suffered--counting even then more families than the Five Nations--but
as they looked on the smoking ruins of their villages and thought of
the undying hatred which had followed them for so many years they lost
all courage and decided to scatter and seek new homes elsewhere.
Father Ragueneau, the superior of the Jesuits, after consultation with
the Fathers and Frenchmen at Ste. Marie, some fifty persons altogether,
felt they could no longer safely remain in their isolated position when
the Hurons had left the country. They removed all their goods to the
Isle of St. Joseph, now one of the Christian Islands, near the entrance
of Matchedash Bay, where they erected a fortified post for the
protection of several thousand Hurons who had sought refuge here.
Before many months passed, the Hurons believed that their position
would be untenable when the Iroquois renewed their attacks, and
determined to leave the island. Some ventured {144} even among the
Iroquois and were formally received into the Senecas and other tribes.
A remnant remained a few months longer on the island, but they soon
left for Quebec after killing some thirty of the bravest Iroquois
warriors, who had attempted to obtain possession of the fort by a base
act of treachery. A number belonging to the Tobacco Nation eventually
reached the upper waters of the Mississippi where they met the Sioux,
or Dacotahs, a fierce nation belonging to a family quite distinct from
the Algonquins and Iroquois, and generally found wandering between the
head-waters of Lake Superior and the Falls of St. Anthony. After
various vicissitudes these Hurons scattered, but some found their rest
by the side of the Detroit River, where they have been always known as
Wyandots. Some three hundred Hurons, old and young, left St. Joseph
for Quebec, where they were most kindly received and given homes on the
western end of the Isle of Orleans, where the Jesuits built a fort for
their security; but even here, as we shall see, the Iroquois followed
them, and they were eventually forced to hide themselves under the guns
of Quebec. War and disease soon thinned them out, while not a few cast
in their lot with the Iroquois who were at last themselves seeking
recruits. The Huron remnant finally found a resting-place at Lorette
on the banks of the St. Charles, a few miles from the heights of the
Capital.
The only memorials now in Canada of a once powerful people, that
numbered at least twenty thousand souls before the time of their ruin
and {145} dispersion, are a remnant still retaining the language of
their tribe on the banks of the Detroit; a larger settlement on the
banks of the St. Charles, but without the distinguishing
characteristics of their ancestors who came there from Isle St. Joseph;
the foundations of the old mission house of Ste. Marie, and the
remarkable graves and ossuaries which interest the student and
antiquary as they wander in the summer-time through the picturesque
country where the nation was once supreme.
[1] It was so called in 1753, after the reigning sovereign of England
by an ambitions and politic Irishman, Sir William Johnson, whose name
is constantly occurring in the history of the wars between England and
France.
{146}
X.
YEARS OF GLOOM--THE KING COMES TO THE RESCUE OF
CANADA--THE IROQUOIS HUMBLED.
(1652-1667.)
It was noon on the 20th May, 1656, when the residents of Quebec were
startled by the remarkable spectacle of a long line of bark canoes
drawn up on the river immediately in front of the town. They could
hear the shouts of the Mohawk warriors making boast of the murder and
capture of unhappy Hurons, whom they had surprised on the Isle of
Orleans close by. The voices of Huron girls--"the very flower of the
tribe," says the Jesuit narrator--were raised in plaintive chants at
the rude command of their savage captors, who even forced them to dance
in sight of the French, on whose protection they had relied. The
governor, M. de Lauzon, a weak, incapable man, only noted for his
greed, was perfectly paralysed at a scene without example, even in
those days of terror, when the Iroquois were virtually masters of the
St. Lawrence valley from Huron to Gaspé.
{147}
At this very time a number of Frenchmen--probably fifty in all--were in
the power of the Iroquois, and the governor had no nerve to make even
an effort to save the Hurons from their fate. To understand the
situation of affairs, it is necessary to go back for a few years.
