tells us—and surely he is an unbiassed witness—that in Cæsar's time the
French Bretons were the best sailors in the world. Were we disposed to
call in question their right to this title at a later day,—the time of
Columbus, Cabot, Cortereal, and Magellan,—what can be said of their
boldly setting sail across an unknown ocean, like the Atlantic, in
vessels not larger than a modern oyster-boat?
Yet the names they left behind them in their adventurous voyages make
it certain that these Basque and Breton fishermen pushed their way into
the Gulf of St. Lawrence soon after Cabot carried home to England the
news that he had been in seas alive with codfish.
[Illustration: SHIPS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.]
The knowledge thus gained pointed with unerring finger to the St.
Lawrence as the open door through which French discoverers should pass
into the spacious interior of our broad continent, though never, in
their wildest flights of fancy, could they have conceived what lay
beyond this door. So accident rather than choice led them on through
the colder region of the north. And while the Spaniards had missed the
Mississippi, a more fortunate chance led Frenchmen to find it by a very
different, though no less certain, route. To them be the honor of the
achievement!
Just as the march of Spanish civilization is traced in the names given
by explorers of that nation, so, in like manner, those conferred by
Frenchmen shall direct us in the lines by which they journeyed onward
toward the setting sun.
Although Jacques Cartier[1] ascended the St. Lawrence so early as
1534-35, it was not till Champlain founded Quebec (1608), that the work
of settling a French colony in Canada began in earnest. But even here,
at Quebec, three hundred miles from the ocean, the great river poured
its undiminished floods out of the wilderness beyond, and it bore its
greatness on its face.
Astonished to find themselves only on the threshold, as it were, of the
continent, the adventurous pioneers caught their first glimpses of its
undoubted grandeur. That they were dazzled by it, is something we may
easily conceive.
Whence came this silent river, this daily riddle for men to guess, and
whither would it lead them? In what far country would its tiny tributary
rills be found? Did they lie hid among the feet of far-off mountains,
over-peering all the land like hoary giants, or gush forth from the
bosom of some vast plain? Was it indeed the road to India?[2]
To such questions as these the future must make answer. All believed
it would lead to India. But Champlain and those who, like him, looked
at things broadly and deeply, were convinced that whoever should hold
that river throughout its course would be masters of the continent it
undoubtedly drained. And as Frenchmen ever loyal to their king and
country, whose glory they would see increased, they purposed making
here, in the wilderness, a NEW FRANCE which some day, perhaps, should
rival, if not eclipse, the old.
To this work the French brought one qualification peculiarly their own.
It was this. Of the three nations who have contended for control in our
country, none have so readily adapted themselves to the original people
as the French have. None have so thoroughly respected their feelings and
prejudices. And none have so easily won their confidence, or so fully
commanded their services.
[Illustration: A WOOD RANGER.]
Moreover, the French being rather traders than colonists in the true
sense, because in Canada the fur trade[3] was chiefly looked to,
and colonization was thought unfavorable to it, exploration became
the profession, we might say, of many who trained themselves for it
by living among the Indians, studying their language, their habits,
learning how to use the paddle, making long canoe voyages, and so
inuring their bodies to the toil and hardship of savage life. While the
English remained in their villages, the French wandered everywhere.
If we add to this that the French are a nation of explorers, in whom
discovery speedily develops into a passion, we shall get at the true
animating spirit which carried them so far into the interior, whether
as simple traders, soldiers, or missionaries.
The world could ill spare one of its pioneers. They are heralds of
civilization following the guiding star of its destiny.
FOOTNOTES
[1] JACQUES CARTIER ascended the St. Lawrence as high as
Montreal (Royal Mount), which he named for the mountain back
of the city.
[2] THE ROAD TO INDIA was no less the goal of early French
explorers than with those of other nations.
[3] THE FUR-TRADE of Canada, rather than agriculture
or fisheries, was considered its truest source of wealth
because it gave immediate returns, and was thought to be
inexhaustible. Hence it became the engrossing occupation of
the inhabitants. It was granted first to De Monts, then to
others who undertook to colonize Canada at their own cost.
