Canada: the Empire of the North

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

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When Champlain came out from France in 1610, he would have repeated the
raid; but a fight with invading Iroquois at the mouth of the Richelieu
delayed him, and the expiration of De Monts' monopoly took him back to
France.

In 1611 trade was free to all comers. Fur traders flocked to the St.
Lawrence like birds of passage. The only way to secure furs for De
Monts was to go higher up the river beyond Quebec; and ascending to
Montreal, Champlain built a factory called Place Royale, with a wall of
bricks to resist the ice jam. This was the third French fort Champlain
helped to found in Canada.

Presently, on his tracks to Montreal, came a flock of free traders.
When the Hurons come shooting down the foamy rapids--here, a pole-shove
to avoid splitting canoes on a rock in mid-rush; there, a dexterous
whirl from the trough of a back wash--the fur traders fire off their
guns in welcome. The Hurons are suspicious. What means it, these
white men, coming in such numbers, firing off their "sticks that
thunder"? At midnight they come stealthily to Champlain's lodge to
complain. Peltries and canoes, the Indians transfer themselves above
the rapids, and later conduct Champlain down those same white
whirlpools to the uneasy amaze of the explorer.

It is clear to Champlain he must obtain royal patronage to stem the
boldness of these free traders. In France he obtains the favor of the
Bourbons; and he obtains it more generously because the world of Paris
has gone agog about a fabulous tale that sets the court by the ears.
From the first Champlain has encouraged young Frenchmen to winter with
the Indian hunters and learn the languages. Brule is with them now.
Nicholas Vignau has just come back from the Ottawa with a fairy story
of a marvelous voyage he has made with the Indians through {49} the
forests to the Sea of the North--the sea where Henry Hudson, the
Englishman, had perished. As the romance gains the ear of the public,
the young man waxes eloquent in detail, and tells of the number of
Englishmen living there. Champlain is ordered to follow this
exploration up.

May, 1613, he is back at Montreal, opposite that island named St.
Helen, after the frail girl who became his wife, preparing to ascend
the Ottawa with four white men--among them Vignau. What Vignau's
sensations were, one may guess. The vain youth had not meant his love
of notoriety to carry him so far; and he must have known that every
foot of the way led him nearer detection; but the liar is always a
gambler with chance. Mishap, bad weather, Indian war--might drive
Champlain back. Vignau assumed bold face.

The path followed was that river trail up the Ottawa which was to
become the highway of empire's westward march for two and a half
centuries. Mount Royal is left to the rear as the voyageurs traverse
the Indian trail through the forests along the rapids to that launching
place named after the patron saint of French voyageur--Ste. Anne's.
The river widens into the silver expanse of Two Mountains Lake, rimmed
to the sky line by the vernal hills, with a silence and solitude over
all, as when sunlight first fell on face of man. Here the eagle utters
a lonely scream from the top of some blasted pine; there a covey of
ducks, catching sight of the coming canoes, dive to bottom, only to
reappear a gunshot away. Where the voyageurs land for their nooning,
or camp at nightfall, or pause to gum the splits in their birch canoes,
the forest in the full flush of spring verdure is a fairy woods.
Against the elms and the maples leafing out in airy tracery that
reveals the branches bronze among the budding green, stand the silver
birches, and the somber hemlocks, and the resinous pines. Upbursting
from the mold below is another miniature forest--a forest of ferns
putting out the hairy fronds that in another month will be above the
height of a man. Overhead, like a flame of fire, flashes the scarlet
tanager with his querulous call; or the oriole flits from branch to
branch, {50} fluting his springtime notes; or the yellow warbler
balances on topmost spray to sing his crisp love song on the long
journey north to nest on Hudson Bay. And over all and in all,
intangible as light, intoxicating as wine, is the tang of the clear,
unsullied, crystal air, setting the blood coursing with new life.
Little wonder that Brule, and Vignau, and other young men whom
Champlain sent to the woods to learn wood lore, became so enamored of
the life that they never returned to civilization.

Presently the sibilant rush of waters forewarns rapids. Indians and
voyageurs debark, invert canoes on their shoulders, packs on back with
straps across foreheads, and amble away over the portages at that
voyageurs' dog-trot which is half walk, half run. So the rapids of
Carillon and Long Sault are ascended. Night time is passed on some
sandy shore on a bed under the stars, or under the canoes turned upside
down. Tents are erected only for the commander, Champlain; and at day
dawn, while the tips of the trees are touched with light and the
morning mist is smoking up from the river shot with gold, canoes are
again on the water and paddle blades tossing the waves behind.

