JACQUES CARTIER, THE DISCOVERER OF CANADA
Jacques Cartier enters the St. Lawrence.--He imagines that he has found
a Sea-route to the Indies.--The Importance of such a Route.--His
Exploration of the St. Lawrence.--A Bitter Winter.--Cartier's Treachery
and its Punishment.--Roberval's Disastrous Expedition.
How early the first Frenchmen visited America it is hard to say. It
has been claimed, on somewhat doubtful evidence, that the Basques, that
ancient people inhabiting the Pyrenees and the shores of the Bay of
Biscay, fished on the coast of Newfoundland before John Cabot saw it
and received credit as the discoverer of this continent. So much, at
any rate, is certain, that within a very few years after Cabot's voyage
a considerable fleet of French, Spanish, and Portuguese vessels was
engaged in the Newfoundland fishery. Later the English took part in
it. The French soon gained the lead in this industry {54} and thus
became the predominant power on the northern shores of America, just as
the Spaniards were on the southern. The formal claim of France to the
territory which she afterward called New France was based on the
explorations of her adventurous voyagers.
Jacques Cartier was a daring mariner, belonging to that bold Breton
race whose fishermen had for many years frequented the Newfoundland
Banks for codfish. In 1534 he sailed to push his exploration farther
than had as yet been attempted. His inspiration was the old dream of
all the early navigators, the hope of finding a highway to China.
Needless to say, he did not find it, but he found something well worth
the finding--Canada.
Sailing through the Straits of Belle Isle, he saw an inland sea opening
before him. Passing Anticosti Island, he landed on the shore of a fine
bay. It was the month of July, and it chanced to be an oppressive day.
"The country is hotter than the country of Spain," he wrote in his
journal. Therefore he gave the bay its name, the Bay of Chaleur
(heat). The beauty and fertility of the country, the abundance of
berries, and "the many goodly meadows, full of {55} grass, and lakes
wherein great pleanty of salmons be," made a great impression on him.
On the shore were more than three hundred men, women, and children.
"These showed themselves very friendly," he says, "and in such wise
were we assured one of another, that we very familiarly began to
traffic for whatever they had, till they had nothing but their naked
bodies, for they gave us all whatsoever they had." These Indians
belonged undoubtedly to some branch of the Algonquin family occupying
all this region.
Cartier did not scruple to take advantage of their simplicity. At
Gaspé he set up a cross with the royal arms, the fleur-de-lys, carved
on it, and a legend meaning, "Long live the King of France!" He meant
this as a symbol of taking possession of the country for his master.
Yet, when the Indian chief asked him what this meant, he answered that
it was only a landmark for vessels that might come that way. Then he
lured some of the natives on board and succeeded in securing two young
men to be taken to France. This villainy accomplished, he sailed for
home in great glee, not doubting that the wide estuary whose mouth he
had entered was the opening of the long-sought passage to Cathay. In
France {56} his report excited wild enthusiasm. The way to the Indies
was open! France had found and France would control it!
Natural enough was this joyful feeling. The only water-route to the
East then in use was that around the Cape of Good Hope, and it
belonged, according to the absurd grant of Pope Alexander the Sixth, to
Portugal alone. Spain had opened another around the Horn, but kept the
fact carefully concealed. In short, the selfish policy of Spain and
Portugal was to shut all other nations out of trading with the regions
which they claimed as theirs; and these tyrants of the southern seas
were not slow in enforcing their claims. Spain, too, had ample means
at her disposal. She was the mightiest power in the world, and her
dominion on the ocean there was none to dispute. At that time Drake
and Hawkins and those other great English seamen who broke her
sea-power had not appeared. This condition of affairs compelled the
northern nations, the English, French, and Dutch, to seek a route
through high latitudes to the fabled wealth of the Indies. It led to
those innumerable attempts to find a northeast or a northwest passage
of which we have read elsewhere. (See, in "The World's Discoverers,"
{57} accounts of Frobisher, Davis, Barentz, and Hudson, and of
Nordenskjold, their triumphant successor.)
Now, Francis the First, the French monarch, a jealous rival of the
Spanish sovereign, was determined to get a share of the New World. He
had already, in 1524, sent out Verrazano to seek a passage to the East
(See a sketch of this very interesting voyage in "The World's
Discoverers"), and now he was eager to back Cartier with men and money.
Accordingly, the next year we find the explorer back at the mouth of
the St. Lawrence, this time with three vessels and with a number of
gentlemen who had embarked in the enterprise, believing that they were
on their way to reap a splendid harvest in the Indies, like that of the
Spanish cavaliers who sailed with the conquerors of Mexico and Peru.
Entering, on St. Lawrence's day, the Gulf which he had discovered in
the previous year, he named it the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The river
emptying into it he called Hochelaga, from the Indian name of the
adjacent country. Then, guided by the two young natives whom he had
kidnapped the year before, whose home, though they had been seized near
its mouth, was high up the river, he sailed up the {58} wide stream,
convinced that he was approaching China.
In due time Stadaconé was reached, near the site of Quebec, and Cartier
visited the chief, Donnaconna, in his village. The two young Indians
who acted as guides and interpreters had been filling the ears of their
countrymen with marvelous tales of France. Especially, they had "made
great brags," Cartier says, about his cannon; and Donnaconna begged him
to fire some of them. Cartier, quite willing to give the savages a
sense of his wonderful resources, ordered twelve guns fired in quick
succession. At the roar of the cannon, he says, "they were greatly
astonished and amazed; for they thought that Heaven had fallen upon
them, and put themselves to flight, howling and crying and shrieking as
if hell had broken loose."
Leaving his two larger vessels safely anchored within the mouth of the
St. Charles River, Cartier set out with the smallest and two open
boats, to ascend the St. Lawrence. At Hochelaga he found a great
throng of Indians on the shore, wild with delight, dancing and singing.
