Raiders from New France by René Chartrand & Adam Hook

Author:René Chartrand & Adam Hook
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472833709
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

Madeleine de Verchères’ fight, 1692

One famous incident during small-scale Iroquois raids into Canada was the fight put up by 14-year-old Madeleine de Verchères, which became iconic in Canadian popular history. She was the daughter of François Jarret de Verchères, a former officer of the Carignan-Salières Regiment who had been granted a seigneurie east of Montreal, where he had built a bastioned stockade fort. Sometimes a few soldiers were detached to such “private” forts, but on October 22, 1692 only one soldier was present when an Iroquois war party appeared, and seized about 20 people who were working in the fields.

By her own account, Madeleine was about “400 steps” from the fort. As she ran for it a pursuing Iroquois grabbed at her scarf, but she untied it and slipped free; reaching the fort, she shut its only gate while shouting a call-to-arms. Ignoring several terror-stricken women, she put on the soldier’s hat, trying to make it seem as though there were men inside, and then fired a cannon. According to La Potherie, this “struck [the Iroquois] with terror, upset all their calculations and at the same time signaled all the forts on the north and south shores of the river from Saint-Ours as far as Montreal to be on their guard. With each fort passing the word on to the next after the first signal from Verchères … a hundred men were sent to bring it help, who arrived shortly after the Iroquois had disappeared into the woods.” The relief detachment caught up with the Iroquois and freed nearly all their prisoners.

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