FROM 1607 TO 1635
Argall of Virginia attacks the French--Champlain on the St.
Lawrence--Champlain and the Iroquois--Champlain explores the
Ottawa--Champlain with the Indians--Discovery of the Great Lakes--War
with the Iroquois--Conflicting interests in New France--The English
take Quebec
Though the monopoly had been rescinded, Poutrincourt set himself to
interesting merchants in the fur trade of Acadia, and the French king
confirmed to him the grant of Port Royal. Yet it was 1610 before Baron
Poutrincourt had gathered supplies to reëstablish the colony, and an
ominous cloud rose on the horizon, threatening his supremacy in the New
World. Nearly all the merchants supporting him were either Huguenots
or moderate Catholics. The Jesuits were all powerful at court, and
were pressing for a part in his scheme. The Jesuit, Father Biard, was
waiting at Bordeaux to join the ship. Poutrincourt evaded issues with
such powerful opponents. He took on board Father La Fléché, a
moderate, and gave the Jesuit the slip by sailing from Dieppe in
February.
To this quarrel there are two sides, as to all quarrels. The colony
must now be supported by the fur trade; and fur traders, world over,
easily add to their profits by deeds which will not bear the censure of
missionaries. On the other hand, to Poutrincourt, the Jesuits meant
divided authority; and the most lawless scoundrel that ever perpetrated
crimes in the fur trade could win over the favor of the priests by a
hypocritical semblance of contrition at the confessional. Contrition
never yet undid a crime; and civil courts can take no cognizance of
repentance.
When the ships sailed in to Port Royal the little fort was found
precisely as it had been left. Not even the furniture had been
disturbed, and old Membertou, the Indian chief, welcomed the white men
back with taciturn joy. Père La Fléché assembles the savages, tells
them the story of the Christian faith, then to the beat of drum and
chant of "Te Deum" receives, one {42} afternoon, twenty naked converts
into the folds of the church. Membertou is baptized Henry, after the
King, and all his frowsy squaws renamed after ladies of the most
dissolute court in Christendom.
Young Biencourt is to convey the ship back to France. He finds that
the Queen Dowager has taken the Jesuits under her especial protection.
Money enough to buy out the interests of the Huguenot merchants for the
Jesuits has been advanced. Fathers Biard and Massé embark on _The
Grace of God_ with young Biencourt in January, 1611, for Port Royal.
Almost at once the divided authority results in trouble. Coasting the
Bay of Fundy, Biencourt discovers that Pontgravé's son has roused the
hostility of the Indians by some shameless act. Young Biencourt is for
hanging the miscreant to the yardarm, but the sinner gains the ear of
the saints by woeful tale of penitence, and Father Biard sides with
young Pontgravé. Instead of the gayety that reigned at Port Royal in
L'Escarbot's day, now is sullen mistrust.
The Jesuits threaten young Biencourt with excommunication. Biencourt
retaliates by threatening _them_ with expulsion. For three months no
religious services are held. The boat of 1612 brings out another
Jesuit, Gilbert du Thet; and the _Jonas_, which comes in 1613 with
fifty more men,--La Saussaye, commander, Fleury, captain,--has been
entirely outfitted by friends of the Jesuits. By this time Baron de
Poutrincourt, in France, was involved in debt beyond hope; but his
right to Port Royal was unshaken, and the Jesuits decided to steer
south to seek a new site for their colony.
[Illustration: PORT ROYAL (From Champlain's diagram)]
Zigzagging along the coast of Maine, Captain Fleury cast anchor off
Mount Desert at Frenchman's Bay. A cross was erected, mass celebrated,
and four white tents pitched to house the people; but the clash between
civil and religious authority broke out again. The sailors would not
obey the priests. Fleury feared mutiny. Saussaye, the commander, lost
his head, and disorder was ripening to disaster when there appeared
over the sea the peak of a sail,--a sail topped by a little red ensign,
the {43} flag of the English, who claimed all this coast. And the sail
was succeeded by decks with sixty mariners, and hulls through whose
ports bristled fourteen cannon. The newcomer was Samuel Argall of
Virginia, whom the Indians had told of the French, now bearing down
full sail, cannon leveled, to expel these aliens from the domain of
England's King. Drums were beating, trumpets blowing, fifes
shrieking--there was no mistaking the purpose of the English ship.
