Libr@rsi

1656-58] RELATION OF i6s7-5S 217
; Onnontague but the latter replied that they could
not restrain their young men.
It is also said that the murderers of the three Montreal
Frenchmen, on being asked why they had
attacked the French after making peace with them,
* *
mockingly answered : The French hold the Hurons
and Algonquins in their arms; so it is not to be
wondered at if, when w:e wish to strike those of one
Nation, the blows sometimes fall upon the others."
At length our Frenchmen had recourse to God,
Fear of the stake and of bondage almost caused a
division of their forces; but incidit illis consilium
honum,— they all united and adopted a wise plan of
action, in pursuance of which —
On the 20th of March, they forsook their house, as
we have related in the second Chapter, and departed
from that [56] poor and wretched country, shaking the
dust from their feet and saying, with the Angels : Cura-
vimus Babylonem, et non est sanata; derelinquamus earn.
On the 25th, Father Ondesonk, having repaired
from the Iroquois Villages to New Holland, wrote
me a Letter which was brought to me from Dieppe,
Paris in the month of November of this
reaching
year, 1658. From it I have extracted the following:
"
Our French at Onnontagu6 do not well know
whether we are at peace or at war for the latest
;
company of our best Huron Christians, who volun-
tarily went up with them to make their abode in the
country of the Onnontagueronnons where they hoped
their Christian religion would receive additional
strength, were all cruelly massacred midway by the
Barbarians conducting them,— and that before the
faces of their brethren, the French, who perhaps
expected to fare no better themselves.