Documentary History of the State of New York, Vol. I
Thos Dongan Dated the 8th September 16S7
M.
DE DENONVILLE TO GOV. DONGAN. [
Paris Doc. III. ; Lond. Doc. V.
]
August 22, 1687.
--The respect
your Master and the orders I have from the King to live in harmony with His Britannic Majesty's Subjects induce me, Sir, to address you this letter on Sir
I entertain for the King
the present state of affairs, so as not to have any thing to reproach myself with.
On seeing, Sir, the letter you were at the trouble to write me on my arrival in this government I persuaded myself by your frank discourse that we should five in the greatest harmony and best understanding in the world, but the event has well proved that your intentions did not at all accord with your fine words.
You recollect, Sir, that you positively asked me in that same letter to refer the difference about boundaries to the decision of our Masters ; letters more recently received from you fully convince me that you received that which I wrote you in reply to your first to shew you that I willingly left
DENONVILLE's EXPEDITION TO THE GENESEE COUNTRY AND NIAGARA.
Nevertheless, Sir, whilst you were expressing these civilities to me you were giving orders and sending passes to despatch canoes to trade at Missilimaquina where an Englishman had never set his foot and where we, the French, are established more than 60 years. I shall say nothing of the tricks and intrigues resorted to by your people and by your orders to induce all the Savage tribes domiciled with the French to revolt against us. I tell you nothing, Your Traders at Orange either, of all your intrigues to engage the Iroquois to declare war against us. have made noise enough about it, and your presents of munitions of war made, with this view, last year and this, are convictions sufficiently conclusive not to entertain a doubt of it, even were there not proofs at hand of your wicked designs against the subjects of the King whose bread you have eaten long enough and by whom you have been sufficiently well entertained to cause you to have more regard for His Majesty, though you had not all the orders from his Brittanic Majesty that you have to live well with all the subjects of the King, his antient friend.