The Laurentian Hills now roll from the river in purpling folds like
fields of heather. The Gatineau is passed, winding in on the right
through dense forests. On the left, flowing through the rolling sand
hills, and joining the main river just where the waters fall over a
precipice in a cataract of spray, is the Rideau River with its famous
falls resembling the white folds of a wind-blown curtain. Then the
voyageurs have swept round that wooded cliff known as Parliament Hill,
jutting out in the river, and there breaks on view a wall of water
hurtling down in shimmering floods at the Chaudiere Falls. The high
cliff to the left and countercurrent from the falls swirl the canoes
over on the right side to the sandy flats where the lumber piles to-day
defile the river. Here boats are once more hauled up for portage--a
long portage, nine miles, all the way to the modern town of Aylmer,
where the river becomes wide as a lake, Lake Du Chene of the oak
forests. Here camp for the night was made, and leaks in the canoes
mended with resin, round fires gleaming red as an angry eye across the
{51} darkening waters, while the prowling wild cats and lynx, which
later gave such good hunting in these forests that the adjoining rapids
became known as the Chats, sent their unearthly screams shivering
through the darkness.

Somewhere near Allumette Isle, Champlain came to an Indian settlement
of the Ottawa tribe. He camped to ask for guides to go on. Old Chief
Tessouat holds solemn powwow, passing the peace pipe round from hand to
hand in silence, before the warriors rise to answer Champlain. Then
with the pompous gravity of Abraham dickering with the desert tribes,
they warn Champlain it is unsafe to go farther. Beyond the Ottawa is
the Nipissing, where dwell the Sorcerer Indians--a treacherous people.
Beyond the Nipissing is the great Fresh Water Sea of the Hurons. They
will grant Champlain canoes, but warn him against the trip. Later the
interpreter comes with word they have changed their minds. Champlain
must _not_ go on. It is too dangerous. Attack would involve war.

"What," demanded Champlain, rushing into the midst of the council tent,
"not go? Why, my young man, here"--pointing to Vignau--"has gone to
that country and found no danger."

What Vignau thought at that stage is not told. The Indians turned on
him in fury.

"Nicholas, did _you_ say _you_ had visited the Nipissings?"

Vignau hems and haws, and stammers, "Yes."

"Liar," roars the chief. "You slept here every night, and if you went
to the Nipissings, you went in a dream." Then to Champlain, "Let him
be tortured."

Champlain took the fellow to his own tent. Vignau reiterated his
story. Champlain took him back to the council. The Indians jeered his
answers and tore the story he told to tatters, showing Champlain how
utterly wrong Vignau's descriptions were.

That night, on promise of forgiveness, Vignau fell on his knees and
confessed the imposture to Champlain. When the fur canoes came down
the Ottawa to trade at Montreal, Champlain accompanied them to the St.
Lawrence, and sailed for France. His exploration had been an
ignominious failure.

{52} Champlain was ever Knight of the Cross as well as explorer. He
longed with the zeal of a missionary to reclaim the Indians from
savagery, and at last raised funds in France to pay the expense of
bringing four or five Recollets--a branch of the Franciscan Friars--to
Quebec in May of 1615. With the peaked hood thrown back, the gray garb
roped in at the waist, the bare feet protected only by heavy sandals,
the Recollets landed at Quebec, and with cannon booming, white men all
on bended knee, held service before the amazed savages.

Of the Recollets, it was agreed that Joseph le Caron should go west to
the Hurons of the Sweet Water Sea. Accompanied by a dozen Frenchmen,
the friar ascended the Ottawa in July, passed that Allumette Island
where Vignau's lie had been confessed, and proceeded westward to the
land of the Hurons. Nine days later Champlain followed with two
canoes, ten Indians, and Etienne Brule, his interpreter. In order to
hold the ever-lasting loyalty of the Hurons and Algonquins in Canada,
Champlain had pledged them that the French would join their twenty-five
hundred warriors in a great invasion of the Iroquois to the south. It
was to be a war not of aggression but of defense; for the Five Nations
of the Iroquois in New York state had harried the Canadian tribes like
wolves raiding a sheep pen. No Frenchman cultivating his farm patch on
the St. Lawrence was safe from ambuscade; no hunter afield secure from
a chance war party.

