Denonville had been thirty years a soldier, and was much esteemed

at court for his valor. It was agreed on all hands that the King’s

selection of him for governor of the troubled colony was a very good

one. But results proved it otherwise; and Denonville’s administration

was even more unfortunate than that of La Barre, whose disastrous

reign had brought Canada almost to the brink of ruin. When he arrived

at Quebec in the autumn of 1685, with his wife and a portion of his

family, he found little to cheer him. One hundred and fifty of the

five hundred soldiers who had been sent out to Canada by King Louis

had perished of scurvy while crossing the sea. The colony was in great

disorder; the Iroquois roamed at their pleasure, destroyed when and

whom they pleased, and vented their anger with all the cruelty and

ferocity of their savage nature on such tribes as favored the French.

The Indian allies of the French who had been abandoned by La Barre

had little respect left for the nation whose chief representative had

so badly served them. But now all this would be changed. Denonville

was ordered to ratify the peace with the Iroquois or to declare war,

the alternative being left to his own discretion. The King, who felt

acutely the disgrace of La Barre’s abandonment of the Illinois,

enjoined the new governor to repair that mischief as speedily as

possible, to sustain the friendly tribes, and to humble the Iroquois

at all hazards. A vigorous policy was determined on, and the King had

great faith in the instrument which was to effect it. Denonville was

given especial instructions regarding the English of New York, who at

this time were constantly intriguing with the enemies of New France.

Dongan understood the country well, and was striving with all his

energy to secure control of the valuable fur districts south of the

Great Lakes. To that end he was always in treaty with the Iroquois,

who promised and disregarded their promises as exigency or humor

suited them. The King was fully aware of this, and his instructions of

March 10, 1685, are especially clear on this point. First, the French

ambassador at London, M. Barillon, was desired to demand from the King

of England “precise orders obliging that Governor [Dongan] to confine

himself within the limits of his government, and to observe a different

line of conduct toward Sieur de Denonville, whom his Majesty has chosen

to succeed said Sieur de la Barre.” And Denonville was himself told

that “everything must be done to maintain good understanding between

the French and English; but if the latter, contrary to all appearances,

excite and aid the Indians, they must be treated as enemies when found

on Indian territory, without, at the same time, attempting anything

on territory under the obedience of the King of England.” Meanwhile,

the English were seizing posts in Acadia[700] which had always been

occupied by the French. Denonville was ordered to send to the governor

at Boston to explain the points of boundary, and to request him to

confine himself to his own limits in future. Perrot, the former

governor of Montreal, was now governor of Acadia, and he was instructed

to keep up a correspondence with Denonville, and to take his orders

from him.[701]

The struggle for the supremacy was between Denonville and Dongan.

The latter dared not act as openly as he wished, for his King, being

often at the mercy of Louis, kept saddling him with mandates which he

could not disobey, though they sorely touched his pride. He could,

however, intrigue; and the convenient Iroquois, who found their gain

in the dissensions of the English and French, and who soon learned to

encourage the rivalry between the two white powers encroaching on their

domain, turned listening ears to his words. Louis favored the schemes

of Denonville, which had been formed on a very extensive scale, and

involved the mastery of the most fruitful part of the entire continent.

New York had at this time about 18,000 inhabitants; Canada’s population

was 12,263; but while the latter people were united in furthering

French aims, the inhabitants of New York, save the active traders

of the colony who were concerned in the purchase of peltries, took

very little interest in Dongan’s plans. The English colonies were all

deeply interested in checking French advancement, but they declined to

help the government of New York, and Dongan was forced to fight his

battles single-handed. His king furnished him neither money nor troops;

but the assistance rendered, though sometimes in a negative sense,

by the Iroquois league, was often formidable enough, and served his

purpose on occasion. On the part of Denonville there were, of course,

counter-intrigues. Through Lamberville he distributed presents to the

Iroquois, and Engelran spent many days at Michillimackinac trying to

stay the Hurons, Ottawas, and other lake tribes from allying themselves

with the English, as they threatened to do. It was clear that a bold

stroke must be made to keep these hitherto friendly tribes on the side

of the French, and the only means which seemed to be open was war with

the Iroquois. The latter were also intriguing with their old enemies,

and trying to make treaties independently of the French. The _coureurs

de bois_, too, were a source of danger and annoyance. La Barre had not

kept them in check, and Denonville speedily discovered that they acted

as though they regarded the edicts of the King as so much waste paper.

It was impossible to prevent their selling brandy to the Indians, and

demoralizing and debauching the tribes. Denonville wrote for more

troops, and seemed anxious to deal a decisive blow at the Iroquois.

Affairs were in a deplorable state, and nothing short of a stalwart

exhibition of French power would save the country. “Nothing can save

us,” wrote the Governor, “but the sending out of troops and the

building of forts and blockhouses. Yet I dare not begin to build them;

for if I do, it will bring down all the Iroquois upon us before we are

in a condition to fight them.”

A brisk correspondence sprang up between the Governor of New York and

Denonville. At first it was polite and complimentary, but ere long it

assumed a sterner character, and strong language was employed on both

sides. A good deal of fencing was indulged in. There were charges and

countercharges. Each blamed the other for keeping bad faith, and each

side made every effort to out-manœuvre the other. Denonville saw with

military prescience that forts would be of service at several important

points. One of these sites was situate on the straits of Detroit, and

he hastened to send Du Lhut with fifty men to occupy it. The active

woodsman promptly built a stockade at the outlet of Lake Huron, on the

western side of the strait, and paused there for a while. News reached

Denonville that Dongan contemplated sending, early in the spring

of 1687, an armed expedition in the direction of Michillimackinac

to forestall the trade there. He complained to the Governor of New

York, and advised the King about it. To Du Lhut he issued orders to

shoot down the intruders so soon as they presented themselves. Dongan

dissembled until he heard from England, when he altered his tone,

and wrote a letter much subdued in temper to Denonville. The French

Governor replied, and counselled harmony.

Intelligence from the north reached Denonville about this time, which

gave him considerable satisfaction. The French had resolved in the

spring of 1686 to assert their right to the territory of Hudson’s

Bay. An English Company had established a post at the mouth of Nelson

River, on the west, and on the southern end there were situate forts

Albany, Hayes, and Rupert, each garrisoned by a few men. The rival of

this Company was the Company of the North, a Canadian institution,

which held a grant from Louis XIV. The French had decided to expel the

English from their posts, and Denonville approved the plan, and sent

Chevalier de Troyes with a band of eighty men to assist the Company.

Forts Hayes and Rupert were assaulted at night. In each instance the

attack was a surprise, and the posts readily fell into the hands

of the invaders. Several of the English were killed, others were

wounded, and the rest were made prisoners. Iberville attacked a vessel

anchored near the fort; three of its defenders were killed, and others,

including Bridger, the governor for the Company, were captured. At Fort

Albany, which was garrisoned by thirty men, a stouter resistance was

offered, but at the end of an hour it was silenced, and shared the fate

of its fellows.

Meanwhile, a treaty of neutrality had been signed at Whitehall, and

there was peace between England and France for a time. The document

bears date Nov. 16, 1686. On Jan. 22, 1687, instructions were sent to

Governor Dongan to maintain friendly relations with Denonville, and to

give him no cause for complaint. The King of France delayed despatching

his orders to Canada until four months had elapsed.

[Illustration]

Denonville was ordered to punish the Iroquois. He had eight hundred

regulars, and a further contingent of eight hundred men were promised

in the spring. Abundant means, too, had been provided; namely, 168,000

livres in money and supplies. Denonville was in high feather, and

everything turned in his favor for a time. He had got rid of his

meddling Intendant, Meules, and a pious man like himself had been sent

in his place. This was Champigny. The Bishop, St. Vallier, had only

words of praise for the administration as it then stood: Church and

State were in perfect harmony at last. The attack on the Iroquois towns

was well planned, and every precaution was observed to keep the matter

secret until the time for action had arrived. Dongan, however, learned

the truth from straggling deserters, and he was not slow in informing

the Iroquois of the warlike designs of the French.

Denonville’s plan was to proceed to the Senecas, the strongest

castle and the nearest to Niagara, his course taking him along the

southern shore, which he elected on account of certain advantages

which it possessed over the northern side. The little army moved

out from Montreal on its career of conquest June 13, 1687. After

some difficulty, Fort Frontenac was reached. Champigny and his men

had arrived a few days in advance of the main army; and through his

exertions thirty men and ninety women and children of a peaceable tribe

belonging to the Iroquois and living in the neighborhood, were decoyed

into the fort under the pretence of being feasted, and treacherously

captured. Other Indians were taken in the same way, many of whom were

afterward consigned to the French galleys. The Iroquois were more

chivalrous. They had Lamberville, the Jesuit missionary whom Denonville

had basely left to his fate, in their power, and could easily have

destroyed him, but they allowed him to go free and join his friends.

At the fort there were assembled, according to Denonville, about two

thousand men, regulars, militia, and Indians. Eight hundred troops,

newly arrived from France, had been left at Montreal to protect the

settlers and property there. More allies were awaiting his commands at

Niagara; they consisted of one hundred and eighty Frenchmen, and four

hundred Indians, under Tonty, La Durantaye, and Du Lhut. The journey to

Niagara had not been made without hardship and adventure. The Indians

of the party had been difficult to manage, and for a while Durantaye

was not sure that they would remain with him. Some of the English

traders, commanded by Johannes Rooseboom, a Dutchman, on the way to

Michillimackinac with goods, were encountered, and Durantaye hastened

with one hundred and twenty _coureurs de bois_ to meet them. The party,

consisting of twenty-nine whites and five Mohawks and Mohicans, were

threatened with death if they resisted. They immediately surrendered,

and were despatched to Michillimackinac as prisoners. The merchandise

they brought was parcelled out among the Indians. This stroke was the

means of saving Durantaye’s life, and the Indians with him became in

consequence his sure allies. While making for Niagara, McGregory’s

canoes were met, and the same fate overtook them. This capture

proved important, for McGregory had with him a number of Ottawa and

Huron prisoners whom the Iroquois had taken. It was the Englishman’s

intention to restore these captives to their countrymen, to make

good the terms of the triple alliance which had been entered into by

the English, the Iroquois, and the lake tribes. McGregory’s capture

destroyed the whole arrangement, and he and his companions, with those

of Rooseboom, were ultimately sent as prisoners to Quebec.

The war-party at Niagara were ordered to repair to the rendezvous at

Irondequoit Bay, on the border of the Seneca country, and Denonville

went to meet them. His command numbered three thousand men, for a

reinforcement of Ottawas of Michillimackinac who had refused to follow

Durantaye, having altered their minds, now joined the party. The host

was well officered. The leaders were Denonville, the Chevalier de

Vaudreuil,—an excellent soldier, fresh from France,—La Durantaye,

Callières, Du Lhut, Tonty, Berthier, La Valterie, Granville, Longueil,

La Hontan, De Troyes, and others. On the afternoon of the 12th of

July, at three o’clock, having already despatched four hundred men to

garrison the redoubt, which had been put in a condition of defence for

the protection of the provisions and canoes, Denonville began his march

across the woods to Gannagaro,—twenty-two miles distant. Each man

carried with him food for thirteen days. Three leagues were made the

first day, and the party camped for the night. Two defiles were passed

the next morning. The heat was intense, and the mosquitoes were very

troublesome, but the men moved on in pretty fair order. So far, only a

few scouts of the enemy had been encountered. At two o’clock the third

defile was entered. It had been the Governor’s intention to rest here,

but having been notified by scouts that a considerable party of the

Senecas was in the neighborhood, an advance was made by Callières, who

was at the head of the three companies commanded by Tonty, Durantaye,

and Du Lhut, besides the detachment of Indians. This body, which

formed the vanguard of the army, pushed rapidly through the defile,

unconscious of the fact that an ambuscade of Senecas, three hundred

strong, was posted in the vicinity. When they reached the end they came

upon a thicket of alders and rank grass. At a given signal, the air

was rent with defiant shouts, and a host of savages leaped from their

places of concealment, and sent a volley of lead into the bewildered

French, while the three hundred Senecas who lined the sides of the

defile sprang upon the van. They had thought to crush their enemy at a

blow, but Denonville, hurrying up with his sixteen hundred men, soon

spread consternation into their ranks. The firing was heavy on both

sides; but the Senecas were defeated with considerable slaughter, and

finally fled from the scene in dismay. Denonville wrote that “all our

Christian Indians from below performed their duty admirably, and firmly

maintained the position assigned to them on the left.” The French did

not follow the flying savages, being too much fatigued by their long

march. Their loss was five or six men killed and twenty wounded. Among

the latter was Father Engelran, who was seriously injured by a bullet.

[Illustration]

The next morning the army pressed forward again, but no Seneca warriors

were to be seen. The villages were deserted, and ten days were occupied

by the soldiers and their allies in reducing the Indian villages and

destroying the provisions and stores which the Senecas had left behind

them. Denonville withdrew on the 24th with his army, and set out for

Montreal. On the way back he ordered a stockade to be built at Niagara,

on the site of La Salle’s old fort, between the River Niagara and Lake

Ontario. Montreal was reached on the 13th of August.[702]

Denonville thought that he had made a successful stroke; but he was

over sanguine. After this his power seemed to wane, and his prestige

went down. Dongan was savage when he heard of the imprisonment of

McGregory and Rooseboom, and wrote a sharp letter demanding their

return. Denonville refused, and upbraided him for having assisted the

savages. He thought better of his resolution as his anger cooled,

however, and in a few weeks released his prisoners.

Dongan called a conference of the Iroquois, and told them to receive

no more Jesuit missionaries into their towns. He called them British

subjects, and said that they should make no treaties with the French

without asking leave of King James. The humbled Indians promised

obedience.

Hitherto, Dongan had not succeeded in getting his king to recognize the

Iroquois as his subjects. On the 10th of November, 1687, however, a

warrant arrived from England authorizing the Governor to protect the

Five Nations, and to repel the French from their territory by force

of arms, should they attack the villages again. The commissioners

appointed, in accordance with the terms of the neutrality treaty signed

at Whitehall, had the boundary question before them. Both French and

English claimed the Iroquois, and the matter was assuming a serious

aspect. News came in August, 1688, to Denonville, that the subject of

dispute would receive prompt and satisfactory settlement.[703]

Meanwhile, the French Governor made several overtures to obtain peace

with the Iroquois; but their demands were greater than his pride could

grant. Dongan’s hand was seen in every proposition formulated by the

savages. Father Vaillant was sent to Albany to try and obtain easier

conditions, but the effort was vain; and the Iroquois absolutely

refused to make peace or grant a truce until Fort Niagara was razed,

and all the prisoners restored. These terms were exasperating; but

when Denonville learned that Dongan had been recalled by King James,

his spirits rose, and he felt as if a great load were removed. The

governments of New York, New Jersey, and New England became one

administration, and Sir Edmund Andros was named governor over all. So

far as Denonville was concerned, he was no better off than before,

for the new Governor insisted on all of Dongan’s old demands being

satisfied, and actually forbade peace with the Iroquois on any other

basis.