WESTWARD BY THE GREAT INLAND WATERWAYS.
"I hear the tread of pioneers
Of nations yet to be."—Whittier.
From Quebec Champlain pushed on up the river to the island of Montreal,
where he established a trading-post. Hither came the Hurons of the
lake to barter their furs for French goods. They came by way of Lake
Nipissing and the Ottawa. These Indians told the French all about their
country, and the way to it. One of them showed Champlain an ingot of
copper, and described the way his people refined it from the native ore.
Interpreters began to study the Indian dialects, and eager traders to
push out farther and farther into the wilderness for the sake of larger
gains.
But the route to the west was not without perils which the French found
it hard to overcome. Two great rival families of savages were divided
from each other by the St. Lawrence and the Lakes. Those living north
of the river may be included in the general name of Hurons;[1] those
on the south were called Iroquois.[2] The two waged perpetual war with
each other, drawing to them kindred or tributary tribes. In an evil hour
Champlain had taken part with the Hurons, so identifying the French, in
the minds of the Iroquois, with their worst enemies.
[Illustration: CHAMPLAIN.]
If to natural obstacles be added the enmity of a most valiant people,
whose country stretched along the whole southern shore of Lake Ontario,
who controlled the portage round the Falls of Niagara, and were
undisputed masters of the lake itself, we shall go forward with some
idea of the impediments to peaceful exploration and of the consummate
folly which had put this stumbling-block in the way of it.
We know that before 1612 Champlain had informed himself quite thoroughly
about Lake Ontario, because we find the lake outlined on his map of that
year. For a like reason we judge him to have known of the Niagara River
and Falls.[3] But that way the Iroquois lay.
This state of things forced exploration into a quite different channel.
The French now had to take the roundabout and difficult way through
the country of the friendly Hurons, their allies, or in other words to
reach Lake Huron by making a canoe voyage up the Ottawa, across Lake
Nipissing, and thence down French River to the lake, instead of going
through the open waters of Lakes Ontario and Erie.
[Illustration: A PORTAGE.]
In 1615 Champlain brought some Franciscan missionaries to Quebec, one of
whom made his way up the Ottawa to Lake Huron a little before him. In
1626 came the Jesuit Fathers,[4] who brought the zeal of their order
to the cause of evangelizing the Indians. Then Richelieu,[5] who held
the reins of the monarchy in his hands, founded his famous Company of
New France, to whom the King not only granted full powers of government,
but also a monopoly of the fur trade, so turning Canada over to private
hands.
An unprosperous beginning, however, awaited the new order of things.
Civil war had broken out in France. Richelieu was beleaguering the
heretics of La Rochelle when England mingled in the fray. In 1629 the
English took Quebec from the French, and did not restore[6] it again
till 1632.
At this time the conquerors had carried Champlain to England, a prisoner
of war. He returned to Quebec in 1633, again in chief command, though
soon (1635) to die at his post, greatest among all the explorers of his
time.
With Champlain's death,[7] a new force came into the cause of discovery
and conversion, for since the coming of the Jesuits the two were
henceforth to go hand in hand.
At the pleasure of the general of the order, its missionaries might be
sent with scrip, staff, and wallet to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Like John the Baptist in the wilderness, we find them living on such
scant fare as nature supplied. Their beds were the bare ground. Under
a canopy of green boughs they reared the altar of their humble missions
for the worship of the ever-living God. Thus in exile and in want, they
began their ministrations among the rude peoples of the wilderness
because God and the Blessed Virgin had given them this pious work to
do. Their food was often more nourishing to the imagination than the
body, yet when compared with what they might expect at the hands of the
Iroquois, hunger counted for little, since these barbarians of the New
World burnt a missionary alive with the same zest that Christians of
the Old did a heretic.
Men willing to undertake such duties, undergo such hardships, live such
lives, are sure to leave their impress on any country. We shall find
they did so on ours.
On their part the savages truly wished for knowledge of the white man's
God, who they were told, and believed, was able to raise them up out of
their lowly condition and make them rich and powerful like the whites.
