Part 2 (1/2)
The resources at his disposal were small, he could not hope to a.s.semble a great expedition; so he determined to make the venture with only a few men and little baggage, relying upon the friends.h.i.+p of the Indians, instead of seeking to conquer them, as the Spaniards had always done.
Champlain had from the first treated the Indians well, and it was this necessity of gaining their friends.h.i.+p that determined the policy which France pursued--the policy of making friends of the Indians, entering into an alliance with them, and helping them fight their battles.
Champlain opened operations by joining an Algonquin war-party against the Iroquois, and a.s.sisting at their defeat--starting, at the same time, a blood feud with that powerful tribe which endured as long as the French held Canada. In the course of this expedition, he discovered the beautiful lake which bears his name.
He went back to France for a time, after that, and on his next return to Canada, in 1611, began building a town at the foot of a rock which had been named Mont Royal, since corrupted to Montreal. Succeeding years were spent in further explorations, which carried him across Lake Ontario, and in plans for the conversion of the Indians, to which the aid of the Jesuits was summoned. Missions were established, and the intrepid priests pushed their way farther and farther into the wilderness. To this work, Champlain gave more and more of his thought in the last years of his life, which ended on Christmas day, 1635.
Among the young men whom Champlain set to work among the Indians was Jean Nicolet. The year before his death, Champlain sent him on an exploring expedition to the west, in the course of which he visited Lake Michigan and perhaps Lake Superior. Following in his footsteps, the Jesuits gradually established missions as far west as the Wisconsin River, and, finally, in 1670, at Sault Ste. Marie, the French formally took possession of the whole Northwest.
It was at about this time there appeared upon the scene another of those picturesque and formidable figures, in which this period of American history so abounds--Robert Cavalier La Salle. La Salle was at that time only twenty years of age. He had reached Canada four years earlier and had devoted himself for three years to the study of the Indian languages, in order to fit himself for the career of western exploration which he contemplated. One day he was visited by a party of Senecas, who told him of a river, which they called the Ohio, so great that many months were required to traverse it. From their description, La Salle concluded that it must fall into the Gulf of California, and so form the long-sought pa.s.sage to China. He determined to explore it, and after surmounting innumerable obstacles, actually did reach it, and descend it as far as the spot where the city of Louisville now stands, afterwards exploring the Illinois and the country south of the Great lakes, as well as the lakes themselves.
Fired by La Salle's report of his discoveries, two other Frenchmen, Louis Joliet, a native of Quebec, who had already led an expedition in search of the copper mines of Lake Superior, and Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit priest and accomplished linguist, started on a still greater journey. With five companions and two birchbark canoes, they headed down the Wisconsin river, and on June 17, 1673, glided out upon the blue waters of the Mississippi. A fortnight later, they reached a little village called Peoria, where the Indians received them well, and continuing down the river, pa.s.sed the Missouri, the Ohio, and finally, having gone far enough to convince themselves that the river emptied into the Gulf of Mexico and not into the Gulf of California, they turned about and reached Green Bay again in September, having paddled more than 2,500 miles. Marquette, shattered in health, remained at Green Bay, while Joliet pushed on to Montreal to tell of his discoveries. Marquette rallied sufficiently at the end of a year to attempt a mission among the Illinois Indians, where death found him in the spring of 1675. Joliet spent his last years in a vain endeavor to persuade the government of France to undertake on a grand scale the development of the rich lands along the Mississippi.
But the story which Joliet took back with him to Quebec fired anew the ambition of La Salle. He conceived New France as a great empire in the wilderness, and he determined to descend the mighty river to its mouth and establish a city there which would hold the river for France against all comers. Such occupation would, according to French doctrine, give France an indisputable right to the whole territory which the river and its tributaries drained, and La Salle's plan was to establish a chain of forts stretching from Lake Erie to the Gulf, to build up around these great cities, and so to lay the foundations for the mightiest empire in history. We may well stand amazed before a plan so ambitious, and before the determination with which this great Frenchman set about its accomplishment.