The state of Canada at this time, 1688, was most deplorable. Disease

had broken out, and the mortality was fearful. Before spring, ten

only, out of a garrison of one hundred men at Niagara, survived the

scourge. The provisions had become bad, and prowling Senecas prevented

any of the inmates of the fort from venturing out to look for food.

Fort Frontenac’s garrison was also sadly diminished, and the distress

throughout the country, from famine and disease, was very great. To

add to the Governor’s troubles, the fur-trade had languished. Bands of

Iroquois menaced the unfortunate settlers. The fields were untilled;

danger lurked in every bush, and destitution, gaunt and grim, abounded

everywhere. Peace must be had at any price, if the colony would live,

and Denonville resolved to make it. He had become unmanned by his

trials, and though he still had a force of fourteen hundred regulars,

some militia, and three or four hundred Indian converts, he hesitated

to venture on war. He wrote to the Court for eight hundred more troops,

and the King sent him three hundred. Then he made up his mind to fight.

He planned a campaign against the Iroquois which he hoped would break

their power. He proposed to divide his army into two sections, with one

of which he might crush the Onondagas and Cayugas, and with the other

the Mohawks and Oneidas. He asked the King for four thousand troops,

and the Bishop backed his demand with an earnest prayer; but France

could not spare them, and the Governor was left to his own resources.

He fell back on the arts of the diplomat, and invited the wily old

chief Big Mouth, to a council at Montreal. The savage consented to

come, despite his promises to the English, and presently he appeared

before Denonville at the head of twelve hundred warriors. He addressed

the Marquis haughtily, and said that he would make peace with the

French, but the terms would not include their allies: the Iroquois must

be left free to attack them when and how they would. Denonville, like

De la Barre on a former occasion, dared not refuse, and the red allies

of the Governor were again abandoned to their fate. A declaration of

neutrality was drawn up June 15, 1688, and Big Mouth promised that

deputies from the whole Confederacy should proceed to Montreal and sign

a general peace.

A chief of the Hurons named Kondiaronk, or the Rat, heard of the treaty

about to be made. Should it be ratified, it meant the destruction of

his own tribe. He took steps to prevent it, and with a band of trusty

savages intercepted the Iroquois deputies on their way to Montreal, at

La Famine, and attacked them. One chief was killed, a warrior escaped

with a broken arm, and the rest were wounded and taken prisoners. The

Rat told his captives that Denonville had informed him that they were

to pass that way, and when the captives replied that they were envoys

of peace, the crafty Huron assumed an injured air, liberated them all

save one, and giving them guns and ammunition, told them to go back to

their people, and avenge the treachery of the French. They departed,

breathing vengeance against Onontio. The wounded Iroquois who had

been in the _mêlée_ escaped, however, learned a different story at

Fort Frontenac, where he was well received, and hastened to Onondaga

charged with explanations. The Iroquois pretended to be satisfied, and

Denonville believed them; but ere long he was terribly undeceived. From

one pretext and another, the treaty was not signed.

And now occurred one of the direst and blackest tragedies in the

annals of New France. During the night and morning of the 4th and 5th

of August, 1689, some fourteen or fifteen hundred Iroquois landed at

Lachine. A tempest was raging at the time, and taking advantage of the

storm and the darkness, they crept noiselessly up to the houses of the

sleeping settlers, and, yelling their piercing war-whoop, fell upon

their defenceless and surprised victims. The houses were fired, and

the massacre of the inmates which followed was swift and frightful.

Few escaped; men, women, and children were indiscriminately slain in

cold blood. It is estimated that more than two hundred persons were

butchered outright, and one hundred and twenty were carried off as

prisoners and reserved for a fate worse than death. Women were impaled,

children roasted by slow fires, and other horrors were perpetrated.

Three stockade forts, Rémy, Roland, and La Présentation, respectably

garrisoned, were situate in the vicinity of this bloody deed. Two

hundred regular troops were encamped less than three miles away. Their

officer, Subercase, was at the time in Montreal, some six miles from

his command. A fugitive from the massacre alarmed the soldiers, and

then fled to Montreal with his terrible news. Flying victims of the

tragedy were seen at intervals pursued by Iroquois, but the presence

of the file of soldiers prevented them from following up their prey.

It was far into the day when Subercase returned, breathless, from

Montreal. He hastily ordered his troops to push on, and, reinforced

by one hundred armed settlers and several men from the forts, marched

towards the encampment of the Indians. Most of the latter were

helplessly drunk by this time, and Subercase could have killed many of

them easily; but just as he was about to strike, Chevalier de Vaudreuil

appeared upon the scene, and by orders of Denonville commanded the

gallant officer to stand solely on the defensive. In vain Subercase

protested; but the orders of his superior could not be gainsaid. The

troops were marched back to Fort Roland, a great opportunity for

revenge was lost, and the fatal pause cost the French very dearly. The

next day the savages were early on the alert. Eighty men hurrying from

Fort Rémy to join Vaudreuil were cut to pieces, and only Le Moyne, De

Longueil, and a few others succeeded in making their way through the

gate of the fort which they had just abandoned. The Indians continued

their fiendish work. They burned all the houses and barns within an

area of nine miles, and pillaged and scalped, without opposition,

within a circle of twenty miles. The miserable policy of Denonville

completely paralyzed the troops and inhabitants, and they allowed

the Iroquois to remain in the neighborhood until they had surfeited

themselves with slaughter, though with a little determined effort they

could readily have driven them off. At length the savages withdrew of

their own accord, and as they passed the forts they called out loud

enough for the inmates to hear, “Onontio, you deceived us, and now we

have deceived you.”

Other troubles overtook the colony: the rebellion broke out in England;

war was declared between Britain and France, in the midst of which

Denonville was recalled, and brave, chivalrous Frontenac, now in his

seventieth year, crossed the seas again, his past conduct forgiven by

King Louis, to administer for a second time the affairs of Canada.

It was in the autumn of 1689, and by evening, that Frontenac was

received at Quebec with fireworks and jubilations. His passage had been

long, and the season was too far advanced to render it practicable to

organize an attack on New York by sea and land, in accordance with

secret instructions which he had received on leaving France;[704] so

the condition of affairs in Canada at once engaged his attention.

These were far from cheerful. Frontenac hastened to Montreal, only

to meet the garrison of Fort Frontenac, which had abandoned and

partially destroyed the works, and were withdrawing under Denonville’s

orders. In every direction the settlements were in terror of the

stealthy Iroquois; and even the tribes of the lakes, having found

under Denonville’s policy that little dependence could be placed in

the support of the French, were showing signs of revolt. Frontenac

had induced a council of the Iroquois; but his proposition for peace

was only met by the revelation of their alliance with the tribes of

Michillimackinac. The French Governor acted promptly: he despatched

a force, accompanied by the astute Nicholas Perrot, to endeavor to

prevent any overt act on the part of the Ottawas.

Meanwhile, to punish the English and to impress the savages, Frontenac

sent out three expeditions. The first, from Montreal, fell suddenly

upon Schenectady, then the farthest outpost of the English in New

York, and perpetrated a fearful massacre. The invaders retired, not

without pursuit, leaving some prisoners in the hands of the English,

who learned from them that Frontenac designed to make a more formidable

attack in the spring. Schuyler, of Albany, appealed to Massachusetts

for help; but the New England colonies soon had a sharper appeal for

their own defence. Towards the end of January, Frontenac’s second

expedition had left Three Rivers, and two months later it fell suddenly

upon Salmon Falls, a settlement on the river dividing Maine from New

Hampshire, where the force plundered and killed whom they could, and

retreated so as to intercept and join the third of the French parties,

which had left Quebec in January, and was now on its way to attack

Fort Loyal, at the present Portland. After a vigorous resistance,

Captain Sylvanus Davis, a Massachusetts man, who commanded the English,

surrendered that post upon terms which were not kept. Murder and rapine

followed, as in the other cases, while Davis and some others were led

captive to Canada. Frontenac received the New Englander kindly, who was

still in his power when another and more famous New Englander appeared

before Quebec with a fleet, in pursuance of a part of a plan of attack

on New France which the English were now bent on making in retaliation.

At a congress in May, 1690, held in New York, the scheme was arranged.

A land force under Fitz-John Winthrop was to march from Albany to

Montreal. It fell (as we shall see) by the way, and disappeared. A

sea-force was to sail from Boston and attack Quebec at the same time.

This for a while promised better.

During the previous year the Boston merchants had lost ships and

cargoes by French cruisers, which harbored at Port Royal.[705] Another

chapter tells the story of the reprisals which the aroused New

Englanders made, and how Sir William Phips had returned with captives

and booty to Boston, just after the Massachusetts Government had

begun to make preparations to carry out their part of the campaign as

planned in New York. There is no test of soldiership like success,

and the adventitious results of the Port Royal expedition stood with

the over-confident and unthinking for much more than they signified,

and Phips of course was put in command of the new Armada. Money

was borrowed, for recurrent frontier wars had drained the colonial

treasuries. England was appealed to; but she refused even to contribute

munitions of war. So with a bluff and coarse adventurer for a general,

with a Cape Cod militia-man in John Walley as his lieutenant, with

a motley force of twenty-two hundred men crowded in thirty-two

extemporized war-ships, and with a scant supply of ammunition, the

fleet left Boston Harbor in August, 1690.

Meanwhile Frontenac at Quebec had, during the winter, been

constructing palisades in front of the inland side of the upper

town, and leaving the work to go on, had gone up in the early

summer to Montreal, to be elated by the arrival of a large fleet

of canoes bringing furs from the upper lakes. All this indicated

to Frontenac that his policy of reclaiming to the French interest

the tribes about Michillimackinac was working successfully, and

he rejoiced. While here, however, he got news of Winthrop’s force

coming down Lake Champlain. It turned out that the English did nothing

more than to frighten him a little by the sudden onset of a scouting

party under John Schuyler, which fell upon the settlement at La

Prairie, and then vanished.

Suddenly again word came of a rumor of a fleet having sailed from

Boston to attack Quebec. Frontenac made haste to return to that town,

and was met on the way by more definite intelligence of the New England

fleet having been seen in the river. When he reached Quebec, not a

hostile sail was in sight. He was in time, and his messengers were

already summoning assistance from all distant posts.

In coming up the river, Phips had captured two vessels, so that the

fleet which two or three days after Frontenac’s arrival slowly emerged

into the basin of Quebec counted thirty-four vessels to the anxious

eyes of the French. Phips’s prisoners had told him that there were not

two hundred men in the works; Frontenac knew that his reinforcements

had already made his garrison about twenty-seven hundred men.

Phips promptly sent a summons to surrender. His messenger was

blindfolded and tumbled about over the barricades, to impress him with

the preparations of defence. Frontenac disdained to take the offered

hour for consideration, and sent back his refusal at once. Phips

dallied with councils of war till he heard the acclamations with which

the Governor of Montreal was received, when he brought several hundred

additional men to the garrison. Walley was at last landed with a force

of twelve or thirteen hundred, who experienced some fighting, which

they conducted courageously enough, but without result, and suffered

much from the inclemency of the weather. Without waiting for the land

troops to reach a position for assaulting the town, Phips moved up

his ships, and began a bombardment, wholly ineffectual, and drew a

return which damaged him so considerably, that, after renewing it

the following day, he finally drew off. There was another delay in

rescuing Walley and his men, who were at last re-embarked under cover

of the night. The fleet now fell down the river, stopped to repair,

and then made their way back to Boston, straggling along for several

months, some of the vessels never reaching home at all. The miseries of

mortification and paper money were all that New England had to show for

her bravado.[706]

[Illustration: ATTACK ON QUEBEC.]

To Frontenac the success of his defence was a temporary relief, so

far as the English were concerned, though the New England cruisers

continued to intercept his supplies in the Gulf. But the Iroquois

wolves began to prowl again. Taunted by their savage allies for their

inertness, the English and Dutch of Albany once more raided towards

Montreal, under Peter Schuyler, and, inflicting more damage than they

received, successfully broke through an ambuscading force on their

retreat. All this irritated Frontenac. He prayed his King for help

to destroy New York and Boston; and when a false report reached him

that ten thousand “Bastonnais” had sailed to wreak their revenge for

Phips’s failure, he set vigorously to work strengthening the vulnerable

points of his colony. He varied his activity with continued expeditions

against the Iroquois, whether strolling or at home, striking

particularly against the Mohawk towns; and he protected a great fleet

of canoes which in the troublous times had been kept back in the upper

country, and now brought credit and hope to the lower settlements in an

ample supply of furs.

But during all this turmoil with public foes, Frontenac was having his

old troubles over again with the Bishop and the Intendant. Outward

courtesy and secret dislike characterized their intercourse, and

discord went in the train of the Bishop as he made his pastoral tours

among a people bound in honor and reverence to the Governor.

The reader must turn to another page[707] for the struggle with the

“Bastonnais” which Frontenac was watching meanwhile in Acadia; but

this did not divert his attention from the grand castigation which

at last he was planning for the Iroquois. He had succeeded, in 1694,

in inducing them to meet him in general council at Quebec, and had

framed the conditions of a truce; but the English at Albany intrigued

to prevent the fulfilment, and war was again imminent. Both sides

were endeavoring to secure the alliance of the tribes of the upper

lakes.[708] These wavered, and Frontenac saw the peril and the remedy.

His recourse was to attack the Iroquois in their villages at once,

and conquer on the Mohawk the peace he needed at Michillimackinac. It

was Frontenac’s last campaign. In July, 1696, he left Montreal with

twenty-two hundred men. He went by way of Fort Frontenac, crossed Lake

Ontario, landed at Oswego, and struggled up its stream, and at last set

sails to his canoes on Lake Onondaga. Then his force marched again, and

Frontenac, enfeebled by his years, was borne along in an arm-chair.

Eight or nine miles and a day’s work brought them to the Onondagas’

village; but its inhabitants had burned it and fled. Vaudreuil was

sent with a detachment, which destroyed the town of the Oneidas. After

committing all the devastation of crops that he could, in hopes that

famine would help him, Frontenac began his homeward march before the

English at Albany were aroused at all. The effect was what Frontenac

wished. The Iroquois ceased their negotiations with the western tribes,

and sued for peace.

Meanwhile the crowns and diplomats of England and France had concluded

the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. Frontenac got word of it from New York as

early as February of 1698, and a confirmation from Louis in July. There

were still some parries of diplomacy between the old French soldier and

the English governor at New York, the Earl of Bellomont, each trying

to maintain the show of a paramount authority over the Five Nations.

But Frontenac was not destined to see the end. In November he sickened.

His adversary, Champigny, mollified at the sight, became reconciled to

him, and soothed his last hours. On the twenty-eighth he died, in the

seventy-eighth year of his age, and New France sincerely mourned her

most distinguished hero.

