_Trade in Fetters.--The Hüguenot Merchants.--Royal Patronage.--The
Fisheries.--Cries for Help.--Agriculture.--Manufactures.--Arts of
Ornament.--Finance.--Card Money.--Repudiation.--Imposts.--The
Beaver Trade.--The Fair at Montreal.--Contraband Trade.--A
Fatal System.--Trouble and Change.--The Coureurs de Bois.--The
Forest.--Letter of Carheil._
|We have seen the head of the colony, its guiding intellect and will:
it remains to observe its organs of nutrition. Whatever they might have
been under a different treatment, they were perverted and enfeebled by
the regimen to which they were subjected.
The spirit of restriction and monopoly had ruled from the beginning. The
old governor Lauson, seignior for a while of a great part of the colony,
held that Montreal had no right to trade directly with France, but must
draw all her supplies from Quebec; * and this preposterous claim was
revived in the time of Mézy. The successive companies to whose hands
the colony was consigned had a baneful effect on individual enterprise.
In 1674,
* Faillon, Colonie Française, II. 244.
the charter of the West India Company was revoked, and trade was
declared open to all subjects of the king; yet commerce was still
condemned to wear the ball and chain. New restrictions were imposed,
meant for good, but resulting in evil. Merchants not resident in the
colony were forbidden all trade, direct or indirect, with the Indians.
* They were also forbidden to sell any goods at retail except in August,
September, and October; ** to trade anywhere in Canada above Quebec; and
to sell clothing or domestic articles ready made. This last restriction
was designed to develop colonial industry. No person, resident or not,
could trade with the English colonies, or go thither without a special
passport, and rigid examination by the military authorities. *** Foreign
trade of any kind was stiffly prohibited. In 1719, after a new company
had engrossed the beaver trade, its agents were empowered to enter all
houses in Canada, whether ecclesiastical or secular, and search them for
foreign goods, which when found were publicly burned. **** In the next
year, the royal council ordered that vessels engaged in foreign trade
should be captured by force of arms, like pirates, and confiscated
along with their cargoes; (v) while anybody having an article of foreign
manufacture in his possession was subjected to a heavy fine. (v*)
Attempts were made to fix the exact amount of profit which merchants
from France should be
* Réglement de Police, 1676, Art. xl.
** Edits et Ord., II. 100.
*** Ibid., I. 489.
**** Ibid.. I. 402.
(v) Ibid., I. 425.
(v*) Ibid., I. 505.
allowed to make in the colony. One of the first acts of the superior
council was to order them to bring their invoices immediately before
that body, which thereupon affixed prices to each article. The merchant
who sold and the purchaser who bought above this tariff were alike
condemned to heavy penalties; and so, too, was the merchant who chose to
keep his goods rather than sell them at the price ordained. * Resident
merchants, on the other hand, were favored to the utmost. They could
sell at what price they saw fit; and, according to La Hontan, they made
great profit by the sale of laces, ribbons, watches, jewels, and similar
superfluities to the poor but extravagant colonists.
A considerable number of the non-resident merchants were Huguenots, for
most of the importations were from the old Huguenot city of Rochelle.
No favor was shown them; they were held under rigid restraint, and
forbidden to exercise their religion, or to remain in the colony during
winter without special license. ** This sometimes bore very hard upon
them. The governor Denonville, an ardent Catholic, states the case of
one Bernon, who had done great service to the colony, and whom La Hontan
mentions as the principal French merchant in the Canadian trade. “It
is a pity,” says Denonville, “that he cannot be converted. As he is
a Huguenot, the bishop wants me to order him home this autumn, which I
have done, though he
* Edits et Ord., II. 17, 19.
** Réglement de Police, 1676. Art. xxxvii.
carries on a large business, and a great deal of money remains due to
him here.” *
For a long time the ships from France went home empty, except a favored
few which carried furs, or occasionally a load of dried pease or of
timber. Payment was made in money when there was any in Canada, or in
bills of exchange. The colony, drawing every thing from France, and
returning little besides beaver skins, remained under a load of
debt. French merchants were discouraged, and shipments from France
languished. As for the trade with the West Indies, which Talon had tried
by precept and example to build up, the intendant reports in 1680 that
it had nearly ceased; though six years later it grew again to the modest
proportions of three vessels loaded with wheat. **
_The besetting evil of trade and industry in Canada was the habit they
contracted, and were encouraged to contract, of depending on the direct
aid of government._ Not a new enterprise was set on foot without a
petition to the king to lend a helping hand. Sometimes the petition was
sent through the governor, sometimes through the intendant; and it was
rarely refused. Denonville writes that the merchants of Quebec, by a
combined effort, had sent a vessel of sixty tons to France with colonial
produce; and he asks that the royal commissaries at Rochefort be
instructed to buy the whole cargo, in order to encourage so
* Denonville au Ministre, 1685.
