1667-1672
EXPEDITIONS FROM MONTREAL
LA SALLE--DOLLIER DE CASSON--DE COURCELLES
A FEUDAL VILLAGE AND ITS YOUNG SEIGNEUR--LA SALLE'S JESUIT
TRAINING--AN EX-JESUIT--THE SEIGNEURY OF ST. SULPICE--SOLD--THE
FEVER FOR EXPLORATION--LA SALLE, DOLLIER DE CASSON AND
GALINEE--SOLDIER OUTRAGES ON INDIANS--THE EXPEDITION TO LAKES
ERIE AND ONTARIO--LA SALLE RETURNS--HIS SEIGNEURY NICKNAMED
"LA CHINE"--THE SULPICIANS TAKE POSSESSION OF LAKE ERIE FOR
LOUIS XIV--RETURN TO MONTREAL--DE GALINEE'S MAP--THE SUBSEQUENT
EXPEDITION OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL, DE COURCELLES.
One of the feudal villages rising at this period was that now known
as Lachine. Its original name was St. Sulpice. It was granted
provisionally in 1667 as a fief to René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, a
brother of M. Jean Cavelier, a young doctor in theology and a Sulpician
who had joined the seminary at Montreal on September 7, 1666.
[Illustration: RENE-ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE]
La Salle, as the former is known to us, became afterwards the
celebrated discoverer of the Mississippi down to the sea and as a
Montrealer deserves special notice here.
He was born at Rouen, November 21, 1643, and was educated at the Jesuit
College there. In his fifteenth year he entered the Jesuit noviceship,
on October 5, 1658. During the two years of noviceship, the père
maître, or novice master, had a difficult task to train the impetuous,
vigorous, impressionable, headstrong, exuberant, healthy youth of
fifteen, to the calm regularity of obedience, and the soldierly,
intellectual routine demanded by the Jesuit traditions; but it is just
this type of strong character, so powerful for good, if brought under
wise subjection, that the Jesuits love to mould; and so the young man
was allowed to take the simple vows of Evangelical Poverty, Chastity
and Obedience on October 10, 1660. The next two years he spent as a
Jesuit scholastic at the Royal College of La Flèche studying philosophy
and the physical sciences, showing ability in the latter courses.
Instead of finishing the third year, the restless young man went out
to teach as a Jesuit professor at Alençon for a year. He then resumed
his delayed third year. From October, 1664, to October, 1665, he taught
at Tours, and from 1665 to 1668 at Blois. In the September of 1666 he
returned to La Flèche to study theology. He was then only twenty-three
years of age, and had been promoted to the theology course seven or
eight years ahead of the usual Jesuit course, because his inability
to stay long in any one place and his want of success in a humdrum
professorship for which he had no taste, and which was irritating
to him and his students, forced his superiors to allow him to hurry
through his studies, thinking doubtless that this ardent spirit might
find congenial work in the distant mission fields with every facility
for exercising his fiery zeal, with less restraint, and under less
conventional circumstances than in France.
This resolution was brought about by Cavelier's own insistency in
demanding immediately the foreign missions, in a letter of April 5th,
written from Blois, to the general of the Jesuits, Jean Paul Oliva.
The general on May 4, 1666, answered temporizingly to the young man,
advising him to continue his studies and prepare himself usefully for
the sacred ministry, and in the meantime maintain that most "perfect
indifference," which is one of the most striking characteristics of
the Jesuit philosophical training and has been subjected to so much
criticism of praise or blame. To this Cavelier replied that he had
still the same desire, but the general wrote that he could give no
different reply. To understand Cavelier's nature he is described in the
Jesuit informations of the time as "inquietus" and "scrupulosus," which
words are very nearly English. Hardly had the theological studies at
La Flèche commenced than he wrote to the general, on December 1, 1666,
asking to be sent to Portugal for his studies. No doubt the restless
Cavelier was undergoing a nervous strain of scrupulosity and doubt as
to his fitness for religious and priestly life, and he thought that
he could find peace of mind again in a change of scene. The general
replied kindly, bidding him remain quietly in his own "Province,"
to conclude his studies, and after the third year of probational
novitiate, which all Jesuits undergo after being ordained and before
taking their final "solemn" vows, his zealous desire for the foreign
missions would be satisfied.
