Part 1 (1/2)
Count Frontenac.
by William Dawson LeSueur.
PREFACE
The author of the following work desires to acknowledge his obligations to two preceding writers who have dealt with the life and times of Count Frontenac, the late Mr. Parkman, and M. Henri Lorin. The merits of the former are too well known and too thoroughly established to need any commendation at this time. If he charms by the lucidity and picturesqueness of his style, none the less does he achieve a high level of historical accuracy, and manifest the control of the true spirit of historical criticism. The work of M. Lorin is, perhaps, less attractive in point of style, but it treats the whole subject from an independent point of view, and in a very comprehensive manner. It is a treasure-house of carefully sifted facts in relation to the career of Canada's most famous governor under the old regime. A certain French writer once complimented another--a dim recollection suggests that it was Buffon who so complimented President Debrosses in regard to his work on language--by saying that whoever treated the same subject ”_apres lui_” would also have to do it ”_d'apres lui_”; and such the author inclines to think has, to some extent, been his situation in relation to his two able and industrious predecessors. At the same time the present work has not been written without consultation of original sources, and it is trusted that it will be found--for Canadian readers especially--a not unserviceable or uninteresting narrative.
W. D. LE SUEUR
CHAPTER I
CANADA BEFORE FRONTENAC
1608 TO 1632
When Count Frontenac landed at Quebec, in the month of September 1672, to administer the government of Canada or, as it was then more generally called, New France, the country had been for a period of a little over sixty years under continuous French rule. The period may, indeed, be limited to exactly sixty years if we take as the starting-point the commission issued to Samuel de Champlain on the 15th of October 1612 as ”Commander in New France,” under the authority of the Count de Soissons, who had been appointed by the queen regent, Marie de Medicis, as lieutenant-general of that territory. What had been accomplished during those sixty odd years? How had the country developed, and what were the elements of the situation which confronted Frontenac on his arrival?
Answers to these questions may be gathered, it is hoped, from the following brief introductory narrative.
The territorial claims of France in the gulf and valley of the St.
Lawrence were founded on the discoveries made in the name of the French king, Francis I, by that brave Breton mariner, Jacques Cartier, in the celebrated voyages undertaken by him in the years 1534 and 1535. An attempt at colonization made in the latter year, the site chosen being the left bank of the St. Charles near Quebec, failed miserably; nor were the similar attempts made in 1541 by Cartier and in 1542 by Roberval any more successful. Cartier did not again return to Canada, and all efforts in the direction of colonization were suspended for sixty years, though French fishermen continued to visit the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the year 1603 a notable figure appears upon the scene, Samuel Champlain, the true founder of French power on the continent of America. A few years previously a certain naval captain named Chauvin, who enjoyed considerable influence at court, had applied for and obtained from King Henry IV a patent granting him exclusive trading privileges in the St.
Lawrence. This he had done at the instance of one Pontgrave, a leading merchant of St. Malo, well acquainted with the St Lawrence trade, whose business instinct had led him to see that the fur trade alone of that region might be a source of vast wealth to any single company controlling it. One condition of the grant was that not less than five hundred persons should be settled in the country, and another that provision should be made for the religious instruction both of the settlers and of the natives. Having obtained the patent, neither Chauvin nor Pontgrave, whom he appointed as his lieutenant, seems to have thought of anything but the conversion of their privilege into money.
They sailed to the St. Lawrence, but proceeded no further than Tadousac, where they set up a trading establishment. At the end of the first summer season they returned to France, leaving some sixteen men behind them so ill provided for that eleven died during the winter of disease and hards.h.i.+p. The rest would have died of starvation had not friendly Indians supplied them with food. Chauvin made two more trips to the St. Lawrence without doing anything to redeem his engagements, and in the year 1601 he died.
