Among the Thousand Islands, the French who had remained behind to gather up the baggage again joined the Onondagas.  They brought with them from the Isle of Massacres a poor Huron woman, whom they had found lying insensible on a rock.  During the massacre she had hidden in a hollow tree, where she remained for three days.  In this region, Radisson almost lost his life by hoisting a blanket sail to his canoe.  The wind drifted the boat so far out that Radisson had to throw all ballast overboard to keep from being swamped.  As they turned from the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario up the Oswego River for Onondaga, they met other warriors of the Iroquois nation.  In spite of pledges to the priest, the meeting was celebrated by torturing the Huron women to entertain the newcomers.  Not the sufferings of the early Christians in Rome exceeded the martyrdom of the Christian Hurons among the Onondagas.  As her mother mounted the scaffold of tortures, a little girl who had been educated by the Ursulines of Quebec broke out with loud weeping.  The Huron mother turned calmly to the child:—­

“Weep not my death, my little daughter!  We shall this day be in heaven,” said she; “God will pity us to all eternity.  The Iroquois cannot rob us of that.”

As the flames crept about her, her voice was heard chanting in the crooning monotone of Indian death dirge:  “Jesu—­have pity on us!  Jesu—­have pity on us!” The next moment the child was thrown into the flames, repeating the same words.

The Iroquois recognized Radisson.  He sent presents to his Mohawk parents, who afterwards played an important part in saving the French of Onondaga.  Having passed the falls, they came to the French fort situated on the crest of a hill above a lake.  Two high towers loopholed for musketry occupied the centre of the courtyard.  Double walls, trenched between, ran round a space large enough to enable the French to keep their cattle inside the fort.  The voyageurs were welcomed to Onondaga by Major Dupuis, fifty Frenchmen, and several Jesuits.

The pilgrims had scarcely settled at Onondaga before signs of the dangers that were gathering became too plain for the blind zeal of the Jesuits to ignore.  Cayugas, Onondagas, and Senecas, togged out in war-gear, swarmed outside the palisades.  There was no more dissembling of hunger for the Jesuits’ evangel.  The warriors spoke no more soft words, but spent their time feasting, chanting war-songs, heaving up the war-hatchet against the kettle of sagamite—­which meant the rupture of peace.  Then came four hundred Mohawks, who not only shouted their war-songs, but built their wigwams before the fort gates and established themselves for the winter like a besieging army.  That the intent of the entire Confederacy was hostile to Onondaga could not be mistaken; but what was holding the Indians back?  Why did they delay the massacre?  Then Huron slaves brought word to the besieged fort of the twelve Iroquois hostages held at Quebec.  The fort understood what stayed the Iroquois blow.  The Confederacy dared not attack the isolated fort lest Quebec should take terrible vengeance on the hostages.