* * * * *

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

A LARGE portion of the manuscript sources of this chapter may be found

in the invaluable collection of papers relating to New France in the

Archives of the Marine and Colonies, the Archives Nationales, and the

Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; and in the office of the Provincial

Registrar at Quebec. The archives of New York, Massachusetts, and

Canada have made extensive transcripts from these documents, as

follows:—

1. _Correspondance Officiele_, first series, vols. i.-v. There are

transcripts from the Paris documents copied in France for the State

of New York, and translations of them all are in the ninth and tenth

volumes of the _Documents relating to the Colonial History of the State

of New York_.[709]

2. _Correspondance Officiele_, second series, vols. ii., iv.-viii.

These papers exist in manuscript, and have not been translated into

English. Copies are in the Library of Parliament, Ottawa, and in the

Archives Office of the Quebec Government.

3. A collection of papers made by an agent of Massachusetts at Paris,

relating chiefly to Acadian matters, contains also a good deal about

Frontenac. They were copied afterward in Boston on an order from the

Quebec Government, and are in the keeping of the Registrar at Quebec.

The Quebec administration intends publishing these papers.[710] [They

have since been published.]

The original Register and Proceedings of Council, in several volumes,

remain in very fair condition in the archives of the Quebec Government.

The first, a folio bound in calf and indexed, bears two titles, the

first of which is, _Registre des Insinuations du Conseil Supérieur

de 1663 à 1682_, ninety-six pages. It begins with the King’s edict

creating the Superior Council, dated April 1, 1663, and ends with the

“Procès Verbal” of the Superior Council concerning the _Redaction_ of

the _Code Civil_, or ordinance of Louis, April 14, 1667.

The second title is, _Jugements et Délibérations du Conseil Souverain

de la Nouvelle France, 1663 à 1676_, two hundred and eighty-one

pages. It begins with an _arrêt_ of the Superior Council ordering

the registration of the King’s edict of April 1, 1663, creating the

Superior Council for New France, to be held at Quebec; and ends with

an interlocutory judgment, dated Dec. 19, 1676, upon a petition of

François Noir Roland, complaining of his curate for refusing him

absolution. This book, or register, is authenticated by the certificate

of the Governor, Comte de Frontenac, on the first page, as follows:—

“Le Présent Régîstre du Conseil Souverain contenant trois cens

soixante et seize feuillets a été ce jour paraphé _ne varietur_ par

premier et dernier, par nous Louis de Buade de Frontenac Chevallier

Comte de Palluau, Conseiller du Roy en ses Conseils, Gouverneur et

Intendant Général pour sa Majesté, en la Nouvelle France, Québec le

quinzième Janvier Mille six cents soixante et quinze.”

“FRONTENAC.”

The entries in general throughout this end of the book are

authenticated by the Governor, Bishop, Intendant, councillors, or Clerk

of the Council; and the last, or two hundred and eighty-first leaf, is

signed by Duchesneau, Intendant, and by Dupont, Member of the Council.

Its general contents consist of a variety of orders, regulations,

ordinances, judgments, civil and criminal, of the Superior Council,

licitation, and adjudications of Crown estates, representations to the

King and his ministers upon various subjects. There are four following

volumes of this register in the archives at Quebec bearing the dates

1677 to 1680, 1681, 1681 to 1687, and 1688 to 1693, respectively. Each

of these contains interesting details of Council proceedings during the

first administration of Frontenac, the time of La Barre and Denonville,

and during Frontenac’s second term.

The _Édits et Ordonnances_, vol. iii., contain copies of the

commissions of Frontenac, La Barre, and Denonville.

For particulars concerning the youth of Frontenac, his family and

marriage, see Parkman’s Appendix, where, among other sources, are

named the journal of Jean Héroard, physician to the court, part of

which is cited in _Le Correspondant_ of Paris for 1873; Pinard,

_Chronologie Historique-Militaire_; _Les Mémoires de Sully_; _Table de

la Gazette de France_; _Mémoires de Philippe Hurault_ (in Petitot);

Jal, _Dictionnaire Critique_, _Biographique, et d’Histoire_, article,

“Frontenac;” _Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux, ix._ (ed.

Monmerqué); _Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier_, vols. i.-iii.;

and _Mémoires du Duc de Saint-Simon_.[711]

At Frontenac’s death we have an _Oraison funèbre du Comte de Frontenac,

par le Père Olivier Goyer_, preached from the text: “In multitudine

videbor bonus et in bello fortis.” A copy of this eulogy, containing

a running commentary on its sentiments strongly adverse to the views

of the orator, is preserved in the Seminary of Quebec. These comments,

selections from which will be found in Parkman’s _Count Frontenac and

New France under Louis XIV._, pp. 431-434, are, the Abbé Casgrain

informs me, from the caustic pen of the Abbé Charles Glandelet, who

came to Canada in 1675, and labored half a century in the Seminary. He

was first theologian, superior, and confessor of the Ursulines, and

died at Three Rivers at the advanced age of eighty years.

In considering the early printed books pertaining to our subject,

we find them copious; but unfortunately we can scarcely account

many of them trustworthy historical authorities, since prejudice

and partisanship characterize them for the most part. The contests

of the period greatly developed antagonisms, and it was not easy at

the time to resist their influences. When we collate the writings of

these contemporaries, we find a great lack of unity and sympathy,

and this often extends to matters of trifling import. While thus in

many ways these books fail of becoming satisfactory chronicles, as

expressions of current partisan feeling they often throw great light on

all transactions; and it is fortunate that in their antagonisms they

give rival sentiments and opposing narratives, from which the careful

student, with the help of official and other contemporary documents,

may in the main satisfy his mind. Foremost among these early narratives

is the _Premier Établissement de la Foy dans la Nouvelle France_ of the

Père Le Clercq: of this, however, as well as of the works of Hennepin

and La Hontan, Tonti, and Marquette, an examination is made in another

chapter.[712]

Of the more general early narratives, we must give a prominent place

to a book which ranks as a respectable authority, and is frequently

quoted,—Bacqueville de la Potherie’s _Histoire de l’Amérique

Septentrionale depuis 1534 jusqu’à 1701_, Paris, 1722, four volumes.

It is particularly useful in studying the relations of Frontenac and

Callières, but as a contribution upon the condition of the Indians at

that time it has its chief value.[713]

The _Histoire du Canada_ of the Abbé Belmont, superior of the Seminary

of Montreal during 1713 and 1724, is a short history of affairs from

1608 to 1700. The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec printed,

about 1840, in their _Collection de Mémoires_, a small edition of

the work from a manuscript copy in the Bibliothèque Nationale of

Paris. It is very scarce, and copies are held at high prices, but the

Society intend reissuing it shortly. Its general accuracy has not

been questioned, and the views expressed are evidently the outcome of

careful consideration.

The general history of the administrations of Frontenac, De la Barre,

and Denonville is exhaustively treated by Father Francis-Xavier de

Charlevoix; and the first place in time and importance among the

contributions to the general history of Canada, of a date earlier

than the present century, must be given to this Jesuit’s _Histoire et

Description Générale de la Nouvelle France, avec le Journal Historique

d’un Voyage fait par l’Ordre du Roi dans l’Amérique Septentrionale_,

which was issued at Paris in 1744.[714] Shea says: “Access to State

papers and the archives of the religious order to which he belonged,

experience and skill as a practised writer, a clear head and an ability

to analyze, arrange, and describe, fitted him for his work.” Parkman,

whose studies have made him a close observer of Charlevoix’s methods,

speaks of his “usual carelessness.”

Charlevoix arrived in Canada in September, 1720, on an expedition

to inspect the missions of Canada. His purpose took him throughout

the limits of New France and Louisiana, and by the Illinois and

the Mississippi to the Gulf. His work is commensurate with his

opportunities; his faults and errors were those of his order; and his

religious training inclined him to give perhaps undue prominence to

the ecclesiastical side of his subject; and though the character of

Frontenac suffers but little at his hands, some of the prejudice which

Charlevoix bestows upon the Recollects necessarily colors his judgment

in matters where the Governor came in contact with the Jesuits.

The Abbé La Tour, not a very trustworthy authority, wrote _Mémoires sur

la Vie de M. de Laval, premier Évêque de Québec_ in 1761,—a small book

which is worth looking into, though not with the object of accepting

all its statements. Frontenac is bitterly attacked, his faults

magnified, and many serious charges are preferred against him. But one

volume, however, was published,—a thin book of a few pages, bearing

the imprint of Jean Frederick Motiens, Cologne, 1761. The second

volume was never printed. The copy of vol. i. which the Abbé Vemey

possessed has this note in the latter’s handwriting: “L’Abbé de la Tour

de Montauban, author of this Life, of which the first volume only has

been published, promised me a manuscript copy of the second volume; but

he did not keep his word. Owing to the unfair manner in which Bishop

St. Vallier was treated in the second volume, his family objected to

its publication.” The first volume ends with the year 1694. A second

edition was published at Paris in 1762.[715]

A useful work, which should not be lost sight of in the consideration

of this period, is _L’Histoire de l’Hôtel Dieu de Québec, de 1639 à

1716_, by the reverend mother, Françoise Juchereau de St. Ignace,

printed in Paris in 1751. It is rich in facts and incidents, and

especially valuable as an authority on the missionary activity of the

time, and on the attempt made by the clergy to evangelize the savages.

A supplementary work, prepared with great care and thoroughness from

original documents, and bearing the same title, has been written by

the Abbé H. R. Casgrain. It is brought down to 1840, and was published

at Quebec in 1878. The Abbé is one of the most industrious of the

French-Canadian writers, and his book is full of interesting details

and notes.[716]

In the third series of _Historical Documents_ published under the

auspices of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec in 1871, is

a paper entitled “Recueil de ce qui s’est passé en Canada au sujet de

la guerre, tant des Anglais que des Iroquois, depuis l’année 1682.”

It contains a good account of the Lachine massacre, the truthfulness

of which may be accepted. The author accompanied Subercase to the

scene.[717]

In a collection entitled, _Bibliotheca Americana: Collection d’ouvrages

inédits ou rares sur l’Amérique_, with the imprint of Leipsic and

Paris, appeared the _Mémoire sur les Mœurs, Coustumes, et Réligions

des Sauvages de l’Amérique Septentrionale, par Nicolas Perrot, publié

pour la première fois par le R. P. Tailhan, de la Compagnie de

Jésus_, 1864. Considerable importance is attached to this memoir by

Charlevoix, La Potherie, Ferland, and others, who frequently quote it

in their narratives. Harrisse (no. 833) says that this work seems to

have been written day by day from 1665 to the death of Perrot, who

was an eye-witness of events under the administration of De la Barre,

Denonville, and Frontenac. Colden gives a part of the narrative in his

_History of the Five Indian Nations_, London, 1747.[718]

It remains to characterize the chief general works of our own time,

which indicate the great interest with which modern research has

invested the story of New France. The French-Canadians generally accept

François-Xavier Garneau as their national historian, and his _Histoire

du Canada_ well entitles him to that consideration. He began writing

his history in 1840, and published the first volume in Quebec in 1845,

the second in 1846, and the third, treating of events down to 1792,

in 1848. A new edition, revised and corrected, and brought down to

1840, appeared at Montreal from Lovell’s press, in 1852, and a third

edition at Quebec in 1859.[719] In 1882 the fourth edition, edited by

his son,[720] was issued at Montreal by Beauchemin & Valois. It is

enriched by many valuable notes, and has a recognized place as a work

of conspicuous merit.

The ecclesiastical history of Canada is particularly illustrated

by the Abbé J. B. A. Ferland in his _Cours d’Histoire du Canada_,

1534-1759, Quebec, 1861 and 1865, two volumes. The author died while

the second volume was passing through the press, and the completing

of the publication devolved upon the Abbé Laverdière, one of the

ablest scholars in the Canadian priesthood. Ferland had access to many

documents of great interest, and his work shows judgment and a skilful

handling of the rich store of materials within his reach.[721]

The _Histoire de la Colonie Française en Canada_, with maps, by the

Abbé Faillon, a Sulpitian priest of very great ability, was projected

on an extensive plan. The author visited Canada on three separate

occasions, spending several years in the country, and made the most of

his opportunities in gathering his material, not only there, but from

the archives of the Propaganda at Rome and from the public offices in

Paris. The result was a work of high value; but it must be read with

a full perception of the author’s intention to rear a monument to

commemorate the labors and trials of the Sulpitians of Montreal.

Parkman[722] thus speaks of him: “In all that relates to Montreal I

cannot be sufficiently grateful to the Abbé Faillon, the indefatigable,

patient, conscientious chronicler of its early history; an ardent and

prejudiced Sulpitian; a priest who three centuries ago would have

passed for credulous, and withal a kind-hearted and estimable man.”

Three volumes only appeared, the first two in 1865, and the third in

1866. The latter deals with events covered by a small portion of the

period discussed in this chapter. M. Faillon’s death at Paris in 1871

prevented further publication; but he has left in manuscript enough

prepared material to complete the work as far as the conquest of

1759-1760. The book was published anonymously, according to the custom

of the Congregation of St. Sulpice.[723]

It is, however, to an American of Puritan stock that the story we

are illustrating owes, for the English reader certainly, its most

conspicuous recital. Two volumes of Francis Parkman’s series of

_France and England in North America_ concern more especially the

period covered by the administrations of Frontenac, De la Barre, and

Denonville; these are his _Frontenac, and New France under Louis XIV._

(Boston, 1877), and his _La Salle, and the Discovery of the Great West_

(Boston, 1879); but the consideration of the last of these belongs more

particularly to another chapter. Of Parkman as an historian there has

been a wide recognition of a learning that has neglected no resource; a

research which has proved fortunate in its results; a judgment which,

though Protestant, is fair and liberal;[724] a critical perception,

which in the conflict of testimony keeps him accurate and luminous;

and a style which has given his narrative the fascinations of a romance.

John Dennis wrote a tragedy,—_Liberty Asserted_,—which was acted

in London in 1704, in which Frontenac was made a character, together

with an English governor and Iroquois chief. Betterton acted in it.

A romantic picture of the period is furnished in an amusing novel by

M. Joseph Marmette, formerly of Quebec, but now of Paris, entitled

_François de Bienville_. Frontenac figures as one of the principal

characters in the story. Frontenac’s expeditions against the Iroquois

were made the subject of a poem by Alfred B. Street,—_Frontenac: or,

the Atotarho of the Iroquois_. London and New York, 1849.

M. T. P. Bedard, of the Archives department, has a paper in the

_Annuaire de l’Institut Canadien_, nos. 7 and 8, 1880, 1881, which

discusses the first and second administrations of the Count, and sheds

some light on the social and political aspects of the country between

1672 and 1698, the year in which Frontenac died.

[Illustration]

EDITORIAL NOTES.

[Illustration: THE QUEBEC MEDAL.

This is engraved from a copy kindly lent by W. S. Appleton, Esq., of

Boston. See _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, xi. 296, and Shea’s _Charlevoix_,

iv. 190, and his _Le Clercq_, ii. 329. See the “Historic Medals of

Canada,” in the _Quebec Lit. and Hist. Soc. Transactions_, 1872-1873,

p. 73.]

