crossed the ocean to consult De Monts, who could not persuade the king
and his minister to grant him a renewal of his charter. The merchants
of the seaboard had combined to represent the injury the trade of the
kingdom would sustain by continuing a monopoly of Canadian furs. De
Monts, however, made the best arrangements he could under such
unfavourable conditions, and Champlain returned to the St. Lawrence in
the spring of 1610. During the summer he assisted the Canadian allies
in a successful assault on a large body of the Iroquois who had raised
a fortification at the mouth of the Richelieu, and all of whom were
killed. It was on this occasion, when a large number of Canadian
nations were assembled, that he commenced the useful experiment of
sending Frenchmen into the Ottawa valley to learn the customs and
language of the natives, and act as interpreters afterwards.
The French at Quebec heard of the assassination {76} of Henry the
Fourth who had been a friend of the colony. Champlain went to France
in the autumn of 1610, and returned to Canada in the following spring.
In the course of the summer he passed some days on the island of Mont
Royal where he proposed establishing a post where the allied nations
could meet for purposes of trade and consultation, as he told the
Ottawa Indians at a later time when he was in their country. He made a
clearing on a little point to which he gave the name of Place Royale,
now known as Pointe-à-Callières, on a portion of which the hospital of
the Grey Nuns was subsequently built. It was not, however, until
thirty years later that the first permanent settlement was made on the
island, and the foundations laid of the great city which was first
named Ville-Marie.
During the next twenty-four years Champlain passed some months in
France at different times, according to the exigencies of the colony.
One of the most important changes he brought about was the formation of
a new commercial association, for the purpose of reconciling rival
mercantile interests. To give strength and dignity to the enterprise,
the Count de Soissons, Charles of Bourbon, one of the royal sons of
France, was placed at the head, but he died suddenly, and was replaced
by Prince de Condé, Henry of Bourbon, also a royal prince, best known
as the father of the victor of Rocroy, and the opponent of Marie de'
Medici during her intrigues with Spain. It was in this same year that
he entered into an engagement with a rich Calvinist, Nicholas Boulle,
to marry his daughter Helen, then a child, {77} when she had arrived at
a suitable age, on the condition that the father would supply funds to
help the French in their Canadian experiment. The marriage was not
consummated until ten years later, and Champlain's wife, whose
Christian name he gave to the pretty islet opposite Montreal harbour,
spent four years in the settlement. The happiness of a domestic life
was not possible in those early Canadian days, and a gentle French girl
probably soon found herself a mere luxury amid the savagery of her
surroundings. Helen Champlain has no place in this narrative, and we
leave her with the remark that she was converted by her husband, and on
his death retired to the seclusion of an Ursuline convent in France.
No child was born to bear the name and possibly increase the fame of
Champlain.
On his return to Canada, in the spring of 1613, Champlain decided to
explore the western waters of Canada. L'Escarbot, who published his
"New France," soon after his return from Acadia, tells us that
"Champlain promised never to cease his efforts until he has found there
[in Canada] a western or northern sea opening up the route to China
which so many have so far sought in vain." While at Paris, during the
winter of 1612, Champlain saw a map which gave him some idea of the
great sea which Hudson had discovered. At the same time he heard from
a Frenchman, Nicholas de Vignau, who had come to Paris direct from the
Ottawa valley, that while among the Algonquin Indians he had gone with
a party to the north where they had found a salt water sea, on whose
shores were the remains {78} of an English ship. The Indians had also,
according to Vignau, brought back an English lad, whom they intended to
present to Champlain when he made his promised visit to the Upper
Ottawa.
Champlain probably thought he was at last to realise the dream of his
life. Accompanied by Vignau, four other Frenchmen, and an Indian
guide, he ascended the great river, with its numerous lakes, cataracts,
and islets. He saw the beautiful fall to which ever since has been
given the name of Rideau--a name also extended to the river, whose
waters make the descent at this point--on account of its striking
resemblance to a white curtain. Next he looked into the deep chasm of
mist, foam, and raging waters, which the Indians called Asticou or
Cauldron (Chaudière), on whose sides and adjacent islets, then thickly
wooded, now stand great mills where the electric light flashes amid the
long steel saws as they cut into the huge pine logs which the forests
of the Ottawa yearly contribute to the commerce and wealth of Canada.