Saussaye, the French commander, dashed for hiding in the woods.
Captain Fleury screamed for some one, every one, any one, "to
fire--fire"; but the French sailors had imitated their commander and
fled to the woods, while the poor Jesuit, Gilbert du Thet, fell
weltering in blood from an English cannonade that swept the French
decks bare and set all sails in flame. In the twinkling of an eye,
Argall had captured men and craft. Fifteen of the French prisoners he
set adrift in open boat, on the chance of their joining the French
fishing fleet off Cape Breton. They were ultimately carried to St.
Malo. {44} The rest of the prisoners, including Father Biard, he took
back to Virginia, where the commission held from the French King
assured them honorable treatment in time of peace; but Argall was
promptly sent north again with his prisoners, and three frigates to lay
waste every vestige of French settlement from Maine to St. John. Mount
Desert, the ruins of Ste. Croix, the fortress beloved by Poutrincourt
at Port Royal, the ripening wheat of Annapolis Basin--all fed the
flames of Argall's zeal; and young Biencourt's wood runners, watching
from the forests the destruction of all their hopes, the ruin of all
their plans, ardently begged their young commander to parley with
Argall that they might obtain the Jesuit Biard and hang him to the
highest tree. To _his_ coming they attributed all the woes. It was as
easy for them to believe that the Jesuit had piloted the English
destroyer to Port Royal, as it had been ten years before for the
Catholics to accuse the Huguenots of murdering the lost priest Aubry;
and there was probably as much truth in one charge as the other.
So fell Port Royal; but out round the ruins of Port Royal, where the
little river runs down to the sea past Goat Island, young Biencourt and
his followers took to the woods--the first of that race of bush lopers,
half savages, half noblemen, to render France such glorious service in
the New World.
When De Monts lost the monopoly of furs in Acadia, Champlain, the court
geographer, had gone home from Port Royal to France. De Monts now
succeeds in obtaining a fresh monopoly for one year on the St.
Lawrence, and sends out two ships in 1608 under his old friends,
Pontgravé, who is to attend to the bartering, Champlain, who is to
explore. With them come some of the colonists from Port Royal, among
others Louis Hebert, the chemist, first colonist to become farmer at
Quebec, and Abraham Martin, whose name was given to the famous plains
where Wolfe and Montcalm later fought.
Pontgravé arrived at the rendezvous of Tadoussac early in June. Here
he found Basque fishermen engaged in the peltry {45} traffic with
Indians from Labrador. When Pontgravé read his commission interdicting
all ships but those of De Monts from trade, the Basques poured a
fusillade of musketry across his decks, killed one man, wounded two,
then boarded his vessel and trundled his cannon ashore. So much for
royal commissions and monopoly!
[Illustration: TADOUSSAC (From Champlain's map)]
At this stage came Champlain on the second boat. Two vessels were
overstrong for the Basques. They quickly came to terms and decamped.
Champlain steered his tiny craft on up the silver flood of the St.