** Ibid., 1686. The year before, about 18,000 minots of
grain were sent hither. In 1736, the shipments reached
80,000 minots.
deserving an enterprise. One Hazeur set up a sawmill, at Mai Bay.
Finding a large stock of planks and timber on his hands, he begs
the king to send two vessels to carry them to France; and the king
accordingly did so. A similar request was made in behalf of another
sawmill at St. Paul’s Bay. Denonville announces that one Riverin
wishes to embark in the whale and cod fishery, and that though strong
in zeal he is weak in resources. The minister replies, that he is to be
encouraged, and that his Majesty will favorably consider his enterprise.
* Various gifts were soon after made him. He now took to himself a
partner, the Sieur Chalons; whereupon the governor writes to ask
the minister’s protection for them. “The Basques,” he says,
“formerly carried on this fishery, but some monopoly or other put a
stop to it.” The remedy he proposes is homoeopathic. He asks another
monopoly for the two partners. Louis Joliet, the discoverer of the
Mississippi, made a fishing station on the island of Anticosti; and he
begs help from the king, on the ground that his fishery will furnish a
good and useful employment to young men. The Sieur Vitry wished to begin
a fishery of white porpoises, and he begs the king
* The interest felt by the king in these matters is shown
in a letter signed by his hand in which he enters with
considerable detail into the plans of Riverin. Le Roy à
Denonville et Champigny, 1 Mai, 1689. He afterwards ordered
boats, harpooners, and cordage to be sent him, for which he
was to pay at his convenience. Four years later, he
complains that, though Riverin had been often helped, his
fisheries were of slight account. “Let him take care,”
pursues the king, “that he does not use his enterprises as a
pretext to obtain favors.”. Mémoire du Roy a Frontenac et
Champigny, 1693
to give him two thousand pounds of cod-line and two thousand pounds of
one and two inch rope. His request was granted, on which he asked for
five hundred livres. The money was given him, and the next year he asked
to have the gift renewed. *
The king was very anxious to develop the fisheries of the colony. “His
Majesty,” writes the minister, “wishes you to induce the inhabitants
to unite with the merchants for this object, and to incite them by all
sorts of means to overcome their natural laziness, since there is no
other way of saving them from the misery in which they now are.” **
“I wish,” says the zealous Denonville, “that fisheries could be
well established to give employment to our young men, and prevent them
from running wild in the woods;” and he adds mournfully, “they (_the
fisheries_) are enriching Boston at our expense.” “They are our true
mines,” urges the intendant Meules; “but the English of Boston have
got possession of those of Acadia, which belong to us; and we ought to
prevent it.” It was not prevented; and the Canadian
* All the above examples are drawn from the correspondence
of the governor and intendant with the minister, between
1680 and 1699, together with a memorial of Hazeur and
another of Riverin, addressed to the minister.
Vitry’s porpoise-fishing appears to have ended in failure.
In 1707 the intendant Raudot granted the porpoise fishery of
the seigniory of Riviere Ouelle to six of the _habitans_.
This fishery is carried on here successfully at the present
day. A very interesting account of it was published in the
Opinion Publique, 1873, by my friend Abbé Casgrain, whose
family residence is the seigniorial mansion of Riviere
Ouelle.
** Mémoire pour Denonville et Champigny, 8 Mars, 1688.
fisheries, like other branches of Canadian industry, remained in a state
of almost hopeless languor. *
The government applied various stimulants. One of these, proposed by the
intendant Duchesneau, is characteristic. He advises the formation of
a company which should have the exclusive right of exporting fish; but
which on its part should be required to take, at a fixed price, all that
the inhabitants should bring them. This notable plan did not find favor
with the king. ** It was practised, however, in the case of beaver
skins, and also in that of woodashes. The farmers of the revenue were
required to take this last commodity at a fixed price, on their own
risk, and in any quantity offered. They remonstrated, saying that it was
unsalable; adding that, if the inhabitants would but take the trouble to
turn it into potash, it might be possible to find a market for it. The
king released them entirely, coupling his order to that effect with a
eulogy of free trade. ***
In all departments of industry, the appeals for help are endless.
