Canada: the Empire of the North

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> Canada: the Empire of the North

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Marc Antoine de Chasteaufort, _pro tem_.

Charles Huault de Montmagny, 1636.

Louis d'Ailleboust of the Montreal Crusaders, 1648.

Jean de Lauzon, 1651.

Charles de Lauzon-Charny (son), _pro tem_.

Louis d'Ailleboust, 1657.

Viscount d'Argenson, 1658, a young man who quarreled with Jesuits.

Viscount d'Avagour, 1661, a bluff soldier, who also quarreled with
Jesuits.

De Mezy, 1663, appointed by Jesuits' influence, but quarreled with them.

{116} Marquis de Tracy, 1663, who was viceroy of all French possessions
in America, and really sent out to act as general.

De Courcelle, 1665, who acts as governor under De Tracy and succeeds
him.

Frontenac, 1672, was recalled through influence of Jesuits, whose
interference he would not tolerate in civil affairs.

De La Barre, 1682, an impotent, dishonest old man, who came to mend his
fortunes.

De Brisay de Denonville, 1685.

Frontenac, 1689.

De Calliere, 1699.

Marquis de Vaudreuil, 1703.

Charles le Moyne, Baron de Longeuil, 1725, son of Le Moyne, the famous
fighter and interpreter of Montreal; brother of Le Moyne d'Iberville,
the commander.

Marquis de Beauharnois, 1726.

Count de la Galissoniere, 1747.

Marquis de la Jonquiere, 1749.

Charles le Moyne, Baron de Longeuil, 1752, son of former Governor.

Duquesne,1752.

Marquis de Vaudreuil, 1755, descendant of first Vaudreuil.

{117}

CHAPTER VII

FROM 1672 TO 1688

The fur fairs of Montreal--Customs of people--Shiploads of brides--The
Iroquois and De Tracy--Who first found Ontario?--Through western
Ontario--Up the Great Lakes--Marquette and Jolliet--Frontenac and La
Salle--La Salle rouses enemies--La Salle descends the Mississippi--Death
of La Salle

While Radisson and other coureurs of the woods were ranging the wilds
from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to
Hudson Bay, changes were almost revolutionizing the little colony of New
France. No longer was everything subservient to missions. When
Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance, of Ville-Marie Mission at
Montreal, went home to France to bring out more colonists in 1659, they
learned that the founder of their mission--Dauversiere, the tax
collector--had gone bankrupt. Montreal was penniless, though sixty more
men and thirty-two girls were accompanying the nuns out this very year.
The Sulpician priests had from the first been ardent friends of the
Montrealers. The priests of St. Sulpice now assumed charge of Montreal.
Though "God's Penny" was still collected at the fairs and market places
of Old France for the conversion of Indians at Mont Royal, the fur trade
was rapidly changing the character of the place.

Afraid of the Iroquois raiders, the tribes of the Up-Country now flocked
to Montreal instead of Quebec, where the traders met them annually at the
great Fur Fairs.

