Canada: the Empire of the North

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

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[Illustration: GALINEE'S MAP OF THE GREAT LAKES, 1669 (The next oldest
chart to that of Champlain)]

At the mouth of Niagara River they could hear the far roar of the famous
falls, which Indian legend said "fell over rocks twice the height of the
highest pine tree." The turbulent torrent of the river could not be
breasted, so they did not see the falls, but rounded on up Lake Ontario
to the region now near the city of Hamilton. Here they had prepared to
portage overland to some stream that would bring them down to Lake Erie,
when, to their amazement, they learned from a passing Indian camp that
two Frenchmen were on their way down this very lake from searching copper
mines on Lake Superior.

{130} The two Frenchmen were Louis Jolliet, yet in his early twenties, to
become famous as an explorer of the Mississippi, and one Monsieur Jean
Pere, soldier of fortune, who was to set France and England by the ears
on Hudson Bay. September 24, as La Salle and Dollier were dragging their
canoes through the autumn-colored sumacs of the swamp, there plunged from
among the russet undergrowth the two wanderers from the north,--Jolliet
and Pere, dumb with amazement to meet a score of men toiling through this
tenantless wilderness. The two parties fell on each other's necks with
delight and camped together. Jolliet told a story that set the
missionaries' zeal on fire and inflamed La Salle with mad eagerness to
pass on to the goal of his discoveries. Jolliet and Pere had not found
the copper mine for Talon on Lake Superior, but they had learned two
important secrets from the Indians. First, if Iroquois blocked the way
up the Ottawa, there was clear, easy water way down to Quebec by Lake
Huron and Lake Ste. Claire and Lake Erie. Jolliet's guide had brought
them down this way, first of white men to traverse the Great Lakes, only
leaving them as they reached Lake Erie and advising them to portage
across up Grand River to avoid Niagara Falls. Second, the Indians told
him the Ohio could be reached by way of Lake Erie.

Sitting round the camp fires near what is now Port Stanley, La Salle
secretly resolved to go on down to Quebec with Jolliet and rearrange his
plans independent of the missionaries. The portaging through swamps had
affected La Salle's health, and he probably judged he could make quicker
time unaccompanied by missionaries. As for Galinee and Dollier, when
they knelt in prayer that night, they fervently besought Heaven to let
them carry the Gospel of truth to those benighted heathen west of Lake
Michigan, of whom Jolliet told. Dollier de Casson sent a letter by
Jolliet to Montreal, begging the Sulpicians to establish a mission near
what is now Toronto. Early next morning an altar was laid on the propped
paddles of the canoes and solemn service held. La Salle and his four
canoes went back to Montreal with Jolliet and Pere; Dollier and Galinee
coasted along the shores of Lake Erie westward.

{131} It was October. The forests were leafless, the weather damp, the
lake too stormy for the frail canoes. As game was plentiful, the priests
decided to winter on a creek near Port Dover. Here log houses were
knocked up, and the servants dispersed moose hunting for winter supplies.
Then followed the most beautiful season of the year in the peninsula of
Ontario, Indian summer, dreamy warm days after the first cold, filling
the forest with a shimmer of golden light, the hills with heat haze,
while the air was odorous with smells of nuts and dried leaves and grapes
hanging thick from wild vines. "It was," writes Galinee, "simply an
Earthly Paradise, the most beautiful region that ever I have seen in my
life, with open woods and meadows and rivers and game in plenty." In
this Earthly Paradise the priests passed the winter, holding services
three times a week--"a winter that ought to be worth ten years of any
other kind of life" Dollier calculated, counting up masses and vespers
and matins. Sometimes when the snow lay deep and the weird voices of the
wind hallooed with bugle sound through the lonely forest, the priests
listening inside fancied that they heard "the hunting of
Arthur,"--unearthly huntsmen coursing the air after unearthly game.