Governors and intendants are so many sturdy beggars for the languishing
colony.
* The Canadian fisheries must not be confounded with the
French fisheries of Newfoundland, which were prosperous, but
were carried on wholly from French ports.
In a memorial addressed by the partners Chalons and Riverin
to the minister Seignelay, they say: “Baston (Boston) et
toute sa colonie nous donne un exemple qui fait honte à
nostre nation, puisqu’elle s’augmente tous les jours par
cette pesche (de la morue) qu’elle fait la plus grande
partie sur nos costes pendant que les François ne s’occupent
à rien.” Meules urges that the king should undertake the
fishing business himself since his subjects cannot or will
not.
** Ministre a Duchesneau, 15 Mai, 1678
*** Le Roy a Duchesneau, 11 Juin, 1680.
“Send us money to build storehouses, to which the _habitants_
can bring their produce and receive goods from the government in
exchange.” “Send us a teacher to make sailors of our young men:
it is a pity the colony should remain in such a state for want of
instruction for youth.” * “We want a surgeon: there is none in
Canada who can set a bone.” ** “Send us some tilers, brick-makers,
and potters.” *** “Send us iron-workers to work our mines.”
**** “It is to be wished that his Majesty would send us all sorts of
artisans, especially potters and glass-workers.” (v) “Our Canadians
need aid and instruction in their fisheries; they need pilots.” (v*)
In 1688, the intendant reported that Canada was entirely without either
pilots or sailors; and, as late as 1712, the engineer Catalogne informed
the government that, though the St. Lawrence was dangerous, a pilot was
rarely to be had. “There ought to be trade with the West Indies and
other places,” urges another writer. “Everybody says it is best,
but nobody will undertake it. Our merchants are too poor, or else are
engrossed by the fur trade.” (v**)
The languor of commerce made agriculture languish. “It is of no use
now,” writes Meules,
* Mémoire a Monseigneur le Marquis de Seignday, présenté
par les Sieurs Chalons et Riverin, 1686.
** Champigny au Ministre, 1688.
*** Ibid.
**** Denonville au Ministre, 1686.
(v) Mémoire de Catalogue, 1712.
(v*) Denonville au Ministre, 1686.
(v**) Mémoire de Chalons et Riverin présenté au Marquis de
Seignelay.
in 1682, “to raise any crops except what each family wants for
itself.” In vain the government sent out seeds for distribution. In
vain intendants lectured the farmers, and lavished well-meant advice.
Tillage remained careless and slovenly. “If,” says the all-observing
Catalogne, “the soil were not better cultivated in Europe than here,
three-fourths of the people would starve.” He complains that the
festivals of the church are so numerous that not ninety working days are
left during the whole working season. The people, he says, ought to be
compelled to build granaries to store their crops, instead of selling
them in autumn for almost nothing, and every habitant should be required
to keep two or three sheep. The intendant Champigny calls for seed of
hemp and flax, and promises to visit the farms, and show the people the
lands best suited for their culture. He thinks that favors should be
granted to those who raise hemp and flax as well as to those who marry.
Denonville is of opinion that each _habitant_ should be compelled to
raise a little hemp every year, and that the king should then buy it
of him at a high price. * It will be well, he says, to make use of
severity, while, at the same time, holding out a hope of gain; and he
begs that weavers be sent out to teach the women and girls, who spend
the winter in idleness, how to weave and spin. Weaving and spinning,
however, as well as the culture of hemp and flax, were neglected till
1705, when the loss of a ship laden with goods for the colony
* Denonville au Ministre, 13 Nov.. 1685
gave the spur to home industry; and Madame de Repentigny set the example
of making a kind of coarse blanket of nettle and linden bark. *
The jealousy of colonial manufactures shown by England appears but
rarely in the relations of France with Canada. According to its light,
the French government usually did its best to stimulate Canadian
industry, with what results we have just seen. There was afterwards some
improvement. In 1714, the intendant Bégon reported that coarse fabrics
of wool and linen were made; that the sisters of the congregation wore
cloth for their own habits as good as the same stuffs in France; that
black cloth was made for priests, and blue cloth for the pupils of
the colleges. The inhabitants, he says, have been taught these arts by
necessity. They were naturally adroit at handiwork of all kinds; and
during the last half century of the French rule, when the population
had settled into comparative stability, many of the mechanic arts were
practised with success, notwithstanding the assertion of the Abbé La
Tour that every thing but bread and meat had still to be brought from
France. This change may be said to date from the peace of Utrecht, or a
few years before it. At that time, one Duplessis had a new vessel on
the stocks. Catalogne, who states the fact, calls it the beginning
of ship-building in Canada, evidently ignorant that Talon had made a
fruitless beginning more than forty years before.