After the dispersion of the Hurons, the Iroquois, principally the
Mohawks, became bolder than ever on the St. Lawrence. M. du
Plessis-Bochat, the governor of Three Rivers, lost his life in a
courageous but ill-advised attempt to chastise a band of warriors that
were in ambush not far from the fort. Father Buteux was killed on his
way to his mission of the Attikamegs or White Fish tribe, at the
headwaters of the St. Maurice. In 1653, Father Poucet was carried off
to a Mohawk village, where he was tortured in the usual fashion, and
then sent back to Canada with offers of peace. The Senecas and Cayugas
were then busily engaged in exterminating the Eries, who had burned one
of their most famous chiefs, whose last words at the stake were
prophetic: "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!"
A peace, or rather a truce, was declared formally in the fall of 1653.
Then, at the request of the Onondagas, Father Simon le Moyne, a
missionary of great tact and courage, who was the first Frenchman to
ascend the St. Lawrence as far as the Thousand Isles, ventured into the
Iroquois country, where he soon became a favourite. As a result of the
negotiations which followed this mission, Governor de Lauzon was
persuaded to send a colony to the villages of the Onondagas. This
colony was composed {148} of Captain Dupuy, an officer of the garrison,
ten soldiers, and between thirty and forty volunteers. Father Dablon,
who had previously gone with Father Chaumonot among the Onondagas, and
had brought back the request for a colony, accompanied the expedition,
which left Quebec in the month of June, 1656. On the way up the river
the Onondagas were attacked by a band of Mohawks, when the boats
carrying the French had gone ahead and were not within sight. Some of
the Onondagas were killed and wounded, and then the Mohawks found out
that they had surprised and injured warriors belonging to a tribe of
their own confederacy. They endeavoured to explain this very serious
act of hostility against their own friends and allies by the excuse
that they had mistaken them for Hurons, whom they were on the way to
attack. There is little doubt that they well understood the character
of the expedition, and attacked it through envy of the success of the
Onondagas in obtaining the settlement of Frenchmen in their villages.
When the Mohawks had made their explanations, they allowed the angry
Onondagas to proceed on their journey, while they themselves went on to
Quebec where, as we have already seen, they showed their contempt of
the French by assailing the Hurons under the very guns of the fort of
St. Louis. As soon as the French colony arrived at the Onondaga
villages, they took possession of the country in the name of Jesus. On
an eminence overlooking the lake they erected the mission of St. Mary
of Gannentaha, the correct Iroquois name for Onondaga, {149} in the
vicinity of the present city of Syracuse. The Onondagas generally
appeared delighted at the presence of the French, though at this very
time the Mohawks continued to paddle up and down the St. Lawrence to
the consternation of the French and Canadian Indians alike. The Jesuit
priest Garreau was killed in one of these excursions while accompanying
a party of Ottawas to Lake Superior.
The colonists at Gannentaha at last found that their own lives were
threatened by a conspiracy to destroy them, but they succeeded in
deceiving the Indians and in escaping to Canada in the month of March,
after living only two years among the Onondagas. Whilst the Indians
were sleeping away the effects of one of those mystic feasts, at which
they invariably stuffed themselves to repletion, the Frenchmen escaped
at night and reached the Oswego River, which they successfully
descended by the aid of flat-boats which they had secretly constructed
after the discovery of the plot. The party reached the French
settlement with the loss of three men, drowned in the descent of the
rapids of the St. Lawrence, probably the Cedars. The enterprise was
most hazardous at this season when the ice had to be broken on the
rivers before the boats could be used. But this very fact had its
advantage, since the bark canoes of the Indians would have been useless
had they followed the party. This exploit is one of the most
remarkable ever performed by the French in those early days, and shows
of what excellent material those pioneers of French colonisation were
made.
