In former times the French had hoped to win over the Five Nations in a body, by wholesale conversion to the Faith; but the attempt had failed.  They had, however, made within their own limits an asylum for such converts as they could gain, whom they collected together at Caughnawaga, near Montreal, to the number of about three hundred warriors.[27] These could not be trusted to fight their kinsmen, but willingly made forays against the English borders.  Caughnawaga, like various other Canadian missions, was divided between the Church, the army, and the fur-trade.  It had a chapel, fortifications, and storehouses; two Jesuits, an officer, and three chief traders.  Of these last, two were maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Desauniers; and one of the Jesuits, their friend Father Tournois, was their partner in business.  They carried on by means of the Mission Indians, and in collusion with influential persons in the colony, a trade with the Dutch at Albany, illegal, but very profitable.[28]

[Footnote 27:  The estimate of a French official report, 1736, and of Sir William Johnson, 1763.]

[Footnote 28:  La Jonquiere au Ministre, 27 Fev. 1750.  Ibid., 29 Oct. 1751.  Ordres du Roy et Depeches des Ministres, 1751.  Notice biographique de la Jonquiere.  La Jonquifere, governor of Canada, at last broke up their contraband trade, and ordered Tournois to Quebec.]

Besides this Iroquois mission, which was chiefly composed of Mohawks and Oneidas, another was now begun farther westward, to win over the Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas.  This was the establishment of Father Piquet, which Celoron had visited in its infancy when on his way to the Ohio, and again on his return.  Piquet was a man in the prime of life, of an alert, vivacious countenance, by no means unprepossessing;[29] an enthusiastic schemer, with great executive talents; ardent, energetic, vain, self-confident, and boastful.  The enterprise seems to have been of his own devising; but it found warm approval from the Government.[30] La Presentation, as he called the new mission, stood on the bank of the River Oswegatchie where it enters the St. Lawrence.  Here the rapids ceased, and navigation was free to Lake Ontario.  The place commanded the main river, and could bar the way to hostile war-parties or contraband traders.  Rich meadows, forests, and abundance of fish and game, made it attractive to Indians, and the Oswegatchie gave access to the Iroquois towns.  Piquet had chosen his site with great skill.  His activity was admirable.  His first stockade was burned by Indian incendiaries; but it rose quickly from its ashes, and within a year or two the mission of La Presentation had a fort of palisades flanked with blockhouses, a chapel, a storehouse, a barn, a stable, ovens, a saw-mill, broad fields of corn and beans, and three villages of Iroquois, containing, in all, forty-nine bark lodges, each holding three or four families, more or less converted to the Faith;