Lachine massacre

The Mohawk and other Iroquois attacked the French and their native allies for a variety of reasons related to both economic and cultural circumstances.

Daniel d'Auger de Subercase

On the rainy morning of 5 August 1689, Iroquois warriors launched a surprise nighttime raid on the undefended settlement of Lachine. They traveled up the Saint Lawrence River by boat, crossed Lake Saint-Louis, and landed on the south shore of the Island of Montreal. While the colonists slept, the invaders surrounded their homes and waited for their leader to signal when the attack should begin.[12] They attacked the homes, broke down doors and windows, and dragged the colonists outside, where many were killed.[12] When some of the colonists barricaded themselves within the village's structures, the attackers set fire to the buildings and waited for the settlers to flee the flames.[12]

According to a 1992 article, the Iroquois, wielding weapons such as the tomahawk, killed 24 French and took more than 70 prisoners.[14] Justin Winsor in Narrative and Critical History of America (1884) stated that "it is estimated that more than two hundred persons were butchered outright, and one hundred and twenty were carried off as prisoners."[15] Other sources, such as Encyclopædia Britannica, claim that 250 settlers and soldiers lost their lives during the massacre.[16] The Iroquois wanted to avenge the 1,200,000 bushels of corn burned by the French, but since they were unable to reach the food stores in Montreal, they kidnapped and killed the Lachine crop producers instead.[17] Lachine was the main departure point for westward-traveling fur traders, a fact that may have provided extra motivation for the Mohawk attack.[16]

Fort Rémy, also known as Fort Lachine.[18]

Word of the attack spread when one of the Lachine survivors reached a local garrison three miles (4.8 km) away and notified the soldiers of the events.[19] In response to the attack, the French mobilized 200 soldiers under the command of Daniel d'Auger de Subercase, along with 100 armed civilians and some soldiers from nearby Forts Rémy, Rolland, and de La Présentation to march against the Iroquois.[19] They defended some of the fleeing colonists from their Mohawk pursuers, but just prior to reaching Lachine, the armed forces were recalled to Fort Rolland by the order of Governor Denonville, who was trying to pacify the local Iroquois inhabitants.[20] He had 700 soldiers at his disposal within the Montreal barracks and might have overtaken the Iroquois forces but decided to follow a diplomatic route.

Numerous attacks from both sides followed, but none was fatal, and the two groups quickly realized the futility of their attempts to drive the other out. In February 1690, the French began peace negotiations with the Iroquois. The French returned captured natives in exchange for the beginnings of peace talks.[21] Throughout the 1690s, there were no major French or native raids, and even against the will of the English, peace talks continued.[22] The time of relative peace eventually led to the Montreal Treaty of 1701 by which the Iroquois promised to remain neutral in case of war between the French and the English.[23]

Following the events at Lachine, Denonville was recalled to France for matters unrelated to the massacre,[24] and Louis de Buade de Frontenac took over governorship of Montreal in October.[25] Frontenac launched raids of vengeance against the English colonists to the south "in Canadien style" by attacking during the winter months of 1690 such as the Schenectady massacre.[26][27]

According to the historian Jean-Francois Lozier, the factors influencing the course of war and peace throughout the region of New-France were not exclusive to the relations between the French and Iroquois or to those between the French and British crowns.[28] A number of factors provide the context for the Lachine Massacre.

Sources of information regarding the victims of the Iroquois in New France are the writings of Jesuit priests; the state registry of parishes in Quebec, Trois-Rivieres, and Montreal; letters written by Marie Guyart (French: Marie de l'Incarnation); and the writings of Samuel Champlain. The accuracy of those sources and reports varies.[29] For instance, in the town of Trois-Rivieres, approximately one third of deaths attributed to the Iroquois lack names.[30] According to Canadian historian John A. Dickinson, although the cruelty of the Iroquois was real, their threat was neither as constant nor terrible as the contemporary sources represented although the residents felt under siege.[31]

