_Military Frontier.--The Canadian Settler.--Seignior and
Vassal.--Example of Talon.--Plan of Settlement.--Aspect of
Canada.--Quebec.--The River Settlements.--Montreal.--The Pioneers._
|We have seen the settler landed and married; let us follow him to
his new home. At the end of Talon’s administration, the head of the
colony, that is to say the island of Montreal and the borders of the
Richelieu, was the seat of a peculiar colonization, the chief object of
which was to protect the rest of Canada against Iroquois incursions. The
lands along the Richelieu, from its mouth to a point above Chambly,
were divided in large seigniorial grants among several officers of the
regiment of Carignan, who in their turn granted out the land to the
soldiers, reserving a sufficient portion as their own. The officer thus
became a kind of feudal chief, and the whole settlement a permanent
military cantonment admirably suited to the object in view. The
disbanded soldier was practically a soldier still, but he was also a
farmer and a landholder.
Talon had recommended this plan as being in accordance with the example
of the Romans. “The practice of that politic and martial people,” he
wrote, “may, in my opinion, be wisely adopted in a country a thousand
leagues distant from its monarch. And as the peace and harmony of
peoples depend above all things on their fidelity to their sovereign,
our first kings, better statesmen than is commonly supposed, introduced
into newly conquered countries men of war, of approved trust, in order
at once to hold the inhabitants to their duty within, and repel the
enemy from without.” *
The troops were accordingly discharged, and settled not alone on the
Richelieu, but also along the St. Lawrence, between Lake St. Peter and
Montreal, as well as at some other points. The Sulpitians, feudal owners
of Montreal, adopted a similar policy, and surrounded their island with
a border of fiefs large and small, granted partly to officers and partly
to humbler settlers, bold, hardy, and practised in bush-fighting. Thus
a line of sentinels was posted around their entire shore, ready to give
the alarm whenever an enemy appeared. About Quebec the settlements,
covered as they were by those above, were for the most part of a more
pacific character.
To return to the Richelieu. The towns and villages which have since
grown upon its banks and along the adjacent shores of the St. Lawrence
owe their names to these officers of Carignan, ancient lords of the
soil: Sorel, Chambly, Saint Ours,
* Projets de Réglemens, 1667 (see Edits et Ordonnances, II.
29).
Contrecœur, Yarennes, Verchères. Yet let it not be supposed that
villages sprang up at once. The military seignior, valiant and poor
as Walter the Penniless, was in no condition to work such magic. His
personal possessions usually consisted of little but his sword and the
money which the king had paid him for marrying a wife. A domain varying
from half a league to six leagues in front on the river, and from half
a league to two leagues in depth, had been freely given him. When he
had distributed a part of it in allotments to the soldiers, a variety
of tasks awaited him: to clear and cultivate his land; to build his
seigniorial mansion, often a log hut; to build a fort; to build a
chapel; and to build a mill. To do all this at once was impossible.
Chambly, the chief proprietor on the Richelieu, was better able than the
others to meet the exigency. He built himself a good house, where, with
cattle and sheep furnished by the king, he lived in reasonable comfort.
* The king’s fort, close at hand, spared him and his tenants the
necessity of building one for themselves, and furnished, no doubt, a
mill, a chapel, and a chaplain. His brother officers, Sorel excepted,
were less fortunate. They and their tenants were forced to provide
defence as well as shelter. Their houses were all built together, and
surrounded by a palisade, so as to form a little fortified village. The
ever-active benevolence of the king had aided them in the task, for the
soldiers were still maintained by him
* Frontenac au Ministre, 2 Nov., 1672. Marie de
l’Incarnation speaks of these officers on the Richelieu as
très honnêtes gens.
while clearing the lands and building the houses destined to be their
own; nor was it till this work was done that the provident government
despatched them to Quebec with orders to bring back wives. The settler,
thus lodged and wedded, was required on his part to aid in clearing
lands for those who should come after him. *
It was chiefly in the more exposed parts of the colony, that the houses
were gathered together in palisaded villages, thus forcing the settler
to walk or paddle some distance to his farm. He naturally preferred to
build when he could on the front of his farm itself, near the river,
which supplied the place of a road. As the grants of land were very
narrow, his house was not far from that of his next neighbor, and thus
a line of dwellings was ranged along the shore, forming what in local
language was called a _côte_, a use of the word peculiar to Canada,
where it still prevails.
