For Ten Years Past A Group Of Algonquins, Montagnais And
Hurons, Amidst Incessant Alarms, Had Been Located In The Picturesque
Parish of Sillery; they, too, were in quest of a more secure asylum.
Negotiations were soon entered into between them
And their persecuted
friends of the West; a plan was put forth to combine. On the 29th March,
1651, the Sillery Indians, many of whom were Hurons united with the
western brethren, sought a shelter, though a very insecure one, in a
fortified nook, adjoining their missionary's house, on the land of
Eleonore de Grandmaison, purchased for them at l'Anse du Fort, in
the Island of Orleans, on the south side of the point opposite Quebec.
Here they set to tilling the soil with some success, cultivating chiefly
Indian corn, their numbers being occasionally increased during the year
1650, by their fugitive brethren of the West, until they counted above 600
souls. Even under the guns of the picket Fort of Orleans, which had
changed its name to Ile St. Marie, in remembrance of their former
residency, the tomahawk and scalping-knife reached them; on the 20th May,
1656, eighty-six of their number were carried away captives, and six
killed, by the ferocious Iroquois; and on the 4th June, 1656, again they
had to fly before their merciless tormentors. The big guns of Fort St.
Louis, which then stood at the north-west extremity of the spot on which
the Dufferin Terrace has lately been erected, seemed to the Hurons a more
effectual protection than the howitzers of Anse du Fort, so they
begged from Governor d'Aillebout for leave to nestle under them in 1658.
'Twas granted.
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