Lawrence to that Cape Diamond where Cartier's men had gathered
worthless stones. Between the high cliff and the river front, not far
from the market place of Quebec City to-day, workmen began clearing the
woods for the site of the French habitation. The little fort was
palisaded, of course, with a moat outside and cannon commanding the
river. The walls were loopholed for musketry; and inside ran a gallery
to serve as lookout and defense. Houses, barracks, garden, and
fresh-water supply completed the fort. One day, as Champlain {46}
worked in his garden, a colonist begged to speak with him. Champlain
stepped into the woods. The man then blurted out how a conspiracy was
on foot, instigated by the Basques, to assassinate Champlain, seize the
fort, and stab any man who dared to resist. One of Pontgravé's small
boats lay at anchor. Champlain sent for the pilot, told him the story
of the plot, gave him two bottles of wine, and bade him invite the
ringleaders on board that night to drink. The ruse worked. The
ringleaders were handcuffed, the other colonists awakened in the fort
and told that the plot had been crushed. The body of Duval, the chief
plotter, in pay of the Basques, swung as warning from a gibbet; and his
head was exposed on a pike to the birds of the air. Though Pontgravé
left a garrison of twenty-eight when he sailed for France, less than a
dozen men had survived the plague of scurvy when the ships came back to
Champlain in 1609.
Champlain's part had been to explore. Now that his fort was built, he
planned to do this by allying himself with the Indians, who came down
to trade at Quebec. These were the Hurons and Montaignais, the former
from the Ottawa, the latter from Labrador. Both waged ceaseless war on
the Iroquois south of the St. Lawrence. After bartering their furs for
weapons from the traders, the allied tribes would set out on the
warpath against the Iroquois. In June, Champlain and eleven white men
accompanied the roving warriors.
The way led from the St. Lawrence south, up the River Richelieu.
Champlain's boat was a ponderous craft; and when the shiver of the
sparkling rapids came with a roar through the dank forest, the heavy
boat had to be sent back to Quebec. Adopting the light birch canoe of
the Indian, Champlain went on, accompanied by only two white men. Of
Indians, there were twenty-four canoes with sixty warriors. For the
first part of the voyage night was made hideous by the grotesque war
dances of the braves lashing themselves to fury by scalp raids in
pantomime, or by the medicine men holding solemn converse with the
demons of earth; the tent poles of the medicine lodge rocked as if by
wind, while eldritch howls predicted victory. {47} Then the long line
of silent canoes had spread out on that upland lake named after
Champlain, the heavily forested Adirondacks breaking the sky line on
one side, the Green Mountains rolling away on the other. Caution now
marked all advance. The Indians paddled only at night, withdrawing to
the wooded shore through the morning mist to hide in the undergrowth
for the day. This was the land of the Iroquois.
[Illustration: DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS (From Champlain's drawing)]
On July 29, as the invaders were stealing silently along the west shore
near Crown Point at night about ten o'clock, there were seen by the
starlight, coming over the water with that peculiar galloping motion of
paddlers dipping together, the Iroquois war canoes. Each side
recognized the other, and the woods rang with shouts; but gathering
clouds and the mist rising from the river screened the foes from mutual
attack, though the night echoed to shout and countershout and challenge
and abuse. Through the half light Champlain could see that the
Iroquois were working like beavers erecting a barricade of logs. The
assailants kept to their canoes under cover of bull-hide shields till
daylight, when Champlain buckled on his armor--breastplate, helmet,
thigh pieces--and landing, advanced. There were not less than two
hundred Iroquois. Outnumbering the Hurons three times over, they
uttered a jubilant whoop and {48} came on at a rush. Champlain and his
two white men took aim. The foremost chiefs dropped in their tracks.
Terrified by "the sticks that thundered and spat fire," the Iroquois
fell back in amaze, halted, then fled. The victory was complete; but
it left as a legacy to New France the undying enmity of the Iroquois.
When Champlain came out from France in 1610, he would have repeated the
raid; but a fight with invading Iroquois at the mouth of the Richelieu
delayed him, and the expiration of De Monts' monopoly took him back to
France.
In 1611 trade was free to all comers. Fur traders flocked to the St.
Lawrence like birds of passage. The only way to secure furs for De
Monts was to go higher up the river beyond Quebec; and ascending to
Montreal, Champlain built a factory called Place Royale, with a wall of
bricks to resist the ice jam. This was the third French fort Champlain
helped to found in Canada.