This answer brought to a head Cavelier's doubts as to his fitness
for the calmer repose of a studious life. On the one hand there were
holding him his three simple vows, not lightly to be laid down, and to
which he had been doubtless substantially faithful; on the other, he
felt that his natural character was impelling him to a freer life than
that of restrained self-sacrifice he had honourably tried to follow
up. So that making use of the privilege of a Jesuit scholastic, not
irrevocably bound to the Society till the taking of the last vows,
and after laying his conscience open to his superior and not "hiding
his moral infirmities," and probably exaggerating them, he applied,
canonically, for his letters of release. By January 28th, in the year
following, the final application was sent to Rome by the Jesuit rector
of La Flèche, and on March 1st, the general, Jean Paul Oliva, wrote
to the Jesuit provincial of France: "After a serious examination of
the informations which you have sent us, we authorize you to accept
the resignation of Robert Ignatius Cavelier, approved scholastic."
Ignatius was a name taken by Cavelier on taking his simple vows in 1660
in admiration of Ignatius Loyola, the soldier saint and founder of the
Society of Jesus.
Robert Ignatius Cavelier left the College of La Flèche on March 28,
1667, an ex-Jesuit. Before his final letters of freedom were given him
he received a kind letter from the general, in which he was told that
the French provincial had been instructed by him "to absolve you from
your vows and set you free." He added in Latin, "But do you, dearest
brother, wheresoever and in whatever state you shall find yourself, be
ever mindful of the state from which you have gone forth, and attend
to the rock from which you have been hewed, and although you may be
separated from us in time and place, strive always to be in heart with
us and to live in Christ with us. May His grace be always with you!"
(Archives General S. J.) Cf. Rochemonteix "Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle
France."
Circumstances in later life separated him largely from intercourse
with the Jesuits, as his career took him across the Sulpicians and the
Recollects.
Cavelier de La Salle is free! Where will he turn his steps? He has no
position and very little of a fortune, for on becoming a Jesuit he had
yielded up his inheritance to others of his family. Canada calls him,
for his brother François, the priest, had gone there in the September
of 1666. Canada, therefore, had doubtless been luring him during his
late mental struggles at La Flèche, and the summer of 1667 found the
ex-Jesuit with his brother, the Sulpician, at Montreal.
The Abbé de Queylus received the young man of twenty-four years kindly,
and doubtless for his brother's sake gave him a "_fief noble_" of great
extent opposite the Sault St. Louis. To encourage him to make good, the
title was not given in writing to him till January 9, 1669, when he
paid a medal of fine gold, which was to be repaid to the Seminary at
every subsequent change of seigneur.
The adventurous Sieur de La Salle set whole-heartedly to work in his
new vocation. He gratefully called the seigneury "St. Sulpice" and,
commencing the clearing of the land, he mapped out the borders of his
future village and subdivided his land as grants to his feudal tenants
in lots of sixty arpents, with half an arpent in the village itself.
He relieved them of any seigneurial dues till the year 1671, provided
they had built their homes by the feast of St. John, 1669. He gave
them the right of hunting on their lands and of fishing in front. He
took off 200 arpents of land from his fief towards Lake St. Peter for
a "common," whereon each could feed his beasts at a feudal fine of
five sous a year, while he reserved 400 arpents for his seigneurial
manor. This, however, he sold in 1670, when the passion for travel and
discovery seized him, as shall be later described.
We have ventured to give the romantic details of the history of one of
the early seigneurs because they illustrate the adventuresome period
and also because many of these facts surrounding the life of La Salle
were not generally known, even by many of the leading historians
of Canada. They will help as a key to explain the temperament and
character of the celebrated discoverer, in his Canadian life, his
enterprises and his misfortunes, his extreme need of movement, his
uncertainty, his passion for travel, his reputation for learning, and
also his active and ardent faith deepened by his Jesuit training.
His robust health and his commanding figure were of powerful avail
to him in his adventurous tasks. The generous blood of Normandy
flowed freely in his veins and, like his countrymen, he was active,
intelligent, industrious, resourceful and self-regarding. He made a
better pioneer than a patient, plodding land owner, as we shall see,
and the defects of an untractable youth made the success of the man as
an explorer.
