Caves : the latter just ofi" Cape Hurd. The 

 Hiver Theonontate was, as we may suppose, the Maitland. 



On the 3rd of July they are all on the move for Lake Erie. This 

 excursion is described in the fifteenth letter, dated September 18th, 

 1688. On the 7th of July they are at the entrance of the river 

 Conde (Cataraugus creek) towards the eastern extremity of the Lake. 

 They here fell trees and build a kind of barricade. The Sauteurs 

 and Ottawas proceed two days' march up the stream intending to 

 plunder some villages. They suddenly come upon a large party of 

 Iroquois and instantly take to flight. Lahontan is startled to hear 

 the sentinel in the redoubt crying out aux armes ! notre parti est 

 hattu et poursuivi ! No enemy appeared however until the following 

 day : and then no engagement took place. Lahontan learned from 

 one Cha-ou-a-non, an escaped slave, who came into the redoubt, that 

 the number of the Iroquois band was four hundred, and sixty more 

 were expected from the Miami country with prisoners or slaves. 

 Cha-ou-a-non was able also to report that at the time when Denon- 

 ville was concocting measures with the Iroquois for peace, an agent 