To most men, such a scheme seemed but the dream of an enthusiast; but La Salle was in deadly earnest, and for eight years he labored to perfect the details of the plan. At last, on April 9, 1682, he planted the flag of France at the mouth of the Mississippi, naming the country Louisiana in honor of his royal master, whose property it was solemnly declared to be. That done, the intrepid explorer hastened back to France; a fleet was fitted out and attempted to sail directly to the mouth of the great river, but missed it; the s.h.i.+ps were wrecked on the coast of Texas, and La Salle was shot from ambush by two of his own followers while searching on foot for the river.
So ended La Salle's part in the accomplishment of a plan which, grandiose as it was, reached a sort of realization--for a great French city near the mouth of the river _was_ built and a thin chain of forts connecting it with Canada, where the French power remained unbroken for three quarters of a century longer; while not until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the royal line of Louis had been succeeded by a soldier of fortune from Corsica, did the great territory which La Salle had named Louisiana pa.s.s from French possession.
On the nineteenth day of November, 1620, fourteen years after the settlement of Jamestown and twelve after the settlement of Quebec, a storm-beaten vessel of 120 tons burthen crept into the lee of Cape Cod and dropped anchor in that welcome refuge. The vessel was the Mayflower, and she had just completed the most famous voyage in American history, after that of Columbus. The colonists she carried, about a hundred in number, Separatists from the Church of England, have come down through history as the ”Pilgrim Fathers.” Among them was one destined to rule the fortunes of the colony for more than a quarter of a century. His name was William Bradford, and he was at that time thirty years of age.
Bradford was born in 1590 at Austerfield, in Yorks.h.i.+re, England, and at the age of sixteen, joined a company of Puritans or Separatists, which met for a time at the little town of Scrooby, but, being threatened with persecution, resolved to remove to Holland. Most of the congregation got away without interference, but Bradford and a few others were arrested and spent several months in prison. As soon as he was released, he joined the colony in Amsterdam, and afterwards, in 1609, removed with it to Leyden. But the newcomers found themselves out of sympathy with Dutch customs and habits of thought, and after long debate, determined to remove to America and found a colony of their own. A patent was obtained, the Mayflower chartered, the congregation put aboard, and the voyage begun on the fifth day of September, 1620.
The colonists expected to settle somewhere near the mouth of the Hudson, but, whether by accident or design, their captain brought up off Cape Cod, and it was decided to land there. After some days' search, a suitable site for a settlement was found, work was begun on houses and fortifications, and the place was named New Plymouth.
Jonathan Carver had been chosen the first governor and guided the colony through the horrors of that first winter; the story of Jamestown was repeated, and by the coming of spring, more than half the colonists were dead. Among them was Carver himself, and William Bradford was at once chosen to succeed him. There can be no doubt that it was to Bradford's wise head and strong hand the colony owed its quick rally, and its escape from the prolonged misery which makes horrible the early history of Virginia. He seems to have possessed a temper resolute, but magnanimous and patient to an unusual degree, together with a religion sincere and devoted, yet neither intolerant nor austere. What results can be accomplished by a combination of qualities at once so rare and so admirable is shown by the work which William Bradford did at Plymouth, over which he ruled almost continuously until his death, thirty-seven years later.
Bradford's success lay first in his courage in doing away with the pernicious system by which all the property was held in common. In doing this, he violated the rules of his company, but he saw that utter failure lay the other way. He divided the colony's land among the several families, in proportion to their number, and compelled each family to s.h.i.+ft for itself. The communal system had nearly wrecked Jamestown and would have wrecked Plymouth had not Bradford had the courage to disregard all precedent and make each family its own provider. Years afterwards, in commenting on the results of this revolutionary change, he wrote, ”Any general want or suffering hath not been among them since to this day.”
And, indeed, this was true. Under Bradford's guidance, the little colony increased steadily in wealth and numbers, and became the sure forerunner of the great Puritan migration of 1630, which founded the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts, into which the older colony of Plymouth was finally absorbed. Of Bradford himself, little more remains to be told. The establishment of Plymouth Plantation was his life work. He was a far bigger man than most of his contemporaries, with a broader outlook upon life and deeper resources within himself. One of these was a literary culture which fairly sets him apart as the first American man of letters. He wrote an entertaining history of his colony, as well as a number of philosophical and theological works, all marked with a style and finish noteworthy for their day.