So much, at least, of the Jesuits' teachings they could comprehend.
No long time elapsed before these Jesuits made their way to the Hurons
of the lake, and here (1634) they established their first missions.
Some say that in this same year a French trader, named Jean Nicolet,[8]
made his way as far west as the Green Bay of Lake Michigan. There is
hopeless confusion about the date, but none as to the fact of his being
the first white man to set foot in what is now the State of Wisconsin.
When Nicolet got back to Quebec, he told the missionaries there that
he had been on a river which would have taken him to the sea, had he
kept on as he was going but three days longer. Hearing this story, the
fathers believed themselves on the eve of no less a discovery than the
long-sought outlet to India.
Although the Spaniards said little about the discoveries they were
making on that side, they could not prevent some knowledge of what they
were doing in New Mexico and on the Pacific from leaking out through the
Jesuits who were themselves concerned in all these discoveries, and so
were better informed than others in regard to their progress.
But from the year 1640, when the missionaries so certainly thought
the key to the South Sea was in their hands, on to 1650, or one whole
decade, the Iroquois gave the French and their allies other work to do
at home. Hardly could the French consider themselves safe in their fort
at Montreal, much less venture abroad upon new schemes of discovery. In
vain the missionaries cried out upon the Iroquois as the great scourge
of Christianity. In vain the elements were invoked to destroy them.
The heathen were at the doors of their monasteries, the Dutch[9] were
behind the Iroquois, urging them on, and the future of New France looked
gloomy indeed.
[Illustration: TOTEM OF THE FOXES.]
Finally (1650) the Iroquois carried the war into the heart of the Huron
country itself. The Hurons fought well, but were soon overpowered and
driven from their villages into perpetual exile. Some fled to the east,
some to the west, thereby becoming so thoroughly dispersed as never more
to be a united nation.
With brief periods of cessation from active warfare, which were rather
truces than peace, war raged until 1661, and as the Iroquois now
commanded all the routes to the west, the French were effectually shut
out from the Great Lakes for the time being.
[Illustration: FRENCH COSTUMES.]
A brighter day dawned at last. In 1660 some Lake Superior Indians
arrived at Quebec in their canoes. When they were ready to go back,
they offered to take a missionary home to live with them. It was a
terrible journey, but the offer could not be neglected. Accordingly one
was sent back in their company, but died in no long time after reaching
their country, of misery and want. The Indians then asked for another
missionary. The next to go was Father Allouez,[10] who set out in the
summer of 1665 in company with some returning savages. Nothing was heard
of him for nearly two years. He had about been given up for lost when
he appeared at Quebec bringing strange tidings indeed. On the southern
shore of Lake Superior, in the forest, among savage hordes, he had set
up a mission. He had been much among the neighbor tribes, and had seen
and talked with the dreaded Sioux, who proudly told him their country
reached to the end of the world. They also told him of a great river,
which he supposed must "fall into the sea by Virginia." The father wrote
down the name as the Sioux pronounced it,—Messipi.[11]
Following in the footsteps of Allouez (1668), Fathers Dablon[12] and
Marquette[13] were sent to the mission at the foot of Lake Superior.
Afterward Dablon founded that at Sault St. Marie. With Dablon, Allouez
(1670) made a journey from Green Bay up Fox River to Winnebago Lake,
which they crossed. Going still farther on, they reached the head
waters of the Wisconsin, which was then found to be a tributary of the
Mississippi.
[Illustration: FOX RIVER.]
Thus, in the course of a few years, the Jesuits had planted missions
at La Pointe, on Lake Superior, at Sault St. Marie, its outlet,
at the Straits of Michilimackinac, and Green Bay. All were first
fishing-places, next missions, and then outposts of civilization in the
western world.
In the spring of 1671, with much ceremony, the French took formal
possession of Sault St. Marie, the lakes Huron and Superior, and all
the country as far as the western sea. In token of sovereignty a cross
of wood was reared with the arms of France fixed upon it. Amid volleys
of musketry, and shouts of "God save the king!" France thus proclaimed
herself mistress of the Great West.