They loaded the strangers with gifts of fish and maize. At night the
dark woods, far and near, were {59} illumined with the blaze of great
fires around which the savages capered with joy.
The next day Cartier and his party were conducted to the great Indian
town. Passing through cornfields laden with ripening grain, they came
to a high circular palisade consisting of three rows of tree-trunks,
the outer and the inner inclining toward each other and supported by an
upright row between them. Along the top were "places to run along and
ladders to get up, all full of stones for the defence of it." In
short, it was a very complete fortification, of the kind that the
Hurons and the Iroquois always built.
Passing through a narrow portal, the Frenchmen saw for the first rime a
group of those large, oblong dwellings, each containing several
families, with which later travelers became familiar in the Iroquois
and the Huron countries. Arriving within the town, the visitors found
themselves objects of curious interest to a great throng of women and
children who crowded around the first Europeans they had ever beheld,
with expressions of wonder and delight. These bearded men seemed to
them to have come down from the skies, children of the Sun.
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Next, a great meeting was held. Then came a touching scene. An aged
chief who was paralyzed was brought and placed at Cartier's feet, and
the latter understood that he was asked to heal him. He laid his hands
on the palsied limbs. Then came a great procession of the sick, the
lame, and the blind, "for it seemed unto them," says Cartier, "that God
was descended and come down from Heaven to heal them." We cannot but
recall how Cortes and his Spaniards were held by the superstitious
Aztecs to have come from another world, and how Cabeza de Vaca was
believed to exercise the power of God to heal the sick. (See "Pioneer
Spaniards in North America.") Cartier solemnly read a passage of the
Scriptures, made the sign of the cross over the poor suppliants, and
offered prayer. The throng of savages, without comprehending a word,
listened in awe-struck silence.
After distributing gifts, the Frenchmen, with a blast of trumpets,
marched out and were led to the top of a neighboring mountain. Seeing
the magnificent expanse of forest extending to the horizon, with the
broad, blue river cleaving its way through. Cartier thought it a
domain worthy or a prince and called the eminence _Mont Royal_. {61}
Thus originated the name of the future city of Montreal, built almost a
century later.
By the time that he had returned to Stadaconé the autumn was well
advanced, and his comrades had made preparations against the coming of
winter by building a fort of palisades on or near the site where Quebec
now stands.
Soon snow and ice shut in the company of Europeans, the first to winter
in the northern part of this continent. A fearful experience it was.
When the cold was at its worst, and the vessels moored in the St.
Charles River were locked fast in ice and burled in snow-drifts, that
dreadful scourge of early explorers, the scurvy, attacked the
Frenchmen. Soon twenty-five had died, and of the living but three or
four were in health. For fear that the Indians, if they learned of
their wretched plight, might seize the opportunity of destroying them
outright, Cartier did not allow any of them to approach the fort. One
day, however, chancing to meet one of them who had himself been ill
with the scurvy, but now was quite well, he was told of a sovereign
remedy, a decoction of the leaves of a certain tree, probably the
spruce. The experiment was tried with success, and the sick Frenchmen
recovered.
{62}
At last the dreary winter wore away, and Cartier prepared to return
home. He had found neither gold nor a passage to India, but he would
not go empty-handed. Donnaconna and nine of his warriors were lured
into the fort as his guests, overwhelmed by sturdy sailors, and carried
on board the vessels. Then, having raised over the scene of this cruel
treachery the symbol of the Prince of Peace, he set sail for France.
In 1541 Cartier made another, and last, voyage to Canada. On reaching
Stadaconé he was besieged by savages eagerly inquiring for the chiefs
whom he had carried away. He replied that Donnaconna was dead, but the
others had married noble ladies and were living in great state in
France. The Indians showed by their coldness that they knew this story
to be false. Every one of the poor exiles had died.
On account of the distrust of the natives, Carder did not stop at
Stadaconé, but pursued his way up the river. While the bulk of his
party made a clearing on the shore, built forts, and sowed turnip-seed,
he went on and explored the rapids above Hochelaga, evidently still
hoping to find a passage to India. Of course, he was disappointed. He
returned to the place {63} where he had left his party and there spent
a gloomy winter, destitute of supplies and shunned by the natives.
All that he had to show for his voyage was a quantity of some shining
mineral and of quartz crystals, mistaken for gold and diamonds. The
treachery of the second voyage made the third a failure.
Thus ended in disappointment and gloom the career of France's great
pioneer, whose discoveries were the foundation of her claims in North
America, and who first described the natives of that vast territory
which she called New France.
Another intending settler of those days was the Sieur de Roberval.
Undismayed by Cartier's ill-success, he sailed up the St. Lawrence and
cast anchor before Cap Rouge, the place which Cartier had fortified and
abandoned. Soon the party were housed in a great structure which
contained accommodations for all under one roof, so that it was planned
on the lines of a true colony, for it included women and children. But
few have ever had a more miserable experience. By some strange lack of
foresight, there was a very scant supply of food, and with the winter
came famine. Disease inevitably followed, so that before spring {64}
one-third of the colony had died. We may think that Nature was hard,
but she was mild and gentle, in comparison with Roberval. He kept one
man in irons for a trifling offence. Another he shot for a petty
theft. To quarreling men and women he gave a taste of the
whipping-post. It has even been said that he hanged six soldiers in
one day.
Just what was the fate of this wretched little band has not been
recorded. We only know that it did not survive long. With its failure
closes the first chapter of the story of French activity on American
soil. Fifty years had passed since Columbus had made his great
discovery, and as yet no foothold had been gained by France anywhere,
nor indeed by any European power on the Atlantic seaboard of the
continent.
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