The death of Chauvin having voided his patent, the king was moved to const.i.tute Knight Commander de Chastes, Governor of Dieppe, his representative in the western world. A company was formed, and an expedition was organized and placed under the command of Pontgrave, as a man having special knowledge of the St. Lawrence navigation. By request of de Chastes, Champlain was a.s.sociated with him. At this time Champlain was thirty-six years of age, and had already distinguished himself as soldier, sailor, explorer, and geographer. His chief work in the two latter characters had been done in connection with a voyage which he had made to the West Indies and Mexico in one of the vessels of the King of Spain. On his return he described the places he had visited in a work, still extant, ill.u.s.trated by curious maps and pictures of his own drawing. Champlain had higher views than mere money making and no more valuable man could have been a.s.signed to the expedition. Setting sail with Pontgrave from Honfleur on the 15th March 1603, he arrived at Tadousac on the 24th May. How earnestly he was bent on carrying the Catholic faith into the wilds of Canada is shown by a conversation he reports having had with an Algonquin chief, into whose mind he was trying to instil correct views as to the origin of things, and particularly of the human race. The Algonquin had been under the impression that the Creator had placed arrows in the ground, and then turned them into men. Champlain a.s.sured him that this was an error, man having been made in the first place out of clay, and woman from a rib taken from his side while he slept. He dwelt somewhat also on the propriety and duty of the invocation of saints, with a view, as the Abbe Faillon hints,[1] to counteracting any prejudice against that doctrine which Chauvin and his companions, who were Calvinists, might have endeavoured to create in the savage mind. Judging, however, by the Algonquin's replies to Champlain's catechising, his mental att.i.tude was one of admirable neutrality, securely founded on nescience, regarding any or all of the doctrines in debate between Rome and Geneva. Chauvin had attended strictly to business.
Before returning to France, Champlain explored the river St. Lawrence as far as the Lachine Rapids. On the way up he anch.o.r.ed before Quebec, the situation of which he describes; doubtless he recognized it as the place near which Jacques Cartier and his men had spent their terrible winter.
In pa.s.sing Three Rivers he noticed how advantageously it was situated both for trade and for defence. He explored the country in the vicinity of the Lachine Rapids sufficiently to recognize that the land to his right, as he ascended, was an island (Montreal). Of the rapids themselves he says that never had he seen a torrent rus.h.i.+ng with such impetuosity. Returning to Tadousac he proceeded down the river to Gaspe and Perce and entered the Baie des Chaleurs. After making, according to his custom, as many observations and inquiries as possible in regard to the character and outlines of the country, he returned to Tadousac, and, gathering his party, which had meanwhile been doing some profitable trading with the natives, set sail for France, where he arrived on the 20th September. M. de Chastes, under whose authority he and Pontgrave were acting, had died in the month of May. Champlain, therefore, went alone to court, exhibited to the king a map he had made of the country, and gave such information as to its resources and capabilities as he had personally gathered. The king was much interested; and, desiring that the work so well begun should be vigorously prosecuted, he issued a patent to a Huguenot gentleman, Pierre Dugas, Sieur de Monts and Governor of Pons conferring upon him exclusive trading privileges for a period of ten years not only in Canada, but in Acadia. The essential condition of this grant, it has been said, was the establishment in the countries mentioned of the ”Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman faith”; but, if such was the case, the terms of the doc.u.ment seem a little lacking in precision, as they speak only of instructing the natives in the principles of Christianity and the knowledge of G.o.d, and thus bringing them to the light of faith and the practice of the Christian religion.
As de Monts was a Huguenot the generality of these terms may not have been without significance.
De Monts had been in Canada before, having accompanied Chauvin on one or two of his voyages to Tadousac. He had also some knowledge of Acadia, and had conceived a preference for that region, as being more favourably situated and milder in climate than Canada so far as he knew it. To that quarter, therefore, he directed the expedition, which left Havre under his command in March 1604. The result was complete failure owing to causes into which it is impossible in this hasty narrative to enter.
Suffice it to say that, opposition having been raised to the privileges enjoyed by de Monts, the king, who was an accomplished politician--it was he who had thought Paris ”well worth a ma.s.s”--cancelled his patent, and thus destroyed all the expectations which he and his business a.s.sociates, who had incurred great expense in equipping the expedition, had founded thereon. Some progress had been made in settlement at Port Royal, and excellent relations had been established with the natives, when in the fall of 1607 the whole colony was recalled to France.