FOOTNOTES
[1] HURONS, or Wyandots, occupied the east shore of Lake
Huron and contiguous country between this and Lake Simcoe.
"Their women were their mules."—_Champlain._ The Wyandots now
live in Kansas, and are civilized.
[2] IROQUOIS, called so by the French; by the English,
Five Nations, and subsequently Six Nations. The confederated
Mohawks, Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Senecas, to whom the
Tuscaroras of North Carolina being joined, made the sixth.
They attributed their origin to five different handfuls of
seed, sowed by the Creator.
[3] NIAGARA RIVER is properly laid down. That Champlain
knew of the FALLS, is evident from the words "_Saut d'eau_,"
meaning waterfall, which he has put down not quite where they
belong, but not far out of the way.
[4] THE JESUITS, or Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius
Loyola, 1534. The brothers were vowed to chastity, poverty
and obedience. See Encyclopædia; also article Jesuit's Bark,
or Cinchona.
[5] RICHELIEU, at this time minister of Louis XIII.
[6] DID NOT RESTORE Quebec till the arrears of Queen
Henrietta's dowry (queen of Charles I.) had been paid in full.
"How strange are the freaks of destiny! Mary de Medicis, widow
of Henry IV., exiled and abandoned, had a daughter, Henrietta,
widow of Charles I., who died at Cologne, in the house where,
sixty-five years before, Rubens, her painter, was born."—_V.
Hugo._
[7] CHAMPLAIN, SAMUEL DE, the father of Canada, and first
among French explorers in the New World, ought to be held
in high esteem by Americans. The work he did was for all
time. A man of sterling qualities; of resources; of solid
judgment; never effervescent, sometimes headstrong, yet prompt
to act in emergencies. Though not noble, he had a chivalric
nature united with capacity for affairs. His _Voyages_ is a
storehouse of information concerning Canada and New England.
[8] JEAN NICOLET has become the subject of much
discussion. The evidence fixing his visit in 1634 is wholly
circumstantial, therefore unsatisfactory. But it is by no
means improbable. I was first inclined to doubt the whole
story as told by Father Vimont, thinking he might have been
imposed upon, but it bears the stamp of genuineness. The
Father wrote in 1640, hence Nicolet must have gone to Green
Bay earlier. No one disputes his claim to be the first white
who visited that region. See _Jesuit Relations_ of 1640.
[9] THE DUTCH then occupied New York, with a fort and trading
post at Albany. They were competitors of the French for the
fur trade, and therefore natural allies of the Iroquois, to
whom they sold guns to be used against the French. After New
York became an English Colony (1664) the English pursued the
same policy of confining the French to the north shore of Lake
Ontario.
[10] FATHER CLAUDE ALLOUEZ, in the _Jesuit Relations_.
[11] MESSIPI, first mentioned under its present name. Mostly
pronounced to-day as here spelled.
[12] FATHER CLAUDE DABLON arrived in Canada, 1655. In 1668
he went with Marquette to the Mission of St. Esprit on Lake
Superior. Afterward he founded that of S. St. Marie.—_Jesuit
Relations._
[13] FATHER JAMES MARQUETTE came to Canada 1666. His going
west was in the nature of a re-enforcement to those earlier
missionaries who had prepared the way. He died while returning
from a journey to the Illinois towns in 1675, or after that
made with Joliet the previous year. Marquette, Mich., is named
for him.
THE SITUATION IN A.D. 1672.
Since the day of Champlain's death New France had been wofully
misgoverned. Men who, like him, would be willing to give their best
efforts and best years to building up the colony, in singleness of
purpose, were not forthcoming. Champlain left no successor. Speaking
generally, the post of governor was calculated at what it would be
worth to the holder. Sometimes it was sold outright, sometimes given
in payment of services, or again to some needy favorite as a means to
repair his ruined fortunes. Hence most governors looked upon Canada as
a place to get rich in, just as the better sort of merchants looked to
making fortunes, and then going home to France as quickly as possible
to enjoy them. Where everybody thought about the country only as a place
of temporary sojourn and nobody as a home, it is evident there could be
no feeling of permanence.