Of the arts of ornament not much could have
* Beauharnois et Raudot au Ministre, 1705.
been expected; but, strangely enough, they were in somewhat better
condition than the useful arts. The nuns of the Hôtel-Dieu made
artificial flowers for altars and shrines, under the direction of
Mother-Juchereau; * and the boys of the seminary were taught to make
carvings in wood for the decoration of churches. ** Pierre, son of the
merchant Le Ber, had a turn for painting, and made religious pictures,
described as very indifferent. *** His sister Jeanne, an enthusiastic
devotee, made embroideries for vestments and altars, and her work was
much admired.
The colonial finances were not prosperous. In the absence of coin,
beaver-skins long served as currency. In 1669, the council declared
wheat a legal tender, at four francs the _minot_ or three French
bushels; **** and, five years later, all creditors were ordered to
receive moose-skins in payment at the market rate. (v) Coin would not
remain in the colony. If the company or the king sent any thither, it
went back in the returning ships. The government devised a remedy. A
coinage was ordered for Canada one-fourth less in value than that of
France. Thus the Canadian livre or franc was worth, in reality, fifteen
sous instead of twenty. (v*) This shallow expedient produced only a
nominal rise of prices, and coin fled the colony as before.
* Juchereau, Hist, de l'Hôtel-Dieu, 244.
** Abeille, II., 13.
*** Faillon, Vie de Mlle. Le Ber, 331.
**** Edits et Ord., II. 47.
(v) Ibid., II. 55.
(v*) This device was of very early date. See Boucher, Hist.
Véritable chap, xiv
Trade was carried on for a time by means of negotiable notes, payable
in furs, goods, or farm produce. In 1685, the intendant Meules issued
a card currency. He had no money to pay the soldiers, “and not
knowing,” he informs the minister, “to what saint to make my vows,
the idea occurred to me of putting in circulation notes made of cards,
each cut into four pieces; and I have issued an ordinance commanding
the inhabitants to receive them in payment.” * The cards were common
playing cards, and each piece was stamped with a _fleur-de-lis_ and a
crown, and signed by the governor, the intendant, and the clerk of the
treasury at Quebec. ** The example of Meules found ready imitation.
Governors and intendants made card money whenever they saw fit; and,
being worthless everywhere but in Canada, it showed no disposition to
escape the colony. It was declared convertible not into coin, but into
bills of exchange; and this conversion could only take place at brief
specified periods. “The currency used in Canada,” says a writer in
the last years of the French rule, “has no value as a representative
of money. It is the sign of a sign.” *** It was card representing
paper, and this paper was very often dishonored. In 1714, the amount of
card rubbish had risen to two million livres. Confidence was lost, and
trade was half dead. The minister Ponchartrain came to the rescue, and
promised to
* Meules au Ministre, 24 Sept., 1685.
** Mémoire addressé au Régent, 1715.
*** Considérations sur l’Etat du Canada, 1758.
redeem it at half its nominal value. The holders preferred to lose half
rather than the whole, and accepted the terms. A few of the cards were
redeemed at the rate named; then the government broke faith, and payment
ceased. “This afflicting news,” says a writer of the time, “was
brought out by the vessel which sailed from France last July.”
In 1717, the government made another proposal, and the cards were
converted into bills of exchange. At the same time a new issue was made,
which it was declared should be the last. * This issue was promptly
redeemed, but twelve years later another followed it. In the interval,
a certain quantity of coin circulated in the colony; but it underwent
fluctuations through the intervention of government; and, within eight
years, at least four edicts were issued affecting its value. ** Then
came more promises to pay, till, in the last bitter years of its
existence, the colony floundered in drifts of worthless paper.
One characteristic grievance was added to the countless woes of Canadian
commerce. The government was so jealous of popular meetings of all
kinds, that for a long time it forbade merchants to meet together
for discussing their affairs; and, it was not till 1717 that the
establishment of a _bourse_ or exchange was permitted at Quebec and
Montreal. ***
In respect of taxation, Canada, as compared with
* Edits et Ord., I. 370.
** Ibid., 400, 432, 436, 484.
*** Doutre et Lareau, Hist, du Droit Canadien, 254.
France, had no reason to complain. If the king permitted governors and
intendants to make card money, he permitted nobody to impose taxes
but himself. The Canadians paid no direct civil tax, except in a few
instances where temporary and local assessments were ordered for special
objects. It was the fur trade on which the chief burden fell. One-fourth
of the beaver-skins, and one-tenth of the moose-hides, belonged to the
king; and wine, brandy, and tobacco contributed a duty of ten per cent.