March 23 (Sunday), 1670, the company paraded down to Lake Erie from their
sheltered quarters, and, erecting a cross, took possession of this land
for France. Then they launched their boats to ascend the other Sweet
Water Seas. The preceding autumn the priests had lost some of their
baggage, and now, in camp near Point Pelee, a sweeping wave carried off
the packs in which were all the holy vessels and equipments for the
mission chapel. They decided to go back to Montreal by way of Sault Ste.
Marie, and ascended to Lake Ste. Claire. Game had been scarce for some
days, the weather tempestuous, and now the priests thought they had found
the cause. On one of the rocks of Lake Ste. Claire was a stone, to which
the Indians offered sacrifices for safe passage on the lakes. To the
priests the rude drawing of a face seemed graven images of
paganism,--signs of Satan, who had baffled their hunting and caused loss
{132} of their packs. "I consecrated one of my axes to break this god of
stone, and, having yoked our canoes abreast, we carried the largest
pieces to the middle of the river and cast them in. God immediately
rewarded us, for we killed a deer." Following the east shore of Lake
Huron, the priests came, on May 25, to Sault Ste. Marie, where the
Jesuits Dablon and Marquette had a mission. Three days late, they
embarked by way of the Ottawa for Montreal, where they arrived on June
18, 1670.

Meanwhile, what had become of Jolliet and Pere and La Salle?

They have no sooner reached Quebec with their report than Talon orders
St. Lusson to go north and take possession at Sault Ste. Marie of all
these unknown lands for France. Jolliet accompanies St. Lusson.
Nicholas Perrot, a famous bushrover, goes along to summon the Indians,
and the ceremony takes place on June 14, 1671, in the presence of the
Jesuits at the Sault, by which the King of France is pronounced lord
paramount of all these regions.

When Jolliet comes down again to Quebec, he finds Count Frontenac has
come as governor, and Jean Talon, the Intendant, is sailing for France.
Before leaving, Talon has recommended Jolliet as a fit man to explore the
Great River of the West. With him is commissioned Jacques Marquette, the
Jesuit, who has labored among the Indians west of Lake Superior. The two
men set out in birch canoes, with smoked meat for provisions, from
Michilimackinac mission, May 17, 1673, for Green Bay, Lake Michigan.
Ascending Fox River on June 17, they induce the Mascoutin Indians, who
had years ago conducted Radisson by this same route, to pilot them across
the portage to the headwaters of the Wisconsin River.

Their way lies directly across that wooded lake region, which has in our
generation become the resort first of the lumberman, then of the
tourist,--a rolling, wooded region of rare sylvan beauty, park-like
forests interspersed with sky-colored lakes. Six weeks from the time
they had left the Sault, Wisconsin River carried their canoe out on the
swift eddies of a mighty river {133} flowing south,--the Mississippi.
For the first time the boat of a Canadian voyageur glided down its waters.

Each night as the explorers landed to sleep under the stars, the tilted
canoe inverted with end on a log as roof in case of rain, Marquette fell
to knees and invoked the Virgin's aid on the expedition; and each morning
as Jolliet launched the boat out on the waters through the early mist, he
headed closely along shore on the watch for sign or footprint of Indian.

The river gathered volume as it rolled southward, carving the clay cliffs
of its banks in a thousand fantastic forms. Where the bank was broken,
the prairies were seen in heaving seas of grass billowing to the wind
like water, herds of countless buffalo pasturing knee-deep. To Marquette
and Jolliet, burning with enthusiasm, it seemed as if they were finding a
new world for France half as large as all Europe. For two weeks not a
sail, not a canoe, not a soul did they see. Then the river carried them
into the country of the Illinois, past Illinois Indians who wore French
clothing, and pictured rocks where the Indians had painted their sign
language. There was no doubt now in the explorers' minds,--the
Mississippi did not lead to China but emptied in the Gulf of Mexico. A
furious torrent of boiling muddy water pouring in on the right forewarned
the Missouri; and in a few more days they passed on the left the clear
current of Beautiful River,--the Ohio.