Presently, on his tracks to Montreal, came a flock of free traders.
When the Hurons come shooting down the foamy rapids--here, a pole-shove
to avoid splitting canoes on a rock in mid-rush; there, a dexterous
whirl from the trough of a back wash--the fur traders fire off their
guns in welcome. The Hurons are suspicious. What means it, these
white men, coming in such numbers, firing off their "sticks that
thunder"? At midnight they come stealthily to Champlain's lodge to
complain. Peltries and canoes, the Indians transfer themselves above
the rapids, and later conduct Champlain down those same white
whirlpools to the uneasy amaze of the explorer.
It is clear to Champlain he must obtain royal patronage to stem the
boldness of these free traders. In France he obtains the favor of the
Bourbons; and he obtains it more generously because the world of Paris
has gone agog about a fabulous tale that sets the court by the ears.
From the first Champlain has encouraged young Frenchmen to winter with
the Indian hunters and learn the languages. Brulé is with them now.
Nicholas Vignau has just come back from the Ottawa with a fairy story
of a marvelous voyage he has made with the Indians through {49} the
forests to the Sea of the North--the sea where Henry Hudson, the
Englishman, had perished. As the romance gains the ear of the public,
the young man waxes eloquent in detail, and tells of the number of
Englishmen living there. Champlain is ordered to follow this
exploration up.
May, 1613, he is back at Montreal, opposite that island named St.
Helen, after the frail girl who became his wife, preparing to ascend
the Ottawa with four white men--among them Vignau. What Vignau's
sensations were, one may guess. The vain youth had not meant his love
of notoriety to carry him so far; and he must have known that every
foot of the way led him nearer detection; but the liar is always a
gambler with chance. Mishap, bad weather, Indian war--might drive
Champlain back. Vignau assumed bold face.
The path followed was that river trail up the Ottawa which was to
become the highway of empire's westward march for two and a half
centuries. Mount Royal is left to the rear as the voyageurs traverse
the Indian trail through the forests along the rapids to that launching
place named after the patron saint of French voyageur--Ste. Anne's.
The river widens into the silver expanse of Two Mountains Lake, rimmed
to the sky line by the vernal hills, with a silence and solitude over
all, as when sunlight first fell on face of man. Here the eagle utters
a lonely scream from the top of some blasted pine; there a covey of
ducks, catching sight of the coming canoes, dive to bottom, only to
reappear a gunshot away. Where the voyageurs land for their nooning,
or camp at nightfall, or pause to gum the splits in their birch canoes,
the forest in the full flush of spring verdure is a fairy woods.
Against the elms and the maples leafing out in airy tracery that
reveals the branches bronze among the budding green, stand the silver
birches, and the somber hemlocks, and the resinous pines. Upbursting
from the mold below is another miniature forest--a forest of ferns
putting out the hairy fronds that in another month will be above the
height of a man. Overhead, like a flame of fire, flashes the scarlet
tanager with his querulous call; or the oriole flits from branch to
branch, {50} fluting his springtime notes; or the yellow warbler
balances on topmost spray to sing his crisp love song on the long
journey north to nest on Hudson Bay. And over all and in all,
intangible as light, intoxicating as wine, is the tang of the clear,
unsullied, crystal air, setting the blood coursing with new life.
Little wonder that Brulé, and Vignau, and other young men whom
Champlain sent to the woods to learn wood lore, became so enamored of
the life that they never returned to civilization.
Presently the sibilant rush of waters forewarns rapids. Indians and
voyageurs debark, invert canoes on their shoulders, packs on back with
straps across foreheads, and amble away over the portages at that
voyageurs' dog-trot which is half walk, half run. So the rapids of
Carillon and Long Sault are ascended. Night time is passed on some
sandy shore on a bed under the stars, or under the canoes turned upside
down. Tents are erected only for the commander, Champlain; and at day
dawn, while the tips of the trees are touched with light and the
morning mist is smoking up from the river shot with gold, canoes are
again on the water and paddle blades tossing the waves behind.