At the Chaudière the Indians evoked the spirits of the waters, and
offered them gifts of tobacco if they would ward off misfortune. The
expedition then passed up the noble expansion of the river known as the
Chats, and saw other lakes and cataracts that gave variety and grandeur
to the scenery of the river of the Algonquins, as it was then called,
and reached at last, after a difficult portage, the country around
Allumette lake, where Nicholas de Vignau had passed the previous
winter. Two hundred and fifty-four years later, on an August day, a
farmer unearthed on this old {79} portage route in the district of
North Renfrew, an old brass astrolabe of Paris make, dated 1603; the
instrument used in those distant days for taking astronomical
observations and ascertaining the latitude. No doubt it had belonged
to Champlain, who lost it on this very portage by way of Muskrat and
Mud lakes, as from this place he ceases to give us the correct
latitudes which he had previously been able to do.
[Illustration: Champlain's lost astrolabe.]
Among the Algonquin Indians of this district, who lived in rudely-built
bark cabins or camps, and were hunters as well as cultivators of the
soil, he soon found out that there was not a word of truth in the story
which Nicholas de Vignau had told him {80} of a journey to a northern
sea, but that it was the invention of "the most impudent liar whom I
have seen for a long time." Champlain did not punish him, though the
Indians urged him to put him to death.
Champlain remained a few days among the Indians, making arrangements
for future explorations, and studying the customs of the people. He
was especially struck with their method of burial. Posts supported a
tablet or slab of wood on which was a rude carving supposed to
represent the features of the dead. A plume decorated the head of a
chief; his weapons meant a warrior; a small bow and one arrow, a boy; a
kettle, a wooden spoon, an iron pot, and a paddle, a woman or girl.
These figures were painted in red or yellow. The dead slept below,
wrapped in furs and surrounded by hatchets, knives, or other treasures
which they might like to have in the far-off country to which they had
gone; for, as Champlain says, "they believe in the immortality of the
soul."
Champlain made no attempt to proceed further up the river. Before
leaving the Upper Ottawa, he made a cedar cross, showing the arms of
France--a custom of the French explorers, as Cartier's narrative tells
us--and fixed it on an elevation by the side of the lake. He also
promised Tessouat to return in the following year and assist him
against the Iroquois.
The next event of moment in the history of the colony was the arrival
in 1615 of Fathers Denis Jamay, Jean d'Olbeau, and Joseph Le Caron, and
{81} the lay brother Pacifique du Plessis, who belonged to the
mendicant order of the Recollets, or reformed branch of the
Franciscans, so named from their founder, St. Francis d'Assisi. They
built near the French post at Quebec a little chapel which was placed
in charge of Father Jamay and Brother Du Plessis, while Jean d'Olbeau
went to live among the Montagnais and Joseph Le Caron among the Hurons
of the West.
During the summer of 1615 Champlain fulfilled his pledge to accompany
the allied tribes on an expedition into the country of the Iroquois.
This was the most important undertaking of Champlain's life in Canada,
not only on account of the length of the journey, and the knowledge he
obtained of the lake region, but of the loss of prestige he must have
sustained among both Iroquois and Canadian Indians who had previously
thought the Frenchman invincible. The enemy were reached not by the
usual route of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, considered too
dangerous from their neighbourhood to the Iroquois, but by a long
detour by way of the Ottawa valley, Georgian Bay, Lake Simcoe, and the
portages, rivers, and lakes that lead into the River Trent, which falls
into the pretty bay of Quinté, at the eastern end of Lake Ontario,
whence they could pass rapidly into the country of the Five Nations.
Accompanied by Stephen Brulé, a noted Indian interpreter, a servant,
and eight Indians, Champlain left Montreal about the middle of July,
ascended the Ottawa, and paddled down the Mattawa to the lake of the
Nipissings, where he had interviews with {82} the Indians who were
dreaded by other tribes as sorcerers.
