OF THE DOINGS OF GALLANT CHAMPLAIN
When the Sieur de Monts abandoned Acadia, thinking, as indeed it
seemed, an evil spell had been cast upon it, he turned his attention
to Quebec and the river St. Lawrence. Here, far inland, was a fair
region which promised wealth and glory, and over this region he
appointed Champlain his lieutenant. Of the two ships which De Monts
fitted out one was for the fur trade, of which King Henry, ere his
heart was pierced by the dagger of Ravaillac, gave him a monopoly for
one year; the other was to carry colonists to found a new French
settlement. You have seen how one after another the French colonies
had, from this cause or that, come to destruction; but with such a
wise and strong head as Samuel de Champlain, one now was expected to
bear better and more lasting fruit. Truly, whatever their faults,
the founders of New France were very determined men, arising fresh
after each disaster, resolved to people with their countrymen the
great Western wilderness. When Champlain's ships, once safely
through the Straits of Belle Isle, reached Tadoussac, Champlain left
there his associate Pontgravé to barter for furs with the {30}
Indians. He himself continued his voyage up the river until he came
to the spot where Jacques Cartier had passed the winter of 1535, and
with his men consumed a whole spruce-tree in order to drive away the
scurvy.
It was at Quebec (a word meaning in the Indian language a strait)
that on the third day of July 1607 Champlain gave orders to
disembark. In the shadow of the towering rock of Cape Diamond, the
first thing to be done was to clear a site and erect cabins for
shelter. As his men toiled on unceasingly the natives gathered round
in wonder and admiration. They were unaccustomed to much manual work
themselves, their squaws doing most of the labour. They saw in a few
short weeks the bastions of a fort and cannon set up. Scarcely had
the workmen completed their task and got all snug and tidy for the
winter than a plot was formed amongst some of Champlain's followers
to kill him. The leader of the plot was a Norman locksmith, Jean
Duval, a brave and violent fellow who had served with Champlain in
Acadia, and was impatient under any kind of authority. According to
the plan the conspirators drew up, their leader was to be shot, the
stores pillaged, and then they were all to fly to Spain with the
booty. Lucky it was for the great and good pioneer that one of the
plotters, filled with remorse, went to Champlain a few days before
the mutiny was to be carried out and confessed all. Champlain with
great promptitude seized Duval and hanged him to the nearest tree,
but the rest he only sent back to France, where the good King, at his
{31} request, pardoned them. Meanwhile Pontgravé had collected and
sailed away with his cargo of furs. Spring came; the snows melted
and were replaced by green meadows and blossoming trees; everywhere
the birds sang. Champlain, without waiting for Pontgravé's return,
set off up the river and soon met again friendly Indian chiefs of the
Algonquin and Huron tribes, who told him terrible tales of their
sufferings at the hands of their enemies the Iroquois or the Five
Nations. In their despair these chiefs sought out the
Man-with-the-Iron-Breast, as they called Champlain, on account of the
steel breast-plate he wore, and asked his help against the
blood-thirsty Iroquois. These men of the Five Nations, Mohawks,
Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, lived in the forests south
of Lake Ontario, and were perhaps at once the most intelligent and
the most cruel of all the Indians on the continent. It was the
Iroquois who had destroyed the old Huron towns of Stadacona and
Hochelaga which Cartier had seen and described, and as they bore the
Hurons and Algonquins an implacable enmity, it was natural that they
would extend this enmity to the pale-faces who had now come to dwell
in the Huron country. They might, it is true, have been propitiated;
but Champlain did not stop to consider any questions of policy: he
favoured at once the idea of alliance with the surrounding red-men,
an alliance which was to cost him and his new colony a bloody and
fearful price. Champlain, then, made three warlike expeditions into
the country of the Iroquois during the next six years. In the first
he paddled in canoes {32} up the Richelieu River and came to a
beautiful lake, to which he gave his own name ("Lake Champlain").