Meanwhile, the short-sighted policy of continually drawing upon the
natural resources of Canada, without making the loss good, may be
compared with stripping mountains of their forests. Under this policy
the colony was like a man who is slowly bleeding to death.
But it was now the age of Louis XIV., who, if sometimes a hard master,
possessed the rare gift of bringing round him men of superior abilities.
Once more let us glance at the two leading monarchies of Europe, and
see if their relative attitude, one to the other, has been in any wise
altered since Pavia.
Under Charles V., Spain menaced Europe with universal dominion; under
Philip II. and Philip III., she had lost the Low Countries; under Philip
IV., Portugal; under Charles II., Burgundy and Flanders. History offers
few examples of such rapid decline.
The characters of these sovereigns may be summed up as follows: Charles
V. was a great general and great king. Philip II. was a king only.
Philip III. and Philip IV. were not even kings. Charles II. could hardly
be called a man. This dotard, at thirty-nine, passed his time in making
and destroying his will. Choosing rather to ally his house with France
than Germany, Charles made a French prince his heir. It was to this
prince that Louis XIV., in embracing him, made use of the memorable
words, "There are no longer any Pyrenees."
It was then, as we have said, the age of Louis XIV. and of French
supremacy in continental affairs.
In our continent Spain was already playing a secondary part. A more
vigorous hand had seized the standard of discovery, and was now bearing
it onward to victory.
It had gone all the way from the humble Jesuit mission at the foot
of Lake Superior to France, that the greatest river of America was as
good as found,—the greatest, because all admitted that only its head
streams could have been touched, while it was seen that its course
must of necessity lie on one or the other side of the mountains of New
Mexico,—toward the Gulf of Mexico or the Vermilion Sea. But on which
side they could not tell.
Of course there were two opinions. Some favored one, some the other,
but either belief announced the river of the continent. Whoever should
first plant themselves at its mouth, would inevitably control its whole
course. And so the idea took root in the minds of the statesmen and
geographers of the time, who set about trying to map out the destiny of
the future empire.
[Illustration: LOUIS XIV.]
The shrewdest among the French explorers did not believe that the
Mississippi and Colorado could be the same, or that the great river
flowed into the South Sea. Father Allouez, as we have seen, thought
otherwise. In any case an incentive had been found for more earnest
effort, with more definite aims. There began to be, in America, a really
national question.
So it was that step by step that great mysterious river which had so
long flowed through men's brains, grew at last into definiteness, though
still waiting for the veil of centuries to be lifted.
So far America had been the orange to be squeezed by whoever should
possess it. Louis, like the rest, no doubt looked more to the revenue he
hoped to get from New France, than to the mere glory of extending his
dominions in that quarter, though he was also ambitious of doing this.
Yet for either purpose he must have suitable agents, while his political
aims in Europe would be furthered by crippling the English and Spanish
colonies in America. The English were to be hemmed in on the seaboard,
while the Spaniards would find themselves checked from advancing beyond
the limits they already occupied.
When the royal arms of France were raised at Sault St. Marie, New
England was pushing out toward the east, not the west. No English could
be found west of the Hudson. No word of English had been heard beyond
Lake Ontario. There was not yet a Pennsylvania. Virginia lay east of the
Blue Ridge; the Carolinas were but recently settled; Florida was hardly
more than a Spanish military post.
In all times large views demand large men for their execution. In
looking about him for a governor who ought to be more of a soldier than
politician, less a courtier than a man of action, though something of
both, the king's eye fell upon Count Frontenac, whose rule somewhat
resembled that of his august master, in the attempted concentration of
all power in himself.
In 1672 Colbert, the prime minister, wrote to the intendant of Canada
that his majesty wished him to give his attention to the discovery
of the South Sea. The wish being the same as a command, the intendant
sought for a fitting agent to carry it into effect.
COUNT FRONTENAC.