à marcher et que si on ne le fit pas, on se trouvoit en danger et on leur faisoit bien d'autres menaces; alors la plus grande partie sont partis pour se rendre au Sault et le déclarant étoit de ceux qui marchoit tout en voulant déserter s'il trouveroit le moyen. (ANQM 1837-38, no. 2269, my emphasis)

Despite threats that people who would leave the ranks would be shot, many hungry, cold and tired peasants like Louis Denaut escaped in the woods (L. Denaut, ANQM 1837-38, no. 2244). At the same time, as Patriotes departed for Kahnawake, Châteauguay resident Robert Findlay jumped out of a back window of his house and made it to Kahnawake, where he secured a boat to cross over to Montreal and alert the authorities (R. Findlay, ANQM 1837-38, no. 2398: Senior 1985: 171). According to Sellar, Findlay told the Indians of the rising, got them to ferry him over to Lachine (Sellar 1888: 570). Even if Findlay did warn some Iroquois, his report does not seem to have spread as the village remained sound asleep until sunrise.

Kahnawake oral history accounts that a local unnamed woman searching the bushes for her lost cow saw the Patriotes and alerted the community. As one written version holds:

On the Sunday morning of November 4, 1838, a group of Mohawk people were meeting in a chapel on the Chateauguay road. This chapel still stands in Kahnawake today. It was dedicated to St. John the Baptist. The Patriotes from Chateauguay intended to surround the chapel and capture all of the men meeting inside. The Patriotes were planning to hold these men hostage in exchange for the guns and ammunition in Kahnawake. The Patriotes would have been successful except for an old Mohawk woman. This woman was walking down the road to Chateauguay looking for a lost cow. She happened to see the Patriotes approaching, armed as if for an attack. There were sixty four Patriotes in all. She rushed back to the chapel and warned all of the men who had assembled there. The Patriotes were armed with sticks and pikes and clubs. The Kahnawake men had muskets. The warriors left the church and set up an ambush by the front of the church entrance. When the force of forty Kahnawake men surrounded the French, the Patriotes immediately surrendered. Eleven others were captured later on in the day...The Kahnawake men took the Patriotes prisoners, bound them with cords and delivered them to a jail in Montreal. (Blanchard 1980: 320)

A second version of this story is provided by Mohawk historian Johnny Beauvais.

The most revealing patriot lack of judgment was their ill-fated sneak raid on Kahnawake [...]. There are several versions of this raid, but we will recount the account that we find most plausible. The Mohawks were in church; it is implied in the old chapel on the hill. We do not agree because that building is too small to contain the large contingent of churchgoers at that time. They had to be in the old church which was replaced by the present one in the 1840s. The Patriots were discovered approaching our town with their primitive arms by a woman searching for her cow in the outer edge of the village, and she scurried back to warn the congregation [...]. The Kahnawake men quickly disarmed the intruders. The Patriots claimed they came to parley but the Mohawks did not accept that a parley be initiated by lurking about and arrive as an armed intrusion. Their annoyance prompted them to tie the prisoners and take the seventy-five prisoners to the Lachine garrison by canoe. (Beauvais 1994: 19)

Interestingly, I have found many non-Native accounts that provide a similar story involving an anonymous woman looking for her cow.

1) Stating that the Iroquois were assembling in the church and not in a small chapel, Father Joseph Marcoux provided this account in a letter he wrote on 7 November 1838.

Dimanche matin (4 November 1838), jour des Patrons du Diocèse, à neuf heures du matin, le monde dans l'Église et le célébrant tout habillé pour commencer, on voit accourir une femme qui cherchait sa vache dans le bois depuis le matin. Elle rapporte qu'elle a vu en chemin se dirigeant vers le village, une masse compacte d'hommes armés, qui lui a paru être de plusieurs cents. En un clin d'oeil, l'Église est évacuée, et chacun de courir à son fusil et à sa hache et de prendre le chemin de la commune. (Marcoux to Turgeon, 7 November 1838, AAQ, 26 CP, D-43)

2) The same story was reported by the newspaper Le Canadien on 9 November 1838.

[...] une femme du village étant à la recherche d'une vache égarée, découvrit dans le bois un parti nombreux d'hommes armés, et en donna avis aux Sauvages qui étaient à la messe. Ils sortirent aussitôt, se saisirent de toutes les armes qu'ils purent se procurer, telles que fusils, cassetêtes et fourches, et poussant des cris de guerre, ils chargèrent leurs ennemis, qui prirent aussitôt la fuite, en jetant leurs armes. Soixante cinq furent faits prisonniers. (Le Canadien 9/11/1839: 1)

3) James Hughes, praising war chief Ignace Kaneratahere Delisle and identifying the Iroquois as our Brown Boys , wrote the following account on 15 November 1838.

Of all the transactions that have taken place here, the most noble [...] was performed by our Brown Boys of Caughnawaga, with Ignace Kaneratahere at their head. [...] On Sunday last the 4th instant about 8 o'clock as mass was beginning, many people having got into the church, it appears that a woman who has lost a cow the day previous was in search of her, scouring about the bushes for that purpose, she heard the bell that the cow had round her neck. The brush wood being thick she got on a stone fence,...