We left the young La Salle organizing his seigneury, but before long
he is to be found, gun on his shoulder and knapsack on his back,
traversing the woods and in his canoe exploring all the rivers and
lakes around the neighbourhood. Trading his merchandise for beaver
skins with the Indians and coming in contact with the _coureurs de
bois_, he learns the directions of the rivers and the products of the
countries through which they pass, and soon there seizes him the great
desire to discover the long-sought-for northwest passage to China and
Japan and thus to open out a fruitful field for commerce for France,
and glory and fortune for himself.
During the autumn of 1668 some Seneca (Tsonnontouan) Indians stopped at
St. Sulpice and from them he learned that the river he called the Ohio
entered into the Mississippi, which emptied its waters into the "River
of the Sault," which he thought to be the Pacific.[104] With the aid of
these he started to master the Iroquois language.
Meanwhile, a similar idea of exploring and evangelizing the Shawnee
district had presented itself to Dollier de Casson who was now at
Quebec, making arrangements with M. de Queylus for his departure.
Dollier had spent the winter of 1668 in the woods with the Indians at
Lake Nipissing, learning an Algonquin dialect from a Nipissing chief
named Nitaukyk. This latter had a Shawnee slave who, on a visit to
Montreal, so enthused Queylus, that he sent a letter back by the slave,
telling M. de Casson of his desire to convert the Shawnee people who
seemed to provide special aptitude for Christianity, and offering this
mission to the zealous Dollier, who hastened to his superior at once
and thence to Quebec.
To raise the money for La Salle's expedition the seigneurs bought back
a great part of his land for 1,000 _livres_, payable in merchandise
to arrive by the vessels at Quebec. But he still wished to retain his
seigneurial domain of 400 arpents. Indeed on January 11th he received
the written titles of these from the seminary.
But on February 9th, following, La Salle, still in need of funds,
sold his seigneurial domain for 2,800 _livres_ to Jean Milot--a very
good bargain considering that he had been granted it for very little,
and that the documents of the transaction reveal that he had only
cleared nine or ten arpents; and that, on the other part, the wood
had only been felled, and not logged, and buildings had only been
commenced.[105] Then he set out to Quebec to interest M. de Courcelles,
the governor, in his project and to obtain all the necessary passports
and authorizations to range the woods and lakes.
De Courcelles warmly approved of his enthusiasm, seeing glory for his
own administration at no cost to himself, and he even allowed soldiers
to quit their companies and join La Salle. He also persuaded Dollier de
Casson, then in Quebec, consulting de Queylus on the Shawnee mission,
to combine with La Salle's expedition, thus giving it a certain
governmental éclat and public importance. Dollier de Casson received
his letters from Laval on May 15, 1669. On returning to Montreal,
preparations were made for departure. La Salle engaged four canoes and
fourteen men, among whom was the Sieur Thoulonnier and the surgeon,
La Roussillière. To meet additional expenses he had to sell another
piece of land above St. Sulpice to Jacques Leber, for 600 _livres_
_tournois_, on July 6, 1669, the day of departure.
De Casson had three canoes and seven men, and with them M. de Galinée,
a Sulpician deacon, an astronomer and mathematician, who joined only
three days before the departure. They took a Hollander to interpret the
Iroquois language.
Before leaving Montreal the party witnessed the execution of three
French soldiers of the Carignan Regiment, who were put to death for
the assassination, near Point Claire on Lake St. Louis, of an Iroquois
chief of the Senecas (Tsonnontouans). On the eve of this date it was
found out, by a confession to La Salle, that three other Frenchmen had
committed, near Montreal, on the River Mascouche, a more atrocious
assassination of six Oneida Iroquois (Onneiouts), three of whom
were a woman and two children. Yet the bodies were never found, so
this remains a mystery. Rewards were offered for the capture of the
prisoners, but they were never taken. Both of these horrible slaughters
had been caused by a desire of seizing the peltry belonging to the
Indians. Such treachery was likely to rekindle war with the natives. On
this occasion, therefore, M. de Courcelles came up to conciliate the
assembled Indians and to assure them, by presents, of the governmental
displeasure at these acts. Under these critical and dangerous
circumstances, the expedition of seven canoes containing twenty-two
Frenchmen and guided by two other canoes of those Tsonnontouans who had
lived with La Salle, left Montreal.
