HOCHELAGA

When Jaques Cartier, in September., 1535, .reached the Indian town of Hochelaga, on the site of the present city of Montreal, he found a village containing about fifty houses. His description of these houses is a description of the Iroquois long-house. The name of the village also suggests Iroquois people as its inhabitants. The final syllable of the name is the Iroquois locative, and it means "the place of." Similar to it is the same engine of the Iroquois name Onondaga. Here and at the village of Stadcona, farther down the river, the whites first came into communication with the people of that great and dominant race. The reports these people gave to Cartier were to the effect that up the Ottawa river there were fierce people continually waging war with each other. How far up, the Hochelagans did not know. the Hochelagans were very friendly and hospitable, and the method of extending their hospitality also is distinctively Iroquoisan. The glimpse we get of Indian character from Cartier's account is one of the first and best, unfortunately a momentary one; but there appears to have been about fifty houses and a palisaded fort. There seems, too, a suggestion that the town was within a palisaded enclosure, but in some portions the record seemed to be at variance with that fact; if, in accordance with the usual custom of the Iroquois who builded on a frontier, the village would be outside of the fort, but adjacent, and the fort of palisades would be kept by as a place of refuge in case of invasion. That there was a fort of palisades at Hochelaga also suggests the nearness of the frontier, and this supposition is borne out by all the facts that come down to us as to the dispersion of the Indian tribes.

Much speculation has been indulged in by later writers as to the population of Hochelaga, and in an article read by the celebrated Horatio hale, before the Congress of Anthropology at Chicago, at the world's Fair, on 1893, he estimated the population as from two to three thousand. If the town had as many hundred as he estimated thousand, it would have been remarkable among the villages of that race, considering the status of the Indians of that day. The Indians were not prolific.

The coming and going of Cartier gives us a glimpse of the Indians of the St. Lawrence, but the intercourse between the whites and red men soon ceased and a period of oblivion succeeded, continuing until the coming of Champlian, of renowned memory, in the year 1802. In the meantime Standcone and Hochelaga had disappeared, and in the place of these villages of Cartier's time, Champlian found a few wandering Algonquins along the river. The people up the Ottawa were no longer an alien and inimical race. This disappearance of Hochelaga has been the subject of much conjecture; the historian and romancers have found in it the source of much conjectural writing, some of which is put forth as history and some purely as fiction. From the fact that an alien and enemy race was found to hold the territory of the former villages, it has been generally supposed that the former and numerous inhabitants, with their palisaded forts, had been driven out in war waged against them by the Algonquins who were found to have succeeded to the occupancy of the territories of the former Iroquois inhabitants. This supposition seems unfounded and carries evidence of its own fallacy. Assuming that the villages of Hochelaga and Standcone were of the size and importance of the assumed figures of hale, and palisaded as reported by Cartier, it is difficult to concede that they would have fallen victims to their northern Algonquin enemies, especially as Champlain found these letter few in numbers and living in mortal feat of the Iroquois; moreover, in all subsequent encounters the Iroquois proved themselves to be far superior to the Algonquins. Probably the exaggerated idea of the size and importance of these town, or hamlets, are responsible for these fallacies as to the fate of the two towns, and when we more properly come to consider then as of very little importance, and of very small size, the historic value of their subsequent fate becomes proportionately diminished. Mr. Hale finds in the habits and traditions of the Wyandots evidence that they were the descendants of the remnant of the Hochelagans, who fled west and south when their village was attacked and destroyed by the Algonquins. Mr. Lightall, in his most interesting romance, "The Master of Life," has made the disaster to the Hochelagans the starting point for the emigration of the Iroquois from Canada into new York and the formation of the great league.

It is, however, quite unnecessary to appeal to warfare as the cause of the fall of Hochelaga, and it seems to be more probably that war had nothing to do with it. There was among the Iroquois a traditional myth of a great serpent whose breath was the pestilence which buried itself under the village of the red man and, by the emanations of its body and the pestilence of its breath, brought sickness and death to the people of the fated village. The first knowledge of the visitation of the serpent came from the appearance of these dire results and, to escape the serpent, the people, with adroit skill would gather together the few needed utensils and silently depart, in a stealthy manner so as to avoid giving their hidden enemy any alarm. They then sought in some more remote locality a new place of habitation, where they might live free from the poisonous presence of the serpent, unless that enemy, after long seeking again, should find them out and again bring the pestilence upon them.