Meeting a party of Iroquois of the Mohawk nation or tribe, he fell
upon them suddenly. The Mohawks fancied at first that they had only
to do with Algonquins, and felt confident of victory, until the
Frenchmen's muskets rang out; then not fast enough could they flee in
panic from the magic bullets, leaving many slain, including their
bravest chiefs. Champlain had only 60 Frenchmen and Indians, while
the Mohawks numbered 200; but his victory was complete; not one of
his force was killed, and the town of the enemy was wiped from the
face of the earth. Notwithstanding Champlain's protests, the
Algonquins insisted on torturing one of their Iroquois captives to
death by every device of savage cruelty. Mercy was not in their
code; they neither gave it, nor, when captured, expected it.
During the next three years Champlain was kept very busy in
explorations, in attacking the Iroquois, and in protecting his
colony. During this time he returned to France, and was favourably
received at Fontainebleau by King Henry, who listened with interest
to Champlain's tale of his adventures in "New France." But in spite
of royal favour, Champlain had so many rivals and enemies that, like
Poutraincourt in Acadia, he found it impossible to get the charter
renewed, and so his friend and patron, De Monts, was obliged to try
and get along without it. Equipping two more ships, he sent
Champlain back with them to Canada.
The great ambition of Champlain's soul was to {33} find a passage
through the continent to China. At last it seemed to him that the
friendliness of the Hurons and Algonquins would furnish him with the
means of attaining this desire. He had just made arrangements with
the chiefs, when the news came to him of King Henry's assassination,
and he felt it was necessary for him to return without delay again to
France. De Monts, his patron, still enjoyed the title of
Lieutenant-General of New France, but his resources and influence had
been sadly crippled by the King's death, and the cost of keeping up
Quebec, Tadoussac, and Acadia was very great. He had no longer the
monopoly, that is to say, the sole right of buying and selling
Canadian furs--it was a right thrown open to other traders; and when
Champlain on his next voyage back from France once more sailed up the
St. Lawrence, he found many strange fur-traders trafficking with the
savages.
The leader had now more to do and think about than ever; he wished,
moreover, to prepare a fitting home for a fair and youthful partner
who was ever in his thoughts. During his absence in Paris he had
espoused a charming Huguenot girl named Helen Bouillé, daughter of
the murdered King's private secretary. Her name survives to-day in
"Helen's Island" in the river opposite Montreal. So many traders did
Champlain find in the vicinity of this island, that he built a fort
there and resolved to turn the site of Hochelaga into a trading
station. Two uneventful years passed by, and then, in the very year
Argall was destroying hapless Port Royal (1613), Champlain's
imagination was kindled by the {34} astonishing tale of a certain
Nicholas Vignau. This adventurer had passed a winter amongst the
red-men of the upper Ottawa River. Vignau told his chief that, in
company with some Algonquins, he had once arrived at a remote
sea-shore, where his eyes had beheld the fragments of a wrecked
English ship. Champlain's heart bounded with joy; he thought his
hopes were now about to be realised. Taking Vignau, two white
followers, and an Indian guide, the explorer passed the dangerous
rapids of the Ottawa and made the acquaintance, one after another, of
its lakes, cataracts, and islands. He pressed on, passed the Rideau
(Curtain) Falls, so named because of the resemblance of this sheet of
water to a great white curtain. He and his awe-struck companions
stared at the raging, foaming cauldron of the Chaudière, close to
where the city of Ottawa, capital of the Canadian Dominion, now
stands, while the Indians cast into the waters gifts of tobacco and
other things to propitiate the angry god of the waters. At last the
party reached Allumette Island. Here dwelt a friendly Algonquin
chief named Tessouat, who received the Frenchmen hospitably and
invited them to a banquet. Tessouat knew Vignau; he knew also how he
had passed his time amongst the men of his tribe. So when Champlain
related at the feast what Vignau had told him of his journey to the
sea-shore, Tessouat bluntly told his guest that Vignau, though a
pale-face, was a liar, and that he had never been on such a journey.