It was now midsummer. The heat was heavy and humid. Marquette's health
began to suffer, and the two explorers spread an awning of sailcloth
above the canoe as they glided with the current. Towards the Arkansas,
Indians appeared on the banks, brandishing weapons of Spanish make.
Though Jolliet, with a peace pipe from the Illinois Indians, succeeded in
reassuring the hostiles, it was unsafe to go farther south. They had
established the fact,--the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of
Mexico,--and on July 17 turned back. It was harder going against stream,
which did not mend Marquette's health; so when the Illinois Indians
offered to show them a shorter way to Lake Michigan, they followed up
Illinois River and crossed the Chicago portage {134} to Lake Michigan.
Jolliet went on down to Quebec with his report. Marquette remained half
ill to establish missions in Michigan. Here, traveling with his Indians
in 1675, the priest died of the malady contracted in the Mississippi
heat, and was buried in a lonely grave of the wildwood wilderness where
he had wandered. Louis Jolliet married and settled down on his seigniory
of Anticosti Island.

Though he had as yet little to show for the La Chine estate, which he had
sacrificed, La Salle had not been idle, but was busy pushing French
dominion by another route to the Mississippi.

Count Frontenac had come to New France as all the viceroys
came--penniless, to mend his fortunes; and as the salary of the Governor
did not exceed $3000 a year, the only way to wealth was by the fur trade;
but which way to look for fur trade! Hudson Bay, thanks to Radisson, was
in the hands of England. Taudoussac was farmed out to the King. The
merchants of Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal absorbed all the furs
of the tribes from the Ottawa; and New England drained the Iroquois land.
There remained but one avenue of new trade, and that was west of the
Lakes, where Jolliet had been.

Taking only La Salle into his confidence, Frontenac issued a royal
mandate commanding all the officers and people of New France to
contribute a quota of men for the establishment of a fort on Lake
Ontario. By June 28, 1673, the same year that Jolliet had been
dispatched for the Mississippi, there had gathered at La Chine, La
Salle's old seigniory near Montreal, four hundred armed men and one
hundred and twenty canoes, which Frontenac ordered painted gaudily in red
and blue. With these the Governor moved in stately array up the St.
Lawrence, setting the leafy avenues of the Thousand Islands ringing with
trumpet and bugle, and sweeping across Lake Ontario in martial lines to
the measured stroke of a hundred paddles.

Long since, La Salle's scouts had scurried from canton to canton,
rallying the Iroquois to the council of great "Onontio." At break of
day, July 13, while the sunrise was just bursting up {135} over the lake,
Frontenac, with soldiers drawn up under arms, himself in velvet cloak
laced with gold braid, met the chiefs of the Iroquois Confederacy at the
place to be known for years as Fort Frontenac, now known as Kingston, a
quiet little city at the entrance of Lake Ontario on the north shore.

[Illustration: ROBERT DE LA SALLE]

Ostensibly the powwow was to maintain peace. In reality, it was to
attract the Iroquois, and all the tribes with whom they traded, away from
the English, down to Frontenac's new fort with their furs. It is a
question if all the military pomp deceived a living soul. Before the
Governor had set his sappers to work on the foundations of a fort, the
merchants of Montreal--the Le Bers and Le Moynes and Le Chesnayes and Le
Forests--were furious with jealousy. Undoubtedly Fort Frontenac would be
the most valuable fur post in America.

{136}

[Illustration: OLD PLAN OF FORT FRONTENAC]

Determined to have the support of the Court, where his wife was in high
favor, Count Frontenac dispatched La Salle to France in 1674 with letters
of strongest recommendation, which, no doubt, Jean Talon, the former
Intendant, indorsed on the spot. La Salle's case was a strong one. He
was to offer to found a line of forts establishing French dominion from
Lake Ontario to the valley of the Mississippi, which Jolliet had just
explored. In return, he asked for patent of nobility and the grant of a
seigniory at Fort Frontenac; in other words, the monopoly of the furs
there, which would easily clear him $20,000 a year. It has never been
proved, but one may suspect that his profits were to be divided with
Count Frontenac. Both requests were at once granted; and La Salle came
back to a hornet's nest of enmity in Canada. Space forbids to tell of
the means taken to defeat him; for, by promising to support Recollet
friars at his fort instead of Jesuits, La Salle had added {137} to the
enmity of the merchants, the hatred of the Jesuits. Poison was put in
his food. Iroquois were stirred up to hostility against him.