The government of the colony of Ma.s.sachusetts presented, for over half a century, the most perfect union of church and state ever witnessed in America. The secular arm was ever ready to support the religious, and to compel every resident of the colony to walk in the strait and narrow way of Puritanism. This was a task easy enough at first, but growing more and more difficult as the character of the settlers became more diverse, until, finally, it had to be abandoned altogether.
One of the first and most formidable of all those who dared array themselves against this bulwark of Puritanism was Roger Williams. He was the son of a merchant tailor of London, had developed into a precocious boy, had shown a leaning toward Puritan doctrines, and had ended by out-Puritaning the Puritans. This was princ.i.p.ally apparent in an intolerance of compromise which led him to remarkable extremes. He refused to conform to the use of the common prayer, and so cut himself off from all chance of preferment; he renounced a property of some thousands of pounds rather than take the oath required by law; and at last was forced to flee the country, reaching Ma.s.sachusetts in 1631.
He was, of course, soon at war with the const.i.tuted authorities over questions of doctrine, and at last it was decided to get rid of him by sending him back to England. He was at Salem at the time, and hearing that a warrant had been despatched from Boston for him, he promptly took to the woods, and, making his way with a few followers to Narragansett Bay, broke ground for a settlement which he named Providence. It was the beginning of the first state in the world which took no cognizance whatever of religious belief, so long as it did not interfere with civil peace. He was soon joined by more adherents, and a few years later, he obtained from the king a charter for the colony of Rhode Island.
Almost from the moment of his landing in America, Williams had interested himself greatly in the welfare of the Indians. The princ.i.p.al cause of his expulsion from Ma.s.sachusetts was his contention that the land belonged to the Indians and not to the King of England, who therefore had no right to give it away, so that the colony's charter was invalid. His town of Providence was built on land which the Indians had given him, and he soon acquired considerable influence among them. He learned to speak their language with great facility, translated the Bible into their tongue, and on more than one occasion saved New England from the horrors of an Indian war. But, despite his lofty character, it is impossible at this day, to regard Williams with any degree of sympathy or liking, or to think of him except as a trouble-maker over trifles. Intolerance, happily, is fading from the world, and with it that useless scrupulosity of behavior, which accomplishes no good, but whose princ.i.p.al result is to make uncomfortable all who come in contact with it.
Meanwhile, just to the south of Rhode Island, a prosperous little settlement had been established, which was soon to grow into the most commercially important on the continent. We have seen how Henry Hudson, in 1609, in a vessel chartered by the Dutch West India Company, entered the Hudson river and explored it for some hundred and fifty miles. The Dutch claimed the region as the result of that voyage, and during the next few years, Dutch traders visited it regularly and did a lively business in furs; but no attempt was made at colonization until 1624, although small trading-posts had existed at various points along the river for ten years previously.
All of this country was included in the patent granted the Virginia Company, and it was for the mouth of the Hudson that the Pilgrims had sailed in the Mayflower. The charge has since been made that their captain had been bribed by the thrifty Dutch to land them somewhere else, and at any cost, to keep them away from the neighborhood of the Dutch trading-posts. From whatever cause, this was certainly done, and many years were to elapse before there came another English invasion.
In 1626, Peter Minuit, director for the Dutch West India Company, purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians, giving for it trinkets and merchandise to the value of $24, and founding New Amsterdam as the central trading depot. From the first, the settlement was a cosmopolitan one, just as it is to-day, and in 1643, it was said that eighteen languages were spoken there.
The most notable figure in this prosperous and growing colony was that of Peter Stuyvesant, an altogether picturesque and gallant personality.
Born in Holland in 1602, he had entered the army at an early age, and, as governor of Curacao, lost a leg in battle. In 1646, he was appointed director-general of New Netherlands, and reached New Amsterdam in the spring of the following year. So much powder was burned in firing salutes to welcome him that there was scarcely any left. His speech of greeting was brief and to the point.