Any tourist crossing Canada to-day can trace Champlain's voyage. Where
the rolling tide of the Ottawa forks at Mattawa, there comes in on the
west side, through dense forests and cedar swamps, a river
amber-colored with the wood-mold of centuries. This is the Mattawa.
Up the Mattawa Champlain pushed his canoes westward, up the shining
flood of the river yellow as gold where the waters shallow above the
pebble bottom. Then the gravel grated keels. The shallows became
weed-grown swamps that entangled the paddles and hid voyageur from
voyageur in reeds the height of a man; and presently a portage over
rocks slippery as ice leads to a stream flowing westward, opening {53}
on a low-lying, clay-colored lake--the country of the Nipissings, with
whom Champlain pauses to feast and hear tales of witchcraft and demon
lore, that gave them the name of Sorcerers.

In a few sleeps--they tell him--he will reach the Sweet Water Sea. The
news is welcome; for the voyageurs are down to short rations, and
launch eagerly westward on the stream draining Nipissing Lake--French
River. This is a tricky little stream in whose sands lie buried the
bodies of countless French voyageurs. It is more dangerous going
_with_ rapids than _against_ them; for the hastening current is
sometimes an undertow, which sweeps the canoes into the rapids before
the roar of the waterfall has given warning. And the country is barren
of game.

As they cross the portages, Champlain's men are glad to snatch at the
raspberry and cranberry bushes for food; and their night-time meal is
dependent on chance fishing. Indian hunters are met,--three hundred of
them,--the Staring Hairs, so named from the upright posture of their
headdress tipped by an eagle quill; and again Champlain is told he is
very near the Inland Sea.

It comes as discoveries nearly always come--his finding of the Great
Lakes; for though Joseph Le Caron, the missionary, had passed this way
ten days ago, the zealous priest never paused to explore and map the
region. You are paddling down the brown, forest-shadowed waters--long
lanes of water like canals through walls of trees silent as sentinels.
Suddenly a change almost imperceptible comes. Instead of the earthy
smell of the forest mold in your nostrils is the clear tang of
sun-bathed, water-washed rocks; and the sky begins to swim, to lose
itself at the horizon. There is no sudden bursting of a sea on your
view. The river begins to coil in and out among islands. The amber
waters have become sheeted silver. You wind from island to island,
islands of pink granite, islands with no tree but one lone blasted
pine, islands that are in themselves forests. There is no end to these
islands. They are not in hundreds; they are in thousands. Then you
see the spray breaking over the reefs, and there is its sky line. You
are not on a river at all. You are on an inland sea. You have been on
the lake for hours. One {54} can guess how Champlain's men scrambled
from island to island, and fished for the rock bass above the deep
pools, and ran along the water line of wave-dashed reefs, wondering
vaguely if the wind wash were the ocean tide of the Western Sea.

But Champlain's Huron guides had not come to find a Western Sea. With
the quick choppy stroke of the Indian paddler they were conveying him
down that eastern shore of Lake Huron now known as Georgian Bay, from
French River to Parry Sound and Midland and Penetang. Where these
little towns to-day stand on the hillsides was a howling wilderness of
forest, with never a footprint but the zigzagging trail of the Indians
back from Georgian Bay to what is now Lake Simcoe.

Between these two shores lay the stamping grounds of the great Huron
tribe. How numerous were they? Records differ. Certainly at no time
more numerous than thirty thousand souls all told, including children.
Though they yearly came to Montreal for trade and war, the Hurons were
sedentary, living in the long houses of bark inclosed by triple
palisades, such as Cartier had seen at Hochelaga almost a century
before.

Champlain followed his supple guides along the wind-fallen forest trail
to the Huron villages. Here he found the missionary. One can guess
how the souls of these two heroes burned as the deep solemn chant of
the _Te Deum_ for the first time rolled through the forests of Lake
Huron.

But now Champlain must to business; and his business is war. Brule and
twelve Indians are sent like the carriers of the fiery cross in the
Highlands of Scotland to rally tribes of the Susquehanna to join the
Hurons against the Iroquois. A wild war dance is held with mystic
rites in the lodges of the Hurons; and the braves set out with
Champlain from Lake Simcoe for Lake Ontario by way of Trent River. As
they near what is now New York state, buckskin is flung aside, the
naked bodies painted and greased, and the trail shunned for the
pathless woods off the beaten track where the Indians glide like beasts
of prey through the frost-tinted forest.