=A.= FRONTENAC’S SECOND TERM.—Mr. Parkman has accompanied his

narrative[725] of the attempt on Quebec in 1690 with an indication

of the sources of the story. Besides the despatches of Frontenac and

the _Relation_ of Monseignat (both printed in the _New York Colonial

Documents_, vol. ix.), there is an account taken by vessel to Rochelle,

which is without place or date, and was probably there printed. It is

entitled, _Relation de ce qui s’est passé en Canada, à la descente

des Anglais à Québec, au mois d’Octobre, 1690, faite par un Officier_

(Harrisse, no. 168; Carter-Brown, vol. ii. no. 1,426), and contains

Phips’s summons to Frontenac (also given in Mather’s _Magnalia_, and

repeated by Parkman, _Frontenac_, p. 266), and Frontenac’s verbal

answer.

[Illustration: PLAN OF ATTACK ON QUEBEC, 1690.

Fac-simile of an engraved plan in La Hontan’s _New Voyages_, London,

1703, vol. i. p. 160. It was re-engraved for the French edition of

1705.]

The copy of Phips’s summons sent to Paris by Frontenac is indorsed

by him to the effect that he retained the original. The _Mercure de

France_ also issued an “Extraordinaire,” with an account (Harrisse,

no. 166,) and another brief _Relation de la levée du siége de Québec_

(Harrisse, no. 167) was printed at Tours. La Hontan, Le Clercq,

La Potherie, and Juchereau (_L’Hôtel Dieu_), give other accounts

contemporary, or nearly so, and their testimony has been availed of

by Charlevoix (cf. Shea’s ed., iv. 169) and the later writers, like

Garneau.

[Illustration: ATTACK ON QUEBEC, 1690.

Fac-simile of the engraving in La Hontan’s _Mémoires_, La Haye, 1709,

vol. ii. p. 14. It was re-engraved for the 1715 edition.]

On the English side, besides a contemporary bulletin issued in the

_Publick Occurrences_, Boston, Sept. 25, 1690 (given in _Hist.

Mag._, August, 1857), two participators in the expedition left

narratives,—one of which by John Walley is printed in Hutchinson’s

_Massachusetts_, i. app. no. xxi., which concerns chiefly the land

forces; and the other was by the officer second in command of the

militia, and is entitled, _An account of the late action of the New

Englanders, under the command of Sir William Phips, against the French

at Canada, sent in a letter from Maj. Thomas Savage, of Boston, in

New England_ (_who was present at the action_), _to his brother, Mr.

Perez Savage, in London_. London, 1691. This quarto tract is in Harvard

College Library; it was reprinted in the _Mass. Hist. Coll._, xiii. 256.

[Illustration]

In the same _Collections_, third series, i. 101, is the diary of

Captain Sylvanus Davis, who was at the time a captive in Quebec; cf.

also Johnston’s _Bremen, Bristol, and Pemaquid_. An original journal of

the expedition is said to have been intrusted to Admiral Walker at the

time of his venture in 1711, and to have been lost in one of his ships

(Walker’s _Journal_, p. 87). Phips’s side of the story is doubtless

told amid the high laudation of Cotton Mather’s _Life of Phips_; some

light is thrown upon the times in Dummer’s _Defence of the Colonies_;

and various tokens of the preparations for the expedition are preserved

in the _Hinckley Papers_, vol. iii, in the Prince Library.

[Illustration]

Somewhat later we have the story in some of its aspects in Colden’s

_Five Nations_; later still, in Hutchinson’s _Massachusetts Bay_, vol.

i.; again, in part, in Belknap’s _New Hampshire_; while the chief

modern writers who have preceded Parkman, on the English side, have

been Palfrey’s _New England_, iv. 51; Barry’s _Massachusetts_, ii.

79; Bowen’s “Life of Phips,” in Sparks’ _American Biography_; and

Warburton, in his _Conquest of Canada_, chap. 14.

[Illustration]

Of the supporting Winthrop expedition from Albany, we have the French

accounts in La Potherie (iii. 126), and in the _New York Colonial

Documents_, ix. 513. The recently published _Winthrop Papers_ (iv.

303-324) throw considerable light through the letters of Fitz-John

Winthrop on the preparations which were made; and they give also his

reasons for the expedition’s failure, and through his Journal, with

which the one printed in the _New York Colonial Documents_, iv. 193,

may be compared. Parkman’s _Frontenac_ (p. 257) and Shea’s _Charlevoix_

(iv. 145) note the authorities; and the _New York Colonial Documents_

(iii. 727, 752) and _Doc. Hist. N. Y._ (ii. 266, 288) yield other

light than that already mentioned. The Journal of Schuyler’s raid to

La Prairie is given in the _Doc. Hist. N. Y._, ii. 285, and in the

publications of the New Jersey Historical Society, vol. i.

[Illustration]

Concerning the minor episodes of this second term of Frontenac’s

government, both Parkman and Shea indicate the essential authorities.

On the destruction of Schenectady, the letter of Monseignat and other

papers in the _Doc. Hist. of New York_, vol. i. 297, etc. (where

authorities are cited), and a letter of Schuyler and his associates

in the Massachusetts Archives, printed in the _Andros Tracts_, are

of the first importance. Cf. also M. Van Rennsselaer’s paper in _N.

Y. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 1846, p. 101, and the same Society’s _Fund

Publications_, ii. 165; a letter from Governor Bradstreet, in the _N.

E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, ii. 150; and the contributions in Munsell’s

_Albany_. French accounts are in _Le Clercq_ (Shea’s edition, ii. 292);

_Potherie_, ii. 68; _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 466; and English accounts

in Smith’s _New York_, p. 66; Colden’s _Five Nations_ (1727), p. 114.

[Illustration]

On Schuyler’s raid by way of Lake Champlain in 1691, the French side

is still to be gathered from La Potherie, with help from Belmont,

_Histoire du Canada_, and from the _Relation of 1682-1712_, and from

the despatches of Frontenac and Champigny. Schuyler’s own Journal

and other documents, French and English, are in the _N. Y. Colonial

Documents_, vol. iii.; Parkman (p. 294) examines the question of the

number of the forces engaged, and Shea, _Charlevoix_, iv. 202, gives

references.

[Illustration]

On the expedition against the Mohawks, led by Mantet, Courtemanche,

and La Noue, we have more various accounts. Parkman gives a graphic

recital, and his notes show he has used all the sources. The French

authorities, besides the letter of Callières to the home government,

are the _Relation de ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable en Canada_,

1692-93; the _Relation de ce qui s’est passé en Canada au sujet de la

Guerre_, 1682-1712; while citations of original journals, etc., are

in Faillon’s _Vie de Mdle. Le Ber_, and of course we have La Potherie

(iii. 169) and Belmont. The _N. Y. Col. Docs._, vol. ix., contain

important material, including a “Narrative of Military Operations

in Canada;” and Major Peter Schuyler’s report is in vol. iv. of the

same collection. Colden, in his _Five Nations_, p. 142, wrote while

the actors were still living. There was a tract on the expedition

issued in London the same year, which is of such rarity that the copy

in the Carter-Brown Library (_Catalogue_, vol. ii. no. 1,446, with

fac-simile of title; also Harrisse, no. 171) is the only one known

to me, and from it Sabin, in 1868, reprinted it. It is entitled, _A

Journal of the late actions of the French in Canada, with the manner

of their being repulsed, by his Excellency Benjamin Fletcher, Governor

of New York_, etc. _By Coll. Nicholas Reyard_ [should be Beyard] _and

Lieutenant-Coll. Charles Lodowick._

[Illustration]

The reader must turn to the chapter on Acadia for the authorities

for such other expeditions as come within the alleged limits of that

province and the neighboring English settlements.

[Illustration: A CANADIAN SOLDIER.

This sketch of the costume of a grenadier de St. Louis, Compagnie

canadienne, is taken from the _Mass Archives: Documents Collected in

France_, iii. 3.]

On Frontenac’s last raid,—the attack upon the Onondagas, in 1696,—we

must naturally find our chief information from the French, for the

English at Albany were not ready to advance till the French had done

their work and had gone. Frontenac and Callières each despatched

accounts to Paris; and besides the _Relation_, 1682-1712, already

referred to, we have the _Relation de ce qui s’est passé en Canada_,—a

manuscript preserved in the library of the Literary and Historical

Society of Quebec (see _Parliamentary Library Catalogue_, 1858, p.

1613); the _Relation_, 1696, which Shea has printed, and of course the

accounts in La Potherie, iii. 270, and Charlevoix (Shea adds references

in his edition, vol. v.), and the papers in the _Doc. Hist. of N.

Y._, i. 323, and the _N. Y. Col. Docs._ iv. 342. Parkman’s narrative

(_Frontenac_, chap. xix.) is clearly put and exemplified.

=B.= GENERAL DOCUMENTARY SOURCES OF CANADIAN HISTORY.—Harrisse

prefaces his _Notes pour servir à l’histoire, à la bibliographie

et à la cartographie de la Nouvelle France et des pays adjacents_,

1545-1700, Paris, 1872, with an account of the sources of early

Canadian history, and of the repositories of documentary material in

Paris, etc. He states that the French Government refused access to

their archives to an agent of the Historical Society of Quebec in 1835,

and that a similar refusal was made in 1838; but that in 1842 General

Cass, then United States Minister, succeeded, in behalf of the State

of Michigan, in securing about forty cartons for publication; and ten

years later the Parliament at Quebec obtained copies of documents,

which now (1872) form a series of thirty-six folios,—not embracing,

however, the papers of the early discovery, which were withheld.

Louis P. Turcotte, in his address on _Les Archives du Canada_ (Quebec,

1877), says that the first inventory of the public archives of Canada

was published in 1791; that it shows the subsequent loss of important

documents; that the first steps were taken to procure copies from the

European archives in 1835, which were not successful at the time; and

that the better results made by the State of New York (1841-1844)

were accordingly availed of. In 1845 the Canadian agent, M. Papineau,

secured other copies in France; and in 1851-1852 M. Faribault added

twenty-four volumes of transcripts to the collection, now in the

library at Ottawa; and sixteen volumes have been added since. M.

Turcotte pays a tribute, for his zeal and industry in preserving early

Canadian records, to M. Jacques Viger, whose efforts have been since

supplemented by the labors of l’Abbé Verreau, who has formed a large

library of copies of manuscripts and printed books. M. Verreau was

in 1873 sent by the Canadian Government to Europe to make additional

collections.

The _Catalogue_ of the Library of the Canadian Parliament, made by

Gérin-Lajoie, and published in 1858, gives (p. 1448) an account of the

manuscript collections at that time in the possession of the Canadian

Government at Toronto, and now transferred to Ottawa, and divides them

thus:—

_First series._—Copies of copies made by Brodhead for the State of

New York, from the archives at Paris, seventeen volumes, with six

additional volumes, drawn at second hand in the same way from the

Colonial Office in London. These copies were made before the Brodhead

collection was printed. Kirke, in his _First English Conquest of

Canada_, London, 1871, says: “The papers in the Record Office [London]

relating to Canada, Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland are

numerous and continuous from 1621 to 1660, with the exception of the

period from 1640 to 1649, during which years we find no papers.”

_Second series._—Copies obtained in Paris by Faribault, and made under

Margry’s direction; twelve volumes, giving the official correspondence

of the governors, 1637-1727. These are enumerated in the _Catalogue_.

_Third series._—Copies of official correspondence relative to Canada,

1654-1731; twelve volumes, likewise arranged by Margry, and also

enumerated in the _Catalogue_.

_Fourth series._—A transcript of Franquet’s “Voyages et mémoires sur

le Canada, 1752-53,” and other documents mentioned in the _Catalogue_.

_Fifth series._—Maps, copied by Morin, and enumerated on pp. 1614-21

of the _Catalogue_.

Cf. _Collection de Mémoires et de Relations sur l’histoire ancienne

du Canada, d’après des manuscrits récemment obtenus des archives et

bureaux publics en France_, Quebec, 1840; and the Transactions of the

Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, 1870-71, and 1871-72. The

_Collection_ contains Belmont and the Report attributed to Talon. Cf.

_Magazine of American History_, iii. 458, in the Quebec Society.

The _Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, publiés par

Clément_, Paris, 1865, vol. iii., second part, contain various

important papers,—like the instructions as intendant of Talon, March

27, 1665; of De Bouteroue, April 5, 1668; Duchesneau, May 30, 1675;

those to Gaudais in 1663, and to Courcelles in 1669: besides letters

to Frontenac, April 7, 1672; June 13, 1673; May 17, 1674; April 22,

1675; May 10, 1677; March 21, 1678; Dec. 4, 1679; April 30, 1681 (pp.

533, 557, 574, 585, 594, 622, 631, 641, 644): others to Talon, Feb.

11, 1671; June 4, 1672 (pp. 511, 539); to Duchesneau, April 15, 1676;

April 28, 1677; May 1, 1677; May 15 and 24, 1678; April 30, 1679 (pp.

605, 614, 619, 632, 635, 638); with one to l’Évêque de Petrée, May 15,

1669 (p. 451). Margry (i. 247) gives some of the correspondence of

Frontenac and Colbert, 1672-1674, relative to the pushing of Recollect

missionaries farther west; and in Clément’s _Histoire de Colbert_,

Paris, 1874, vol. i. last chapter, there is an exposition of Colbert’s

colonial policy.

[Illustration]

Mr. Ben: Perley Poore was appointed by the Governor of Massachusetts,

in May, 1845, to select and transcribe such documents in the

French archives as he might find to bear upon the early history of

Massachusetts and the relations of New England with New France. His

report to the Governor, Dec. 28, 1847, accompanied by letters from John

G. Palfrey and Jared Sparks, telling the story of his work, constitutes

_Senate Doc., no. 9_ (1848), _Mass. Documents_. His transcripts,

covering papers from the discovery to 1780, fill ten volumes in the

Archives of the State, and are accompanied by two volumes of engraved

maps. Mr. Poore, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Historical

Society, and with the pledge of Colonel William P. Winchester to

assume the expense if necessary, had already a year earlier begun his

work. M. Davezac was at that time _chef des archives_ of the Marine,

and the confusion which Brodhead, the agent of New York, had earlier

found among the papers had disappeared under the care of the new

custodian. From other departments as well as from other public and from

private sources, Mr. Poore increased his collection, and added to it

water-color drawings and engraved prints of an illustrative nature; but

unfortunately many of the documents cited are given by title only, and

the blank pages left to be filled are still empty. It is these papers

which have been copied within a year or two for the Government of the

Province of Quebec.

The manuscript collections of Mr. Parkman are very extensive, and are

still in his house; the more important of his maps, however, have been

transferred to the College Library at Cambridge, and these have been

sketched elsewhere in the present volume. The Editor is under great

obligations to Mr. Parkman for unrestricted access to his manuscripts.

They consist of large masses of miscellaneous transcripts, with a few

original papers, and so far as they come within the period of the

present volume, of the following bound series:—

I. _Acadia_, in three volumes. These are transcripts made by, or

under the direction of, Mr. Ben: Perley Poore, and in considerable

part supplement the collection made by Mr. Poore for the State of

Massachusetts.