For a while the shock of this discovery overwhelmed Champlain with
rage and sorrow. {35} Tessouat was so indignant at the way the
French leader had been deceived, that he wanted Vignau to be put to
death, but Champlain was of too noble and forgiving a nature for
that, and contented himself with rebuking the offender. At the same
time, although Vignau confessed his falsehood, we are able to see
to-day a certain foundation for his story which was obscured from
Canada's founder. We happen to know now what Champlain centuries ago
did not dream of: that only three hundred miles separate Allumette
Island from the southern end of the great inland sea, Hudson's Bay.
This body of water two or three brief seasons before had been
discovered by an Englishman, who, like Champlain, had tried to find a
short route to China and the East Indies.
In 1610 Henry Hudson, in the pay of the Dutch, sailed up the river
which now bears his name, and paved the way for the Dutch colony,
afterwards called the New Netherlands. A year later, in the service
of England, he sailed northwards in the _Half Moon_, passed through
the narrow Hudson's Straits, and so on into the ice-bound inland sea.
There his terrified crew mutinied, turning their brave commander
adrift in an open boat, together with his son and two of his faithful
companions. Thus perished Henry Hudson, who was never heard of
again. As for the craven mutineers, when they stole back guiltily to
England, they were seized and made to pay the penalty of their crime.
Three ships were sent out to search for Hudson, but, alas, it was
then too late.
Of this inland sea Vignau may have heard stories {36} from the
Indians. It may be that those who told him had really seen the wreck
of poor Henry Hudson's boat on the shores, but this we shall never
really know until the great Day of Judgment comes, when the sea gives
up its dead and all secrets of the deep are known.
In the discovery of Lake Ontario, two years later, Champlain found
some compensation for his disappointment. He was the first European
to visit the "freshwater sea," as he called it. He penned a
description of all he had seen, and carried it to France, where it
was eagerly read. One of Champlain's mottoes was that "the salvation
of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an Empire." Up
to now Quebec had been wholly without priests, but when Champlain
returned to the colony he brought out four priests of the Order of
the Recollets, pious men who had taken vows of poverty and
self-denial. These set about converting the savages to Christianity.
One of them, Joseph Le Caron, went forward to the distant Huron
country, which had not yet been visited by any European. Champlain
himself accompanied the priest from Quebec. On reaching the rapids
just above Montreal, the Governor held a conference with the Hurons,
who had come from their homes in the West to meet him and induce him
to fulfil his pledge to attack the Iroquois. This expedition was one
of the most fateful episodes in Champlain's life. He knew nothing
about Iroquois history or character. If he had had any suspicion of
what his present action was to cost his countrymen in Canada, he
would rather have died {37} than provoke the enmity of so terrible a
foe. Champlain chose this time to take a most round-about route,
measuring full 300 leagues, he and his men often carrying on their
backs the canoes and baggage, living on coarse food, and suffering
many hardships. Even the priest was obliged to take his share of the
hardest work, paddling his oar until the sweat mantled his brow,
staggering through the forest with a load such as a mule might carry,
and with it all obliged, with the whole party, to hasten at full
speed for fear of falling behind into the hands of Iroquois. In
those days when there were no roads and hardly even any long paths,
travellers made their way by following the rivers and lakes in
canoes. When they came to the end of one waterway and wished to
reach the beginning of another, they followed what were called the
portages or carrying-places, paths in the woods, sometimes only a few
yards long and sometimes as long as nine or ten miles.
For many weeks did Champlain sojourn in the Huron country, and then,
in early autumn, he departed from their chief town, Carhagonha, on
Lake Simcoe, with several hundred red warriors, to inflict
chastisement on the painted warriors of the Five Nations.
