Bush Runner by Mark Bourrie

Author:Mark Bourrie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2019-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

Finding Adam Dollard

At the end of this stretch of the Ottawa River, they came across a scene of horror. Above the Long Sault Rapids, about forty miles upstream from Montreal, they saw the grizzly sight of the mangled bodies of Adam Dollard and his men hanging from trees along the riverbank. Dollard, and sixteen other young Frenchmen, about sixty Huron and four Algonquins, had gone up the river at the first sign of spring to ambush Iroquois returning from the north. This raid, Radisson says, was a fight to save the struggling colony of New France, which needed the Iroquois’ furs. As well, it was supposed to be proof to all the people of the region that the French could impose their will on any nation, even the Iroquois. Dollard and his men portaged around the rapids and had just reached the calmer water upstream when they saw the Iroquois fur brigade.129 An advance party of the French expedition found the Iroquois’ leading canoes, and a fight on shore left both sides bloodied and falling back on their main force. Dollard’s Algonquins, who were likely members of the bands that lived along that part of the river, knew of a new fort nearby. It was a small stockade, barely able to hold twenty men, but at least it offered some defense for the French, who took it over and shut their Indian allies outside. This proved to be the first of several serious mistakes.

The Iroquois set up their own base nearby. Some were adopted Huron, and they visited the camp to persuade their former countrymen to give up. Many did leave. Still, the French and the allies who stayed had a good chance of surviving a siege by the two hundred Iroquois in the fur brigade, but another Iroquois army, probably headed toward Montreal down the St. Lawrence River, now swung north and reached the Ottawa River by paddling the sluggish creeks that wander through the flatlands northwest of Montreal. Dollard and his men were doomed. Even if they could get a message to Montreal, there weren’t enough men in the town to save them.

For whatever it was worth, the French antagonized the Iroquois by cutting off the heads of men killed in the first skirmish and sticking them on poles above the little French fort. After two days of siege by the men of the Iroquois fur brigade, Dollard and his men looked out from the fort and saw another six hundred warriors camping and preparing for battle. That convinced most of the rest of the Huron to make whatever peace they could. They had little bargaining power, and they were tied up and put to preliminary tortures, as though they had been taken by force. Annaotaha, the most famous Huron war chief, did negotiate with the Iroquois, who were quite willing to adopt them all, but the French fired on the Iroquois before terms were settled.

Early 20th-century painting of Adam Dollard at the Battle of Long Sault.

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