During a long course of years, these were the only imposts. The king,
also, retained the exclusive right of the fur trade at Tadoussac. A vast
tract of wilderness extending from St. Paul’s Bay to a point eighty
leagues down the St. Lawrence, and stretching indefinitely northward
towards Hudson’s Bay, formed a sort of royal preserve, whence every
settler was rigidly excluded. The farmers of the revenue had their
trading-houses at Tadoussac, whither the northern tribes, until war,
pestilence, and brandy consumed them, brought every summer a large
quantity of furs.
When, in 1674, the West India Company, to whom these imposts had been
granted, was extinguished, the king resumed possession of them. The
various duties, along with the trade of Tadoussac, were now farmed out
to one Oudiette and his associates, who paid the Crown three hundred and
fifty thousand livres for their privilege. *
* The annual return to the king from the ferme du Canada
was, for some years, 119,000 francs (livres). Out of this
were paid from 35,000 to 40,000 francs a year for “ordinary
charges.” The governor, intendant, and all troops except the
small garrisons of Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers, were
paid from other sources. There was a time when the balance
must have been in the king’s favor; but profit soon changed
to loss, owing partly to wars, partly to the confusion into
which the beaver trade soon fell. “His Majesty,” writes the
minister to the governor in 1698, “may soon grow tired of a
colony which, far from yielding him any profit, costs him
immense sums every year.”
We come now to a trade far more important than all the rest together,
one which absorbed the enterprise of the colony, drained the life-sap
from other branches of commerce, and, even more than a vicious system
of government, kept them in a state of chronic debility,--the hardy,
adventurous, lawless, fascinating fur trade. In the eighteenth century,
Canada exported a moderate quantity of timber, wheat, the herb called
ginseng, and a few other commodities; but from first to last she lived
chiefly on beaver-skins. The government tried without ceasing to control
and regulate this traffic; but it never succeeded. It aimed, above all
things, to bring the trade home to the colonists, to prevent them from
going to the Indians, and induce the Indians to come to them. To
this end a great annual fair was established by order of the king at
Montreal. Thither every summer a host of savages came down from the
lakes in their bark canoes. A place was assigned them at a little
distance from the town. They landed, drew up their canoes in a line on
the bank, took out their packs of beaver-skins, set up their wigwams,
slung their kettles, and encamped for the night. On the next day, there
was a grand council on the common, between St. Paul Street and the
river. Speeches of compliment were made amid a solemn smoking of pipes.
The governor-general was usually present, seated in an armchair, while
the visitors formed a ring about him, ranged in the order of their
tribes. On the next day the trade began in the same place. Merchants
of high and low degree brought up their goods from Quebec, and every
inhabitant of Montreal, of any substance, sought a share in the profit.
Their booths were set along the palisades, of the town, and each had an
interpreter, to whom he usually promised a certain portion of his gains.
The scene abounded in those contrasts--not always edifying, but always
picturesque--which mark the whole course of French Canadian history.
Here was a throng of Indians armed with bows and arrows, warclubs, or
the cheap guns of the trade; some of them completely naked except
for the feathers on their heads and the paint on their faces; French
bush-rangers tricked out with savage finery; merchants and _habitants_
in their coarse and plain attire, and the grave priests of St. Sulpice
robed in black. Order and sobriety were their watchwords, but the wild
gathering was beyond their control. The prohibition to sell brandy could
rarely be enforced; and the fair ended at times in a pandemonium of
drunken frenzy. The rapacity of trade, and the license of savages and
_coureurs de bois_, had completely transformed the pious settlement.
A similar fair was established at Three Rivers, for the Algonquin tribes
north of that place. These yearly markets did not fully answer the
desired object. There was a constant tendency among the inhabitants of
Canada to form settlements above Montreal, in order to intercept the
Indians on their way down, drench them with brandy, and get their furs
from them at low rates in advance of the fair. Such settlements were
forbidden, but not prevented. The audacious “squatter” defied
edict and ordinance and the fury of drunken savages, and boldly planted
himself in the path of the descending trade.-Nor is this a matter of
surprise; for he was usually the secret agent of some high colonial
officer, an intendant, the local governor, or the governor-general, who
often used his power to enforce the law against others, and to violate
it himself.