Crossing Lake Simcoe, Champlain and his followers travelled slowly
and with much hardship through the country north of Lake Ontario,
until by this very roundabout route the whole party came in a month's
time to the fort of the Onondagas, which they intended to attack. As
they drew near, the French {38} and Indians fell in with outlying
bands of this tribe, capturing many prisoners. Champlain strove
unceasingly to induce his Huron allies to show mercy to the captives,
but the Indian warrior always deemed mercy a pitiful sign of
weakness. He wanted not only to cut off the hands and feet of the
male prisoners, gouge out their eyes and burn them alive, but to
torture the women and children as well. Only was it when Champlain
threatened to withdraw his French soldiers altogether that the Huron
chiefs consented to confine their barbarities to the men alone. When
the allies got closer to the Onondaga fort they found it was much
more strongly defended than they had supposed. It consisted of four
rows of strong stakes, and a thick wall made of heavy branches of
trees. On the top of this wall were gutters of wood to conduct water
to any part which the enemy should set on fire. The water was drawn
from a small pond inside the fortification, where all the Onondagas
were assembled in little houses, having a large store of bows and
arrows, stones and hatchets. Provisions, too, were plentiful, for
the Indian harvest was just over. Champlain saw at once that to take
such a fort was not an easy task, and advised his Indian allies to be
prudent. But the young Hurons were foolhardy and rushed at the
four-fold palisade with ear-splitting war-whoops, flourishing their
tomahawks. The consequence was as Champlain foresaw: they were shot
down or killed by a shower of stones by the enemy. After a time,
when they had lost heavily, the Hurons were ready to listen to
reason. A plan was devised. In the {39} night-time Champlain had a
high wooden platform built; upon it he placed several of his
musketeers so that they could fire into the fort, while 300 Hurons
were stationed close by to set fire to the palisade. These measures
might have succeeded, but the wind unluckily was in the wrong
direction and blew the flames of the Huron torches away from the
fort. Champlain himself, while trying to make the unruly Hurons obey
his orders, was twice wounded, and many of his followers were killed.
Then it was that the foolish Huron chiefs became disheartened. They
lost faith in the "Man -with -the -Iron -Breast" and decided to give
up the attempt and retreat homewards before the winter set in. In
vain Champlain besought them; they were obdurate. As it was, when
they got to the place, eighty miles away, where their canoes had been
left, high winds and snowstorms had begun, and their wounded,
including Champlain, suffered much. Solemnly had they promised the
French leader that after the attack on the Iroquois they would carry
him down the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga, but now they became traitors
to their word and refused him even two guides for such a journey.
There was nothing else to do: Champlain was obliged to go back with
them and spend the whole of the succeeding winter in their lodges.
On the way they made many halts to allow the Hurons time to procure
stores of fish and game, which were very plentiful in the region
north of Lake Ontario. Not until two days before Christmas was the
journey ended.
Champlain was not idle that winter, for when his {40} wounds had
healed he moved amongst the tribes, making himself acquainted with
the country and the language. The woods were filled with June
flowers ere he returned to Quebec, where he had been mourned as one
dead. You can imagine how rejoiced were the band of martial pioneers
there to see their leader once more alive and well. They cheered and
sang songs and waved flags in his honour, and even discharged the
great cannon, whose echoes startled the Indians prowling afar on the
green banks of the St. Lawrence.
Verily the part which Samuel de Champlain and his little band of
Frenchmen had played in giving armed assistance to the Hurons and
Algonquins was to have terrible results. It threw the Iroquois into
friendship with the Dutch and other enemies of the French, who
supplied them with firearms. It caused them to bear a hate to
Champlain and all his countrymen almost as great as the hate they
bore to the dusky Hurons.
