became commanders, holding vast tribes loyal
to France. For years there had been legends of mines. Talon opened
mines at Gaspe and Three Rivers and Cape Breton. All clothing had
formerly been imported from France. Talon had the inhabitants
taught--and they badly needed it, for many of their children ran naked as
Indians--to weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw
for hats,--all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a
habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a
holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made.
"The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened
their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by
encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young Frenchmen for
deserting to the English, Talon asked the King to grant titles of
nobility to those who were loyal, like the Godefrois and the Denis' and
the Le Moynes and young Chouart Groseillers, son of Radisson's
brother-in-law, so that there sprang up a Canadian noblesse which was as
graceful with the frying pan of a night camp fire in the woods as with
the steps of a stately dance in the governor's ballroom. Above all did
Talon encourage the bush-rovers in their far wanderings to explore new
lands for France.

New France had not forgotten the Iroquois treachery to the French colony
at Onondaga. Iroquois raid and ambuscade kept the hostility of these
sleepless foes fresh in French memory. {125} When Jean Talon came to
Canada as intendant, there had come as governor Courcelle, with the
Marquis de Tracy as major general of all the French forces in
America,--the West Indies as well as Canada. The Carignan Regiment of
soldiers seasoned in European campaigns had been sent to protect the
colonists from Indian raid; and it was determined to strike the Iroquois
Confederacy a blow that would forever put the fear of the French in their
hearts.

Richelieu River was still the trail of the Mohawk warrior; and De Tracy
sent his soldiers to build forts on this stream at Sorel and
Chambly--named after officers of the regiment. January, 1666, Courcelle,
the Governor, set out on snowshoes to invade the Iroquois Country with
five hundred men, half Canadian bushrovers, half regular soldiers. By
some mistake the snow-covered trail to the Mohawks was missed, the wrong
road followed, and the French Governor found himself among the Dutch at
Sche