Champlain, who had accompanied this expedition, turned it to good account in increasing his stores of geographical knowledge. In the following year, 1608, de Monts succeeded in obtaining a renewal of his patent for one year. After consultation with Champlain he decided that Quebec would be the best place at which to attempt a settlement. He accordingly equipped two vessels for the enterprise, and placed them under the command of Champlain, whom he appointed as his lieutenant with full powers of control over the whole expedition. He himself remained behind in Paris to watch over his interests, which were subject at every moment to attack. His lieutenant sailed from Honfleur on the 13th April 1608, and arrived at Tadousac on the 3rd of June, and at Quebec on the 3rd of July. Having disembarked his men, Champlain set them to work at once to clear the level piece of land at the base of the rock, erect a storehouse and dwellings, and surround the whole with a palisade and ditch. Thus in the summer of 1608 was the city of Quebec founded, and the power of France formally established on the North American continent.
The first event of note in the annals of the new colony was certainly not an auspicious one: a plot that was formed by some of the men of the expedition against the life of their commander. Had the designs of the conspirators not been brought to light in time, the course of Canadian history, as we know it, might have been seriously turned aside. Four men were found guilty, and sentenced to death; the ringleader only, a Norman named Jean Duval, was executed, the others were sent to France where their sentences were commuted. Lescarbot, a contemporary writer, to whom we are indebted for much information respecting the events of the period, states that the men were dissatisfied with their food; but from Champlain's own narrative it appears that the plot was formed, if not before the expedition left France, at least before it reached Quebec, and that the whole motive of the conspirators was gain, their intention being to deliver over all Champlain's goods to the Basques and Spaniards fis.h.i.+ng and trading at Tadousac, and to escape on their vessels with the proceeds of their treason. This danger, however, having been happily averted, work was proceeded with on what Champlain in his narrative calls the ”habitation,” and by the time winter set in the dwellings were in readiness. The winter was destined to be a most unhappy one. As before, when Cartier took up his quarters on the banks of the St. Charles in the winter of 1535-6, scurvy broke out, and twenty men out of a company of twenty-eight died.
In the spring of 1609 a reinforcement for the shrunken colony was brought out by Pontgrave. It was in the summer of that year that Champlain, with little thought of the consequences his action would entail, carried out a promise previously made to the Algonquins and Hurons to a.s.sist them in their feud with the Iroquois. Taking eleven Frenchmen with him in a s.h.i.+p's boat, and accompanied by about three hundred savages in their canoes, he proceeded as far as the mouth of the Richelieu River. There most of the savages changed their minds, and deserted the party. Finding that the boat was not suited to the navigation of the Richelieu River up which the route to the enemy's country lay, Champlain sent it back to Quebec and nine men with it. He with two Frenchmen and sixty Indians proceeded in canoes, and on the 30th of July a band of Iroquois on the war-path was encountered on the sh.o.r.e of what has since been known as Lake Champlain. The story is briefly told. Champlain, who had loaded his arquebus with four b.a.l.l.s, brought down at the first shot three Iroquois chiefs, two instantly killed, and the third mortally wounded. His men did further execution.
The Iroquois, astounded at such swift death, turned and fled. In the pursuit others were killed. Commenting on this campaign, and a somewhat similar one of the year following, the Abbe Faillon observes that if Champlain, instead of siding with the Algonquins and Hurons against the Iroquois, had declared himself the friend of all the tribes, he would not only have done more honour to the French name, but would have gained access for himself and for the missionaries who were to follow him to all the Indian communities. By the course he actually followed he inspired the most powerful and best organized of the Indian tribes with a hatred for the French race and for the religion they professed, which during a long series of years wreaked itself in countless deeds of blood, and more than once brought the colony of New France to the verge of extinction. The ma.s.sacre of Lachine (1689) was a late harvest of the blood sown on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Champlain eighty years before.
The vessels which brought out recruits brought also the news that the exclusive privilege of trade granted to de Monts had been cancelled, or at least had not been renewed, though de Monts still retained his position as the king's lieutenant in New France. Champlain was therefore obliged to return to France in the autumn and discuss matters. Leaving Quebec on the 5th September he reached Honfleur on the 14th October. He saw the king, reported progress, and showed him some of the products of the country. De Monts renewed his efforts to be reinstated in his privileges, but without success. In the end it was arranged that Champlain should return to Canada, which he did, leaving Honfleur on the 8th April 1610, and arriving at Quebec early in May. We pa.s.s over the second attack on the Iroquois, made in the month of June of this year, in which Champlain was slightly wounded. It is interesting, however, to learn that, on returning from his campaign, he found a piece of land near his ”habitation” at Quebec, which he had brought under cultivation, yielding good crops of vegetables, Indian corn, wheat, rye, and barley. He had been much annoyed on reaching Quebec in the spring to find that no care had been taken of some grape vines that he had carefully laid down the previous fall. This was but one example of an indolent neglect only too characteristic, unhappily, of the Quebec colonists in after years.