All this time Champlain, great as was his ambition, can only be
regarded as the agent or manager of a company of men in France whose
first wish was to make money out of the fur trade. These men in
their hearts had very little sympathy for Champlain's schemes of
colonisation and conversion of the savages, and, becoming
dissatisfied with the profits Champlain was making for them, they
tried repeatedly to procure his recall. In order to baffle the
intrigues against him and explain to the King himself the importance
of Canada to the kingdom of France, Champlain sailed away yet again
for home, {41} leaving sixty men, the entire French population of
Canada, behind him in Quebec. By his zeal and eloquence he was able
to obtain some fresh supplies for his colony, and also some more
soldiers and workers. Amongst these was an apothecary named Louis
Hébert, who is often spoken of as the first emigrant to Canada,
because he took with him his wife and two children, intending to
settle as a farmer on the land. Direct descendants of Hébert are
alive in Canada to this day. Two years later Champlain managed to
bring a body of eighty colonists out to New France, and the next year
(1620) his own wife, Helen de Champlain, accompanied him for the
first time to the colony. This time he had triumphed over those who
wished to depose him, and was now confirmed in his title of Viceroy
of New France, and all seemed in the general rejoicings on his return
to promise well for his enterprise. Not only the French in Quebec,
but the Indians were delighted at the beauty and manners of the
Governor's wife, then only twenty-two years of age. They tell of her
that she wore always a small mirror suspended from her neck,
according to the custom of the ladies in those days. When the
red-men who drew near her looked in the little mirror they saw each,
to his astonishment, his own face reflected there, and went about
telling one another that the beautiful wife of the white chief
cherished an image of each in her heart.
Once in Quebec, Champlain lost no time in laying the foundation of a
Government House, since known as the Château of St. Louis, reared on
the heights of {42} the rock. This building came to be the residence
of every succeeding Governor of Canada for two hundred years, until
one night it was wholly destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. In the
year it was begun, too, the Recollet priests began to build their
convent, and other large buildings arose.
So now you see quite a flourishing little town was fast growing up in
the midst of the Canadian wilderness. But with the advancement of
his schemes came many new troubles for the lion-hearted Champlain.
In the first place, the Indians had acquired a passion for strong
drink--"fire-water" they called it,--and although people of their
fierce, reckless disposition should never have been allowed to touch
a drop, yet the fur-traders were so callous and greedy as to be
always ready to supply them with gallons and hogsheads of the fatal
brandy. The consequences were what might have been expected, and
Champlain was very angry as he looked upon the scenes of riot and
bloodshed. But his efforts to keep liquor from the Indians only made
the traders hate him more bitterly. To this source of anxiety was
added another: the bloodthirsty feud between the Iroquois and the
Algonquins and Hurons, which occasioned constant bloody massacres and
made the life of the French colonists at Quebec, Three Rivers, and
Tadoussac one of never-ending danger. On a certain night a band
crept down the St. Lawrence silently to Quebec, having sworn an oath
to wipe the city of the pale-faces from the face of the earth. But
the stone buildings, the cannon and muskets in the hands of the
determined Frenchmen {43} daunted them and they beat a retreat. Not
to be wholly balked of blood, they fell upon the Algonquins, who were
bringing furs to Quebec, slaughtering them without mercy. Then there
were plots against Quebec, even amongst the tribes which Champlain
considered friendly, for savages were, and ever will be, fickle, and
often the most trifling incident will tempt them to treachery.
Meantime Champlain's friends in France, the associated merchants, had
lost their fur-trading monopoly because they had failed to fulfil
their pledges. In consequence of this, the monopoly was handed over
by the King to two Huguenot gentlemen, William and Emery de Caen, an
uncle and nephew. The uncle was a merchant and the nephew was a sea
captain, and, although Protestants themselves, they were charged not
to settle any but Catholics in the colony. This arrangement turned
out a very bad one. The Huguenots and Catholics quarrelled in New
France, as they had been quarrelling in Old France, and finally, so
violent grew the disputes, that the King joined the two associations
into one under the title of "the Company of Montmorency," with
Champlain still as Viceroy. Matters thereafter went so much more
smoothly that Champlain decided to take the opportunity of paying
another visit to his native country. With him he took his beautiful
young wife, Helen de Champlain, who had had nearly five years amongst
the Indians and the rough fur-traders, and had endured many hardships
and faced many dangers. You must bear in mind that when she sailed
away she left behind only fifty of her {44} fellow-countrymen in
Quebec. This is a very small number, but they were for the most part
very much in earnest, very hardy and rugged, and inspired by
Champlain in a strong belief in the future of the country. Before we
have finished our history you will see whether that belief was
justified or not.
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