The canoes of the adventurous Frenchmen went down French River, and at
last reached the waters of the great Fresh Water Sea, the _Mer Douce_
of Champlain's maps, and now named Lake Huron in memory of the hapless
race that once made their home in that wild region. Passing by the
western shore of the picturesque district of Muskoka, the party landed
at the foot of the bay and found themselves before long among the
villages of the Hurons, whose country lay then between Nottawasaga Bay
and Lake Simcoe. Here Champlain saw the triple palisades, long houses,
containing several households, and other distinctive features of those
Indian villages, one of which Cartier found at the foot of Mont Royal.
In the village of Carhagouaha, where the palisades were as high as
thirty-five feet, Champlain met Father Le Caron, the pioneer of these
intrepid missionaries who led the way to the head-waters and
tributaries of the great lakes. For the first time in that western
region the great Roman Catholic ceremony of the Mass was celebrated in
the presence of Champlain and wondering Indian warriors. At the town
of Cahiague, the Indian capital, comprising two hundred cabins, and
situated within the modern township of Orillia, he was received with
great rejoicings, and preparations immediately made for the expedition
against the Iroquois. Stephen Brulé undertook the dangerous mission of
communicating with the Andastes, a friendly nation near the {83}
headwaters of the Susquehanna, who had promised to bring five hundred
warriors to the assistance of the Canadian allied forces.
[Illustration: Onondaga fort in the Iroquois country; from Champlain's
sketch.]
The expedition reached the eastern end of Lake Ontario at the beginning
of October by the circuitous route I have already mentioned, crossed to
the other side somewhere near Sackett's harbour, and soon arrived in
the neighbourhood of the Onondaga fort, which is placed by the best
authorities a few miles to the south of Lake Oneida. It was on the
afternoon of the 10th of October, when the woods {84} wear their
brightest foliage, that the allied Indians commenced the attack with
all that impetuosity and imprudence peculiar to savages on such
occasions. The fort was really a village protected by four concentric
rows of palisades, made up of pieces of heavy timber, thirty feet in
height, and supporting an inside gallery or parapet where the defenders
were relatively safe from guns and arrows. The fort was by the side of
a pond from which water was conducted to gutters under the control of
the besieged for the purpose of protecting the outer walls from fire.
Champlain had nine Frenchmen under his direction--eight of them having
accompanied Father Le Caron to the Huron village. It was utterly
impossible to give anything like method to the Indian assaults on the
strong works of the enemy. Champlain had a high wooden platform built,
and placed on it several of his gunners who could fire into the
village, but the Iroquois kept well under cover and very little harm
was done. The attempts to fire the palisades were fruitless on account
of the want of method shown by the attacking parties. At last the
allied Indians became disheartened when they saw Champlain himself was
wounded and no impression was made on the fort. They returned to the
cover of the woods, and awaited for a few days the arrival of Stephen
Brulé and the expected reinforcements of Andastes. But when nearly a
week had passed, and the scouts brought no news of Indians from the
Susquehanna, the Canadians determined to return home without making
another attack on the village. And here, I may {85} mention, that
Stephen Brulé was not seen at Quebec until three years later. It
appeared then, from his account of his wanderings, that he succeeded
after some vexatious delay in bringing the Andastes to Oneida Lake only
to find that they had left the country of the Iroquois, who tortured
him for a while, and then, pleased with his spirit, desisted, and
eventually gave him his liberty. He is reported to have reached in his
wanderings the neighbourhood of Lake Superior, where he found copper,
but we have no satisfactory information on this point.[1]
On their return to Canada, the Indians carried Champlain and other
wounded men in baskets made of withes. They reached the Huron villages
on the 20th of December after a long and wearisome journey. Champlain
remained in their country for four months, making himself acquainted
with their customs and the nature of the region, of which he has given
a graphic description. Towards the last of April, Champlain left the
Huron villages, and arrived at Quebec near the end of June, to the
great delight of his little colony, who were in doubt of his ever
coming back.