This was not all; for the more youthful and vigorous part of the male
population soon began to escape into the woods, and trade with the
Indians far beyond the limits of the remotest settlements. Here, too,
many of them were in league with the authorities, who denounced the
abuse while secretly favoring the portion of it in which they themselves
were interested. The home government, unable to prevent the evil, tried
to regulate it. Licenses were issued for the forest trade. * Their
number was limited to twenty-five, and the privileges which they
conferred varied at different periods. In La Hontan’s time, each
license authorized the departure of two canoes loaded with goods. One
canoe only was afterwards allowed, bearing three men with about four
hundred pounds of freight. The licenses were sometimes sold for the
profit of government, but many were given to widows of
* Ordres du Roy au sujet de la Traite du Canada, 1681.
officers and other needy persons, to the hospitals, or to favorites and
retainers of the governor. Those who could not themselves use them sold
them to merchants or _voyageurs_, at a price varying from a thousand to
eighteen hundred francs. They were valid for a year and a half; and each
canoeman had a share in the profits, which, if no accident happened,
were very large. The license system was several times suppressed and
renewed again; but, like the fair at Montreal, it failed completely to
answer its purpose, and restrain the young men of Canada from a general
exodus into the wilderness. *
The most characteristic features of the Canadian fur trade still remain
to be seen. Oudiette and his associates were not only charged with
collecting the revenue, but were also vested with an exclusive right of
transporting all the beaver-skins of the colony to France. On their
part they were compelled to receive all beaver-skins brought to their
magazines; and, after deducting the fourth belonging to the king, to pay
for the rest at a fixed price. This price was graduated to the different
qualities of the fur; but the average cost to the collectors was a
little more than three francs a pound. The inhabitants could barter
their furs with merchants; but the merchants must bring them all to the
magazines of Oudiette, who paid in receipts convertible into bills of
exchange. He soon found himself burdened with such a mass
* Before me is one of these licenses, signed by the
governor Denonville. A condition of carrying no brandy is
appended to it.
of beaver-skins, that the market was completely glutted. The French
hatters refused to take them all; and for the part which they consented
to take, they paid chiefly in hats, which Oudiette was not allowed to
sell in France, but only in the French West Indies, where few people
wanted them. An unlucky fashion of small hats diminished the consumption
of fur and increased his embarrassments, as did also a practice common
among the hatters of mixing rabbit fur with the beaver. In his extremity
he bethought him of setting up a hat factory for himself under the name
of a certain licensed hatter, thinking thereby to alarm his customers
into buying his stock. * The other hatters rose in wrath and petitioned
the minister. The new factory was suppressed, and Oudiette soon became
bankrupt. Another company of farmers of the revenue took his place
with similar results. The action of the law of supply and demand was
completely arrested by the peremptory edict which, with a view to
the prosperity of the colony and the profit of the king, required the
company to take every beaver-skin offered.
All Canada, thinking itself sure of its price, rushed into the beaver
trade, and the accumulation of unsalable furs became more and
more suffocating. The farmers of the revenue could not meet their
engagements. Their bills of exchange were unpaid, and Canada was
filled with distress and consternation. In 1700, a change of system was
ordered. The monopoly of exporting beaver
* Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687.
was placed in the hands of a company formed of the chief inhabitants of
Canada. Some of them hesitated to take the risk; but the government was
not to be trifled with, and the minister, Ponchartrain, wrote in terms
so peremptory, and so menacing to the recusants, that, in the words of
a writer of the time, he “shut everybody’s mouth.” About a hundred
and fifty merchants accordingly subscribed to the stock of the new
company, and immediately petitioned the king for a ship and a loan of
seven hundred thousand francs. They were required to take off the hands
of the farmers of the revenue an accumulation of more than six hundred
thousand pounds of beaver, for which, however, they were to pay but half
its usual price. The market of France absolutely refused it, and
the directors of the new company saw no better course than to burn
three-fourths of the troublesome and perishable commodity; nor was this
the first resort to this strange expedient. One cannot repress a feeling
of indignation at the fate of the interesting and unfortunate animals
uselessly sacrificed to a false economic system. In order to rid
themselves of what remained, the directors begged the king to issue a
decree, requiring all hatters to put at least three ounces of genuine
beaver-fur into each hat.