Towards the end of this summer grave news arrived. The king, Henry IV, had fallen under the dagger of an a.s.sa.s.sin. Champlain and Pontgrave both thought it desirable to return to France without delay, as it was impossible to say how their interests might be affected by the change of government. The only incident of importance, so far as is known, which happened during Champlain's stay in France on this occasion, was his marriage to a Protestant young lady named Helen Boulle, whom, on account of her tender years--she was only twelve years old--he left to grow up under her father's roof, but who brought him as her dowry a much needed subsidy of six thousand francs. Thus financially reinforced he sailed again for Canada in the spring of 1611. He had an appointment to keep, made the previous year, with certain Indians to meet them at the Grand Saut (Lachine Rapids) to discuss matters of trade and war. He arrived there on the 28th May, a few days later than he had said, but found no Indians. Not being a man to waste time he employed himself while waiting in prospecting the Island of Montreal and erecting a wall, as the commencement of a fort, almost on the very spot selected thirty-one years afterwards by Maisonneuve for the same purpose. It has been conjectured that, if Champlain had known all the advantages possessed by Montreal, as compared with Quebec, before he began to construct buildings at the latter place, Montreal would probably have been the first capital of New France. This, however, seems hardly probable. It was important that the capital should be a place naturally strong in a military point of view--”natura fortis,” as the motto of the city of Quebec has it--and of comparatively easy access from the sea; and these obvious advantages Quebec possessed in a much higher degree than Montreal.
De Monts was at last convinced that, under existing conditions, there was no money in the enterprise to which he was committed. Others could engage in the fur trade as freely as he, without having any establishments in Canada to keep up; so he willingly resigned his empty honours as lieutenant-general, in order to see what he could do as a private trader, or private member of a trading company. The office of lieutenant-general pa.s.sed into the hands of a more powerful person, the Duke of Conde, who wisely made Champlain his lieutenant, and under whose auspices a powerful company was formed, consisting of all the traders of Rouen and St. Malo who wished to join it. The merchants of La Roch.e.l.le had also been invited to take a share in the enterprise, but they held off, and were consequently left out of the arrangement. Champlain had returned to France in September 1611, and the difficulties and oppositions of one kind and another to which the organization of the new company gave rise kept him there till the spring of 1613, when, again setting sail for Canada, he arrived at Quebec about the 1st of May. It was in the early summer of this year that he made his celebrated trip up the Ottawa River as far as Allumette Island, about one hundred miles above the city of Ottawa, after which he again returned to France.
Up to this time nothing had been done by the various trading companies that had been formed towards the evangelization of the native tribes, nor even for meeting the spiritual necessities of the Europeans settled or trading in New France. Champlain, who remained in France during the whole of the following year (1614), thought it time to take the matter in hand. He therefore arranged with the Provincial of the Recollet Fathers, a sub-order of the Franciscans, that six of their members should go out to New France as missionaries, their maintenance and lodging to be provided by the company. Four of the fathers sailed with him from France in the s.h.i.+p _St. etienne_ of three hundred and fifty tons, on the 24th April 1615, and arrived at Quebec about the 1st of June. They were received with many tokens of satisfaction, but the good fathers were not long in discovering that there was very little zeal for religion in the colony, and that their work was going to be beset with the most serious difficulties and discouragements. A Recollet writer, Theodat Sagard, who came to Canada a year or two later, and who wrote a most interesting record of his experiences, says that the French themselves, who were supposed to be Christians, were by their scandalous lives the greatest impediment to the conversion of the Indians. We gather from Champlain's narrative that the first celebration of the ma.s.s took place at Riviere des Prairies, a few miles below Montreal, before a few French and a large number of Indians, ”who were full of admiration at the ceremonies practised, and the ornaments used, the latter in particular seeming to them, unaccustomed as they were to such things, very beautiful and interesting.”