The impoverished seignior rarely built a chapel. Most of the early
Canadian churches were built with funds furnished by the seminaries of
Quebec or of Montreal, aided by contributions of material and labor
from the parishioners. ** Meanwhile mass was said in some house of the
neighborhood by
* “Sa Majesté semble prétendre faire la dépense entière pour
former le commencement des habitations par l’abattis du
bois, la culture et semence de deux arpens de terre,
l’avance de quelques farines aux familles venantes,” etc.,
etc. Projets de Réglemens, 1667. This applied to civil and
military settlers alike. The established settler was allowed
four years to clear two arpents of land for a newcomer. The
soldiers were maintained by the king during a year, while
preparing their farms and houses. Talon asks that two years
more be given them. Talon au Roy. 10 Nov., 1670
** La Tour, Vie de Laval, chap. x.
a missionary priest, paddling his canoe from village to village, or from
_côte_ to _côte_.
The mill was an object of the last importance. It was built of stone and
pierced with loopholes, to serve as a blockhouse in case of attack. The
great mill at Montreal was one of the chief defences of the place.
It was at once the duty and the right of the seignior to supply his
tenants, or rather vassals, with this essential requisite, and they on
their part were required to grind their grain at his mill, leaving the
fourteenth part in payment. But for many years there was not a seigniory
in Canada, where this fraction would pay the wages of a miller and,
except the ecclesiastical corporations, there were few seigniors who
could pay the cost of building. The first settlers were usually forced
to grind for themselves after the tedious fashion of the Indians.
Talon, in his capacity of counsellor, friend, and father to all Canada,
arranged the new settlements near Quebec in the manner which he judged
best, and which he meant to serve as an example to the rest of the
colony. It was his aim to concentrate population around this point,
so that, should an enemy appear, the sound of a cannon-shot from the
Chateau St. Louis might summon a numerous body of defenders to this the
common point of rendezvous. * He bought a tract of land near Quebec,
laid it out, and settled it as a model seigniory, hoping, as he says,
to kindle a spirit of emulation among the new-made seigniors to whom he
* Projets de Réglemens, 1667.
had granted lands from the king. He also laid out at the royal cost
three villages in the immediate neighborhood, planning them with great
care, and peopling them partly with families newly arrived, partly with
soldiers, and partly with old settlers, in order that the newcomers
might take lessons from the experience of these veterans. That each
village might be complete in itself, he furnished it as well as he could
with the needful carpenter, mason, blacksmith, and shoemaker. These
inland villages, called respectively Bourg Royal, Bourg la Reine, and
Bourg Talon, did not prove very thrifty. * Wherever the settlers were
allowed to choose for themselves, they ranged their dwellings along the
watercourses. With the exception of Talon’s villages, one could
have seen nearly every house in Canada, by paddling a canoe up the St.
Lawrence and the Richelieu. The settlements formed long thin lines
on the edges of the rivers; a convenient arrangement, but one very
unfavorable to defence, to ecclesiastical control, and to strong
government. The king soon discovered this; and repeated orders were sent
to concentrate the inhabitants and form Canada into villages, instead
of _côtes_. To do so would have involved a general revocation of grants
and abandonment of houses and clearings, a measure too arbitrary and too
wasteful, even for Louis XIV., and one extremely difficult to enforce.
Canada persisted in attenuating herself, and the royal will was foiled.