The Laurentian Hills now roll from the river in purpling folds like
fields of heather. The Gatineau is passed, winding in on the right
through dense forests. On the left, flowing through the rolling sand
hills, and joining the main river just where the waters fall over a
precipice in a cataract of spray, is the Rideau River with its famous
falls resembling the white folds of a wind-blown curtain. Then the
voyageurs have swept round that wooded cliff known as Parliament Hill,
jutting out in the river, and there breaks on view a wall of water
hurtling down in shimmering floods at the Chaudière Falls. The high
cliff to the left and countercurrent from the falls swirl the canoes
over on the right side to the sandy flats where the lumber piles to-day
defile the river. Here boats are once more hauled up for portage--a
long portage, nine miles, all the way to the modern town of Aylmer,
where the river becomes wide as a lake, Lake Du Chêne of the oak
forests. Here camp for the night was made, and leaks in the canoes
mended with resin, round fires gleaming red as an angry eye across the
{51} darkening waters, while the prowling wild cats and lynx, which
later gave such good hunting in these forests that the adjoining rapids
became known as the Chats, sent their unearthly screams shivering
through the darkness.
Somewhere near Allumette Isle, Champlain came to an Indian settlement
of the Ottawa tribe. He camped to ask for guides to go on. Old Chief
Tessouat holds solemn powwow, passing the peace pipe round from hand to
hand in silence, before the warriors rise to answer Champlain. Then
with the pompous gravity of Abraham dickering with the desert tribes,
they warn Champlain it is unsafe to go farther. Beyond the Ottawa is
the Nipissing, where dwell the Sorcerer Indians--a treacherous people.
Beyond the Nipissing is the great Fresh Water Sea of the Hurons. They
will grant Champlain canoes, but warn him against the trip. Later the
interpreter comes with word they have changed their minds. Champlain
must _not_ go on. It is too dangerous. Attack would involve war.
"What," demanded Champlain, rushing into the midst of the council tent,
"not go? Why, my young man, here"--pointing to Vignau--"has gone to
that country and found no danger."
What Vignau thought at that stage is not told. The Indians turned on
him in fury.
"Nicholas, did _you_ say _you_ had visited the Nipissings?"
Vignau hems and haws, and stammers, "Yes."
"Liar," roars the chief. "You slept here every night, and if you went
to the Nipissings, you went in a dream." Then to Champlain, "Let him
be tortured."
Champlain took the fellow to his own tent. Vignau reiterated his
story. Champlain took him back to the council. The Indians jeered his
answers and tore the story he told to tatters, showing Champlain how
utterly wrong Vignau's descriptions were.
That night, on promise of forgiveness, Vignau fell on his knees and
confessed the imposture to Champlain. When the fur canoes came down
the Ottawa to trade at Montreal, Champlain accompanied them to the St.
Lawrence, and sailed for France. His exploration had been an
ignominious failure.
{52} Champlain was ever Knight of the Cross as well as explorer. He
longed with the zeal of a missionary to reclaim the Indians from
savagery, and at last raised funds in France to pay the expense of
bringing four or five Recollets--a branch of the Franciscan Friars--to
Quebec in May of 1615. With the peaked hood thrown back, the gray garb
roped in at the waist, the bare feet protected only by heavy sandals,
the Recollets landed at Quebec, and with cannon booming, white men all
on bended knee, held service before the amazed savages.
Of the Recollets, it was agreed that Joseph le Caron should go west to
the Hurons of the Sweet Water Sea. Accompanied by a dozen Frenchmen,
the friar ascended the Ottawa in July, passed that Allumette Island
where Vignau's lie had been confessed, and proceeded westward to the
land of the Hurons. Nine days later Champlain followed with two
canoes, ten Indians, and Etienne Brulé, his interpreter. In order to
hold the ever-lasting loyalty of the Hurons and Algonquins in Canada,
Champlain had pledged them that the French would join their twenty-five
hundred warriors in a great invasion of the Iroquois to the south. It
was to be a war not of aggression but of defense; for the Five Nations
of the Iroquois in New York state had harried the Canadian tribes like
wolves raiding a sheep pen. No Frenchman cultivating his farm patch on
the St. Lawrence was safe from ambuscade; no hunter afield secure from
a chance war party.