Meanwhile no enmity checks his ardor. He has replaced the wooden walls
of Fort Frontenac with stone, mounted ten cannon, manned the fort with
twenty soldiers, maintained more than forty workmen, cleared one hundred
acres for crops, and in 1677 is off again for France to ask permission to
build another fort above Niagara. This time, when La Salle comes out, he
is accompanied by a man famous in American annals, a soldier of fortune
from Italy, cousin of Duluth the bushrover, one Henry Tonty, a man with a
copper hand, his arm having been shattered in war, who presently comes to
have repute among the Indians as a great "medicine man," because blows
struck by that metal hand have a way of being effective. By 1678 the
fort is built above Niagara. By 1679 a vessel of forty-five tons and ten
cannon is launched on Lake Erie, the _Griffon_, the first vessel to plow
the waters of the Great Lakes. As she slides off her skids, August 17,
to go up to Michilimackinac for a cargo of furs, _Te Deum_ is chanted
from the new fort, and Louis Hennepin, the Dutch friar, standing on deck
in full vestments, asks Heaven's blessing on the ship's venture.

Scant is the courtesy of the Michilimackinac traders as the _Griffon's_
guns roar salute to the fort. Cold is the welcome of the Jesuits as La
Salle enters their chapel dressed in scarlet mantle trimmed with gold.
And to be frank, though La Salle was backed by the King, he had no right
to trade at Michilimackinac, for his monopoly explicitly states he shall
not interfere with the trade of the north, but barter only with the
tribes towards the Illinois. Never mind! he loads his ships to the water
line with furs to pay his increasing debts, and sends the ship on down to
Niagara with the cargo, while he and Tonty, with different parties,
proceed to the south end of Lake Michigan to cross the Chicago portage
leading to the Mississippi. Did the jealous traders bribe the pilot to
sink the ship to bottom? Who knows? Certain it is when Tonty and La
Salle went down the {138} Illinois early in the new year of 1680, news of
disasters came thick and fast. The _Griffon_ had sunk with all her
cargo. The ship from France with the year's supplies for La Salle at
Fort Frontenac had been wrecked at the mouth of the St. Lawrence; and
worse than these losses, which meant financial ruin, here among the
Illinois Indians were Mascoutin Indian spies bribed to stir up trouble
for La Salle. Small wonder that he named the fort built here Fort
Crevecoeur,--Fort Broken Heart.

[Illustration: THE BUILDING OF THE _GRIFFON_ (After the engraving in
Father Hennepin's "Nouvelle Decouverte," Amsterdam, 1704)]

If La Salle had been fur trader only, as his enemies averred, and not
patriot, one wonders why he did not sit still in his fort at Frontenac
and draw his profits of $20,000 a year, instead of risking loss and
poison and ruin and calumny and death by chasing the phantom of his great
desire to found a New France on the Mississippi.

Never pausing to repine, he orders Hennepin, the friar, to take two
voyageurs and descend Illinois River as far as the Mississippi. Tonty he
leaves in charge of the Illinois fort. He {139} himself proceeds
overland the width of half a continent, to Fort Frontenac and Montreal.

Friar Hennepin's adventures have been told in his own book of marvels,
half truth, half lies. Jolliet, it will be remembered, had explored the
Great River south of the Wisconsin. Hennepin struck up from the mouth of
the Illinois, to explore north, and he found enough adventure to satisfy
his marvel-loving soul. The Sioux captured him somewhere near the
Wisconsin. In the wanderings of his captivity he went as far north as
the Falls of St. Anthony, the site of Minnesota's Twin Cities, and he
finally fell in with a band of Duluth's bushrovers from Kaministiquia
(modern Fort William), Lake Superior.

The rest of the story of La Salle on the Mississippi is more the history
of the United States than of Canada, and must be given in few words.