In the spring of 1660 it was discovered that an {150} organised attack
was to be made on all the settlements by a large force of over a
thousand Iroquois, who were to assemble at the junction of the Ottawa
and St. Lawrence rivers. It is stated on credible authority that
Montreal--Canada in fact--was saved at this critical juncture by the
heroism of a few devoted Frenchmen. Among the officers of the little
garrison that then protected Montreal, was Adam Daulac or Dollard,
Sieur des Ormeaux, who obtained leave from Maisonneuve, the governor,
to lead a party of volunteers against the Iroquois, who were wintering
in large numbers on the upper Ottawa. Sixteen brave fellows, whose
names are all recorded in the early records of Montreal, took a solemn
oath to accept and give no quarter, and after settling their private
affairs and receiving the sacrament, they set out on their mission of
inevitable death. Dollard and his band soon reached the impetuous
rapids of the Long Sault of the Ottawa, destined to be their
Thermopylae. There, among the woods, they found an old circular
inclosure of logs, which had been built by some Indians for defensive
purposes. This was only a wretched bulwark, but the Frenchmen were in
a state of exalted enthusiasm, and proceeded to strengthen it. Only
two or three days after their arrival, they heard that the Iroquois
were descending the river. The first attacks of the Iroquois were
repulsed, and then they sent out scouts to bring up a large force of
five hundred warriors who were at the mouth of the Richelieu. In the
meantime they continued harassing the inmates of the fort, who were
suffering for food and {151} water. A band of Hurons who had joined
the French just before the arrival of the Iroquois, now deserted them,
with the exception of their chief, who as well as four Algonquins,
remained faithful to the end. The forests soon resounded with the
yells of the Iroquois, when reinforced. Still Dollard and his brave
companions never faltered, but day after day beat back the astonished
assailants, who knew the weakness of the defenders, and had anticipated
an easy victory. At last a general assault was made, and in the
struggle Dollard was killed. Even then the survivors kept up the
fight, and when the Iroquois stood within the inclosure there was no
one to meet them. Four Frenchmen, still alive, were picked up from the
pile of corpses. Three of these were instantly burned, while the
fourth was reserved for continuous torture a day or so later. The
faithless Hurons gained nothing by their desertion, for they were put
to death, with the exception of five who eluded their captors, and took
an account of this remarkable episode to the French at Montreal. The
Iroquois were obviously amazed at the courage of a few Frenchmen, and
decided to give up, for the present, their project of attacking
settlements defended by men so dauntless.
Even the forces of nature seemed at this time to conspire against the
unfortunate colony. A remarkable earthquake, the effects of which can
still be seen on the St. Lawrence,--at picturesque Les Eboulements,
which means "earth slips," for instance,--commenced in the month of
February, 1663, and did not cease entirely until the following summer.
{152}
Fervent appeals for assistance were made to the King by Pierre Boucher,
the governor of Three Rivers, by Monseigneur Laval, the first bishop,
by the Jesuit Fathers, and by the governors of New France, especially
by M. d'Avaugour, who recommended that three thousand soldiers be sent
to the colony, and allowed to become settlers after a certain term of
service. By 1663, the total population of Canada did not exceed two
thousand souls, the large majority of whom were at Quebec, Montreal,
and Three Rivers. It was at the risk of their lives that men ventured
beyond the guns of Montreal. The fur-trade was in the hands of
monopolists. The people could not raise enough food to feed
themselves, but had to depend on the French ships to a large extent.
The Company of the Hundred Associates had been found quite unequal to
the work of settling and developing the country, or providing adequate
means of defence. Under the advice of the great Colbert, the King,
young Louis Quatorze, decided to assume the control of New France and
make it a royal province. The immediate result of the new policy was
the coming of the Marquis de Tracy, a veteran soldier, as
lieutenant-general, with full powers to inquire into the state of
Canada. He arrived at Quebec on the 30th June, 1665, attended by a
brilliant retinue. The Carignan-Salières Regiment, which had
distinguished itself against the Turks, was also sent as a proof of the
intention of the King to defend his long-neglected colony. In a few
weeks, more than two thousand persons, soldiers and settlers, had come
to Canada. Among {153} the number were M. de Courcelles, the first
governor, and M. Talon, the first intendant, under the new régime.