Any tourist crossing Canada to-day can trace Champlain's voyage. Where
the rolling tide of the Ottawa forks at Mattawa, there comes in on the
west side, through dense forests and cedar swamps, a river
amber-colored with the wood-mold of centuries. This is the Mattawa.
Up the Mattawa Champlain pushed his canoes westward, up the shining
flood of the river yellow as gold where the waters shallow above the
pebble bottom. Then the gravel grated keels. The shallows became
weed-grown swamps that entangled the paddles and hid voyageur from
voyageur in reeds the height of a man; and presently a portage over
rocks slippery as ice leads to a stream flowing westward, opening {53}
on a low-lying, clay-colored lake--the country of the Nipissings, with
whom Champlain pauses to feast and hear tales of witchcraft and demon
lore, that gave them the name of Sorcerers.
In a few sleeps--they tell him--he will reach the Sweet Water Sea. The
news is welcome; for the voyageurs are down to short rations, and
launch eagerly westward on the stream draining Nipissing Lake--French
River. This is a tricky little stream in whose sands lie buried the
bodies of countless French voyageurs. It is more dangerous going
_with_ rapids than _against_ them; for the hastening current is
sometimes an undertow, which sweeps the canoes into the rapids before
the roar of the waterfall has given warning. And the country is barren
of game.
As they cross the portages, Champlain's men are glad to snatch at the
raspberry and cranberry bushes for food; and their night-time meal is
dependent on chance fishing. Indian hunters are met,--three hundred of
them,--the Staring Hairs, so named from the upright posture of their
headdress tipped by an eagle quill; and again Champlain is told he is
very near the Inland Sea.
It comes as discoveries nearly always come--his finding of the Great
Lakes; for though Joseph Le Caron, the missionary, had passed this way
ten days ago, the zealous priest never paused to explore and map the
region. You are paddling down the brown, forest-shadowed waters--long
lanes of water like canals through walls of trees silent as sentinels.
Suddenly a change almost imperceptible comes. Instead of the earthy
smell of the forest mold in your nostrils is the clear tang of
sun-bathed, water-washed rocks; and the sky begins to swim, to lose
itself at the horizon. There is no sudden bursting of a sea on your
view. The river begins to coil in and out among islands. The amber
waters have become sheeted silver. You wind from island to island,
islands of pink granite, islands with no tree but one lone blasted
pine, islands that are in themselves forests. There is no end to these
islands. They are not in hundreds; they are in thousands. Then you
see the spray breaking over the reefs, and there is its sky line. You
are not on a river at all. You are on an inland sea. You have been on
the lake for hours. One {54} can guess how Champlain's men scrambled
from island to island, and fished for the rock bass above the deep
pools, and ran along the water line of wave-dashed reefs, wondering
vaguely if the wind wash were the ocean tide of the Western Sea.
But Champlain's Huron guides had not come to find a Western Sea. With
the quick choppy stroke of the Indian paddler they were conveying him
down that eastern shore of Lake Huron now known as Georgian Bay, from
French River to Parry Sound and Midland and Penetang. Where these
little towns to-day stand on the hillsides was a howling wilderness of
forest, with never a footprint but the zigzagging trail of the Indians
back from Georgian Bay to what is now Lake Simcoe.
Between these two shores lay the stamping grounds of the great Huron
tribe. How numerous were they? Records differ. Certainly at no time
more numerous than thirty thousand souls all told, including children.