When La Salle returned from interviewing his creditors on the St.
Lawrence, he found the Illinois Indians dispersed by hostile Iroquois
whom his enemies had hounded on. Fort Crevecoeur had been destroyed and
plundered by mutineers among his own men. Only Tonty and two or three
others had remained faithful, and they had fled for their lives to Lake
Michigan. Not knowing where Tonty had taken refuge, La Salle pushed on
down the Illinois River, and for the first time beheld the Mississippi,
the goal of all his dreams; but anxiety for his lost men robbed the event
of all jubilation. Once more united with Tonty at Michilimackinac, La
Salle returned dauntlessly to the Illinois. Late in the fall of 1681 he
set out with eighteen Indians and twenty Frenchmen from Lake Michigan for
the Illinois. February of 1682 saw the canoes floating down the
winter-swollen current of the Illinois River for the Mississippi, which
was reached on the 6th. A week later the river had cleared of ice, and
the voyageurs were camped amid the dense forests at the mouth of the
Missouri. The weather became warmer. Trees were donning their bridal
attire of spring and the air was heavy with the odor of blossoms.
Instead of high cliffs, carved fantastic by {140} the waters, came
low-lying swamps, full of reeds, through which the canoes glided and lost
themselves. Camp after camp of strange Indian tribes they visited, till
finally they came to villages where the Indians were worshipers of the
sun and wore clothing of Spanish make. By these signs La Salle guessed
he was nearing the Gulf of Mexico. Fog lay longer on the river of
mornings now. Ground was lower. They were nearing the sea. April 6 the
river seemed to split into three channels. Different canoes followed
each channel. The muddy river water became salty. Then the blue sky
line opened to the fore through the leafy vista of the forest-grown
banks. Another paddle stroke, and the canoes shot out on the Gulf of
Mexico,--La Salle erect and silent and stern as was his wont. April 9,
1682, a cross is planted with claim to this domain for France. To fire
of musketry and chant of Te Deum a new empire is created for King Louis
of France. Louisiana is its name.

Take a map of North America. Look at it. What had the pathfinders of
New France accomplished? Draw a line from Cape Breton to James Bay, from
James Bay down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Gulf of
Mexico across to Cape Breton. Inside the triangle lies the French empire
of the New World,--in area the size of half Europe. That had the
pathfinders accomplished for France.

La Salle was too ill to proceed at once from the Mississippi to Quebec.
As long as Frontenac remained governor, La Salle could rely on his hungry
creditors and vicious enemies--now eager as wolves, to confiscate his
furs and seize his seigniory at Fort Frontenac--being restrained by the
strong hand of the Viceroy; but while La Salle lay ill at the Illinois
fort, Frontenac was succeeded by La Barre as viceroy; and the new
Governor was a weak, avaricious old man, ready to believe any evil tale
carried to his ears. He at once sided with La Salle's enemies, and wrote
the French King that the explorer's "_head was turned_"; that La Salle
"_accomplished nothing, but spent his life leading bandits through the
forests, pillaging Indians; {141} that all the story of discovering the
Mississippi was a fabrication_." When La Salle came from the wilderness
he found himself a ruined man. Fort Frontenac had been seized by his
enemies. Supplies for the Mississippi had been stopped, and officers
were on their way to seize the forts there.

Leaving Tonty in charge of his interests, La Salle sailed for France
where he had a strong friend at court in Frontenac. As it happened,
Spain and France were playing at the game of checkmating each other; and
it pleased the French King to restore La Salle's forts and to give the
Canadian explorer four ships to colonize the Mississippi by way of the
Gulf of Mexico. This was to oust Spain from her ancient claim on the
gulf; but Beaujeu, the naval commander of the expedition, was not in
sympathy with La Salle. Beaujeu was a noble by birth; La Salle, only a
noble of the merchant classes. The two bickered and quarreled from the
first. By some blunder, when the ships reached the Gulf of Mexico, laden
with colonists, in December of 1684, they missed the mouth of the
Mississippi and anchored off Texas. The main ship sailed back to France.
Two others were wrecked, and La Salle in desperation, after several trips
seeking the Mississippi, resolved to go overland by way of the
Mississippi valley and the Illinois to obtain aid in Canada for his
colonists. All the world knows what happened. Near Trinity River in
Texas some of his men mutinied. Early in the morning of the 19th of
March, 1687, La Salle left camp with a friar and Indian to ascertain what
was delaying the plotters, who had not returned from the hunt. Suddenly
La Salle seemed overwhelmed by a great sadness. He spoke of death. A
moment later, catching sight of one of the delinquents, he had called
out. A shot rang from the underbush; another shot; and La Salle reeled
forward dead, with a bullet wound gaping in his forehead. The body of
the man who had won a new empire for France was stripped and left naked,
a prey to the foxes and carrion birds. So perished Robert Cavelier de La
Salle, aged forty-four.