Both were fond of state and ceremony, and the French taste of the
Canadians was now gratified by a plentiful display of gold lace,
ribbons, wigs, ornamented swords, and slouched hats. Probably the most
interesting feature of the immigration was the number of young women as
wives for the bachelors--as the future mothers of a Canadian people.
The new authorities went energetically to work. The fortifications at
Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were strengthened, and four new
forts erected from the mouth of the Richelieu to Isle La Mothe on Lake
Champlain. The Iroquois saw the significance of this new condition of
things. The Onondagas, led by Garacontié, a friend of the Jesuits,
made overtures of peace, which were favourably heard by "Onontio," as
the governor of Canada had been called ever since the days of
Montmagny, whose name, "Great Mountain," the Iroquois so translated.
The Mohawks, the most dangerous tribe, sent no envoys, and Courcelles,
in the inclement month of January, went into their country with a large
force of regular soldiers and fur hunters, but missed the trail to
their villages, and found himself at the Dutch settlements, where he
learned, to his dismay, that the English had become the possessors of
the New Netherlands. On its return, the expedition suffered terribly
from the severe cold, and lost a number of persons who were killed by
the Indians, always hovering in the rear. The Mohawks then {154}
thought it prudent to send a deputation to treat for peace, but the
Marquis de Tracy and Governor de Courcelles were suspicious of their
good faith, and sent a Jesuit priest to their country to ascertain the
real sentiment of the tribe. He was recalled, while on the way, on
account of the news that several French officers--one of them a
relative of the lieutenant-general--had been murdered by the Mohawks.
The lieutenant-general and governor at once organised a powerful
expedition of the regular forces and Canadian inhabitants--some
thirteen hundred in all--who left Quebec, with those two distinguished
officers in command, on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, the
14th September, 1666, as every effort was made to give a religious
aspect to an army, intended to avenge the death of martyred
missionaries, as well as to afford Canada some guarantees of peace. It
took the expedition nearly a month to reach the first village of the Mo
hawks, but only to find it deserted. It was the same result in three
other villages visited by the French. The Mohawks had made
preparations for defence, but their courage failed them as they heard
of the formidable character of the force that had come into the
country. They deserted their homes and great stores of provisions.
Villages and provisions were burned, and the Iroquois saw only ashes
when they returned after the departure of the French. It was a great
blow to these formidable foes of the French. Peace was soon made
between the Five Nations and the French. The Marquis de Tracy then
returned to France, and for twenty years {155} Canada had a respite
from the raids which had so seriously disturbed her tranquillity, and
was enabled at last to organise her new government, extend her
settlements, and develop her strength for days of future trial.
{156}
XI.
CANADA AS A ROYAL PROVINCE--CHURCH AND STATE.
(1663-1759.)
We have now come to that period of Canadian history when the political
and social conditions of the people assumed those forms which they
retained, with a few modifications from time to time, during the whole
of the French régime. Four men now made a permanent impress on the
struggling colony so long neglected by the French Government. First,
was the King, Louis Quatorze, then full of the arrogance and confidence
of a youthful prince, imbued with the most extravagant idea of his
kingly attributes. By his side was the great successor of Mazarin,
Jean Baptiste Colbert, whose knowledge of finance, earnest desire to
foster the best resources of the kingdom, acknowledged rectitude, as
well as admirable tact, gave him not only great influence in France,
but enabled him to sway the mind of the autocratic king at most
critical junctures. Happily for Colbert and Canada, Louis was a most
industrious {157} as well as pleasure-seeking sovereign, and studied
the documents, which his various servants, from Colbert to the
intendants in the colonies, sent him from time to time respecting their
affairs.
In Canada itself the great minister had the aid of the ablest intendant
ever sent by the King to Canada. This was Jean Baptiste Talon, who was
not inferior to Colbert for his knowledge of commerce and finance, and
clearness of intellect.