No more picturesque scene exists in Canada's past than these Fur Fairs.
Down the rapids of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence bounded the canoes of
the Indian hunters, Hurons and Pottawatomies from Lake Michigan, Crees
and Ojibways from Lake Superior, Iroquois and Eries and Neutrals from
what is now the Province of Ontario, the northern Indians in long birch
canoes light as paper, the Indians of Ontario in dugouts of oak and
walnut. The Fur Fair usually took place between June and August; and the
Viceroy, magnificent in red cloak faced with velvet and ornamented with
gold braid, came up from Quebec {118} for the occasion and occupied a
chair of state under a marquee erected near the Indian tents. Wigwams
then went up like mushrooms, the Huron and Iroquois tents of sewed bark
hung in the shape of a square from four poles, the tepees of the Upper
Indians made of birch and buffalo hides, hung on poles crisscrossed at
the top to a peak, spreading in wide circle to the ground. Usually the
Fur Fair occupied a great common between St. Paul Street and the river.
Furs unpacked, there stalked among the tents great sachems glorious in
robes of painted buckskin garnished with wampum, Indian children stark
naked, young braves flaunting and boastful, wearing headdresses with
strings of eagle quills reaching to the ground, each quill signifying an
enemy taken. Then came "the peddlers,"--the fur merchants,--unpacking
their goods to tempt the Indians, men of the colonial noblesse famous in
history, the Forests and Le Chesnays and Le Bers. Here, too, gorgeous in
finery, bristling with firearms, were the bushrovers, the interpreters,
the French voyageurs, who had to come out of the wilds once every two
years to renew their licenses to trade. There was Charles Le Moyne, son
of an innkeeper of Dieppe, who had come to Montreal as interpreter and
won such wealth as trader that his family became members of the French
aristocracy. Two of his descendants became governors of Canada; and the
history of his sons is the history of Canada's most heroic age. There
was Louis Jolliet, who had studied for the Jesuit priesthood but turned
fur trader among the tribes of Lake Michigan. There was Daniel Greysolon
Duluth, a man of good birth, ample means, and with the finest house in
Montreal, who had turned bushrover, gathered round him a band of three or
four hundred lawless, dare-devil French hunters, and now roamed the woods
from Detroit halfway to Hudson Bay, swaying the Indians in favor of
France and ruling the wilds, sole lord of the wilderness. There were
Groseillers and Radisson and a shy young man of twenty-five who had
obtained a seigniory from the Sulpicians at Lachine--Robert Cavelier de
La Salle. Sometimes, too, Father Marquette came down with his Indians
from the missions on Lake Superior. Maisonneuve, {119} too, was there,
grieving, no doubt, to see this Kingdom of Heaven, which he had set up on
earth, becoming more and more a kingdom of this world. Later, when the
Hundred Associates lost their charter and Canada became a Royal Province
governed directly by the Crown, Maisonneuve was deprived of the
government of Montreal and retired to die in obscurity in Paris. Louis
d'Ailleboust, Governor of Montreal when Maisonneuve is absent, Governor
at Quebec when state necessities drag him from religious devotion, moves
also in the gay throng of the Fur Fair. In later days is a famous
character at the Fur Fairs--La Motte Cadillac of Detroit, bushrover and
gentleman like Duluth, but prone to break heads when he comes to town
where the wine is good.

[Illustration: PLAN OF MONTREAL IN 1672]

Trade was regulated by royal license. Only twenty-five canoes a year
were allowed to go to the woods with three men in each, and a license was
good for only two years. Fines, branding, the galleys for life, death,
were the penalties for those who traded without license; but that did not
prevent more than one thousand young Frenchmen running off to the woods
to live like Indians. In fact, there was no other way for the youth of
New {120} France to earn a living. Penniless young noblemen, criminals
escaping the law, the sons of the poorest, all were on the same footing
in the woods. He who could persuade a merchant to outfit him for trade
disappeared in the wilds; and if he came back at all, came back with
wealth of furs and bought off punishment, "wearing sword and lace and
swaggering as if he were a gentleman," the annals of the day complain;
and a long session in the confessional box relieved the prodigal's
conscience from the sins of a life in the woods. If my young gentleman
were rich enough, the past was forgotten, and he was now on the highroad
to distinguished service and perhaps a title.

[Illustration: LA SALLE'S HOUSE NEAR MONTREAL]

In the early days a beaver skin could be bought for a needle or a bell or
a tin mirror; and in spite of all the priests could do to prevent it,
brandy played a shameful part in the trade. In vain the priests preached
against it, and the bishop thundered anathemas. The evils of the brandy
traffic were apparent to all--the Fur Fairs became a bedlam of crime; but
when the Governor called in all the traders to confer on the subject, it
was plain that if the Indians did _not_ obtain liquor from the French,
they would go on down with their furs to the English of New York, and the
French Governor was afraid to forbid the evil.

[Illustration: KITCHEN, CHATEAU DE RAMEZAY, MONTREAL]

The Fur Fair over, the Governor departed for Quebec; the Indians, for
their own land; the bushrovers, for their far wanderings; and there
settled over Montreal for another year drowsy quiet but for the chapel
bells of St. Sulpice and Ville Marie and Bon Secours--the Chapel of Ste.
Anne's Good Help--built close on the verge of the river, that the
voyageurs coming and going might cross themselves as they passed her
spire; drowsy peace but for the chapel chimes ringing . . . ringing . . .
ringing . . . morning . . . noon . . . and night . . . lilting and
singing and calling all New France to prayers. As the last canoe glided
up the river, and sunset silence fell on Montreal, there knelt before the
dimly lighted altars of the chapels, shadow figures--Maisonneuve praying
for his mission; D'Ailleboust, asking Heaven's blessing on the new shrine
down at St. Anne de Beaupre near Quebec, which he had built for the
miraculous {121} healing of physical ills; Dollier de Casson, priest of
the wilds, manly and portly and strong, wilderness fighter for the Cross.
Then the organ swells, and the chant rolls out, and till the next Fur
Fair Montreal is again a mission.