Another important event in the history of those days was the coming
into the country of several Jesuit missionaries in 1625, when the Duke
of Ventadour, a staunch friend of the order, was made viceroy of the
colony in place of the Duke of Montmorency, who had purchased the
rights of the Prince of Condé when he was imprisoned in the {86}
Bastile for having taken up arms against the King. These Jesuit
missionaries, Charles Lalemant, who was the first superior in Canada,
Jean de Brebeuf, Ennemond Massé, the priest who had been in Acadia,
François Charton, and Gilbert Buret, the two latter lay brothers, were
received very coldly by the officials of Quebec, whose business
interests were at that time managed by the Huguenots, William and
Emeric Caen. They were, however, received by the Recollets, who had
removed to a convent, Notre-Dame des Anges, which they had built by the
St. Charles, of sufficient strength to resist an attack which, it is
reported on sufficiently good authority, the Iroquois made in 1622.
The first Jesuit establishment was built in 1625 on the point at the
meeting of the Lairet and St. Charles, where Cartier had made his
little fort ninety years before.
We come now to a critical point in the fortunes of the poor and
struggling colony. The ruling spirit of France, Cardinal Richelieu, at
last intervened in Canadian affairs, and formed the Company of New
France, generally called the company of the Hundred Associates, who
received a perpetual monopoly of the fur-trade, and a control of all
other commerce for sixteen years, beside dominion over an immense
territory extending from Florida to the Arctic Seas, and from the Gulf
of St. Lawrence to the great Fresh Water Sea, the extent of which was
not yet known. Richelieu placed himself at the head of the enterprise.
No Huguenot thenceforth was to be allowed to enter the colony under any
conditions. The company was bound to send out immediately a {87}
number of labourers and mechanics, with all their necessary tools, to
the St. Lawrence, and four thousand other colonists in the course of
fifteen years, and to support them for three years. Not only was the
new association a great commercial corporation, but it was a feudal
lord as well. Richelieu introduced in a modified form the old feudal
tenure of France, with the object of creating a Canadian _noblesse_ and
encouraging men of good birth and means to emigrate and develop the
resources of the country. This was the beginning of that seigniorial
tenure which lasted for two centuries and a quarter.
Champlain was re-appointed lieutenant-governor and had every reason to
believe that at last a new spirit would be infused into the affairs of
the colony. Fate, however, was preparing for him a cruel blow. In the
spring of 1628, the half-starved men of Quebec were anxiously looking
for the provisions and men expected from France, when they were
dismayed by the news that an English fleet was off the Saguenay. This
disheartening report was immediately followed by a message to surrender
the fort of Quebec to the English admiral, David Kirk. War had been
declared between England and France, through the scheming chiefly of
Buckingham, the rash favourite of Charles the First, and an intense
hater of the French King for whose queen, Anne of Austria, he had
developed an ardent and unrequited passion. English settlements were
by this time established on Massachusetts Bay and England was ambitious
of extending her dominion over North {88} America, even in those
countries where France had preceded her.
Admiral Kirk, who was the son of a gentleman in Derbyshire, and one of
the pioneers of the colonisation of Newfoundland, did not attempt the
taking of Quebec in 1628, as he was quite satisfied with the capture
off the Saguenay, of a French expedition, consisting of four armed
vessels and eighteen transports, under the command of Claude de
Roquemont, who had been sent by the new company to relieve Quebec.
Next year, however, in July, he brought his fleet again to the
Saguenay, and sent three ships to Quebec under his brothers, Lewis and
Thomas. Champlain immediately surrendered, as his little garrison were
half-starved and incapable of making any resistance, and the English
flag floated for the first time on the fort of St. Louis. Champlain
and his companions, excepting thirteen who remained with the English,
went on board the English ships, and Lewis Kirk was left in charge of
Quebec. On the way down the river, the English ships met a French
vessel off Malbaie, under the command of Emeric Caen, and after a hot
fight she became also an English prize.