We see also in the picture of those times the piercing eyes and
prominent nose of the ascetic face of the eminent divine who, even more
than Colbert and Talon, has moulded the opinions of the Canadian people
in certain important respects down to the present time. Monseigneur
Laval was known in France as the Abbé de Montigny, and when the Jesuits
induced him to come to Canada he was appointed grand vicar by the Pope,
with the title of Bishop of Petrosa.
Before the Canadian bishops and their agents in France decided on the
Abbé de Montigny as a bishop they had made an experiment with the Abbé
Queylus, one of the four Sulpician priests who came to Montreal in
1657, to look after the spiritual, and subsequently its temporal,
interests. The Abbé had been appointed vicar-general of Canada by the
Archbishop of Rouen, who claimed a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction
in the country, and the Jesuits at Quebec were at first disposed to
make him bishop had they found him sufficiently ductile. After some
experience of his opinions and character, they came to the conclusion
that he was not a friend of their {158} order, and used all their
influence thenceforth to drive him from Canada. Then they chose the
Abbé de Montigny, between whom and the Abbé Queylus there ensued a
conflict of authority, which ended eventually in the defeat of the
latter, as well as of the Archbishop of Rouen. The Abbé, divested of
his former dignity and pretensions, returned in later years to the
island of Montreal, of which the Sulpicians had become the seigniorial
proprietors, when the original company were too weak to carry out the
objects of their formation. The same order remains in possession of
their most valuable lands in the city and island, where their seminary
for the education of priests and youth generally occupies a high
position among the educational institutions of the province.
Bishop Laval was endowed with an inflexible will, and eminently fitted
to assert those ultramontane principles which would make all temporal
power subordinate to the Pope and his vicegerents on earth. His claim
to take precedence even of the governor on certain public occasions
indicates the extremes to which this resolute dignitary of the Church
was prepared to go on behalf of its supremacy.
[Illustration: Portrait of Laval, first Canadian bishop.]
No question can be raised as to Bishop Laval's charity and generosity.
He accumulated no riches for himself--he spent nothing on the luxuries,
hardly anything on the conveniences of life, but gave freely to the
establishment of those famous seminaries at Quebec, which have been
ever since identified with the religious and secular instruction of the
French Canadians, and now form part of the noble university which bears
his name.
{159}
With a man like Laval at the head of the Church in Canada at this early
period, it necessarily exercised a powerful influence at the council
board, and in the affairs of the country generally. If he was
sometimes too arbitrary, too arrogant in the assertion of his
ecclesiastical dignity, yet he was also {160} animated by very
conscientious motives with respect to temporal questions. In the
quarrel he had with the governor, Baron Dubois d'Avaugour, an old
soldier, as to the sale of brandy to the Indians, he showed that his
zeal in the discharge of what he believed to be a Christian and
patriotic duty predominated above all such mercenary and commercial
considerations as animated the governor and officials, who believed
that the trading interests of the country were injured by prohibition.
Laval saw that the very life-blood of the Indians was being poisoned by
this traffic, and succeeded in obtaining the removal of D'Avaugour.
But all the efforts of himself and his successor, Saint-Vallier, could
not practically restrain the sale of spirituous liquors, as long as the
fur-trade so largely depended on their consumption.
At this time, and for a long time afterwards, Protestantism was unknown
in Canada, for the King and Jesuits had decided to keep the colony
entirely free from heresy. The French Protestants, after the
revocation of the edict of Nantes, gave to England and the Netherlands
the benefit of their great industry and manufacturing knowledge. Some
of them even found their way to America, and stimulated the gathering
strength of the southern colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas.
The new régime under Colbert was essentially parental. All emigration
was under the direction of the French authorities. Wives were sent by
shiploads for the settlers, newly-wedded couples received liberal
presents suitable to their condition in a new country; early marriages
and large families were {161} encouraged by bounties. Every possible
care was taken by the officials and religious communities who had
charge of such matters, that the women were of good morals, and
suitable for the struggles of a colonial existence.