When New France becomes a Crown Colony, the government consists solely
and only of the Sovereign Council, to whom the King transmits his will.
This council consists of the Governor, his administrative officer called
the "Intendant," the bishop, and several of the inhabitants of New France
nominated by the other members of the council. Of elections there are
absolutely none. Popular meetings are forbidden. New France is a
despotism, with the Sovereign Council representing the King. Domestic
disputes, religious quarrels, civil cases, crimes,--all come before the
Sovereign Council. Clients could plead their own cases without a fee, or
hire a notary. Cases are tried by the Sovereign Council. Laws are
passed by it. Fines are imposed and sentences pronounced; but as the
Sovereign Council met only once a week, the management of affairs fell
chiefly to the Intendant, whose palace became known as the Place of
Justice. Of systematic taxation there was none. One fourth of all
beaver went for public revenue. Part of Labrador was reserved as the
King's Domain for trading, and sometimes a duty of ten per cent was
charged on liquor brought into the colony. The stroke of the Sovereign
Council's pen could create a law, and the stroke of the King's pen annul
it. Laws are passed forbidding men, who are not nobles, assuming the
title of Esquire or Sieur on penalty of what would be a $500 fine. "Wood
is not to be piled on the streets." "Chimneys are to be built large
enough to admit a chimney sweep." "Only shingles of oak and walnut may
be used in towns where there is danger of fire." Swearing is punished by
fines, by the disgrace of being led through the streets at the end of a
rope and begging pardon on knees at the church steps, by branding if the
offense be repeated. Murderers are punished by being shot, or exposed in
an iron cage on the cliffs above the St. Lawrence till death {122} comes.
No detail is too small for the Sovereign Council's notice. In fact, a
case is on record where a Mademoiselle Andre is expelled from the colony
for flirting so outrageously with young officers that she demoralizes the
garrison. Mademoiselle avoids the punishment by bribing one of the
officers on the ship where she is placed, and escaping to land in man's
clothing.

The people of New France were regulated in every detail of their lives by
the Church as well as the Sovereign Council. For trading brandy to the
Indians, Bishop Laval thunders excommunication at delinquents; and Bishop
St. Valliere, his successor, publicly rebukes the dames of New France for
wearing low-necked dresses, and curling their hair, and donning gay
ribbons in place of bonnets. "The vanity of dress among women becomes a
greater scandal than before," he complains. "They affect immodest
headdress, with heads uncovered or only concealed under a collection of
ribbons, laces, curls, and other vanities."

[Illustration: LAVAL (After the portrait in Laval University, Quebec)]

The laws came from the King and Sovereign Council. The enforcement of
them depended on the Intendant. As long as he was a man of integrity,
New France might live as happily as a family under a despotic but wise
father. It was when the Intendant became corrupt that the system fell to
pieces. {123} Of all the intendants of New France, one name stands
preeminent, that of Jean Talon, who came to Canada, aged forty, in 1665,
at the time the country became a Crown Province. One of eleven children
of Irish origin, Talon had been educated at the Jesuit College of Paris,
and had served as an intendant in France before coming to Canada.
Officially he was to stand between the King and the colony, to transmit
the commands of one and the wants of the other. He was to stand between
the Governor and the colony, to watch that the Governor did not overstep
his authority and that the colony obeyed the laws. He was to stand
between the Church and the colony, to see that the Church did not usurp
the prerogatives of the Governor and that the people were kept in the
path of right living without having their natural liberties curtailed.
He was, in a word, to accept the thankless task of taking all the cuffs
from the King and the kicks from the colony, all the blame of whatever
went amiss and no credit for what went well.

When Talon came to Canada there were less than two thousand people in the
colony. He wrote frantically to His Royal Master for colonists. "We
cannot depeople France to people Canada," wrote the King; but from his
royal revenue he set aside money yearly to send men to Canada as
soldiers, women as wives. In 1671 one hundred and sixty-five girls were
sent out to be wedded to the French youth. A year later came one hundred
and fifty more. Licenses would not be given to the wood rovers for the
fur trade unless they married. Bachelors were fined unless they quickly
chose a wife from among the King's girls. Promotion was withheld from
the young ensigns and cadets in the army unless they found brides.
Yearly the ships brought girls whom the cures of France had carefully
selected in country parishes. Yearly Talon gave a bounty to the
middle-aged duenna who had safely chaperoned her charges across seas to
the convents of Quebec and Montreal, where the bashful suitors came to
make choice. "We want country girls, who can work," wrote the Intendant;
and girls who could work the King sent, instructing Talon to mate as many
as he {124} could to officers of the Carignan Regiment, so that the
soldiers would be likely to turn settlers. Results: by 1674 Canada had a
population of six thousand seven hundred; by 1684, of nearly twelve
thousand, not counting the one thousand bush lopers who roamed the woods
and married squaws.