When the fleet arrived in the harbour of Plymouth, the English Admiral
heard to his amazement that peace had been declared some time before,
and that all conquests made by the fleets or armies of either France or
England after 24th April, 1629, must be restored. The Kirks and
Alexander used every possible exertion to prevent the restoration of
Quebec and Port Royal, which was also in the {89} possession of the
English. Three years elapsed before Champlain obtained a restitution
of his property, which had been illegally seized. The King of England,
Charles I., had not only renewed a charter, which his father had given
to a favourite, Sir William Alexander, of the present province of Nova
Scotia, then a part of Acadia, but had also extended it to the "county
and lordship of Canada." Under these circumstances Charles delayed the
negotiations for peace by every possible subterfuge. At last the
French King, whose sister was married to Charles, agreed to pay the
large sum of money which was still owing to the latter as the balance
of the dower of his queen. Charles had already commenced that fight
with his Commons, which was not to end until his head fell on the
block, and was most anxious to get money wherever and as soon as he
could. The result was the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, signed on
March 29, 1632. Quebec as well as Port Royal--to whose history I shall
refer in the following chapter--were restored to France, and Champlain
was again in his fort on Cape Diamond in the last week of May, 1633. A
number of Jesuits, who were favoured by Richelieu, accompanied him and
henceforth took the place of the Recollets in the mission work of the
colony. In 1634, there were altogether eight Jesuit priests in the
country. They appear to have even borrowed the name of the Recollet
convent, _Notre Dame des Anges_, and given it to their own
establishment and seigniory by the St. Charles.
During the last three years of Champlain's life in Canada no events of
importance occurred. The {90} Company of the Hundred Associates had
been most seriously crippled by the capture of the expedition in 1628,
and were not able to do very much for the colony. The indefatigable
lieutenant-governor, true to his trust, succeeded in building a little
fort in 1634 at the mouth of the St. Maurice, and founded the present
city of Three Rivers, as a bulwark against the Iroquois. It had,
however, been for years a trading place, where Brother Du Plessis spent
some time in instructing the Indian children and people in the Catholic
religion, and was instrumental in preventing a rising of the Montagnais
Indians who had become discontented and proposed to destroy the French
settlements.
On Christmas Day, 1635, Champlain died from a paralytic stroke in the
fort, dominating the great river by whose banks he had toiled and
struggled for so many years as a faithful servant of his king and
country. Father Le Jeune pronounced the eulogy over his grave, the
exact site of which is even now a matter of dispute.
What had the patient and courageous Frenchman of Brouage accomplished
during the years--nearly three decades--since he landed at the foot of
Cape Diamond? On the verge of the heights a little fort of logs and a
château of masonry, a few clumsy and wretched buildings on the point
below, a cottage and clearing of the first Canadian farmer Hébert, the
ruins of the Recollet convent and the mission house of the Jesuits on
the St. Charles, the chapel of Notre-Dame de Recouvrance, which he had
built close to the fort to commemorate the restoration of {91} Quebec
to the French, the stone manor-house of the first seignior of Canada,
Robert Giffard of Beauport, a post at Tadousac and another at Three
Rivers, perhaps two hundred Frenchmen in the whole valley. These were
the only visible signs of French dominion on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, when the cold blasts of winter sighed Champlain's requiem on
the heights whence his fancy had so often carried him to Cathay. The
results look small when we think of the patience and energy shown by
the great man whose aspirations took so ambitious and hopeful a range.
It is evident by the last map he drew of the country, that he had some
idea of the existence of a great lake beyond Lake Huron, and of the
Niagara Falls, though he had seen neither. He died, however, ignorant
of the magnitude, number, and position of the western lakes, and still
deluded by visions, as others after him, of a road to Asia. No one,
however, will deny that he was made of the heroic mould from which come
founders of states, and the Jesuit historian Charlevoix has, with
poetic justice, called him the "Father of New France."
[1] Brulé was murdered by the Hurons in 1634 at Toanché, an Indian
village in the West.
{92}
VII.
GENTLEMEN-ADVENTURERS IN ACADIA.
(1614-1677.)