The other
warriors were tied like the rest to stakes at the fort.
The whole number of prisoners thus secured was fifty-one, sustained by
such food as their wives were able to get for them. Of more than a
hundred and fifty women and children captured with them, many died at
the fort, partly from excitement and distress, and partly from a
pestilential disease. The survivors were all baptized, and then
distributed among the mission villages in the colony. The men were
sent to Quebec, where some of them were given up to their Christian
relatives in the missions who had claimed them, and whom it was not
expedient to offend; and the rest, after being baptized, were sent to
France, to share with convicts and Huguenots the horrible slavery of
the royal galleys. [1]
Before reaching Fort Frontenac, Denonville, to his great relief, was
joined by Lamberville, delivered from the peril to which the governor
had exposed him. He owed his life to an act of magnanimity on the part
of the Iroquois, which does them signal honor. One of the prisoners at
Fort Frontenac had contrived to escape, and, leaping sixteen feet to
the ground from the window of a blockhouse, crossed the lake, and gave
the alarm to his countrymen. Apparently, it was from him that the
Onondagas learned that the invitations of Onontio were a snare; that
he had entrapped their relatives, and was about to fall on their
Seneca brethren with all the force of Canada.
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