It is quite easy in the light of modern sanitary science to see the cause of this serpent myth of the pestilence in the unsanitary conditions that would accumulate around a village of these primitive men. The strongest palisades were of no avail against its insidious approach. No remedy known to the medicine men of the forest folk availed to stay its ravage. This myth furnishes a more probably hypothesis of the disappearance of the two villages of the Iroquois of Cartier's day than any forced suggestion of war against them successfully waged by an enemy who from every other suggestion was utterly inferior. All these attempts to explain the matter, however, belong rather to the domain of fiction than history; suffice it to say that the coming of Champlian found an entirely different race possessing the valley of the St. Lawrence; and here turns the fate of nations. The events that followed, in which he was the prime mover and principal actor, were of greatest import to the generations that were to inhabit the vast country of northern America. If we were to apply the canons of historical criticism, it would not be difficult to see in his career and in his administration of the affairs of France in the new world, events that have determined the course of all its subsequent history; which gave the new world over to freedom of religion, freedom of thought and democracy, and which may leaven the old world models and mould their tendencies, until the entire world shall have become democratic.

Champlain had brought a number of young men, or rather boys, who were to learn the languages of the Indians and become interpreters. Among them probably the most celebrated was Stephen Brule, who was the first white to come up the Ottawa river and the first to behold our Lake Huron. Wisdom would have suggested that Champlain should have waited for these young men to qualify for their office, and to obtain the knowledge they could impart before entering into any alliance which might prove entangling. Champlain was ignorant of the affairs of the Indians beyond the valley of the St. Lawrence. The little knowledge he could derive from the imperfect communications with the Algonquins that he came in contact with, apprised him that they were at enemy with a race to the southward, against which they sought his active aid. He had no means of determining the justice of that quarrel. Who were the aggressors, what questions of right or wrong were involved or power of that southern race, or the possible results of his alliance with the Adirondacks. He was a dashing soldier, but not a diplomat. Under these circumstances he listened to their siren appeals, and formed an alliance with the enemies of the great league, an alliance cemented and sanctified by those ceremonies tht meant so much to the Indians, but were lightly entered into by the French.

He soon joined an expedition of his allies against their enemies. His allies included the Ottawas, who dwelt up the river that nor preserves their name, the same warlike people to whom the Hochelagans refereed in their tale to Cartier and the "Mantagnais." A rather indefinite term, referring to some highland band of the Algonquins, and some of the Hurons, who because of territorial location had become joined to the Algonquins in the war against the league.

It was June, 1609, when the fateful expedition o sixty red men, armed with their native weapons, and three whites--Champlain and two others--paddled up the Sorel river out on the placid waters of the lake now named for Champlain. There the little flotilla of canoes sighted a similar flotilla of the enemy. Fighting on the waters is not to the taste of the Indian. The narrow confines of a canoe forbid the room for the strategy of the red man. Both parties took to the shore. There a few discharges of the guns of the Frenchmen decided the battle, and Champlian and his red allies saw their enemies flee from this new and terrible instrument of destruction. They regarded their victory as complete and from the standpoint of the Indian it was. The Algonquins saw an enemy before whom they had often fled, and whom they had always feared, flee before the new alliance. They returned to the St. Lawrence and soon afterward another battle was fought by the French and Indian allies against some Iroquois who held a palisaded fort; even this advantage was of no avail against the weapons of the white men. Champlain was jubilant, for he had no earned the gratitude of his red allies, who promised him aid in exploring the great west and northwest.

The effect of these two conflicts on the league was the opposite. There was no jubilation. They saw the French in alliance with their enemies and with a new weapon against which their crude ones were useless. This did not bring them to despair, but the seeds of implacable hatred toward the French were sown in the breasts of the people of the long-house, and never afterwards could the diplomacy of the French quench that hatred.

Not far from this same time when Champlain's canoes came up the Sorel from the North, Hendrick Hudson came up the Hudson from the south. He came in friendship and in him the leaguemen saw a different race of white men. He came to open up trade. The Indians had furs and wanted the new weapon of the white man. The Dutch were astute traders and they wanted the furs of the red men. They sailed up the river and met the Iroquois, smarting under their defeat from the French, and they soon supplied the new weapon to the men of the league and taught its use, and so commenced the traffic which was destined to make New York City the first emporium of the New World, as the Iroquois of the league had made it from the time of Ay-oun-a-wa-ta, the Empire state.

So there began the conflict between the French of Canada and their Indian allies on the one hand, and the Five Nations aided by the Dutch, and later by the English, on the south--the French representing despotism; the league, Dutch, and English representing the ideals of democracy. Who can say that it was not the power of the league that decided the fate of America by turning the tide in favor of the democratic principle, which was the vital principle of their own polity.