Between Acadia and Quebec lay wilderness. Jean Talon opened a road
connecting the two far-separated provinces. The Sovereign Council had
practically outlawed the bush lopers. Talon pronounced trade free, and
formed them into companies of bush fighters--defenders of the colony.
Instead of being wild-wood bandits, men like Duluth at Lake Superior and
La Motte Cadillac at Detroit became commanders, holding vast tribes loyal
to France. For years there had been legends of mines. Talon opened
mines at Gaspe and Three Rivers and Cape Breton. All clothing had
formerly been imported from France. Talon had the inhabitants
taught--and they badly needed it, for many of their children ran naked as
Indians--to weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw
for hats,--all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a
habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a
holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made.
"The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened
their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by
encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young Frenchmen for
deserting to the English, Talon asked the King to grant titles of
nobility to those who were loyal, like the Godefrois and the Denis' and
the Le Moynes and young Chouart Groseillers, son of Radisson's
brother-in-law, so that there sprang up a Canadian noblesse which was as
graceful with the frying pan of a night camp fire in the woods as with
the steps of a stately dance in the governor's ballroom. Above all did
Talon encourage the bush-rovers in their far wanderings to explore new
lands for France.

New France had not forgotten the Iroquois treachery to the French colony
at Onondaga. Iroquois raid and ambuscade kept the hostility of these
sleepless foes fresh in French memory. {125} When Jean Talon came to
Canada as intendant, there had come as governor Courcelle, with the
Marquis de Tracy as major general of all the French forces in
America,--the West Indies as well as Canada. The Carignan Regiment of
soldiers seasoned in European campaigns had been sent to protect the
colonists from Indian raid; and it was determined to strike the Iroquois
Confederacy a blow that would forever put the fear of the French in their
hearts.

Richelieu River was still the trail of the Mohawk warrior; and De Tracy
sent his soldiers to build forts on this stream at Sorel and
Chambly--named after officers of the regiment. January, 1666, Courcelle,
the Governor, set out on snowshoes to invade the Iroquois Country with
five hundred men, half Canadian bushrovers, half regular soldiers. By
some mistake the snow-covered trail to the Mohawks was missed, the wrong
road followed, and the French Governor found himself among the Dutch at
Schenectady. March rains had set in. Through the leafless forests in
driving sleet and rain retreated the French. Sixty had perished from
exposure and disease before Courcelle led his men back to the Richelieu.
The Mohawk warriors showed their contempt for this kind of white-man
warfare by raiding some French hunters on Lake Champlain and killing a
young nephew of De Tracy.

Nevertheless, on second thought, twenty-four Indian deputies proceeded to
Quebec with the surviving captives to sue for peace. De Tracy was ready
for them. Solemnly the peace pipe had been puffed and solemnly the peace
powwow held. The Mohawk chief was received in pompous state at the
Governor's table. Heated with wine and mistaking French courtesy for
fear, the warrior grew boastful at the white chief's table.

"This is the hand," he exclaimed, proudly stretching out his right arm,
"this is the hand that split the head of your young man, O Onontio!"

"Then by the power of Heaven," thundered the Marquis de Tracy, springing
to his feet ablaze with indignation, "it is the hand that shall never
split another head!"

{126} Forthwith the body of the great Mohawk chief dangled a scarecrow to
the fowls of the air; and the other terrified deputies tore breathlessly
back for the Iroquois land with such a story as one may guess.

With thirteen hundred men and three hundred boats the Marquis de Tracy
and Courcelle set out from the St. Lawrence in October for the Iroquois
cantons. Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal bushrover, led six hundred
wild-wood followers in their buckskin coats and beaded moccasins, with
hair flying to the wind like Indians; and one hundred Huron braves were
also in line with the Canadians. The rest of the forces were of the
Carignan Regiment. Dollier de Casson, the Sulpician priest, powerful of
frame as De Tracy himself, marched as chaplain.