Nor need the fate of the mutineers be told here. The fate of mutineers
is the same the world over. Having slain their {142} commander, they
fell on one another and perished, either at one another's hands or among
the Indians. As for the colonists of men, women, and girls left in
Texas, the few who were not massacred by the Indians fell into the hands
of the Spaniards. La Salle's debts at the time of his death were what
would now be half a million dollars. His life had ended in what the
world calls ruin, but France entered into his heritage.

With the passing of Robert de La Salle passes the heroic age of
Canada,--its age of youth's dream. Now was to come its manhood,--its
struggles, its wars, its nation building, working out a greater destiny
than any dream of youth.

{143}

CHAPTER VIII

FROM 1679 TO 1713

Radisson quarrels with company--Up Labrador coast--Radisson captures
his rivals--Radisson ordered back to England--Death of Radisson--Jan
Pere the spy--The raid on Moose Factory--Sargeant besieged

Before leaving for France, Jean Talon, the Intendant, had set another
exploration in motion. English trade was now in full sway on Hudson
Bay. In possession of the Mississippi, the Ohio, the Illinois, the
Great Lakes, France controlled all avenues of approach to the Great
Northwest except Hudson Bay. This she had lost through injustice to
Radisson; and already the troublesome question had come up,--What was
to be the boundary between the fur-trading domain of the French
northward from the St. Lawrence and the fur-trading domain of the
English southward from Hudson Bay. Fewer furs came down to Quebec from
Labrador, the King's Domain, from Kaministiquia (Fort William), the
stamping ground of Duluth, the forest ranger. The furs of these
regions were being drained by the English of Hudson Bay.

Talon determined to put a stop to this, and had advised Frontenac
accordingly. August, 1671, Governor Frontenac dispatched the English
Jesuit--Father Albanel--with French guides and Indian voyageurs to set
up French arms on Hudson Bay and to bear letters to Radisson and
Groseillers. The journey was terrific. I have told the story
elsewhere. Autumn found the voyageurs beyond the forested shores of
the Saguenay and Lake St. John, ascending a current full of boiling
cascades towards Lake Mistassini. Then the frost-painted woods became
naked as antlers, with wintry winds setting the dead boughs crashing;
and the ice, thin as mica, forming at the edges of the streams, had
presently thickened too hard for the voyageurs to break with their
paddles. Albanel and his comrades wintered in the Montaignais' lodges,
which were banked so heavily with snow that scarcely a breath of pure
air could penetrate the {144} stench. By day the priest wandered from
lodge to lodge, preaching the gospel. At night he was to be found afar
in the snow-padded solitudes of the forest engaged in prayer. At last,
in the spring of 1672, thaw set the ice loose and the torrents rushing.
Downstream on June 10 launched Albanel, running many a wild-rushing
rapid, taking the leap with the torrential waters over the lesser
cataracts, and avoiding the larger falls by long detours over rocks
slippery as ice, through swamps to a man's armpits. The hinterland of
Hudson Bay, with its swamps and rough portages and dank forests of
unbroken windfall, was then and is to-day the hardest canoe trip in
North America; but towards the end of June the French canoes glided out
on the arm of the sea called James Bay, hoisted the French flag, and in
solemn council with the Indians presented gifts to induce them to come
down the Saguenay to Quebec. Fort Rupert, the Hudson's Bay Company's
post, consisted of two barrack-like log structures. When Albanel came
to the houses he found not a soul, only boxes of provisions and one
lonely dog.

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