II. _Correspondance officielle_, in five volumes, coming down to 1670,

being transcripts from the French archives.

III. _Canada_, in eight volumes, covering 1670-1700, being transcripts

from the French archives, and supplementing Brodhead’s _Colonial

Documents of New York_, vol. ix.

=C.= BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Harrisse’s _Notes_, etc., is the latest of the

general bibliographies of the history and cartography of New France;

and this with his _Cabot_ constitutes a complete, or nearly so,

indication of the sources of Canadian history previous to 1700.

Charlevoix in 1743 prefixed to his _Nouvelle France_ a list of

authorities as known to him, and characterized them; and this is

included in Shea’s translation. Of the modern writers, Ferland and

Faillon in their introduction each make note of their predecessors.

The work of G. B. Faribault, _Catalogue d’ouvrages sur l’histoire de

l’Amérique, et en particulier sur celle du Canada, avec des notes_,

Quebec, 1837, containing nine hundred and ninety-six titles, besides

maps, etc., has lost whatever importance its abounding errors left

for it formerly. There is a biographical sketch (1867) of Faribault

in the Abbé Casgrain’s _Œvres_, vol. ii. Cf. Morgan’s _Bibliotheca

Canadensis_, p. 118. H. J. Morgan’s _Bibliotheca Canadensis_, Ottawa,

1867, includes the writers on Canadian history who have published since

the conquest of 1759.

From this book and other sources the following enumeration of the

various general histories of Canada, compendious as well as elaborate,

and including such as cover a long interval in a general way, is

taken:—

Excepting one volume of a projected _History of Canada_, by George

Heriot, published in London in 1804, and which was an abridgment of

Charlevoix, the earliest of modern works is _The History of Canada from

its first Discovery to 1796_, by William Smith, published in Quebec in

1815. The author was a son of the historian of New York.

There was published in Paris in 1821, in a duodecimo of 512 pages,

a sketchy compendium by D. Dainville,—_Beautés de l’histoire du

Canada, ou époques remarquables, traits intéressans, mœurs, usages,

coutumes des habitants du Canada, tant indigènes que colons, depuis sa

découverte jusqu’à ce jour_.

In 1837 Michael Bibaud published at Montreal a _Histoire du Canada

sous la domination Française_. A second edition was published in

1845. In 1844 appeared his _Histoire du Canada et des Canadiens sous

la domination Anglaise_. This author also published a _Bibliothèque

Canadienne_, a monthly magazine, which for several years gathered and

preserved considerable documentary material.

Between 1845 and 1848 the work of Garneau, mentioned in the preceding

chapter, was printed, which became the basis of Bell’s adaptation in

1866.

In 1851 a comprehensive compendium by W. H. Smith,—_Canada_ [West]:

_Past, Present, and Future_,—in two volumes, was published at Toronto.

Brasseur de Bourbourg’s _Histoire du Canada; de son Église et de ses

missions_, published in Paris in 1852, is characterized in the Note on

the _Jesuit Relations_, following chap. vi.

A popular _History of Canada from its first Discovery to the Present

Time_, by John MacMullen was published at Brockville in 1855 and 1868.

L. Dussieux’s _Le Canada sous la domination Française_ was published at

Paris in 1855, and a new edition in 1862.

F. M. N. M. Bibaud’s _Les Institutions de l’histoire du Canada_ (to

1818), Montreal, 1855, is a concise narrative.

Between 1861 and 1865, and in 1865-1866, were published the works of

Ferland and Faillon, of which note is made in the preceding chapter.

John Boyd’s _Summary of Canadian History_ was issued at Toronto in

1860, and many editions since.

In 1863 Boucher de la Bruère, fils, published a brief survey,—_Le

Canada sous la domination Anglaise_.

Alexander Monro’s _History, Geography, and Statistics of British North

America_ was published at Montreal in 1864.

William Canniff’s _History of the Settlement of Upper Canada, with

special reference to the Bay Quinté_, appeared at Toronto in 1869. This

book was undertaken under the auspices of the Historical Society of

Upper Canada, which was established at St. Catharines in 1861.

At Montreal, in 1872, appeared Henry H. Miles’s _History of Canada

under the French régime (1535-1763), with Maps, Plans, and Illustrative

Notes_.

Andrew Archer’s _History of Canada_ was published in 1875 at London.

John Harper’s _History of the Maritime Provinces_ was issued at St.

John, N.B., in 1876.

Charles R. Tuttle’s _Short History of Canada_, 1500-1878, appeared in

Boston in 1878.

F. Teissier’s compendious historical sketch of Canada under the French,

1562-1763, appeared at Limoges,—_Les Français au Canada_. It is not

dated, but is recent.

The series of monographs by Mr. Parkman is spoken of elsewhere.

An important work is now publishing: _Histoire des Canadiens-Français.

1608-1880. Origine, Histoire, Réligion, Guerres, Découvertes,

Colonization, Coutumes, Vie Domestique, Sociale et Politique,

Développement, Avenir_. Par Benjamin Sulte. Ouvrage orné de portraits

et de plans. Montreal. 1882-1883.

THE GENERAL ATLASES AND CHARTS

OF THE

SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.

BY THE EDITOR.

THE general atlases at this time becoming familiar to Europe were

unfortunately made up on a thrifty principle, little conducive to

keeping the public mind abreast of current discovery,—so far as

America, at least, was concerned,—and very perplexing now to any one

studying the course of the cartographical development of American

geography. Dates were sedulously erased with a deceitful purpose (which

is not yet gone into disuse) from plates thus made to do service for

many years, and united with other dated maps, to convey an impression

of a like period of production.

Bestelli e Forlani’s _Tavole moderne di Geografia de la maggior parte

del mondo_, Roma, 1558-80, with seventy-one large maps, including three

maps of the world, and three of America, is reputed the best atlas

which had been constructed up to that date. Sets vary much in their

make-up.[726]

Perhaps the prototype of the modern atlas can be best found in the

_Theatrum orbis terrarum_ of Ortelius, issued in the first edition at

Antwerp in 1570, of which an account has been given elsewhere.[727] His

portrait is on a later page.

In 1597 appeared the earliest special atlas of America in the

_Descriptionis Ptolemaicæ Augmentum_ of Cornelius Wytfliet, which was

reissued the same year with its errata corrected.[728] It had nineteen

maps, which were also used in the second edition, issued in 1598. A

fac-simile of the title of 1597 is given on the next page.[729]

[Illustration]

[Illustration

This is a fac-simile of a cut in Lorenzo Crasso’s _Elogii d’ Huomini

letterati_, Venice. 1666. There’s a portrait of him at sixty-two in the

1584 edition of Ptolemy, the second of Mercator’s own editing. It is

engraved by Francis Hoggenberg. The engraving in the 1613 edition of

Mercator’s _Atlas_ represents Mercator and Hondius seated at a table,

and is colored. There is said to be an engraving in the 1618 edition of

Ptolemy, but it is wanting in the Harvard College copy. Cf. fac-similes

of old prints in Raemdonck’s _Mercator_, in C. P. Daly’s address on

_The Early History of Cartography_, and in _Scribner’s Monthly_,

ii. 464. There is another portrait of Mercator in J. F. Foppens’

_Bibliotheca Belgica_, Bruxelles, 1739.]

Reference has been made elsewhere to the conspicuous work of Gerard

Mercator, which was a sort of culmination of his geographical views, in

his great mappemonde of 1569.[730] Then after giving his attention to

a closer study of Ptolemy and to the publication of an edition of the

great Alexandrian geography, with a revision of Agathodæmon’s charts,

but without any attempt to make them conform to the newer knowledge, he

set about the compilation of a modern geographical _atlas_ (applying

this word for the first time to such a collection, though modern

usage has somewhat narrowed the meaning as he applied it); and he

had published two parts of it, when he died, in December, 1594,—the

second part having appeared at Duisburg in 1585, and the third in 1590.

Shortly after his death, a son, Rumold Mercator, published in 1595,

at Dusseldorf, part i., and prefixed to it a Latin biography of his

father, by Walter Ghymm, which is the principal source of our knowledge

of his career.[731] The son Rumold died in 1600, and in 1602, at the

expense of the estate, the three parts of the _Atlas_ were united and

published together, making what is properly the earliest edition of the

so-called _Mercator Atlas_. It had one hundred and eleven maps and a

Latin text. It is very rare, for Raemdonck says he has met with but two

copies of it. Up to this time it had contained no American maps. A map

of America, as one of the four quarters of the globe, was called for in

part iii.; but Raemdonck (p. 257) says he has never seen a copy of that

part which has it.

Mercator’s maps were followed, however, pretty closely in Mathias

Quad’s or Quadus’s _Geographisch Handtbuch_,[732] Cologne, 1600, which

contained a map of the world and another of North America, with some

other special American maps; and such were also contained in the Latin

version called _Fasciculus geographicus_, Cologne, 1608, etc.

[Illustration: signature

This is a fac-simile of an engraving in J. F. Foppens’s _Bibliotheca

Belgica_, 1739, vol. i. p. 3. There is another engraving in Lorenzo

Crasso’s _Elogii d’huomini letterati_, Venice, 1666.]

In 1604 Mercator’s plates fell by purchase into the possession of

Jodocus Hondius,[733] of Amsterdam, who got out a new edition in

1606,[734] to which he added fifty maps, including a few American ones;

and thus began what is known as the _Hondius-Mercator Atlas_. The text

was furnished by Montanus,[735] and the new maps were engraved by

Petrus Kærius, who also prepared for Hondius the _Atlas minor Gerardi

Mercatoris_ in 1607.[736]

[Illustration: MAPPEMONDE DE GERARD MERCATOR Duisbourg. 1569.]

After the death of Jodocus Hondius, Feb. 16, 1611, Heinrich Hondius (b.

1580; d. 1644) and Johannes Jannsonius (d. 1666) completed the _Atlas_;

and what is known as the fourth edition (1613) contains portraits of

Mercator and the elder Hondius. In this there were ten American maps,

and for several editions subsequently there were 105 of Mercator’s

maps and 51 of Hondius’. Such seemingly was the make-up of the seventh

edition in 1619 (though called fourth on the title); but there is much

arbitrary mingling of the maps observable in many copies of these early

editions.

The same Latin text and its translations appeared in the several

editions down to 1630, when what is called sometimes the eleventh

edition appeared with 163 maps (105 by Mercator, 58 by Hondius); but I

have noted copies with 184 maps, of which ten are American, and a copy

dated 1632, with 178 maps. Raemdonck does not venture to enumerate all

the Latin editions of Hondius and Jannsonius; but he mentions those of

1612, 1613, 1616, 1623, 1627, 1628, 1630, 1631.

In 1633 a marked change was made in the _Mercator-Hondius Atlas_. There

was a new Latin text, and it was now called the _Atlas novus_, and made

two volumes, containing 238 newly engraved maps (only 87 of Mercator’s

remaining, while Hondius added 151, including 10 new maps of America).

The French text was issued the same year, but it added details not

in the Latin, and in the general description of America is quite

different.[737] The German text also appeared in 1633; but it had—at

least in the copy we have noted—only 160 maps, and of these 6 were

American. The Dutch text is dated usually in 1634.

In 1635 the English text appeared with the following title: _Historia

Mundi; or, Mercator’s Atlas.... Lately rectified in divers places, and

also beautified and enlarged with new mappes and tables by the studious

industry of Iudocus Hondy. Englished by W. S._, London;[738] and of

this there was a second edition in 1637. The only map showing New

France is a general one of America, which is no improvement upon that

of the 1613 edition.

The English market was also supplied with another English version,

published much more sumptuously, in two large folios, at Amsterdam

in 1636, with the title, _Atlas; or, a Geographical Description of

the Regions ... of the World, represented by New and Exact Maps.

Translated by Henry Hexham. Printed at Amsterdam by Henry Hondius and

John Johnson_.[739] The American maps are in the second volume, where

the map of the two Americas is much like the world-map in vol. i. There

is no part of New France shown in the special maps, except in that of

“Nova Anglia, Novum Belgium, et Virginia,” where lying west of the Lac

des Iroquois (Ontario) is a single and larger “Grand lac.”

A still further enlargement of the Mercator-Hondius _Atlas novus_

took place in 1638, when it appeared in three imperial folio volumes,

with 318 maps, 17 of which are special maps of America.[740] It was

now more commonly known as Jannson’s _Atlas_,—this publisher being

a son-in-law of Jodocus Hondius,—and it went on increasing till it

grew to eight volumes, to which were added a volume “Orbis Maritimus”

(1657), a second on the ancient world, a celestial atlas for a third,

and an “Atlas Contractus,” or _résumé_, for the fourth; making twelve

in all.[741]

* * * * *

At this time there was a rival in the _Atlas_ of Blaeu, of which the

reader will find an account in chapter ix. of the present volume, to be

supplemented by the present brief statement.

Willem Jannson Blaeu was born in 1571, and died in 1638, and, with his

sons Jean and Cornelis, devoted himself with untiring assiduity to his

art. In 1647 the number of their maps reached one hundred. In 1655

their _Atlas_ had reached six volumes, and contained 372 maps. In this

year (1655) the Blaeu establishment issued separately the American map,

_Americæ nova Tabula_, with nine views of towns and representations of

native costumes, accompanied by four pages of text. The Latin edition

of 1662-63, _Atlas major, sive cosmographia Blaviana_, had 586 maps, of

which the collection in the _Carter-Brown Catalogue_ (ii. 900) shows 23

in vol. xi. to belong to America.[742]

The Blaeu establishment was burned in 1672, and most of the plates

were lost. Those which were saved passed into the hands of Frederic

de Witt, who put his name on them, and they continued to be issued

thus inscribed in the _Blaeu Atlas_ of 1685, etc.; and when De Witt’s

business fell to Covens and Mortier, the inscriptions were again

altered.[743]

* * * * *

A French atlas began a little later to attract attention, and

ultimately made the name of its maker famous in cartographic annals.

It was begun in 1646 by Nicolas Sanson d’Abbeville, who in 1647 was

appointed Royal Geographer of France, and held that office till his

death.[744] The volume of his _Atlas_, containing fifteen American

maps, and entitled _L’Amérique, en plusieurs Cartes nouvelles et

exactes_, was published by the author in Paris without date, but

probably in 1656, though some copies are dated in 1657, 1658, and

1662.[745]

The elder Sanson, having been born in 1600, died in 1667, leaving about

four hundred plates to his sons, who kept up the name,[746] and their

stock subsequently fell to Robert Vaugondy, who has given a notice of

the Sansons in his _Essai sur l’Hist. de la Géog._, as has Lenglet

Dufresnoy in his _Méthode pour étudier la Géographie_.[747]

A new Dutch atlas, that of N. Visscher, called _Atlas minor, sive

Geographia compendiosa_, appeared at Amsterdam about 1670. It contained

twenty-six maps, and had three American maps; but the number was

increased in later editions.[748] In 1680 it appeared in two volumes

with 195 maps, 10 of which were American, and plates by Jannson, De

Witt, and others, were included. It is not easy to discriminate among

various composite atlases of this period, the chief cartographers

being made to contribute to various imprints. Another _Atlas minor,

novissimas Orbis Terrarum Tabulas complectens_, is likewise of this

date (1680), and passes under the name of S. Wolfgang, with maps by

Blaeu, Visscher, De Witt, and others. This usually contains nineteen

American maps. Other atlases have the name of Frederic de Witt,

who, as we have seen, got possession of some of Blaeu’s plates. The

first example of his imprint appeared about 1675, at Amsterdam, with

a printed index calling for 102 maps. Another edition (? 1680) is

indexed for 160 plates, contained in two volumes of maps, and a third

of charts.[749] Another small German atlas, the _Vorstellung der

gantzen Welt_, of J. U. Muller, was published at Ulm in 1692, which had

eighteen small American maps; and towards the close of the century the

_Atlas minor_ of Allard obtained a good popularity. The pre-eminent

name of Delisle, just becoming known, marked the opening of a new era

in cartography, which is beyond the limits of the present volume.

