The French in Canada--Champlain Attacks the Iroquois--Quebec a Military
Post--Weak Efforts at Colonization--Fur-traders and Missionaries--The
Foundation of New France--The French King Claims from the Upper Lakes to
the Sea--Slow Growth of the French Colonies--Mixing with the Savages--The
"Coureurs de Bois."
Although the French navigator, Jacques Cartier, had sailed up the St.
Lawrence as early as 1534, it was not until 1608--the year after the
foundation of Jamestown--that Samuel de Champlain effected a permanent
settlement at Quebec. It happened that the Indians of the St. Lawrence
region were at bitter enmity with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, who
lived in the present State of New York, and this enmity had no small
influence in deciding the subsequent duel between France and England for
empire in North America. Champlain accepted the St. Lawrence Indians as
allies, and consented to lead a war party against the Iroquois. In 1609,
the year after the settlement of Quebec, Champlain entered the lake which
bears his name, accompanied by a number of the St. Lawrence Indians, and
engaged the Iroquois in battle. The warriors of the Five Nations were
brave, but the white man's gun was too much for them, and when two of
their chiefs fell dead, pierced by a shot from Champlain's weapon, they
turned and fled. The French thus won the friendship of the Canadian
Indians and the undying hatred of the Five Nations, and the latter
therefore stood faithfully by first the Dutch, and later the English in
the establishment of their power at Manhattan.
Quebec continued for many years to be hardly more than a military post.
At the time of Champlain's death, in 1635, there was, says Winsor, a
fortress with a few small guns on the cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the
foot of the precipice was a row of unsightly and unsubstantial buildings,
where the scant population lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and
stored their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd which, in the
dreary days, sheltered itself here from the cold blasts that blew along
the river channel. There was the military officer, who sought to give
some color to the scene in showing as much of his brilliant garb as the
cloak which shielded him from the wind would permit. The priest went from
house to house with his looped hat. The lounging hunter preferred for the
most part to tell his story within doors. Occasionally you could mark a
stray savage who had come to the settlement for food. Such characters as
these, and the lazy laborers taking a season of rest after the summer's
traffic, would be grouped in the narrow street beneath the precipice
whenever the wintry sun gave more than its usual warmth at mid-day. It
was hardly a scene to inspire confidence in the future. It was not the
beginning of empire. If one climbed the path leading to the top of the
rugged slope he could see a single cottage that looked as if a settler
had come to stay. There were cattle-sheds and signs of thrift in its
garden plot. If Champlain had had other colonists like the man who built
this house and marked out this farmstead, he might have died with the
hope that New France had been planted in this great valley on the basis
of domestic life. The widow of this genuine settler, Hebert, still
occupied the house at the time when Champlain died, and they point out to
you now in the upper town the spot where this one early householder of
Quebec made his little struggle to instil a proper spirit of colonization
into a crowd of barterers and adventurers. From this upper level the
visitor at this time might have glanced across the valley of the St.
Charles to but a single other sign of permanency in the stone manor house
of Robert Gifart, which had, the previous year, been built at Beauport.
The French pushed their explorations toward the west and missionary
stations were established in the country of the Hurons. Two French
fur-traders reached in 1658 the western extremity of Lake Superior, and
heard from the Indians there of the great river--the Mississippi--running
toward the south. Upon the return of the traders to Canada an expedition
was organized to proceed to the distant region to which the traders had
penetrated, exchange trinkets for furs, and convert the natives to the
Christian faith. It was now that the French began to reap the fatal
fruits of their causeless war on the Iroquois. The latter attacked and
dispersed the expedition, killing several Frenchmen. In 1665, western
exploration was resumed, Father Allouez reaching the Falls of St. Mary in
September of that year, and coasting along the southern shore of Lake
Superior to the great village of the Chippewas. Delegations from a number
of Indian nations, including the Illinois tribe, met Father Allouez in
council at St. Mary's, and complained of the hostile visitations of the
Iroquois from the east and the Sioux from the west. Father Allouez
promised them protection against the Iroquois. Soon after this the French
summoned a great convention of the tribes to St. Mary's, and in presence
of the chieftains formally took possession of the country in behalf of
the king of France. A large wooden cross was elevated with religious
ceremonies. The priests chanted and prayed and the French king was
proclaimed sovereign of the country along the upper lakes and southward
to the sea. Thus was founded the short-lived empire of France in America.
The only French occupation of the St. Lawrence was not of the kind to
flourish. Sir William Alexander, in a tract which he published in 1624,
to induce a more active immigration on the part of his countrymen to his
province of New Scotland (Nova Scotia), accounts for the want of
stability in the French colony in that they were "only desirous to know
the nature and quality of the soil and did never seek to have (its
products) in such quantity as was requisite for their maintenance,
affecting more by making a needless ostentation that the world should
know they had been there, more in love with glory than with virtue....
Being always subject to divisions among themselves it was impossible that
they could subsist, which proceeded sometimes from emulation or envy, and
at other times from the laziness of the disposition of some, who,
loathing labor, would be commanded by none."[1] In 1660, after more than
half a century after the first settlement, a census of Canada showed a
total of 3418 souls, while the inhabitants of New England numbered at the
same time not far from eighty thousand. The establishment of seigneuries
was not calculated to invite or promote desirable immigration. A
seigneurial title was given to any enterprising person who would
undertake to plant settlers on the land, and accept in return a certain
proportion of the grist, furs and fish which the occupant could procure
by labor. Immigrants of the class which builds up a country want to own
the land which they cultivate. The sense of independence inspires them
with energy and with a patriotic interest in the commonwealth. Another
peculiar feature of French colonization was the tendency to mingle with
the natives. As early as 1635, Champlain told the Hurons, at his last
Council in Quebec, that they only needed to embrace the white man's faith
if they would have the white man take their daughters in marriage. The
English principle was to drive out the savage when he could be driven
out, or to tolerate him as a ward and an inferior when it would be unjust
to expel or destroy him; the Frenchman embraced the Indian as a brother.
"The French missionary," says Doyle in his Puritan colonies, "well nigh
broke with civilization; he toned down all that was spiritual in his
religion, and emphasized all that was sensual, till he had assimilated it
to the wants of the savage. The better and worse features of Puritanism
forbade a triumph won on such terms." One of the worst products of French
colonial life was the class known as the "coureurs de bois," a lawless
gang, half trader, half explorer, bent on divertisement, and not
discouraged by misery or peril. They lived in a certain fashion to which
the missionaries themselves were not averse, as Lemercier shows where he
commends the priests of his order as being savages among savages.
Charlevoix tells us that while the Indian did not become French, the
Frenchman became a savage. Talon speaks of these vagabonds as living as
banditti, gathering furs as they could and bringing them to Albany or
Montreal to sell, just as it proved the easiest. If the intendant could
have controlled them he would have made them marry, give up trade and the
wilderness, and settle down to work.
[1] Winsor's "Cartier to Frontenac."