To men living in savagery come temptations that can neither be measured
nor judged by civilization. To the French at Onondaga came such a
temptation now. Their priests were busy launching the boats. The
departing soldiers seemed simultaneously to have become conscious of a
very black suggestion. Cooped up against the outer wall in the dead
sleep of torpid gluttony lay the leading warriors of the Iroquois
nation. Were these not the assassins of countless Frenchmen, the
murderers of women, the torturers of children? Had Providence not
placed the treacherous Iroquois in the hands of fifty Frenchmen? If
these warriors were slain, it would be an easy matter to march to the
villages of the Confederacy, kill the old men, and take prisoners the
women. New France would be forever free of her most deadly enemy.
Like the Indians, the white men were trying to justify a wrong under
pretence of good. By chance, word of the conspiracy was carried to the
Jesuits. With all the authority of the church, the priests forbade the
crime. "Their answer was," relates Radisson, "that they were sent to
instruct in the faith of Jesus Christ and not to destroy, and that the
cross must be their sword."
Locking the sally-port, the company--as the Jesuit father
records--"shook the dust of Onondaga from their feet," launched out on
the swift-flowing, dark river and escaped "as the children of Israel
escaped by night from the land of Egypt." They had not gone far
through the darkness before the roar of waters told them of a cataract
ahead.
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