Though they yearly came to Montreal for trade and war, the Hurons were
sedentary, living in the long houses of bark inclosed by triple
palisades, such as Cartier had seen at Hochelaga almost a century
before.
Champlain followed his supple guides along the wind-fallen forest trail
to the Huron villages. Here he found the missionary. One can guess
how the souls of these two heroes burned as the deep solemn chant of
the _Te Deum_ for the first time rolled through the forests of Lake
Huron.
But now Champlain must to business; and his business is war. Brulé and
twelve Indians are sent like the carriers of the fiery cross in the
Highlands of Scotland to rally tribes of the Susquehanna to join the
Hurons against the Iroquois. A wild war dance is held with mystic
rites in the lodges of the Hurons; and the braves set out with
Champlain from Lake Simcoe for Lake Ontario by way of Trent River. As
they near what is now New York state, buckskin is flung aside, the
naked bodies painted and greased, and the trail shunned for the
pathless woods off the beaten track where the Indians glide like beasts
of prey through the frost-tinted forest.
{55}
[Illustration: THE ONONDAGA FORT (From Champlain's diagram)]
October 9 they suddenly come on some Onondagas fishing, and they begin
torturing their captives by cutting off a girl's finger, when Champlain
commands them to desist. Presently the forest opens to a farm clearing
where the Iroquois are harvesting their corn. Spite of all Champlain
could do, the wild Hurons uttered their war cry and rushed the field,
but the Iroquois turned on the rabble and drove them back to the woods.
Champlain was furious. They should have waited for Brulé to come with
their allies; and the foolish attack had only served to forewarn the
enemy. He frankly told the Hurons if they were going to fight under
_his_ command, they must fight as white men fight; and he set them to
building a platform from which marksmen could shoot over the walls of
the Iroquois town. But the admonitions {56} fell on frenzied ears. No
sooner was the command to advance given than the Hurons broke from
cover like maniacs, easy marks for the javelin throwers inside the
walls, and hurled themselves against the Iroquois palisades in blind
fury, making more din with yelling than woe with shots. Boiling water
poured from the galleries inside drove the braves back from the walls,
and the poisoned barb of the Iroquois arrows pursued their flight. A
score fell wounded, among them Champlain with an arrow in his knee-cap.
The flight became panic fast and furious, with the wounded carried on
wicker stretchers whose every jolt added agony to pain.
[Illustration: VIEW OF QUEBEC (From Champlain's plan)]
As for Brulé, he arrived with the allies only to find that the Hurons
had fled, and here was he, alone in a hostile land, with Iroquois
warriors rampant as molested wasps. In the swift retreat off the trail
Brulé lost his way. He was without food {57} or powder, and had to
choose between starvation or surrender to the Iroquois. Throwing down
his weapons, he gave himself up to what he knew would be certain
torture. Had he winced or whined as they tore the nails from his
fingers and the hair from his head, the Iroquois would probably have
brained him on the spot for a poltroon; but the young man, bound to a
stake, pointed to a gathering storm as sign of Heaven's displeasure.
The high spirit pleased the Iroquois. They unbound him and took him
with them in their wanderings for three years.
The Hurons had promised to convey Champlain back down the St. Lawrence
to Quebec, but the defeat had caused loss of prestige. The man "with
the stick that thundered" was no more invulnerable to wounds than they.
They forgot their promises and invented excuses for not proceeding to
Quebec. Champlain wintered with the hunters somewhere north of Lake
Ontario, and came down the Ottawa with the fur canoes the next summer.
He was received at Quebec as one risen from the dead.
While Champlain had been exploring, New France had not prospered as a
colony. Royal patron after royal patron sold the monopoly to fresh
hands, and each new master appointed Champlain viceroy. The fur trade
merchants could pay forty per cent dividends, but could do nothing to
advance settlement. Less than one hundred people made up the
population of New France; and these were torn asunder by jealousies.
Huguenot and Catholic were opposed; and when three Jesuits came to
Quebec, Jesuits and Recollets distrusted each other.