All was in vain. The affairs of the company fell into a confusion which
was aggravated by the bad faith of some of its chief members. In 1707,
it was succeeded by another company, to whose magazines every _habitant_
or merchant was ordered to bring every beaver-skin in his possession
within forty-eight hours; and the company, like its predecessors, was
required to receive it, and pay for it in written promises. Again the
market was overwhelmed with a surfeit of beaver. Again the bills of
exchange were unpaid, and all was confusion and distress. Among the
memorials and petitions to which this state of things gave birth, there
is one conspicuous by the presence of good sense and the absence
of self-interest. The writer proposes that there should be no more
monopoly, but that everybody should be free to buy beaver-skins and send
them to France, subject only to a moderate duty of entry. The proposal
was not accepted. In 1721, the monopoly of exporting beaver-skins was
given to the new West India Company; but this time it was provided
that the government should direct from time to time, according to the
capacities of the market, the quantity of furs which the company should
be forced to receive. *
Out of the beaver trade rose a huge evil, baneful to the growth and the
morals of Canada. All that was most active and vigorous in the colony
took to the woods, and escaped from the control of intendants, councils,
and priests, to the savage freedom
* On the fur trade the documents consulted are very
numerous. The following are the most important: Mémoire sur
ce qui concerne le Commerce du Castor et ses dépendances,
1715; Mémoire concernant le Commerce le Traite entre les
François et les Sauvages, 1691; Mémoire sur le Canada
addressé au Régent, 1715; Mémoire sur les Affaires de Canada
dans leur Estât présent, 1696; Mémoire des Négotiants de la
Rochelle qui font Commerce en Canada sur la Proposition de
ne plus recevoir les Castors et d'engager les Habitants a la
Culture des Terres et Pesche de la Molue, 1696; Mémoire du
Sr. Riverin sur la Traite et la Ferme du Castor, 1696;
Mémoire touchant le Commerce du Canada, 1687, etc.
of the wilderness. Not only were the possible profits great; but, in
the pursuit of them, there was a fascinating element of adventure and
danger. The bush-rangers or _coureurs de bois_ were to the king an
object of horror. They defeated his plans for the increase of the
population, and shocked his native instinct of discipline and order.
Edict after edict was directed against them; and more than once the
colony presented the extraordinary spectacle of the greater part of its
young men turned into forest outlaws. But severity was dangerous. The
offenders might be driven over to the English, or converted into a
lawless banditti, renegades of civilization and the faith. Therefore,
clemency alternated with rigor, and declarations of amnesty with edicts
of proscription. Neither threats nor blandishments were of much avail.
We hear of seigniories abandoned; farms turning again into forests;
wives and children left in destitution. The exodus of the _coureurs de
bois_ would take, at times, the character of an organized movement. The
famous Du Lhut is said to have made a general combination of the young
men of Canada to follow him into the woods. Their plan was to be absent
four years, in order that the edicts against them might have time to
relent. The intendant Duchesneau reported that eight hundred men out of
a population of less than ten thousand souls had vanished from sight in
the immensity of a boundless wilderness. Whereupon the king ordered that
any person going into the woods without a license should be whipped and
branded for the first offence, and sent lor life to the galleys for the
second. * The order was more easily given than enforced. “I must not
conceal from you, monseigneur,” again writes Duchesneau, “that the
disobedience of the _coureurs de bois_ has reached such a point that
everybody boldly contravenes the king’s interdictions; that there
is no longer any concealment; and that parties are collected with
astonishing insolence to go and trade in the Indian country. I have done
all in my power to prevent this evil, which may cause the ruin of
the colony. I have enacted ordinances against the _coureurs de bois_;
against the merchants who furnish them with goods; against the gentlemen
and others who harbor them, and even against those who have any
knowledge of them, and will not inform the local judges. All has been in
vain; inasmuch as some of the most considerable families are interested
with them, and the governor lets them go on and even shares their
profits.” ** “You are aware, monseigneur,” writes Denonville, some
years later, “that the _coureurs de bois_ are a great evil, but you
are not aware how great this evil is. It deprives the country of
its effective men; makes them indocile, debauched, and incapable of
discipline, and turns them into pretended nobles, wearing the sword and
decked out with lace, both they and their relations, who all affect to
be gentlemen and ladies. As for cultivating the soil, they will not hear
of it.
* Le Roy a Frontenac, 30 Avril, 1681. On another occasion,
it was ordered that any person thus offending should suffer
death.
** N. Y. Colonial Docs., IX. 131.
This, along with the scattered condition of the settlements, causes
their children to be as unruly as Indians, being brought up in the same
manner. Not that there are not some very good people here, but they are
in a minority.” * In another despatch he enlarges on their vagabond
and lawless ways, their indifference to marriage, and the mischief
caused by their example; describes how, on their return from the woods,
they swagger like lords, spend all their gains in dress and drunken
revelry, and despise the peasants, whose daughters they will not deign
to marry, though they are peasants themselves.
