Unfortunately, as we have said, these Iroquois were divided into five nations, who often acted without concert, so that protestations of peace by wampum belts had always to be taken for what they were worth. Montreal was soon to be in daily dread of assault. Thus in the autumn, when in fancied security, owing to the recent renewal of peace, the ordinary precautions were being neglected at Montreal in the busy building and farming operations, a band of Iroquois were in ambuscade around. The sentinel was standing on a tree stump, leisurely surveying the country around, when an Iroquois who had stealthily approached, hiding at intervals behind other stumps, suddenly pounced upon him and seizing him by the legs, threw him over his shoulders and set off in flight with the bewildered soldier shrieking for his life and fighting as best he could. His cries aroused the men in the field and they pursued them until they came up to the Iroquois band with their chief at their head. They would have fared badly had not Lambert Closse come up with his men. Recognizing the chief, who was known by the French as "La Barrique," or "The Hogshead," because of his barrel-like corpulency, he ordered one of his best shots cautiously to get within fighting distance, and pick him off.
Meanwhile Hogshead, unaware of impending disaster, was standing on a stump haranguing his men and urging them to the attack, when he received a charge of heavy lead full in his body and he fell to the ground bathed in blood. Thinking him dead, his followers fled incontinently.
But he did not die, for under the skillful care of the doctors and Jeanne Mance, he was tended at the hospital and recovered, though he was seriously crippled for the rest of his days. Their charity changed his fierce disposition. When he left he promised never to go on the warpath against them again but that he would return later to conclude a peace, as indeed he did, though not so easily as he could have wished.
For a time the Iroquois left Montreal severely alone. "Let us not go thither," they would say. "They are devils there." They turned to attack the settlement of the Ile des Oies below Quebec instead. But later, on May 31, 1655, they attacked the colony and killed one Dabigeon.