"[531] Bigot declares that guns, canoes, and other presents
were given to the Western tribes before they left Montreal; and he adds,
"they must be sent home satisfied at any cost." Such were the pains
taken to preserve allies who were useful chiefly through the terror
inspired by their diabolical cruelties. This time their ferocity cost
them dear. They had dug up and scalped the corpses in the graveyard of
Fort William Henry, many of which were remains of victims of the
small-pox; and the savages caught the disease, which is said to have
made great havoc among them.[532]
[Footnote 531: "En chemin faisant et meme en entrant a Montreal ils les
ont manges et fait manger aux autres prisonniers." _Bigot au Ministre,
24 Aout, 1757._
"Des sauvages out fait manger aux meres la chair de leurs enfants."
_Jugement impartial sur les Operations militaires en Canada_. A French
diary kept in Canada at this time, and captured at sea, is cited by
Hutchinson as containing similar statements.]
[Footnote 532: One of these corpses was that of Richard Rogers, brother
of the noted partisan Robert Rogers. He had died of small-pox some time
before. Rogers, _Journals_, 55, _note_.]
Vaudreuil, in reporting what he calls "my capture of Fort William
Henry," takes great credit to himself for his "generous procedures"
towards the English prisoners; alluding, it seems, to his having bought
some of them from the Indians with the brandy which was sure to cause
the murder of others.
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