* In 1672, the king, as a mark of honor, attached these
villages to Talon’s seigniory. Documents on Seigniorial
Tenure.
As you ascended the St. Lawrence, the first harboring place of
civilization was Tadoussao, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where the
company had its trading station, where its agents ruled supreme, and
where, in early summer, all was alive with canoes and wigwams, and
troops of Montagnais savages, bringing their furs to market. Leave
Tadoussac behind, and, embarked in a sailboat or a canoe, follow the
northern coast. Far on the left, twenty miles away, the southern shore
lies pale and dim, and mountain ranges wave their faint outline along
the sky. You pass the beetling rocks of Mai Bay, a solitude but for the
bark hut of some wandering Indian beneath the cliff; the Eboulements
with their wild romantic gorge, and foaming waterfalls; and the Bay of
St. Paul with its broad valley and its woody mountains, rich with hidden
stores of iron. Vast piles of savage verdure border the mighty stream,
till at length the mountain of Cape Tourmente upheaves its huge bulk
from the bosom of the water, shadowed by lowering clouds, and dark with
forests. Just beyond, begin the settlements of Laval’s vast seigniory
of Beaupré, which had not been forgotten in the distribution of
emigrants, and which, in 1667, contained more inhabitants than Quebec
itself. * The ribbon of rich meadow land that borders that beautiful
shore, was yellow with wheat
* The census of 1667 gives to Quebec only 448 souls; Côte
de Beaupré, 656; Beauport, 123; Island of Orleans, 529;
other settlements included under the government of Quebec,
1,011; Côte de Lauzon (south shore), 113; Trois Rivières and
its dependencies, 666; Montreal, 766. Both Beaupré and Isle
d’Orleans belonged at this time to the bishop.
in harvest time, and on the woody slopes behind, the frequent clearings
and the solid little dwellings of logs continued for a long distance
to relieve the sameness of the forest. After passing the cataract af
Montmorenci, there was another settlement, much smaller, at Beauport,
the seigniory of the exphysician Giffard, one of the earliest
proprietors in Canada. The neighboring shores of the island of Orleans
were also edged with houses and clearings. The promontory of Quebec now
towered full in sight, crowned with church, fort, chateau, convents, and
seminary. There was little else on the rock. Priests, nuns, government
officials, and soldiers, were the denizens of the Upper Town; while
commerce and the trades were cabined along the strand beneath. * From
the gallery of the chateau, you might toss a pebble far down on their
shingled roofs. In the midst of them was the magazine of the company,
with its two round towers and two projecting wings. It was here that all
the beaver-skins of the colony were collected, assorted, and shipped
for France. The so-called chateau St. Louis was an indifferent wooden
structure planted on a site truly superb; above the Lower Town, above
the river, above the ships, gazing abroad on a majestic panorama of
waters, forests, and mountains. ** Behind it was the area of the fort,
of which it formed one side. The
* According to Juchereau, there were seventy houses at
Quebec about the time of Tracy’s arrival.
** In 1660, an exact inventory was taken of the contents of
the fort and chateau; a beggarly account of rubbish. The
chateau was then a long low building roofed with shingles.
governor lived in the chateau, and soldiers were on guard night and day
in the fort. At some little distance was the convent of the Ursulines,
ugly but substantial, * where Mother Mary of the Incarnation ruled her
pupils and her nuns; and a little further on, towards the right, was
the Hôtel Dieu. Between them were the massive buildings of the Jesuits,
then as now facing the principal square. At one side was their church,
newly finished; and opposite, across the square, stood and still
stands the great church of Notre Dame. Behind the church was
Laval’s seminary, with the extensive enclosures belonging to it. The
_sénéchaussée_ or court-house, the tavern of one Jacques Boisdon on
the square near the church, and a few houses along the line of what is
now St. Louis Street, comprised nearly all the civil part of the Upper
Town. The ecclesiastical buildings were of stone, and the church of
Notre Dame and the Jesuit College were marvels of size and solidity in
view of the poverty and weakness of the colony. **
Proceeding upward along the north shore of the St. Lawrence, one found
a cluster of houses at Cap Rouge, and, further on, the frequent rude
beginnings of a seigniory. The settlements thickened on
* There is an engraving of it in Abbé Casgrain’s
interesting Vie de Marie de l'Incarnation. It was burned in
1686.