* * * * *

Some notice should be given of another class of atlases, the successors

of the portolanos of the sixteenth century, and the beginning of the

later science of hydrography. In these the Dutch were conspicuous; and

many of their subsequent charts trace back to the larger _pascaart_

of the North Atlantic which Jacob Aertz Colom published at Amsterdam

about 1630.[750] Among the earliest of the regular _Zee-Atlases_ was

that of Theunis Jacobsz, published in Amsterdam about 1635, which has a

chart showing the American coast-line from Nova Francia to Virginia. Of

large importance in this direction was the _Arcano del Mare_ of Robert

Dudley, issued at Florence in 1646-1647, of which mention has been made

in other chapters in this and in the preceding volume. Another of the

Amsterdam Coloms—Arnold Colom—published his _Zee-Atlas_ about 1650,

which contains six American coast-charts, and sometimes appears with

a Latin title, _Ora maritima Orbis universi_, and is of interest in

the historical study of our American coast-lines, improving as he does

the preceding work of Jacobsz. Later editions of Colom, dating the

charts, appeared in 1656 and 1663.[751] Of about this same date (1654)

is a _pascaart_, published at Amsterdam, which seems to have been

the joint business project of Frederic de Witt, Anthony and Theunis

Jacobsz, and Gulielmus Blaeu. The world-map in it is dated 1652, and

is doubly marked “C. J. Visscher” (Claes Jannson Visscher) and “Autore

N. J. Piscator” (Nicolas Joanides), as the Latin equivalent of the

same person. It shows the Atlantic coast from Labrador to Brazil. The

first edition of Hendrick Doncker’s _Zee-Atlas ofte Water-Waereld_

appeared at Amsterdam in 1659, and is particularly useful for the

American coasts. New maps were added to it in the edition of 1666; but

the _Nieuwe Groote vermeerderde Zee-Atlas_ of 1676, though still called

Doncker’s, is based on Colom, and has Colom’s six American charts.

Additional American and other charts were added to the 1697 edition;

while a set of still larger charts constitute Doncker’s _Nieuw Groot

Zeekaert-boek_ of 1712.[752]

The _Zee-Atlas_ of Van Loon, with its forty-five double charts,

appeared in 1661.[753] It is in parts reproduced from Blaeu, De Laet,

and Jannson. Its numbers 46 and 47 show the coast from Newfoundland

southwards. P. Goos, in his _Lichtende Colomme_, Amsterdam, 1657, had

touched the Arctic coasts of America; but in his _Zee-Atlas_ of 1666 he

gave in excellent manner eleven charts of the coasts of both Americas,

out of the forty-one charts in all. These were all repeated in the

edition of 1668-1669, and in the French edition, _Atlas de la Mer_,

1673. Other Dutch editions, with some changes, followed in 1675 and

1676. It was issued with an English text at Amsterdam in 1670.

Frederic de Witt, who had earlier appended to his _Atlas_ a section of

maritime charts, published his _Zee-Atlas_ in 1675, which contained

twenty-seven charts, eight of which were American; and in 1676 Arent

Roggeveen issued his well-known navigator’s chart-book, which in

English is known as _The Burning Fen_ (1676), and which also has a

Spanish dress (1680). It gives in successive charts the whole eastern

coast of the two Americas, on a large scale. Johann van Keulen, who

had published a chart of the coast from Nantucket to Trinidad in

1680, issued a _Zee-Atlas_ in 1682-1687, based in part upon Van Loon,

enlarging it in successive issues, so that in the edition of 1694 it

had 146 charts, of which 38 were American. A later edition in 1734

contained 12 large folded charts of American coasts.[754]

Near the close of the century we come to the earliest of the French

marine atlases, the _Neptune Français_, which Jaillot published in its

enlarged form in 1693; but not till a _Suite du Neptune Français_ was

issued in 1700 did any charts of American coasts make part of it. This

contained eleven on America, professing to be based on Sanson’s drafts.

THE MAPS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, SHOWING CANADA.

BY THE EDITOR.

[Detailed maps of the Upper Lakes and the Mississippi Basin, as well

as those produced by Hennepin, though connected with this period,

are made the subject of separate treatment elsewhere in the present

volume. The general atlases are treated in the next preceding pages.]

[Illustration: MOLINEAUX, 1600.

The key is as follows:

1. Discovered by Cabot.

2. Bacalaos.

3. C. Bonavista.

4. C. Raso.

5. C. Britton.

6. I. Sables.

7. I. S. John.

8. Claudia.

9. Comokee.

10. C. Chesepick.

11. Hotorast.

12. La Bermudas.

13. Bahama.

14. La Florida.

15. The Gulfe of Mexico.

16. Virginia.

17. The Lacke of Tadenac, the bounds whereof are unknowne.

18. Canada.

19. Hochelague.

Except for the supposed inland sea, much the same configuration of Nova

Francia is given in the map of not far from this date which Hondius

made to illustrate Drake’s voyage, and of which a fac-simile is given

in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of _The World Encompassed_. The same

general character belongs to the Hondius map in the 1613 edition

of Mercator; while in the same book the _Orbis Terræ compendiosa

Descriptio_ is very nearly of the original Mercator and Ortelius type,

which is also closely followed in a second map, _America, sive India

nova, per Michælem Mercatorem_. Another map of the same date is in

Megiser’s _Septentrio Novantiquus_, Leipsic, 1613.]

IN the notes at the end of chapter ii. we followed the cartography of

New France down to the opening of the seventeenth century. We saw in

the map of Molineaux (1600) an indication of a great inland sea, as the

prototype of the Great Lakes; but the general belief of the period,

just as Champlain was entering on his discoveries, is well shown in

the map, “Americæ sive Novi Orbis nova Descriptio,” which appeared in

Botero’s _Relaciones universales_, published at Valladolid in 1603.[755]

The Spanish and the Dutch only repeated, but hardly with as much

precision, what the map in Botero had shown;[756] and we only get

approximate exactness when we come to the map of Lescarbot in 1609, of

which sections are given in the present and in other chapters.[757]

Champlain’s first map was made in 1612, and his second in 1613,[758]

both of which appeared in _Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain_, Paris,

1613. Between the issue of these 1612 and 1613 maps of Champlain and

his greater one in 1632, the cartography of New France is illustrated

by several conspicuous maps. Those of Hondius and Mercator, so called,

of the same year were of course unaffected by the drafts of Champlain.

We begin to notice some effects of Champlain’s work, however, in

several of the Dutch maps; in that of Jacobsz, or Jacobsen, of 1621,

for instance, of which account will be found on another page.[759] Maps

by Jodocus Hondius and Blaeu represent a number of streams flowing from

small lakes uniting to form the St. Lawrence. One by Jannson, in 1626,

nearly resembles for the St. Lawrence region that portion of a “new and

accurate map of the world, 1626,” which makes part of Speed’s _Prospect

of the most famous Parts of the World_.

In 1625 the _Pilgrimes_[760] of Purchas introduces us to two

significant maps. One is that which Sir William Alexander issued in his

_Encouragement to Colonies_ in 1624, and was reproduced by Purchas,

calling it “New England, New Scotland, and New France.” The essential

part of it is given in Vol. III. chap. ix. The other is that called

“The North Part of America,” ascribed to Master Briggs.

[Illustration: BOTERO, 1603.]

In the original edition of De Laet’s _Nieuwe Wereldt_,[761] published

in 1625, we have a map of North America; but in the 1630 (Dutch)

edition we find a special map of New France, which was repeated in the

(Latin) 1633 edition. Harrisse[762] is in error in assigning the first

appearance of this map to the 1640 French edition.

Champlain’s great map appeared in his 1632 edition.

[Illustration: NEWFOUNDLAND, 1609.

Part of Lescarbot’s map. There is in the Kohl Collection, in the State

Department at Washington, a map of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River

of about this date, copied from one in the Dépôt de la Marine at Paris.

Kohl also includes a map by Joannes Oliva, copied from a manuscript

portolano among the Egerton Manuscripts in the British Museum, which

purports to have been made at Marseilles in 1613. Its names and legends

are Italian and Latin; and the map, while inferior to Hakluyt’s map,

bears a strong resemblance to it. It is much behind the time, except as

respects the outline of Newfoundland, which seems to be more accurately

drawn than before. This island was still further to be improved in

Mason’s map of 1626. Oliva seems to have been ignorant of Lescarbot’s

book.]

[Illustration: EASTERLY PORTION OF CHAMPLAIN’S 1612 MAP.

These fac-similes of the 1612 map are made from the Harvard College

copy. There are other fac-similes in the Boston and Quebec editions;

and one by Pilinski (fifty copies at 40 francs) was made in Paris in

1878. Sabin’s _Dictionary_, p. 478, says: “The copies vary in the maps.

Mr. Lenox’s copy differs from that in the New York Historical Society.

Sometimes in one map there are more references than in the others, and

the spelling of the references varies. The large map is usually in two

parts, and is very often wanting or defective.” Harrisse, nos. 306-318,

enumerates the proper maps of this 1613 edition. The title of the 1613

edition speaks of this map: “La première servant à la navigation,

dressée selon les compas, qui nordestent, sur lesquels les mariniers

navigent.”]

[Illustration: WESTERLY PORTION OF CHAMPLAIN’S 1612 MAP.]

[Illustration: PART OF CHAMPLAIN’S 1613 MAP.

The title of the 1613 edition speaks of this map as being “en son vray

Meridien, avec ses longitudes et latitudes: à laquelle est adjousté le

voyage du destroict qu’ont trouvé les Anglois, au dessus de Labrador,

depuis le 53^e degré de latitude, jusques au 63^e én l’an 1612,

cerchans un chemin par le nord pour aller à la Chine.”]

[Illustration: AMERICÆ SEPTENTRIONALIS PARS (_Jacobsz_, 1621).]

[Illustration: BRIGGS IN PURCHAS, 1625.]

It will be observed that Champlain had reached, in his plotting of the

country east of the Penobscot, something more than tolerable accuracy.

Farther west, proportions and relations were all wrong. The country

between the St. Lawrence and the Gulf of Maine is much too narrow. The

Penobscot is made almost to unite with the more northern river; and

this error is perpetuated in the Dutch maps published by Blaeu, and

Covens and Mortier many years later. The placing of Lake Champlain

within a short distance of Casco Bay was another error that the later

Dutch cartographers adopted in one form or another. Lake Ontario is not

greatly misshapen; but Erie is stretched into a strait, while beyond

a distorted Huron a “grand lac” is so placed as to leave a doubt if

Superior or Michigan was intended.

[Illustration: SPEED, 1626.]

Notwithstanding this pronounced belief in large inland seas, and the

publication of the belief, the notion did not make converts in every

direction. Two years later (1634) a map of Petrus Kærius, and even his

other map, which appeared in Speed’s _Prospect of the most famous Parts

of the World_, published in London, gave no intimation of Champlain’s

results. The same backwardness of knowledge or apprehension is apparent

in the map which accompanies the Amsterdam edition of Linschoten in

1644; in that of the world, dated 1651, which appeared in Speed’s 1676

edition; in the map in Petavius’s _History of the World_, London, 1659;

and in two maps of N. I. Visscher, both dated 1652, which make the St.

Lawrence River rise in the neighborhood of the Colorado. We might not

expect the _Zee-Atlas_ of Van Loon to give signs of the inland lakes;

but it is strange that the map “Americæ nova descriptio,” ignoring the

great interior waters, was used in editions of Heylin’s _Cosmographie_,

in London, from 1669 to 1677.

[Illustration: NOVA FRANCIA ET REGIONES ADJACENTES (_De Laet_).

Cf. another section of De Laet’s map in chap. viii. De Laet was much

better informed than Champlain regarding the relative position of Lake

Champlain to New England; and he placed it more in accordance with the

English belief, as expressed by Thomas Morton, _New English Canaan_

(Adams’s edition, p. 234), who speaks of Lake Champlain as being three

hundred miles distant from Massachusetts Bay,—a distance somewhat in

excess. De Laet’s map is also given in Cassell’s _United States_, i.

240.]

Some of the Dutch cartographers were not so inalert. Johannes Jannson

in his _America septentrionalis_, and even Visscher himself in his

_Novissima et accuratissima totius Americæ Descriptio_ give diverse

interpretations to this idea of the inland seas. The draft in the

Hexham English translation (1636) of the Mercator-Hondius atlas is not

much nearer that of Champlain.

[Illustration: JANNSON.]

Harrisse (_Notes_, etc., nos. 190, 191) refers to two charts of the

St. Lawrence of 1641 which are preserved in Paris, and are known to be

the work of Jean Bourdon, who came to Quebec in 1633-34. Perhaps one

of these is the same referred to by Kohl, as dated 1635, and in the

_Dépôt de la Marine_, of which a copy is in the Kohl Collection in the

State Department at Washington. Harrisse also (no. 324) refers to a

_Description de la Nouvelle France_,—a map published by Boisseau in

Paris in 1643.

The map in Dudley’s _Arcano del Mare_ (Florence, 1647), called “Carta

particolare della terra nuova, con la gran Baia et il Fiume grande

della Canida: D’America, carta prima,”[763] presents a surprise in

making the St. Croix River connect the Bay of Fundy with the St.

Lawrence; and Dudley seems to have had very confused notions of the

sites of Hochelaga and the Saguenay. The annexed sketch is much reduced.

The same transverse strait appears in _Carte générale des Costes de

l’Amérique_, published at Amsterdam by Covens and Mortier. A treatment

of the geographical problem of the lakes which had more or less vogue,

is shown in Gottfried’s _Neue Welt_, 1655, in a map called “America

noviter delineate;” and this same treatment was preserved by Blaeu so

late as 1685.

[Illustration: VISSCHER.]

A most decided advance came with the map, _Le Canada, ou Nouvelle

France_, of Nicolas Sanson in 1656,[764]—a far better correlation

of the three lower lakes than we had found in Champlain, with an

indication of those farther west.[765] Contemporary with Sanson was the

English geographer Peter Heylin, whose map, as has already been noted,

betrays no knowledge of Champlain. His _Cosmographie in Four Books_

appeared in 1657,[766] and the second part of the fourth book relates

to America, and is accompanied by the map in question. The contemporary

Dutch maps of Jannson, Visscher, and Blaeu deserve little notice as

contributions to knowledge.[767]

[Illustration: EASTERLY PORTION OF CHAMPLAIN’S MAP 1632.