{55}

[Illustration: THE ONONDAGA FORT (From Champlain's diagram)]

October 9 they suddenly come on some Onondagas fishing, and they begin
torturing their captives by cutting off a girl's finger, when Champlain
commands them to desist. Presently the forest opens to a farm clearing
where the Iroquois are harvesting their corn. Spite of all Champlain
could do, the wild Hurons uttered their war cry and rushed the field,
but the Iroquois turned on the rabble and drove them back to the woods.
Champlain was furious. They should have waited for Brule to come with
their allies; and the foolish attack had only served to forewarn the
enemy. He frankly told the Hurons if they were going to fight under
_his_ command, they must fight as white men fight; and he set them to
building a platform from which marksmen could shoot over the walls of
the Iroquois town. But the admonitions {56} fell on frenzied ears. No
sooner was the command to advance given than the Hurons broke from
cover like maniacs, easy marks for the javelin throwers inside the
walls, and hurled themselves against the Iroquois palisades in blind
fury, making more din with yelling than woe with shots. Boiling water
poured from the galleries inside drove the braves back from the walls,
and the poisoned barb of the Iroquois arrows pursued their flight. A
score fell wounded, among them Champlain with an arrow in his knee-cap.
The flight became panic fast and furious, with the wounded carried on
wicker stretchers whose every jolt added agony to pain.

[Illustration: VIEW OF QUEBEC (From Champlain's plan)]

As for Brule, he arrived with the allies only to find that the Hurons
had fled, and here was he, alone in a hostile land, with Iroquois
warriors rampant as molested wasps. In the swift retreat off the trail
Brule lost his way. He was without food {57} or powder, and had to
choose between starvation or surrender to the Iroquois. Throwing down
his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain
torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his
fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have
brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a
stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure.
The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him
with them in their wanderings for three years.

The Hurons had promised to convey Champlain back down the St. Lawrence
to Quebec, but the defeat had caused loss of prestige. The man "with
the stick that thundered" was no more invulnerable to wounds than they.
They forgot their promises and invented excuses for not proceeding to
Quebec. Champlain wintered with the hunters somewhere north of Lake
Ontario, and came down the Ottawa with the fur canoes the next summer.
He was received at Quebec as one risen from the dead.

While Champlain had been exploring, New France had not prospered as a
colony. Royal patron after royal patron sold the monopoly to fresh
hands, and each new master appointed Champlain viceroy. The fur trade
merchants could pay forty per cent dividends, but could do nothing to
advance settlement. Less than one hundred people made up the
population of New France; and these were torn asunder by jealousies.
Huguenot and Catholic were opposed; and when three Jesuits came to
Quebec, Jesuits and Recollets distrusted each other.

Madam Champlain joined her husband at Quebec, in 1620, to stay for four
years, and that same year Champlain built himself a new habitation--the
famous Castle of St. Louis on the cliff above the first dwelling.
Louis Hebert, the apothecary of Port Royal, is now a farmer close to
the Castle of Quebec; and the wife of Abraham Martin has given birth to
the first white child born in New France.

Now came a revolutionary change. Cardinal Richelieu was virtual ruler
of France. He quickly realized that the monopolists {58} were sucking
the lifeblood of the colony in furs and were giving nothing in return
to the country. In 1627, under the great cardinal's patronage, the
Company of One Hundred Associates was formed. In this company any of
the seaport traders could buy shares. Indeed, they were promised
patent of nobility if they did buy shares. Exclusive monopoly of furs
was given to the company from Florida to Labrador. In return the
Associates were to send two ships yearly to Canada. Before 1643 they
were to bring out four thousand colonists, support them for three
years, and give them land. In each settlement were to be supported
three priests; and, to prevent discord, Huguenots were to be banished
from New France.

To Champlain it must have seemed as if the ambition of his life were to
be realized. Just when the sky seemed clearest the bolt fell.

Early in April, 1628, the Associates had dispatched colonists and
stores for Quebec; but war had broken out between France and England.
Gervais Kirke, an English Huguenot of Dieppe, France, who had been put
under the ban by Cardinal Richelieu, had rallied the merchants of
London to fit out privateers to wage war on New France. The vessels
were commanded by the three sons, Thomas, Louis, and David; and to the
Kirkes rallied many Huguenots banished from France.