[Illustration: A MAP IN THE RELATION OF 1662-1663 (This map includes
Lake Ontario and the Iroquois Country. It shows the relative positions
of the Five Nations and Fort d'Orange (Albany). It also gives plans of
the forts on the Richelieu and shows their location)]

Never had such an expedition been seen before on the St. Lawrence. Drums
beat reveille at peep of dawn. Fifes outshrilled the roar of rapids, and
stately figures in gold braid {127} and plumed hats glided over the
waters of the Richelieu among the painted forests of the frost-tinted
maples. Indians have a way of conveying news that modern trappers
designate as "the moccasin telegram." "Moccasin telegram" now carried
news of the coming army to the Iroquois villages, and the alarm ran like
wildfire from Mohawk to Onondaga and from Onondaga to Seneca. When the
French army struck up the Mohawk River, and to beat of drum charged in
full fury out of the rain-dripping forests across the stubble fields to
attack the first palisaded village, they found it desolate, deserted,
silent as the dead, though winter stores crammed the abandoned houses and
wildest confusion showed that the warriors had fled in panic. So it was
with the next village and the next. The Iroquois had stampeded in blind
flight, and the only show of opposition was a wild whoop here and there
from ambush. De Tracy took possession of the land for France, planted a
cross, and ordered the villages set on fire. For a time, at least, peace
was assured with the Iroquois.

Who first discovered the Province of Ontario? Before Champlain had
ascended the Ottawa, or the Jesuits established their missions south of
Lake Huron, young men sent out as wood rovers had canoed up the Ottawa
and gone westward to the land of the Sweet Water Seas. Was it Vignau,
the romancer, or Nicolet, the coureur de bois, or the boy Etienne Brule,
who first saw what has been called the Garden of Canada, the rolling
meadows and wooded hills that lie wedged in between the Upper and the
Lower of the Great Lakes? Tradition says it was Brule; but however that
may be, little was known of what is now Ontario except in the region of
the old Jesuit missions around Georgian Bay. It was not even known that
Michigan and Huron were _two_ lakes. The Sulpicians of Montreal had a
mission at the Bay of Quinte on Lake Ontario, and the south shore of the
lake, where it touched on Iroquois territory, was known to the Jesuits;
but from Quinte Bay to Detroit--a distance equal to that from New York to
Chicago, or London to Italy--was an unknown world.

{128} But to return to the explorations which Jean Talon, the Intendant,
had set in motion--

When Dollier de Casson, the soldier who had become Sulpician priest,
returned from the campaign against the Iroquois, he had been sent as a
missionary to the Nipissing Country. There he heard among the Indians of
a shorter route to the Great River of the West--the Mississippi--than by
the Ottawa and Sault Ste. Marie. The Indians told him if he would ascend
the St. Lawrence to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, he could portage overland
to the Beautiful River,--Ohio,--which would carry him down to the
Mississippi.

The Sulpicians had been encouraged by Talon in order to eclipse and hold
in check the Jesuits. They were eager to send their missionaries to the
new realm of this Great River, and hurried Dollier de Casson down to
Quebec to obtain Intendant Talon's permission.

There, curiously enough, Dollier de Casson met Cavalier de La Salle, the
shy young seigneur of La Chine, intent on almost the same aim,--to
explore the Great River. Where the Sulpicians had granted him his
seigniory above Montreal he had built a fort, which soon won the nickname
of La Chine,--China,--because its young master was continually
entertaining Iroquois Indians within the walls, to question them of the
Great River, which might lead to China.

Governor Courcelle and Intendant Talon ordered the priest and young
seigneur to set out together on their explorations. The Sulpicians were
to bear all expenses, buying back La Salle's lands to enable him to
outfit canoes with the money. Father Galinee, who understood map making,
accompanied Dollier de Casson, and the expedition of seven birch canoes,
with three white men in each, and two dugouts with Seneca Indians, who
had been visiting La Salle, set out from Montreal on July 6, 1669. Not a
leader in the party was over thirty-five years of age. Dollier de
Casson, the big priest, was only thirty-three and La Salle barely
twenty-six. Corn meal was carried as food. For the rest, they were to
depend on chance shots. With {129} numerous portages, keeping to the
south shore of the St. Lawrence because that was best known to the Seneca
guides, the canoes passed up Lake St. Louis and Lake St. Francis and
glided through the sylvan fairyland of the Thousand Islands, coming out
in August on Lake Ontario, "which," says Galinee, "appeared to us like a
great sea." Striking south, they appealed to the Seneca Iroquois for
guides to the Ohio, but the Senecas were so intent on torturing some
prisoners recently captured, that they paid no heed to the appeal. A
month was wasted, and the white men proceeded with Indian slaves for
guides, still along the south shore of the lake.

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