Libr@rsi

1656 -58 J RELATION OF 1637-58 187
country, where they arrived on the nth day of
July of the same year, 1656.
In the year 1657,— as there was promise of a fine i6s7*
harvest in all the Villages of the upper Iroquois, and
as the common people hearkened to the good news
of the Gospel with simplicity, and the Elders with a
cunning dissimulation,— Fathers Paul Ragueneau
and Frangois Du Peron, some Frenchmen, and sev-
eral Hurons started from Montreal on the 26th of
July, to go and help their brethren and compatriots.
On the 3rd day of August of the same year, 1657,.
the Iroquois' perfidy began to show itself through
the massacre of the poor Hurons whom they were
conducting to their country, after having made a
thousand avowals of good will and a thousand oaths,—
such as they are wont to make,— that they would
treat them as brothers. And, had not a number of
Iroquois remained with the French at Kebec to try
to carry off with them the rest of the Hurons,— who,
distrusting these treacherous rogues, had been [32]
unwilling to embark with the others,— the fate of
the Fathers and of the Frenchmen who went up with
them would even then have been sealed; and, soon
afterward, the same lot would have befallen all those
who dwelt on the shores of Lake Gannantaa, near
Onnontagu6. But the fear lest the French should
take vengeance on their countrymen stayed their
project. Our Fathers received secret information of
it immediately after their arrival in the country. A
Captain, in fact, who knew the Elders' secret, and
who had conceived some fondness for the Preaching
of the Gospel, upon falling seriously ill asked for
Baptism. Having received it after sufficient instruction,
he revealed to him who conferred it the wicked