This brings the general view of Indian history to the early years of the seventeenth century, and this century saw the attainment of the greatest power of the league. Ay-oun-a-wa-ta had dreamed of universal peace, an entire world without war, as men today dream. The fruition of this dream was the great peace between the five peoples; as today, their ethics were tribal and, being at peace with each other, they had more opportunity to make war against those outside the league. All their history during this period and their activity in war were motivated by their hatred for the French and their allies. Beginning about 1638, after their harvest of furs for a score of years had been great, and nearly all of which had been traded with the Dutch for guns and munitions, they began systematically to destroy the outlying bands of unconfederated Huron-Iroquois and such of the Algonquins as had joined the French. It is needless to say that this warfare was carried on ruthlessly, and that opposition was punished by extermination, especially since they were located far from the home of the league, which made adoption into the tribe less practicable.

The superior equipment and morale of the men of the league triumphed over the numbers, however great, of their enemies. The Huron country was completely overrun. The missions shared the same fate. The Jesuit fathers, busied on errands of mercy and endeavoring to relieve the dreadful suffering, being French, fell under the club of the invading force. Some died at the stake and so sealed a life of devotion with a martyr's death. But, regardless of the general cataclysm that came upon the Huron country, there still remained bands of this people, who came over into Michigan, or remnants of the Huron-Iroquois of an earlier day, who, even as late as 1800, still lived in our peninsula, and to come extent retained their tribal customs. According to Copway, the Hurons were divided into five distinct tribes who, in imitation of the confederated five nations, had formed something like an alliance. On their dispersal the first nation fled to the south of Lake Huron, about Saginaw; subsequently it moved further south on to St. Clair. A part of the Huron people fled to the isle of St. Joseph in the Georgian bay. A remnant of the Tobacco Nation, the Petuns, fled to Mackinac Island, and were joined by Ottawas. Here they failed to find the safety sought, for even in these hidden places the warriors of the league sought them out, and they started to the islands of Lake Michigan near Green bay; some went northward to Chequamegon bay, of Lake Superior, where Father Allouez found them. These fugitives, fleeing from one enemy, came into the sphere of the dreaded Sioux; driven back again they sought asylum on the island of the Turtle, Mackinac, where in 1671 they received the ministrations of the gentle Father Marquette. During these troublous times, in the milder parts of the Canadian northland there hung like a threatening cloud, a hardy race of Indians, the Ojibways--or the Chippewas of later times--whose history is inseparably connected with the history of Michigan and of our county. The year 1800 found a village of them within the present bounds of the fifth ward of the city of Flint.

Of the early habitations of the various Indians in Michigan and vicinity during the years both following and preceding the dispersal of the Hurons, we get only a kaleidoscopic view. So rapidly did one tribe appear in particular locality, and so suddenly vanish; so frequent were the forays of the ever-active Iroquois of the league, that only certain salient points can here be shown. The salient points, or landmarks, leading up to the eighteenth century appear to be, first, the formation of the Iroquois league Ay-oun-a-wa-ta; second, the coming of Cartier in 1535, and the glimpse we get of the condition at hat date, followed by a period of oblivion during which we find that great changes occurred; third, the coming of Champlain up the St. Lawrence, his ill-advised alliance with the Algonquins and Huron enemies of the league, causing the French to be placed by the Iroquois league in the category of its enemies; fourth, the coming of Hendrick Hudson up the Hudson river at practically the same time as Champlain, and the consequent opening of trade by the Dutch, resulting in arming the warriors of the league; and fifth, the successful wars of the league against the allies of the French, resulting in their dispersal.

Their dispersal was the beginning of what may appropriately be called the volkwandering of the native races in and about Michigan similar to the period of European history which followed the breaking up of the roman power and the irruption of the modern races. In our local volkwandering we have another parallel; there was a northern nation, which, profiting by the disintegration of the more southern tribes, was to pour down into more congenial because more southern homes. This was the Chippewa nation, which was destined for a time to hold in dominion a greater extent of territory perhaps than any other Indian tribe, not excepting the great league.

Around these historical nuclei we may group many facts derived from the oral history of the various races. There are stories told by the "Keepers of the faith," and to these we may add the deductions of the ethnologists, who under governmental sanction and at governmental expense, have garnered the field, sifted out the chaff and built up a splendid monument tot he memory of our Indian brothers.

There is a beautiful story told of a little people who once dwelt on the island of the Turtle, or Mackinac. They were peaceful and happy, they were simple in their habits, temperate in their desires, and found upon and about the island that was theirs, and on the adjacent shores of its encircling lake all that their hearts could desire. They grew numerous, and the lesson they impressed upon their children was that of contentment and thankfulness. But even in their retreat they did not escape the baleful activity of the Iroquois, who came upon them and destroyed their villages, killed their men and women. But a few escaped by the direct aid of their manitou, and these few transformed by their manitou into ethereal beings. For many years haunted the forests of the state. When some belated hunter, lost in the depths of the woods, heard peals of merry laughter, he knew it was from the little fairy folk, who had been so miraculously saved from the hands of the hated Iroquois, to wander in the forest far from the island of the Turtle, but always happy as in the day of their glory.