palisades.[21] The scalps of dead Indians flaunted from the pickets.
Not a tree but was spattered with bullet marks as with bird shot. Here
and there burnt holes gaped in the stockades like wounds. Outside
along the river bank lay the charred bones of captives who had been
burned. The scarred fort told its own tale. Here refugees had been
penned up by the Iroquois till thirst and starvation did their work.
In the clay a hole had been dug for water by the parched victims, and
the ooze through the mud eagerly scooped up. Only when he reached
Montreal did Radisson learn the story of the dismantled fort. The
rumor carried to the explorers on Lake Michigan of a thousand Iroquois
going on the war-path to exterminate the French had been only too true.
Half the warriors were to assault Quebec, half to come down on Montreal
from the Ottawa. One thing only could save the French--to keep the
bands apart. Those on the Ottawa had been hunting all winter and must
necessarily be short of powder. To intercept them, a gallant band of
seventeen French, four Algonquins, and sixty Hurons led by Dollard took
their stand at the Long Sault. The French and their Indian allies were
boiling their kettles when two hundred Iroquois broke from the woods.
There was no time to build a fort. Leaving their food, Dollard and his
men threw themselves into the rude palisades which Indians had erected
the previous year. The Iroquois kept up a constant fire and sent for
reinforcements of six hundred warriors, who were on the Richelieu. In
defiance the Indians fighting for the French sallied out, scalped the
fallen Iroquois, and hoisted the sanguinary trophies on long poles
above the pickets. The enraged Iroquois redoubled their fury. The
fort was too small to admit all the Hurons; and when the Iroquois came
up from the Richelieu with Huron renegades among their warriors, the
Hurons deserted their French allies and went over in a body to the
enemy. For two days the French had fought against two hundred
Iroquois. For five more days they fought against eight hundred. "The