Madam Champlain joined her husband at Quebec, in 1620, to stay for four
years, and that same year Champlain built himself a new habitation--the
famous Castle of St. Louis on the cliff above the first dwelling.
Louis Hebert, the apothecary of Port Royal, is now a farmer close to
the Castle of Quebec; and the wife of Abraham Martin has given birth to
the first white child born in New France.
Now came a revolutionary change. Cardinal Richelieu was virtual ruler
of France. He quickly realized that the monopolists {58} were sucking
the lifeblood of the colony in furs and were giving nothing in return
to the country. In 1627, under the great cardinal's patronage, the
Company of One Hundred Associates was formed. In this company any of
the seaport traders could buy shares. Indeed, they were promised
patent of nobility if they did buy shares. Exclusive monopoly of furs
was given to the company from Florida to Labrador. In return the
Associates were to send two ships yearly to Canada. Before 1643 they
were to bring out four thousand colonists, support them for three
years, and give them land. In each settlement were to be supported
three priests; and, to prevent discord, Huguenots were to be banished
from New France.
To Champlain it must have seemed as if the ambition of his life were to
be realized. Just when the sky seemed clearest the bolt fell.
Early in April, 1628, the Associates had dispatched colonists and
stores for Quebec; but war had broken out between France and England.
Gervais Kirke, an English Huguenot of Dieppe, France, who had been put
under the ban by Cardinal Richelieu, had rallied the merchants of
London to fit out privateers to wage war on New France. The vessels
were commanded by the three sons, Thomas, Louis, and David; and to the
Kirkes rallied many Huguenots banished from France.
Quebec was hourly looking for the annual ships, when one morning in
July two men rushed breathless through the woods and up the steep rock
to Castle St. Louis with word that an English fleet of six frigates lay
in hiding at Tadoussac, ready to pounce on the French! Later came
other messengers--Indians, fishermen, traders--confirming the terrible
news. Then a Basque fisherman arrives with a demand, from Kirke for
the keys to the fort. Though there is no food inside the walls, less
than fifty pounds of ammunition in the storehouse, and not enough men
to man the guns, Champlain hopes against hope, and sends the Basque
fisherman back with suave regrets that he cannot comply with Monsieur
Kirke's polite request. Quebec's one chance lay in the hope that the
French vessels might {59} slip past the English frigates by night.
Days wore on to weeks, weeks to months, and a thousand rumors filled
the air; but no ships came. The people of Quebec were now reduced to
diet of nuts and corn. Then came Indian runners with word that the
French ships had been waylaid, boarded, scuttled, and sunk. Loaded to
the water line with booty, the English privateers had gone home.
[Illustration: QUEBEC (From Champlain's map)]
For that winter Quebec lived on such food as the Indians brought in
from the woods. By the summer of 1629 men, women, and children were
grubbing for roots, fishing for food, ranging the rocks for berries.
There are times when the only thing to do is--do nothing; and it is
probably the hardest task a brave man ever has. When the English fleet
came back in July Champlain had a ragamuffin, half-starved retinue of
precisely sixteen men. Yet he haggled for such terms that the English
promised to convey the prisoners to France. On July 20, for the first
time in history, the red flag of England blew to the winds above the
heights of Quebec.
But New France was only a pawn to the gamesters of French and English
diplomacy. Peace was proclaimed; and for the {60} sake of receiving
$200,000 as dowry due his French wife, Charles of England restored to
France the half continent which the Kirkes had captured, David Kirke
receiving the paltry honor of a title as compensation for the loss.
Champlain was back in Quebec by 1633; but his course had run. Between
Christmas eve and Christmas morning, in 1635, the brave Soldier of the
Cross, the first knight of the Canadian wildwoods, passed from the
sphere of earthly life--a life without a stain, whether among the
intriguing courtiers of Paris or in the midst of naked license in the
Indian camp.
{61}