r a French colony, Lauzon, the
French Governor, readily consented if the Jesuits would pay the cost,
estimated at about $10,000; and in 1656 Major Dupuis had led fifty
Frenchmen and four Jesuits up the St. Lawrence in long boats through
the wilderness to a little hill on Lake Onondaga, where a palisaded
fort was built, and the lilies of France, embroidered on a white silk
flag by the Ursuline nuns, flung from the breeze above the Iroquois
land. The colony was hardly established before three hundred Mohawks
fell on the Hurons encamped under shelter of Quebec, butchered without
mercy, and departed with shouts of laughter that echoed below the guns
at Cape Diamond, scalps waving from the prow of each Iroquois canoe.
Quebec was thunderstruck, numb with fright. The French dared not
retaliate, or the Iroquois would fall on the colony at Onondaga.
Perhaps people who keep their vision too constantly fixed on heaven
lose {99} sight of the practical duties of earth; but when eighty
Onondagas came again in 1657, inviting a hundred Hurons to join the
Iroquois Confederacy, the Jesuits again suspected no treachery in the
invitation, but saw only a providential opportunity to spread one
hundred Huron converts among the Iroquois pagans. Father Ragueneau,
who had led the poor refugees down from the Christian Islands on
Georgian Bay, now with another priest offered to accompany the Hurons
to the Iroquois nation. An interpreter was needed. Young Radisson,
now twenty-one years of age, offered to go as a lay helper, and the
party of two hundred and twenty French, eighty Iroquois, one hundred
Hurons, departed from the gates of Montreal, July 26.

[Illustration: SAUSON'S MAP, 1656]

Hardly were they beyond recall, before scouts brought word that twelve
hundred Iroquois had gone on the warpath against Canada, and three
Frenchmen of Montreal had been scalped. At last the Governor of Quebec
bestirred himself: he caused twelve Iroquois to be seized and held as
hostages for the safety of the French.

The Onondagas had set out from Montreal carrying the Frenchmen's
baggage. Beyond the first portage they flung the packs on the ground,
hurried the Hurons into canoes so that no two Hurons were in one boat,
and paddled over the {100} water with loud laughter, leaving the French
in the lurch. Father Ragueneau and Radisson quickly read the ominous
signs. Telling the other French to gather up the baggage, they armed
themselves and paddled in