European accounts of the Lachine massacre come from two primary sources: survivors of the attack, and Catholic missionaries in the area. Initial reports inflated the Lachine death toll significantly. Colby arrived at the total number of dead, 24, by examining Catholic parish registers before and after the attack.[32] French Catholic accounts of the attack were recorded. François Vachon de Belmont, the fifth superior of the Sulpicians of Montreal, wrote in his History of Canada:

After this total victory, the unhappy band of prisoners was subjected to all the rage which the cruellest vengeance could inspire in these savages. They were taken to the far side of Lake St. Louis by the victorious army, which shouted ninety times while crossing to indicate the number of prisoners or scalps they had taken, saying, we have been tricked, Ononthio, we will trick you as well. Once they had landed, they lit fires, planted stakes in the ground, burned five Frenchmen, roasted six children, and grilled some others on the coals and ate them.[11]

Surviving prisoners of the Lachine massacre reported that 48 of their colleagues were tortured, burned, and eaten shortly after capture. Further, many survivors showed evidence of ritual torture and recounted their experiences. After the attack, the French colonists retrieved many English-made weapons, which the Mohawk had left behind in their retreat from the island. The evidence of the English arming the Mohawk incited a longstanding hatred of the English colonists of New York as well as demands for revenge. Iroquois accounts of the attack have not been recovered, as they were recounted in oral histories. French sources reported that only three of the attackers were killed.[12]

Because all of the written accounts of the attack were by the French victims, their reports of cannibalism and parents forced to throw their children onto burning fires may be exaggerated or apocryphal. The Mohawk and the Iroquois have used ritual torture after warfare, sometimes to honour the bravery of enemy warriors, as was then common practice among native tribes.[12]

• List of massacres in Canada
• History of Montreal
• List of Indian massacres

• Borthwick, John Douglas (1892). History and Biographical Gazetteer of Montreal to the Year 1892. Montreal: John Lovell. – Also History and Biographical Gazetteer of Montreal to the Year 1892 at Google Books
• Campbell, T.J. (1915). Pioneer Laymen of North America. Vol. II. New York: The America Press. – Also Pioneer Laymen of North America at Google Books
• Colby, Charles W. (1914). Wrong, George M.; Langton, H. H. (eds.). The Fighting Governor: A Chronicle of Frontenac. Chronicles of Canada. Vol. 7. Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company. ISBN 9780722267066. – Also The Fighting Governor at Project Gutenberg
• Daugherty, W.E. (January 1983). "The Colonial Struggle for Acadia, The Initial Phase: 1686–1713" (PDF). Maritime Indian Treaties In Historical Perspective (Report). Department of Indian and Northern Affairs.
• Dickinson, John (June 1982). "La guerre iroquoise et la mortalité en Nouvelle- France, 1608 -1666" [The Iroquois War and Mortality in New France, 1608-1666] (PDF). fr:Revue d'histoire de l'Amérique française (in French). 36 (1).
• Lozier, Jean-François (Fall 2007). "Review of: Native American Weapons by Colin Taylor". Material Culture. 39 (2): 82–84. JSTOR 29764420.
• Lozier, Jean-François (2012). In Each Other's Arms: France and the St. Lawrence Mission Villages in War and Peace, 1630-1730 (PhD Thesis). University of Toronto. hdl:1807/36291. S2CID 129483904.
• Lyons, Chuck (Winter 2007). "France's Fateful Strike Against the Iroquois". Military History Quarterly.
• Richter, Daniel K. (1992). The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization. UNC Press Books. ISBN 978-0-8078-6791-4. JSTOR 10.5149/9780807867914_richter.
• Roberts, Charles G.D. (1897). A History of Canada. Toronto: George M. Morang. – Also A History of Canada at Google Books
• Rushforth, Brett (2012). Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-3558-6.
• Wallace, Paul A. W. (January 1956). "The Iroquois: A Brief Outline of their History". Pennsylvania History. 23 (1): 15–28. JSTOR 27769640.
• Winsor, Justin, ed. (1884). Narrative and Critical History of America. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. – Also Narrative and Critical History of America at Google Books and Narrative and Critical History of America at Project Gutenberg
• The Lachine massacre. 31 October 2000. {{cite encyclopedia}}: |work= ignored (help)

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