The great map of 1632, by Champlain, has been reproduced full size

in the Quebec edition of his works, and also in the Prince Society

edition. A fac-simile, somewhat reduced, is given in O’Callaghan’s

_Documentary History of New York_, vol. iii. Another, full size, was

made by Pilinski in 1860, and published by Tross, of Paris (thirty-six

copies, and of date, 1877, fifty copies at 40 francs). Field calls it

“imperfect.” Brunet, however, says it has “une admirable exactitude.”

The copy of the 1632 edition in the Bibliothèque Nationale lacks this

map. The Harvard Le Mur copy has no map (Field, _Indian Bibliography_,

no. 268).

Sabin (no. 11,839) says that the map here copied (the original of

which is in the Harvard College “Collet” copy) belongs properly to the

copies having the Le Mur and Sevestre imprints, and has the legend,

“Faict l’an 1632 par le Sieur de Champlain;” while the proper Collet

map is smaller, and is inscribed, “Faict par le Sieur de Champlain,

suivant les Mémoires de P. du Val, en l’Isle du Palais.” The earliest

copy, however, which I have found of the map thus referred to bears

date 1664, and is called _Le Canada, faict par le S^r. de Champlain,

... suivant les Mémoires de P. du Val, Géographe du Roy_. This map

appeared with even later dates (1677, etc.), preserving much of the

characteristics of the 1632 map, though stretching the plot farther

west, and at a time when much better knowledge was current. Harrisse,

nos. 331, 348; but cf. no. 274. Kohl, in the Department of State

Collection, has one of date 1660.]

[Illustration: WESTERLY PORTION OF CHAMPLAIN’S 1632 MAP.]

[Illustration: DUDLEY, 1647.]

Of the map of Creuxius, made in 1660 and published in 1664, a

fac-simile of a part is annexed.[768] For the eastern parts of the

country reference may be made to the map _Tabula Novæ Franciæ_, of

about 1663, given in the chapter on Acadie.[769]

[Illustration: CREUXIUS, 1660.]

[Illustration: CARTE GÉNÉRALE OF COVENS AND MORTIER.]

One of the volumes of the great _Blaeu Atlas_ of 1662, _America, quæ

est Geographiæ Blavianæ Pars quinta_, very singularly ignored all that

the cartographers of New France had been long divulging, and the same

misrepresentation was persistently employed in the later _Blaeu Atlas_

of 1685, which contained in other American maps a variety of notions

equally erroneous, and which had been current at a period very long

passed.

[Illustration: GOTTFRIED, 1655.]

The map in Montanus’s _De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld_, 1670, “per

Jacobum Meursium,” not the same as the “Novissima et accuratissima

totius Americæ Descriptio” of John Ogilby’s great folio on _America_,

1670, and later years, seems to be substantially N. Visscher’s map of

the same title, issued in Amsterdam in the same year.[770]

The maps of Hennepin (1683-1697) form a part of a special note

elsewhere in the present volume; and the map accompanying Le Clercq’s

_Etablissement de la Foy_, 1691, is also reproduced in Shea’s

translation of that book.[771] It makes the Mississippi debouch on the

Texas shore of the Gulf of Mexico, as many of the maps of this period

do.

Maps of a general character, indicating a knowledge of the interior

topography of America, sometimes expanding, and not seldom retrograde,

followed rapidly as the century was closing, of which the most

important were the maps of _Amérique septentrionale_ (1667, 1669, 1674,

1685, 1690, 1692, 1695), by the Sansons, and the Roman reprint of it

in 1677,[772] as well as _La Mer du Nort_ of Du Val in 1679,[773]

Sanson’s _Le Nouveau Mexique_, of the same year, which extends

from Montreal to the Gulf;[774] the _North America_ of the English

geographer, William Berry (1680);[775] the _Partie de la Nouvelle

France_ of Hubert Jaillott (1685);[776] and the same cartographer’s

_Amérique septentrionale_ of 1694, and _Le Monde_ of 1696; the _Carte

Generalle de la Nouvelle France_[777] (1692) engraved by Boudan; the

_Amérique septentrionale_ of De Fer (1693); the marine _Cartes_ (1696)

of Le Cordier;[778] the _New Sett of Maps_ published by Edward Wells

in London in 1698-99; and finally the _Amérique septentrionale_ of

Delisle.[779] The maps of La Hontan (1703-1709) are the subject of

special treatment in another note.

[Illustration: SANSON, 1656.

This is the same map, whether with the imprint, “Paris, chez Pierre

Mariette, 1656,” or “Chez l’Autheur” in his _America en plusieurs

Cartes_, 1657, though the scale in the former is much larger.]

[Illustration: BLAEU, 1662 AND 1685.

Cf. a section in Cassell’s _United States_, i. 312.]

[Illustration: NOVI BELGII TABULA, 1670.

From Ogilby’s _America_, p. 169.]

[Illustration: OGILBY’S MAP, 1670.]

If we run through the series of maps here sketched, we cannot but be

struck with the unsettled notions regarding the geography of the St.

Lawrence Valley. Beginning with the clear intimation by Molineaux,

in 1600, of a great body of interior water, which was the mysterious

link between the Atlantic and the Arctic seas, and finding this idea

modified by Botero and others, we see Champlain in 1613 still leaving

it vague. The maps of the next few years paid little attention to any

features farther west than the limit of tide-water; and not till we

reach the great map which accompanied the final edition of Champlain’s

collected voyages in 1632 do we begin to get a distorted plot of the

upper lakes, Lake Erie being nothing more than a channel of varying

width connecting them with Lake Huron. The first really serviceable

delineation of the great lakes were the maps of Sanson and Du Creux,

or Creuxius, in 1656 and 1660. Here we find Lake Erie given its

due prominence; Huron is unduly large, but in its right position;

and Michigan and Superior, though not completed, are placed with

approximate accuracy. This truth of position, however, was disregarded

by many a later geographer, till we reach a type of map, about the end

of the century, which is exemplified in that given by Campanius in 1702.

[Illustration: FROM CAMPANIUS, 1702.]

A water-way which made an island of greater or less extent of the

peninsula which lies between the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic,

appeared first in 1600 on the Molineaux map, and was repeated by Dudley

in 1647; but on other maps the water-sheds were separated by a narrow

tract. So much uncertainty attended this feature that the short portage

of the prevailing notion was far from constant in its position, and

on some maps seems repeated in more than one place,—taking now the

appearance of a connection on the line of the St. Croix, or some other

river of New Brunswick; now on that of the Kennebec and Chaudière;

again as if having some connection with Lake Champlain, when a

misconception of its true position placed that expanse of water between

the Connecticut and the Saco; and once more on the line of the Hudson

and Lake George.

CHAPTER VIII.

NEW NETHERLAND, OR THE DUTCH IN NORTH AMERICA

BY BERTHOLD FERNOW,

_Keeper of the Historical Records, State of New York_.

SAYS Carlyle: “Those Dutch are a strong people. They raised their land

out of a marsh, and went on for a long period of time breeding cows and

making cheese, and might have gone on with their cows and cheese till

doomsday. But Spain comes over and says, ‘We want you to believe in St.

Ignatius.’ ‘Very sorry,’ replied the Dutch, ‘but we can’t.’ ‘God! but

you _must_,’ says Spain; and they went about with guns and swords to

make the Dutch believe in St. Ignatius. Never made them believe in him,

but did succeed in breaking their own vertebral column forever, and

raising the Dutch into a great nation.”

A nation’s struggle for religious liberty comes upon every individual

member of that nation as a personal matter, as a battle to be fought

with himself and with the world. Hence we see the Dutch, encouraged by

the large influx of Belgians whom the same unwillingness to believe in

St. Ignatius had driven out of their homes, emerge from the conflict

with Spain, individually and as a nation, more self-reliant, sturdy,

and independent than ever before.

Compelled by the physical condition of their country to become a

maritime nation, while other circumstances directed them to commercial

pursuits, they had long been the common carriers of the sea, and had

availed themselves at an early date of the discoveries made by the

Cabots, Verrazano, and other adventurous explorers in the century

succeeding the voyages of Columbus. They had studied the weak points

of that vast Spanish empire “where the sun never set,” and found in

the war with Spain a good excuse to make use of their knowledge, and

to send their ships to the West Indies and the Spanish main to prey

upon the commerce of their enemies. The first proposition to make such

an expedition, submitted to the States-General in 1581 by an English

sea-captain, Beets, and refused by them, was undoubtedly conceived

in a purely commercial spirit. Gradually the idea of destroying the

transatlantic resources of Spain, and thereby compelling her to submit

to the Dutch conditions of peace and to the evacuation of Belgium,

caused the formation of a West India company, which, authorized to

trade with and fight the Spaniards in American waters, appears in the

light of a necessary political measure, without, however, throwing in

the background the necessity of finding a shorter route to the East

Indies.[780]

Although the scheme to form a West India company was first broached

in 1592 by William Usselinx, an exiled Antwerp merchant, it was many

years before it could be carried out. The longing for a share in the

riches of the New World conduced in the mean time to the establishment

of the “Greenland Company” about 1596, and the pretended search by its

ships for a northwest passage led to a supposed first discovery of the

Hudson River, if we may rely upon an unsupported statement made by

officers of the West India Company in an appeal for assistance to the

Assembly of the Nineteen in 1644. According to this document, ships

of the Greenland Company had entered the North and Delaware rivers in

1598; their crews had landed in both places, and had built small forts

to protect them against the inclemency of the winter and to resist the

attacks of the Indians.

Of the next adventurer who sailed through the Narrows we know more,

and of his discoveries we have documentary evidence. A company of

English merchants had organized to trade to America in the first

years of the seventeenth century. Their first adventures, directed

to Guiana and Virginia, were not successful,[781] yet gave a new

impetus to the scheme originally conceived by Usselinx. A plan for

the organization of a West India company was drawn up in 1606,

according to the exiled Belgian’s ideas. The company was to be in

existence thirty-six years, to receive during the first six years

assistance from all the United Provinces, and to be managed in the

same manner as the East India Company. Political considerations on

one side and rivalry between the Provinces on the other prevented

the consummation of this project. A peace or truce with Spain was

about to be negotiated, and Oldenbarnevelt, then Advocate of Holland

and one of the most prominent and influential members of the peace

party, foresaw that the organization of a West India company with the

avowed purpose of obtaining most of its profits by preying on Spanish

commerce in American waters would only prolong the war. Probably he

saw still farther. Usselinx’s plan was, as we have seen, to compel

Spain by these means to evacuate Belgium, and thus give her exiled sons

a chance to return to their old homes. A wholesale departure of the

shrewd, industrious, and skilled Belgians would have deprived Holland

of her political pre-eminence and have left her an obscure and isolated

province. On the other hand, each province and each seaport desired a

share in the equipping of the fleet destined to sail in the interests

of the proposed company, and as no province was willing to allow a

rival to have what she could not have, the project itself between these

two extremes of the opposing parties came to nought. It was only when

Oldenbarnevelt, accused of high treason, had been lodged in prison, and

the renewal of the war with Spain had been commended to the public,

that the scheme was taken up again, in 1618.

Private ships, sailing from Dutch ports, had not been idle in the mean

time; in 1607 we hear of them in Canada trading for furs, and in 1609

an English mariner, Henry Hudson, who had made several voyages for the

English company already mentioned, offered his services to the East

India Company to search for the passage to India by the north.

Under the auspices of the Amsterdam chamber of this company Hudson

left the Texel in the yacht “Half Moon” April 4, 1609. His failures in

the years 1607 and 1608, while in the employ of the English company,

had discouraged neither him nor his new employers; but soon ice and

fogs compel him, so we are told, to abandon his original plan to go to

the East Indies by a possible northeast passage, and he proposes to

his crew a search for a northwest passage along the American coast,

at about the 40th degree of latitude. A contemporary writer states:

“This idea had been suggested to Hudson by some letters and maps which

his friend Captain Smith had sent him from Virginia, and by which he

informed him that there was a sea leading into the Western Ocean by

the north of Virginia.” So westward Hudson turns the bow of his ship,

to make a first landfall on the coast of Newfoundland, a second at

Penobscot Bay, and a third at Cape Cod. Thence he takes a southwest

course, but again fails to strike land under the 40th degree; he has

gone too far south by one degree, and he anchors in a wide bay under

39° 5´´ on the 28th of August. He is in Delaware Bay. Scarcely a week

later, on the 4th of September, he finds himself with his yacht in the

“Great North River of New Netherland,” under 40° 30´. A month later,

to a day, he passes again out of the “Great mouth of the Great River,”

homeward bound to report that what he had thought to be the long and

vainly sought northwest passage was only a great river, navigable for

vessels of light draught for one hundred and fifty miles, and running

through a country fair to look upon and inhabited by red men peacefully

inclined. Little did Hudson think, while he was navigating the waters

named for him, that Champlain, another explorer, had recently been

fighting his way up the shores of the lake now bearing his name, and

that, a century and a half later, the great battle for supremacy on

this continent between France and England,—between the old religion

and the new,—would be fiercely waged in those peaceful regions.

The report brought home by Hudson, that the newly discovered country

abounded in fur-bearing animals, created the wildest excitement among

a people compelled by their northern climate to resort to very warm

clothing in winter. Many private ventures, therefore, followed Hudson’s

track soon after his return, and finally the plan to organize a West

India company, never quite relinquished, was now, 1618, destined to be

carried out. There was in this juncture less opposition to it; but

still various reasons delayed the consent of the States-General until

June, 1621, when at last they signed the charter. Englishmen from

Virginia, who claimed the country under a grant, had tried to oust

the Dutch, who had before this established themselves on the banks

of the Hudson, under the _octroi_ of 1614. The West India Company

nevertheless, undismayed, took possession, in 1623, by sending Captain

Cornelis Jacobsen Mey as director to the Prince Hendrick or South

River (Delaware), and Adrian Jorissen Tienpont in like capacity to the

Prince Mauritius or North River. Mey, going up the South River, fifteen

leagues from its mouth erected in the present town of Gloucester,

N. J., about four miles below Philadelphia, Fort Nassau, the first

European settlement in that region; while the director on the North

River, besides strengthening the establishment which he found at its

mouth, built a fort a few miles above the one erected in 1618 near the

mouth of the Normanskil, now Albany, by the servants of the “United New

Netherland Company,” and called it “Fort Orange.”

