[Footnote: _N. Y. Col. Docs._, IX.
435.] So desperate, wrote Frontenac, were the needs of the colony, and
so great the contempt with which the Iroquois regarded it, that it
almost needed a miracle either to carry on war or make peace. What he
most earnestly wished was to keep the Iroquois quiet, and so leave his
hands free to deal with the English. This was not easy, to such a
pitch of audacity had late events raised them. Neither his temper nor
his convictions would allow him to beg peace of them, like his
predecessor; but he had inordinate trust in the influence of his name,
and he now took a course which he hoped might answer his purpose
without increasing their insolence. The perfidious folly of Denonville
in seizing their countrymen at Fort Frontenac had been a prime cause
of their hostility; and, at the request of the late governor, the
surviving captives, thirteen in all, had been taken from the galleys,
gorgeously clad in French attire, and sent back to Canada in the ship
which carried Frontenac. Among them was a famous Cayuga war-chief
called Ourehaoue, whose loss had infuriated the Iroquois. [Footnote:
Ourehaoue was not one of the neutrals entrapped at Fort Frontenac, but
was seized about the same time by the troops on their way up the St.
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