Preparations in rather ostentatious fashion were therefore made for a punitive expedition, and in the summer of 1684 the governor with his troops was at Cataraqui.  At this point, however, he began to question whether a parley might not be a better means of securing peace than the laying waste of Indian lands.  Accordingly, it was arranged that a council with the Iroquois should be held across the lake from Cataraqui at a place which later took the name of La Famine from the fact that during the council the French supplies ran low and the troops had to be put on short rations.  After negotiations which the cynical chronicler La Hontan has described with picturesque realism, an inglorious truce was patched up.  The new governor was sadly deficient in his knowledge of the Indian temperament.  He had given the Iroquois an impression that the French were too proud to fight.  For their part the Iroquois offered him war or peace as he might choose, and La Barre assured them that he chose to live at peace.  When the expedition returned to Quebec there was great disgust throughout the colony, the echoes of which were not without their effect at Versailles, and La Barre was forthwith recalled.

In his place the King sent out the Marquis de Denonville in 1685 with power to make war on the tribesmen or to respect the peace as he might find expedient upon his arrival.  The new governor was an honest, well-intentioned soul, neither mentally incapable nor lacking in personal courage.  He might have served his King most acceptably in many posts of routine officialdom, but he was not the man to handle the destinies of half a continent in critical years.  His mission, to be sure, was no sinecure, for the Iroquois had grown bolder with the assurance of support from the English.  Now that they were securing arms and ammunition from Albany it was probable that they would carry their raids right to the heart of New France.  Denonville was therefore forced to the conclusion that he had better strike quickly.  In making this decision he was right, for in dealing with savage races a thrust is almost always the best defense.

Armed preparations were consequently once more placed under way, and in the summer of 1687 a flotilla of canoes and batteaux bearing soldiers and supplies was again at Cataraqui.  This time the expedition was stronger in numbers and better equipped than ever before.  Down the lakes from Michilimackinac came a force of coureurs-de-bois, among them seasoned veterans of the wilderness like Du Lhut, Tonty, La Foret, Morel de la Durantaye, and Nicholas Perrot, each worth a whole squad of soldiers when it came to fighting the Iroquois in their own forests.  At the rendezvous across the lake from Cataraqui the French and their allies mustered nearly three thousand men.  Denonville had none of his predecessor’s bravado coupled with cowardice; his plans were carried forward with a precision worthy of Frontenac.  Unlike Frontenac, however he had a scant appreciation