They made their way to the great village of Tsonnontouan and stayed
there a month, trembling in fear of their lives, for the chief, lately
murdered at Montreal, came from this place. Added to this one of
those drunken bouts, the results of the liquor traffic, seized the
inhabitants and threatened the Europeans' safety. While here Dollier
de Casson, worn out by the unaccustomed hardships of the journey,
fell into a great fever and was near his end, but happily recovering,
the explorers left and arrived at a river whose cataracts marked the
descent of the waters of Lake Erie into those of Lake Ontario.
Five days' journey brought them to the other side of Lake Ontario.
While here a fever also fell upon La Salle which in a few days
imperilled his life. On September 22d, they journeyed again and on the
24th reached a village named Tenaoutoua, where they met the explorer,
Joliet, arrived there the evening before. He had previously set out
from Montreal with canoes and merchandise, under instructions from
M. de Courcelles, to seek the whereabouts of a copper mine said to
be situated on Lake Superior. Finding the winter coming on, he had
relinquished this project and was about to return to Montreal. He gave
a description of the places he had visited and Galinée, the Sulpician
geographer, entered them on his map.
La Salle now determined that he also would return to Montreal, urging
for excuse the state of his health and the inexperience of his men
to stand a winter in the woods, where they were likely to perish of
hunger. But the missionary party was firm in its resolution to proceed
to the Mississippi Indians. Thus it was that some of La Salle's party
arrived the autumn of 1669 in Montreal alone. Whether La Salle returned
with them is doubted, for his traces for two years are hard to follow.
The failure of his expedition to discover La Chine was commemorated in
derision by the wags of Montreal who henceforth dubbed his seigneury
of St. Sulpice, as that of "La Chine." Such it soon began to be named,
even in the official documents, as for example one of June 10, 1670,
"this place La Chine, so called." So La Chine it has remained to this
day.
Meanwhile the Montreal missionaries, after leaving Tenaoutoua on
October 1, 1669, arrived, the 13th or 14th, on the banks of Lake
Erie, which seemed to them like a great sea lashed and tossed by the
tempestuous winds. At the mouth of a pleasant river, after three days
they built their cabin and there they remained for fifteen days, till
the fierce lake winds drove them to a more sheltered place in the
woods, about a quarter of a league away, on a bank of a stream. There
they reconstructed their cabin, but more strongly, and wintered for
five months and eleven days.
When spring came, they determined to push on to the Mississippi
Indians, but before doing so, an event is to be chronicled in the
history of discovery, from Montreal. On March 23d, on Passion Sunday,
descending to the banks of Lake Erie, the explorers took possession of
the country in the name of Louis XIV.
The following _procès verbal_, then drawn up and preserved in the
marine archives of France, fully explains the picturesque ceremony:
"We, the undersigned, certify having affixed the arms of the king of
France, on the lands of the lake named Erie, with this inscription:
"In the year of salvation 1669, Clement IX being seated on the chair
of St. Peter, Louis XIV reigning in France, M. de Courcelles being
governor of New France and M. Talon intendant there for the king,
two missionaries of the Seminary of Montreal, arrived at this spot
accompanied by seven other Frenchmen, who are the first Europeans to
have wintered on this lake, the lands of which being unoccupied, they
take possession of in the name of their king, by placing up his arms
which they have affixed to this cross.
"In testimony of which we have signed the present certification.
"François Dollier,
"Priest of the Diocese of Nantes, in Brittany;
"De Galinée,
"Deacon of the Diocese of Rennes, in Brittany."
On the 26th of March they proceeded further on their journey, but in
Easter week, having halted by the side of Lake Erie, and drawn some
of their canoes onto the land, leaving others on the sandy shore near
the water's edge, wearied out with fatigue after a day's journey of
twenty leagues, the party fell asleep. A great wind arose and heaped
up the waters so that the awakened sleepers had difficulty in rescuing
their canoes. One they utterly lost, as well as apparel and chapel
accoutrements. A barrel of gunpowder floating on the waves was saved
but the ammunition was lost. This disaster made them resolve to turn
back to Montreal.
They chose for their return voyage the route passing by the mission of
Sault Ste. Marie. On their way, after 100 leagues' navigation, they
destroyed a rude Indian idol, and after entering Lake Huron arrived on
May 25th at Sault Ste. Marie Fort, where they were joyously received by
the Jesuits, Dablon and Marquette, with the little colony of twenty to
twenty-five Frenchmen.