Quebec was hourly looking for the annual ships, when one morning in
July two men rushed breathless through the woods and up the steep rock
to Castle St. Louis with word that an English fleet of six frigates lay
in hiding at Tadoussac, ready to pounce on the French! Later came
other messengers--Indians, fishermen, traders--confirming the terrible
news. Then a Basque fisherman arrives with a demand, from Kirke for
the keys to the fort. Though there is no food inside the walls, less
than fifty pounds of ammunition in the storehouse, and not enough men
to man the guns, Champlain hopes against hope, and sends the Basque
fisherman back with suave regrets that he cannot comply with Monsieur
Kirke's polite request. Quebec's one chance lay in the hope that the
French vessels might {59} slip past the English frigates by night.
Days wore on to weeks, weeks to months, and a thousand rumors filled
the air; but no ships came. The people of Quebec were now reduced to
diet of nuts and corn. Then came Indian runners with word that the
French ships had been waylaid, boarded, scuttled, and sunk. Loaded to
the water line with booty, the English privateers had gone home.

[Illustration: QUEBEC (From Champlain's map)]

For that winter Quebec lived on such food as the Indians brought in
from the woods. By the summer of 1629 men, women, and children were
grubbing for roots, fishing for food, ranging the rocks for berries.
There are times when the only thing to do is--do nothing; and it is
probably the hardest task a brave man ever has. When the English fleet
came back in July Champlain had a ragamuffin, half-starved retinue of
precisely sixteen men. Yet he haggled for such terms that the English
promised to convey the prisoners to France. On July 20, for the first
time in history, the red flag of England blew to the winds above the
heights of Quebec.

But New France was only a pawn to the gamesters of French and English
diplomacy. Peace was proclaimed; and for the {60} sake of receiving
$200,000 as dowry due his French wife, Charles of England restored to
France the half continent which the Kirkes had captured, David Kirke
receiving the paltry honor of a title as compensation for the loss.
Champlain was back in Quebec by 1633; but his course had run. Between
Christmas eve and Christmas morning, in 1635, the brave Soldier of the
Cross, the first knight of the Canadian wildwoods, passed from the
sphere of earthly life--a life without a stain, whether among the
intriguing courtiers of Paris or in the midst of naked license in the
Indian camp.

{61}

CHAPTER IV

FROM 1635 TO 1666

Frays between La Tour and Charnisay--Madame La Tour defends the
fort--Charnisay's treachery

When Port Royal fell before Argall, it will be remembered, young
Biencourt took to the woods with his French bush lopers and Indian
followers of Nova Scotia. The farms and fort of Annapolis Basin
granted to his father by special patents lay in ruins. Familiar with
the woods as the English buccaneer, who had destroyed the fort, was
with his ship's cabin, Biencourt withdrew to the southwest corner of
Nova Scotia, where he built a rude stronghold of logs and slabs near
the modern Cape Sable. Here he could keep in touch with the French
fishermen off Cape Breton, and also traffic with the Indians of the
mainland.

With Biencourt was a young man of his own age, boon comrade, kindred
spirit, who had come to Port Royal a boy of fourteen, in 1606, in the
gay days of Marc L'Escarbot--Charles de La Tour. Sea rovers, bush
lopers, these two could bid defiance to English raiders. Whether
Biencourt died in 1623 or went home to France is unknown; but he deeded
over to his friend, Charles de La Tour, all possessions in Acadia.

And now England again comes on the scene. By virtue of Cabot's
discovery and Argall's conquest, the King of England, in 1621, grants
to Sir William Alexander, the Earl of Stirling, all of Acadia, renamed
Nova Scotia--New Scotland. By way of encouraging emigration, the order
of Nova Scotia Baronets is created, a title being granted to those who
subscribe to the colonization company.

Sir William Alexander's colonists shun the French bush lopers under
Charles de La Tour down at Fort St. Louis on Cape Sable. The seventy
Scotch colonists go on up the Annapolis Basin and build their fort four
miles from old Port Royal. How did they pass the pioneer years--these
Scotch retainers of the {62} Nova Scotia Baronets? Report among the
French fishing fleet says thirty died of scurvy; but of definite
information not a vestige remains. The annals of these colonists are
as completely lost to history as the annals of the lost Roanoke colony
in Virginia.

Under the same English patent Lord Ochiltree lands English colonists in
Cape Breton, the grand summer rendezvous of the French fishermen; but
two can play at Argall's game of raids. French seamen swoop down on
Ochiltree's colony, capture fifty, destroy the settlement, and run up
the white flag of France in place of the red standard of England.

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