[Illustration]

Tienpont’s successor, Peter Minuit, three years later, in 1626, bought

from the Indians the whole of Manhattan Island for the value of about

twenty-four dollars, with the view of making this the principal

settlement. This purchase and the organization, under the charter, of

a council with supreme executive, legislative, and judicial authority,

must be considered the first foundation of our present State of

New York, even though the titles of the officers constituting the

council,—upper and under merchant, commissary, book-keeper of monthly

wages,—seem to prove that in the beginning the Company had only purely

commercial ends in view. Their charter of 1621, it is true, required

them “to advance the peopling of those fruitful and unsettled parts,”

but not until the trade with New Netherland threatened to become

unprofitable, in 1627-28, was a plan taken into consideration to reap

other benefits than those accruing from the fur-trade alone, through a

more extended colonization. The deliberations of the Assembly of the

Nineteen and directors of the West India Company resulted in a new

“charter of freedoms and exemptions,” sanctioned by the States-General,

June 7, 1629. Its provisions, no more favorable to liberty, as we

understand it now, than that of 1621, attempted to transplant to the

soil of New York the feudal system of Europe as it had already been

established in Canada; and with it was imported the first germ of that

weakening disease,—inadequate revenues,—which caused the colony to

fall such an easy prey to England’s attack in 1664. While the charter

was still under discussion, several of the Company’s directors took

advantage of their position and secured for themselves a share of the

new privileges by purchasing from the Indians, as the charter required,

the most conveniently located and fertile tracts of land. The records

of the acknowledgment of these transactions before the Director and

Council of the Colony are the earliest which are extant in the

original now in the possession of the State of New York. They bear

dates from April, 1630, to July, 1631, and include the present counties

of Albany and Richmond, N. Y., the cities of Hoboken and Jersey City,

N. J., and the southern parts of the States of New Jersey and Delaware.

This mode of acquiring lands from the Indians by purchase established

from the beginning the principles by which the intercourse between the

white and the red men in the valley of the Hudson was to be regulated.

The great Indian problem, which has been and still is a question of

paramount importance to the United States Government, was solved then

by the Dutch of New Netherland without great difficulty. Persecuted

by Spain and France for their religious convictions, the Dutch had

learned to tolerate the superstitions and even repugnant beliefs of

others. Not less religious than the Puritans of New England, they made

no such religious pretexts for tyranny and cruelty as mar the records

of their neighbors. They treated the Indian as a man with rights of

life, liberty, opinion, and property like their own. Truthful among

themselves, they inspired in the Indian a belief in their sincerity and

honesty, and purchased what they wanted fairly and with the consent of

the seller. The Dutch _régime_ always upheld this principle, and as a

consequence the Indians of this State caused no further difficulty,

with a few exceptions, to the settlers than a financial outlay. The

historians who charge the Dutch with pusillanimity and cowardice in

their dealings with the Indians forget that to their policy we owe

to-day the existence of the United States.

The country between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River, the

Great Lakes and the Savannah River, was at the time of the arrival of

the Dutch practically ruled by a confederacy of Indian tribes,—the

Five Nations,—who, settled along the Mohawk and Upper Hudson rivers

and in western New York, commanded the key to the continent. It was

indeed in their power, had they pleased, to allow the French of Canada

to crush the Dutch settlements on the Hudson; and had this territory

become a French province, the united action of the American colonies

in the French and Revolutionary wars would have been an impossibility.

These Five Nations, called by the Jesuit fathers living among them the

most enlightened but also the most intractable and ferocious of all the

Indians, became soon after the arrival of the Dutch the stanch friends

of the new-comers, and remained so during the whole Dutch period. The

English wisely adhered to this Indian policy of the Dutch, and by the

continued friendship of the Five Nations were enabled successfully to

contend with the French for the supremacy on this continent.

The purchasers of the tracts already mentioned—with one exception,

associations of Dutch merchants—lost no time in sending out people

to settle their colonies. Renselaerswyck, adjoining and surrounding

Fort Orange, had in 1630 already a population of thirty males, of whom

several had families, sent out by the Association recognizing Kilian

van Renselaer, a pearl merchant of Amsterdam, as patroon. The same

men, associated with several others, among whom was Captain David

Pietersen de Vries, had bought the present counties of Sussex and Kent,

in the State of Delaware, to which by a purchase made the following

year they added the present Cape May County, N. J. On December 12,

1630, they sent two vessels to the Delaware or South River, “to plant

a colony for the cultivation of grain and tobacco, as well as to carry

on the whale-fishery in that region.” They carried out the first part

of the plan, but were so unsuccessful in the second part that the

expedition proved a losing one. Undismayed by their financial loss,

another was sent out in May, 1632, under Captain de Vries’ personal

command, although information had been received that the settlement

on the South River, Zwanendael, had been destroyed by the Indians,

and all the settlers, thirty-two in number, killed. Arriving opposite

Zwanendael, De Vries found the news but too true; and after visiting

the old Fort Nassau, now deserted, and loitering a while in the river,

he left the region without any further attempt at colonization. The

pecuniary losses attending these two unfortunate expeditions induced

the patroons of Zwanendael, two years later, to dispose of their right

and title to these tracts of land to the West India Company.

[Illustration]

Shortly before Minuit was appointed director of New Netherland, a

number of Walloons, compelled by French intolerance to leave their

homes between the rivers Scheldt and Lys, had applied to Sir Dudley

Carleton, principal Secretary of State to King Charles I., for

permission to settle in Virginia. The answer of the Virginia Company

not proving satisfactory, they turned their eyes upon New Netherland,

where a small number of them arrived with Minuit. For some reasons they

left the lands first allotted to them on Staten Island, and went over

to Long Island, where Wallabout,[782] in the city of Brooklyn, still

reminds us of the origin of its first settlers. It will be remembered

that Englishmen from Virginia (under Captain Samuel Argal, in 1613) had

attempted to drive the Dutch from the Hudson River.[783] It is said

that the Dutch then acknowledged the English title to this region under

a grant of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, and made an

arrangement for their continuing there on sufferance. Be that as it

may, the West India Company had paid no heed to this early warning.

Now, in 1627, the matter was to be recalled to their minds in a manner

more diplomatic than Argal’s, by a letter from Governor Bradford of

Plymouth Colony, which most earnestly asserted the right of the English

to the territory occupied by the Dutch. This urged the latter to clear

their title, for otherwise it said: “It will be harder and with

more difficulty obtained hereafter, and perhaps not without blows.”

Before the director’s appeal for assistance against possible English

invaders reached the home office, the Company had already taken steps

to remove some of the causes which might endanger their colony. They

had obtained, September, 1627, from King Charles I. an order giving to

their vessels the same privileges as had been granted by the treaty

of Southampton to all national vessels of Holland,—that is, freedom

of trade to all ports of England and her colonies. But their title

to New Netherland was not cleared, because they could not do it; for

they did not dare to assert the pretensions to the _premier seisin_,

then considered valid according to that maxim of the civil law, “_quæ

nullius sunt, in bonis dantur occupanti_;” nor did they later claim the

right of first discovery when, after the surrender of New Netherland

to the English, in 1664, negotiations were had concerning restitution.

Only once did they claim a title by such discovery. This was when the

ship “Union,” bringing home the recalled director Minuit (1632), was

attached in an English port, at the suit of the New England Company,

on a charge which had been made notwithstanding the King’s order of

September, 1627, and which alleged that the ship had obtained her cargo

in countries subject to his Majesty. The denial of this claim and the

counter claim of first discovery by Englishmen set up by the British

ministry failed to bring forth a rejoinder from their High Mightinesses

of Holland.

[Illustration]

When De Vries, having ascertained the destruction of his colony

on the Delaware, came to New Amsterdam, he found there the newly

appointed director, Wouter van Twiller, just arrived. He was, as De

Vries thought, “an unfit person,” whom family influence had suddenly

raised from a clerkship in the Company’s office at Amsterdam to

the governorship of New Netherland “to perform a comedy,” and his

council De Vries calls “a pack of fools, who knew nothing except

to drink, by whose management the Company must come to nought.” De

Vries’ prediction came near being realized. Seized with a mania for

territorial aggrandizement, Van Twiller bought from the Indians a part

of the Connecticut territory in 1633, and by building Fort Hope, near

the present site of Hartford, planted the seed for another quarrel with

the English at Boston, who claimed all the land from the Narragansetts

nearly to the Manhattans under a grant made in 1631 to the Earl of

Warwick, and under a subsequent transfer from the latter in 1632 to

Lord Say and Seal’s company. Notwithstanding their numerical weakness,

the Dutch kept a footing in Connecticut for nearly twenty years; but

they could not prevent the same Englishmen from invading Long Island

in a like manner, and being prominent actors in the final catastrophe

of 1664. Another purchase made by Van Twiller from the Indians, also

in 1633, which included the territory on the Schuylkill, the building

of Fort Beeversreede there and additions made to Fort Nassau, put

new life into the sinking settlement on the Delaware River, and thus

gave color to the subsequent statement, made in the dispute with the

Swedes, that they (the Dutch) had never relinquished their hold upon

this territory.[784] Thoroughly imbued with a sense of the wealth and

power of the West India Company, then in the zenith of its power, Van

Twiller expended the revenues of his government lavishly in building up

New Amsterdam and Fort Orange, and, without regard for official ethics,

abused his position still further at the expense of the Company, by

granting to himself and his boon companions the most fertile tracts of

land on and near Manhattan and Long islands. His irregular proceedings,

finally brought to the notice of the States-General by the law officer

of New Netherland, led to his recall in 1637, when he was succeeded by

William Kieft.

Up to this time the history of New Netherland is more or less a history

of the acts of the director, who proceeded more like the agent of a

great commercial institution than the ruler of a vast province. He

assumed to be the head of the agency, and all the other inhabitants of

the colony were either his servants or his tenants. Nominally he was

also directed to supervise the proceedings of adjoining colonies of the

same nationality; but they either died out, like Pavonia (New Jersey)

and Zwanendael (Delaware), or as yet the interests of those private

establishments, like Renselaerswyck (Albany) had not come in conflict

with those of the Company so as to call forth the authority vested in

the director. The relations with the Indians had also been amicable so

far, a slight misunderstanding with the New Jersey Indians excepted;

and the quarrel with the English about the Connecticut lands having

been referred to the home authorities for settlement, this complication

did not require any display of statesmanship. The province having been

brought to the verge of ruin by Wouter van Twiller, up to the beginning

of whose administration it had returned a profit of $75,000 to the

Company, the abilities of his successor were taxed to their utmost to

rebuild it, and his statesmanship was tried in his dealings with the

Swedes, the English, and the Indians.

The absorption, for their own benefit, of the most fertile lands

by officers of the Company had naturally tended to prevent actual

settlers from coming to New Netherland, and the Company itself had

thus far failed to send over colonists, as required by the charter.

The incessant disputes between the Amsterdam department of the Company

and the patroons of Renselaerswyck over the interpretation of the

privileges granted in 1629, and the complaints of the fiscal[785] of

New Netherland against Wouter van Twiller, which pointedly referred to

the general maladministration of the province, at last induced their

High Mightinesses to turn their attention to it. A short investigation

compelled them to announce officially that the colony was retrograding,

its population decreasing, and that it required a change in the

administration of its affairs. But as the charter of the Company was

the fundamental evil, the Government was almost powerless to enforce

its demands, and had to be satisfied with recommending to the Assembly

of the Nineteen of the West India Company the adoption of a plan for

the effectual settlement of the country and the encouragement of a

sound and healthful emigration. This step resulted in overthrowing the

monopoly of the American trade enjoyed by the Company since 1623, and

in opening not only the trade, but also the cultivation of the soil

under certain conditions, to every immigrant, denizen, or foreigner.

The new order of things gave to the drooping colony a fresh lease of

life. Its population, hitherto only transient, as it consisted mainly

of the Company’s servants, who returned to Europe at the expiration of

their respective terms, now became permanent,—“whole colonies” coming

“to escape the insupportable government of New England;” servants who

had obtained their liberty in Maryland and Virginia availing themselves

of the opportunity to make use of the experience acquired on the

tobacco plantations of their English masters; wealthy individuals of

the more educated classes emigrating with their families and importing

large quantities of stock; and the peasant farmers of continental

Europe seeking freehold homes on the banks of the Hudson and on Long

Island, which they could not acquire in the land of their birth.

These all flocked now to New Netherland, and gave to New Amsterdam

something of its present cosmopolitan character; for Father Jogues

found there in 1643 eighteen different nationalities represented by its

population. Two other invasions, however, of New Netherland brought a

people likewise intent upon the cultivation of the soil and trading

with the Indians; but they were not such as “acknowledged their High

Mightinesses and the Directors of the West India Company as their

suzerain lords and masters,” and these caused some anxiety and trouble

to the new director.

The first of these invasions, arriving on this side of the Atlantic in

Delaware Bay almost simultaneously with Kieft, was made in pursuance of

a plan long cherished by the great Protestant hero of the seventeenth

century, Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, to give his country a share in

the harvest which other nations were then gathering in the New World.

Various reasons deferred the carrying out of this plan, first laid

before the King in 1626 by the same Usselinx who planned the West India

Company; and not until 1638 did the South Company of Sweden send out

their first adventure under another man, also formerly connected with

the West India Company, Peter Minuit.

Kieft’s protest against this intrusion had no effect upon the Swedish

commander and his colony, whose history is told in another chapter.

More energy was displayed by the Dutch two years later in dealing

with some Englishmen from New Haven, who began a settlement on the

Schuylkill River, opposite Fort Nassau, and who were promptly driven

away. Laxity and corruption on the part of the Dutch local director

seems to have been the cause of the almost inexplicable patience with

which the Dutch bore the encroachments made by the Swedes; and not

until the government of New Netherland was intrusted to the energetic

Stuyvesant was anything done to counteract the Swedish influences

on the Delaware. Stuyvesant built in 1651 a new fort (Casimir, now

Newcastle, Del.), below the Swedish fort Christina (Wilmington), the

treacherous surrender of which, in 1654, to a newly arriving Swedish

governor, led in 1655 to the complete overthrow of Swedish rule.

The next two years, to 1657, the inhabitants of the Delaware territory

had to suffer under the mismanagement of various commanders appointed

by the Director-General and Council, whose lack of administrative

talent helped not a little to embarrass the Company financially.

Under pressure of monetary difficulty, part of the Delaware region

was ceded by the Company to the municipality of Amsterdam in Holland,

which in May, 1657, established a new colony at Fort Casimir, calling

it New Amstel, while the name of Christina was changed to Altena, and

the territory belonging to it placed in charge of an agent of more

experience than his predecessors. The remaining years of Dutch rule on

the Delaware derive interest chiefly from an attempt by comers from

Maryland to obtain possession of the country through a clever trick;

from quarrels between the authorities of the two Dutch colonies brought

on by the weakness and folly of the directors of the “City’s Colony;”

and from difficulties with Maryland which arose out of the Indian

question. With the surrender of New Amsterdam in 1664, the Delaware

country passed also into English hands.

Historians have hitherto failed to give due weight to the attempt of

Sweden to establish this American colony, and to the effect it had

upon the fortunes of the West India Company. The expedition of 1655,

although politically successful, not only exhausted the ready means of

the New Netherland Government, but also plunged it and the Company into

debts which never ceased to hamper its movement, and which afterward

rendered it impossible to furnish the province a sufficient military

protection.