Thence they started on May 28th, with a guide from the fort, and after
a strenuous journey of twenty-two days reached Montreal on June 18,
1670.
[Illustration: OLD MAP OF MONTREAL]
M. de Galinée on his return made a corrected copy of his map, which he
sent to M. Talon, with a copy of the "_prise de possession_," already
described, and these were of great use later, to the French government,
which sent them to London in 1687 as evidences of the pretensions which
the French claimed over Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the neighbouring
countries.
[Illustration: GALINEE'S MAP, 1669]
Dollier de Casson wrote a history of this voyage but no copy has been
found. Though the journey was unsuccessful in the conversion of the
Indians, yet it paved the way to succeeding explorations which were
quickly sent by Talon, and to the eventual evangelization of these
parts.
Of La Salle's experience, after leaving the Sulpicians, we have little
to record, as he was lost to civilization; but we see him coming
back at intervals to Montreal as his base to obtain supplies for his
explorations. On the 6th of August, 1671, he received on credit "in
his great need and necessity" from the hands of Migeon de Branssat,
procureur fiscal of Ville Marie, merchandise to the sum of 454 _livres_
_tournois_. Again on December 18, 1672, being in Montreal, there is
an "obligation" recorded at the city _greffe_ of a promise to pay, on
the August following, the same sum in peltry or money, either at the
house of Jacques Leber, where he lived, or at Rouen at the house of his
relative, M. Nicholas Crevêt, king's councillor and master of accounts.
Montreal, being at the head of navigation, became the starting point of
many subsequent expeditions. We may add here the expedition of Governor
General de Courcelles to Lake Ontario, which left Montreal on June 2,
1671. The object of the voyage was to conciliate the Indians who had
made peace but who were in danger of breaking it, irritated as they
had been by such breaches of faith as that related to have recently
occurred at Montreal, by the brutal assassinations, and to show them by
a dignified appearance among them not, in canoe, but "en bateau" that
their waters were not inaccessible, and that the French knew how to
punish and keep them in check. Another motive was to explore the lands
bordering on Lake Ontario with the view of establishing a fort and
colony and of diverting the peltry trade into French instead of English
hands, and of claiming those lands for the French.
Accordingly de Courcelles arrived at Montreal with a specially
constructed bateau of two or three tons under the management of
Sergeant Champagne and eight other soldiers. The governor's daring
expedition was joined at Montreal by M. Perrot, the local governor of
Montreal; M. de Varennes, that of Three Rivers; Charles Le Moyne, M. de
Laubia, M. de La Vallière, M. de Normanville and several others, as a
mark of esteem for the governor; finally the genial Dollier de Casson
as chaplain. It is from him that we have the history of the expedition.
The party of fifty-two went by road to La Chine and embarked above St.
Louis Rapids on the governor's barque and thirteen birch bark canoes.
On June 12th it reached the mouth of Lake Ontario. On the way a party
of Iroquois had been met and impressed with fear and respect. These
were now sent with letters to the missionaries to publish around news
of the mission of the governor general. The Iroquois were overwhelmed
by the dignity of the governor and his party, and for a time they kept
dumb with their hands and their mouths, in astonishment. Of the French
they said that they were demons and brought to a conclusion everything
they wanted. The governor, they thought an incomparable man. He made
capital of his success and menaced destruction to those who should
revolt, whose settlements he would take and destroy at will.
The party returned on June 14th and soon arrived in Montreal, the whole
expedition having taken only fifteen days. It was most successful with
the Indians and restrained their trade with the Dutch and English,
and even the latter, according to Marie l'Incarnation (letter No. 89)
feared lest they should be driven from their trading posts.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] La Salle wondered where the Ohio emptied itself. His mind wavered
between the Gulf of Mexico or the Vermillion River (the Gulf of
California). He seems to have favoured the latter hypothesis.
[105] The Abbé Véreault says La Salle hired a small house in Montreal
in November, 1668. At the southeast corner of St. Peter and St. Paul
Streets a tablet commemorates such a house. On January 9th he was again
in Montreal. Probably he found Lachine lonely and naturally sought the
town.