In their attack, the Mohawk warriors destroyed a substantial portion of the Lachine settlement by fire and captured numerous inhabitants, killing around 24.

[1][2] The Mohawk people and other Iroquois tribes attacked the French and their indigenous allies for a variety of reasons related to both economic and cultural circumstances.

[3] By 1667, large numbers of Hurons and Iroquois, especially Mohawks, started arriving at the St Lawrence Valley and its mission villages to escape the effects of warfare.

When new diseases such as smallpox killed large numbers of native people within their communities, survivors were motivated to warfare to take captives to rebuild.

[9] To serve as punishment for attacks on French fur fleets, New France ordered two expeditions under Courcelles and Tracy into Mohawk territory in 1666.

They traveled up the Saint Lawrence River by boat, crossed Lake Saint-Louis, and landed on the south shore of the Island of Montreal.

It is claimed that the Iroquois wanted to avenge the 1,200,000 bushels of corn burned by the French, but since they were unable to reach the food stores in Montreal, they kidnapped and killed the Lachine crop producers instead.

Word of the attack spread when one of the Lachine survivors reached a local garrison three miles (4.8 km) away and notified the soldiers of the events.

[20] They defended some of the fleeing colonists from their Mohawk pursuers, but just prior to reaching Lachine, the armed forces were recalled to Fort Rolland by the order of Governor Denonville, who was trying to pacify the local Iroquois inhabitants.

[23] The time of relative peace eventually led to the Montreal Treaty of 1701 by which the Iroquois promised to remain neutral in case of war between the French and the English.

[26] Frontenac launched raids of vengeance against the English colonists to the south "in Canadien style" by attacking during the winter months of 1690 such as the Schenectady massacre.

[31] According to Canadian historian John A. Dickinson, although the cruelty of the Iroquois was real, their threat was neither as constant nor terrible as the contemporary sources represented although the residents felt under siege.

François Vachon de Belmont, the fifth superior of the Sulpicians of Montreal, wrote in his History of Canada: After this total victory, the unhappy band of prisoners was subjected to all the rage which the cruellest vengeance could inspire in these savages.

Once they had landed, they lit fires, planted stakes in the ground, burned five Frenchmen, roasted six children, and grilled some others on the coals and ate them.

[13] Because all of the written accounts of the attack were by the French victims, their reports of cannibalism and parents forced to throw their children onto burning fires may be exaggerated or apocryphal.