It was a curious scene when a party of _coureurs de bois_ returned from
their rovings. Montreal was their harboring place, and they conducted
themselves much like the crew of a man-of-war paid off after a long
voyage. As long as their beaver-skins lasted, they set no bounds to
their riot. Every house in the place, we are told, was turned into a
drinking shop. The newcomers were bedizened with a strange mixture
of French and Indian finery; while some of them, with instincts more
thoroughly savage, stalked about the streets as naked as a Pottawattamie
or a Sioux. The clamor of tongues was prodigious, and gambling and
drinking filled the day and the night. When at last they were sober
again, they sought absolution for their sins; nor could the priests
venture to bear too hard on their unruly penitents,
* Denonville, Mémoire sur l’Estât des Affaires de le
Nouvelle France.
lest they should break wholly with the church and dispense thenceforth
with her sacraments.
Under such leaders as Du Lhut, the _coureurs de bois_ built forts of
palisades at various points throughout the West and Northwest. They
had a post of this sort at Detroit some time before its permanent
settlement, as well as others on Lake Superior and in the valley of the
Mississippi. They occupied them as long as it suited their purposes, and
then abandoned them to the next comer. Michillimackinac was, however,
their chief resort; and thence they would set out, two or three
together, to roam for hundreds of miles through the endless meshwork of
interlocking lakes and rivers which seams the northern wilderness.
No wonder that a year or two of bush-ranging spoiled them for
civilization. Though not a very valuable member of society, and though
a thorn in the side of princes and rulers, the _coureur de bois_ had his
uses, at least from an artistic point of view; and his strange figure,
sometimes brutally savage, but oftener marked with the lines of a
dare-devil courage, and a reckless, thoughtless gayety, will always be
joined to the memories of that grand world of woods which the
nineteenth century is fast civilizing out of existence. At least, he is
picturesque, and with his red-skin companion serves to animate forest
scenery. Perhaps he could sometimes feel, without knowing that he felt
them, the charms of the savage nature that had adopted him. Rude as he
was, her voice may not always have been meaningless for one who knew her
haunts so well; deep recesses where, veiled in foliage, some wild shy
rivulet steals with timid music through breathless caves of verdure;
gulfs where feathered crags rise like castle walls, where the noonday
sun pierces with keen rays athwart the torrent, and the mossed arms
of fallen pines cast wavering shadows on the illumined foam; pools of
liquid crystal turned emerald in the reflected green of impending
woods; rocks on whose rugged front the gleam of sunlit waters dances in
quivering light; ancient trees hurled headlong by the storm to dam the
raging stream with their forlorn and savage ruin; or the stern depths
of immemorial forests, dim and silent as a cavern, columned with
innumerable trunks, each like an Atlas upholding its world of leaves,
and sweating perpetual moisture down its dark and channelled rind; some
strong in youth, some grisly with decrepit age, nightmares of strange
distortion, gnarled and knotted with wens and goitres; roots intertwined
beneath like serpents petrified in an agony of contorted strife; green
and glistening mosses carpeting the rough ground, mantling the rocks,
turning pulpy stumps to mounds of verdure, and swathing fallen trunks
as bent in the impotence of rottenness, they lie outstretched over
knoll and hollow, like mouldering reptiles of the primeval world, while
around, and on and through them, springs the young growth that battens
on their decay,--the forest devouring its own dead. Or, to turn from its
funereal shade to the light and life of the open woodland, the sheen of
sparkling lakes, and mountains basking in the glory of the summer noon,
flecked by the shadows of passing clouds that sail on snowy wings across
the transparent azure.
Yet it would be false coloring to paint the half-savage _coureur de
bois_ as a romantic lover of nature. He liked the woods because they
emancipated him from restraint. He liked the lounging ease of the
campfire, and the license of Indian villages. His life has a dark and
ugly side, which is nowhere drawn more strongly than in a letter written
by the Jesuit Carheil to the intendant Champigny. It was at a time
when some of the outlying forest posts, originally either missions
or transient stations of _coureurs de bois_, had received regular
garrisons. Carheil writes from Michillimackinac, and describes the
state of things around him like one whom long familiarity with them had
stripped of every illusion.
But here, for the present, we pause; for the father touches on other
matters than the _coureurs de bois_, and we reserve him and his letter
for the next chapter.