** The first stone of Notre Dame de Quebec was laid in
September, 1647, and the first mass was said in it on the
24th of December, 1650. The side walls still remain as part
of the present structure. The Jesuit college was also begun
in 1647. The walls and roof were finished in 1649. The
church connected with it, since destroyed, was begun in
1666. Journal des Jésuites.
approaching Three Rivers, a fur-trading hamlet enclosed with a square
palisade. Above this place, a line of incipient seigniories bordered the
river, most of them granted to officers: Laubia, a captain; Labadie, a
sergeant; Moras, an ensign; Berthier, a captain; Raudin, an ensign; La
Valterie, a lieutenant. * Under their auspices, settlers, military and
civilian, were ranging themselves along the shore, and ugly gaps in
the forest thickly set with stumps bore witness to their toils. These
settlements rapidly extended, till in a few years a chain of houses and
clearings reached with little interruption from Quebec to Montreal.
Such was the fruit of Tracy’s chastisement of the Mohawks, and the
influx of immigrants that followed.
As you approached Montreal, the fortified mill built by the Sulpitians
at Point aux Trembles towered above the woods; and soon after the newly
built chapel of the Infant Jesus. More settlements followed, till at
length the great fortified mill of Montreal rose in sight; then the long
row of compact wooden houses, the Hôtel Dieu, and the rough masonry of
the seminary of St. Sulpice. Beyond the town, the clearings continued
at intervals till you reached Lake St. Louis, where young Cavelier de la
Salle had laid out his seigniory of La Chine, and abandoned it to begin
his hard career of western exploration. Above the island of Montreal,
* Documents on the Seigniorial Tenure; Abstracts of Titles.
Most of these grants, like those on the Richelieu, were made
by Talon in 1672; but the land had, in many cases, been
occupied and cleared in anticipation of the title.
the wilderness was broken only by a solitary trading station on the
neighboring Isle Perot.
Now cross Lake St. Louis, shoot the rapids of La Chine, and follow
the southern shore downward. Here the seigniories of Longueuil,
Boucherville, Yarennes, Verchères, and Contrecoeur were already begun.
From the fort of Sorel one could visit the military seigniories along
the Richelieu or descend towards Quebec, passing on the way those of
Lussaudière, Becancour, Lobinière, and others still in a shapeless
infancy. Even far below Quebec, at St. Anne de la Pocatière, River
Ouelle, and other points, cabins and clearings greeted the eye of the
passing canoeman.
For a year or two, the settler’s initiation was a rough one; but when
he had a few acres under tillage he could support himself and his family
on the produce, aided by hunting, if he knew how to use a gun, and by
the bountiful profusion of eels which the St. Lawrence never failed to
yield in their season, and which, smoked or salted, supplied his larder
for months. In winter he hewed timber, sawed planks, or split shingles
for the market of Quebec, obtaining in return such necessaries as he
required. With thrift and hard work he was sure of comfort at last; but
the former habits of the military settlers and of many of the others
were not favorable to a routine of dogged industry. The sameness and
solitude of their new life often became insufferable; nor, married
as they had been, was the domestic hearth likely to supply much
consolation. Yet, thrifty or not, they multiplied apace.
“A poor man,” says Mother Mary, “will have eight children and
more, who run about in winter with bare heads and bare feet, and a
little jacket on their backs, live on nothing but bread and eels, and
on that grow fat and stout.” With such treatment the weaker sort died;
but the strong survived, and out of this rugged nursing sprang the hardy
Canadian race of bush-rangers and bush-fighters.