Letter by Reverend Father Etienne de Carheil to Monsieur Louis Hector de Callieres, governor [on conditions in the Upper Lakes in 1702]

              1696-1702] CARHEIL TO CALLlkRES 211
necessity of sending any among the savages than that of keeping garrisons there, which must be Commanded by some one — it is perfectly useless to Send any; because the garrisons themselves are quite unnecessary, except for the trade of the Comman¬ dants and their own trade. They are necessary only for those two trades; as regards all the Rest, they are of no use either to the savages or to the voyageurs, to whom the trade belongs, or to the missionaries. In the first place, they are of no use to the savages as regards war, either in their villages or outside them: in the villages they are Useless, because the method common to all these barbarous nations of carrying on warfare does not consist, Like ours, in going to assault one another's Villages, because they will never expose themselves to the danger of losing men Which is unavoidable in Such assaults. They carry on war only by surprises, by Ambushes, by Secret approaches, and by sudden and unforeseen discharges in the Fields, in the woods, while fishing and hunting, and everywhere else when they can discover one another outside their Villages. So, for That Reason, the garrisons are Useless to them as support; and are still more so outside the villages—-where the garrisons not only would not follow them, but cannot do so. For the soldiers are Unable to perform the movements that the savages perform in the woods, and in all sorts of places that are impracticable to all but themselves and the animals; and the soldiers are far from being able to assist them. On the Contrary, the savages themselves would have to help extricate them from the difficulties in which they would be placed on expeditions As difficult as Those through The Thick