1660
Battle of the Long Sault
The continued existence of the colony of New France was always more than a little perilous. At risk from European powers when the home country went to war with the Dutch or the British, and under the constant threat of native resistance, particularly from the savage Iroquois Confederacy, the colonists lived in a state of perpetual tension.
Dollard des Ormeaux was a young man with some military experience before migrating to New France where he settled in Ville-Marie, what is now Montreal. Learning that an Iroquois force assembling on the Ottawa River was intent on raiding French settlements on the St Laurence, Dollard proposed taking a party inland and ambushing the hostile natives. With the agreement of the town’s leadership, Dollard gathered 17 settler volunteers and 4 Huron for the guerrilla task. In early May they reached the Ottawa and established themselves in an old Algonquian fort at the Long Sault, where they were joined by another 40 Huron warriors.
The Iroquois force they meant to ambush was far larger than anticipated, numbering perhaps 700, and Dollard and his men soon found themselves besieged. They held off the Iroquois for five days, despite the defection of many of the Huron. The crucial moment came when Dollard lit a barrel of explosives which he meant to hurl into the enemy ranks but at that moment he was shot and the gunpowder fell back into the fort, killing many of its defenders in the explosion. The Iroquois soon overran the palisades and found only 5 Frenchmen alive; 4 soon died and the other was taken prisoner along with a few Huron to be tortured to death and cannibalized.
The fact that the Iroquois, at this point, returned home and did not attack the settlements has led to Dollard and his men being treated as the saviours of New France. Recent historians have tried to downplay the heroic aspect, suggesting that Dollard was really intent on stealing furs, and that the Iroquois would not have gone on to imperil New France anyway. The debate continues.