1667-1672
EDUCATION
AT QUEBEC: JACQUES LEBER, JEANNE LEBER, CHARLES LE MOYNE (OF
LONGUEUIL), LOUIS PRUDHOMME--MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS' SCHOOL AT
MONTREAL--"GALLICIZING" INDIAN CHILDREN--GANNENSAGONAS--THE
SULPICIANS AT GENTILLY--THE JESUITS AT MADELEINE LA PRAIRIE.
Another effort of Louis XIV, through his minister Colbert, was the
furtherance of education in the colony. It was naturally of a very
rudimentary character in these early days of scarce population. To
help, Colbert sent from the king, 6,000 _livres_ on April 5, 1667. The
work of education was in the hands of the clergy and religious with the
exception of that done at Montreal by Marguerite Bourgeoys, who had
not yet established her order. At Quebec, the Jesuits had since 1635
commenced a college for boys at which later young Joliet, who afterward
with Père Marquette, was the discoverer of Illinois, was taught to
defend philosophical theses. The Ursulines had a _pensionnat_ of thirty
girls, of whom Marie l'Incarnation, writing in 1668, says: "They gave
more trouble than sixty in France. The _externes_ give us some more
trouble." Still she says that there is a great desire to educate the
French girls and "they learn to read and write, to say their prayers,
learn Christian morals and all that a girl ought to know." Among the
_pensionnaires_ was Jeanne Leber, the daughter of Jacques Leber, the
Montreal merchant, and she was pious, and clever at elocution and lace
work.
[Illustration: JACQUES MARQUETTE]
At Montreal, as the population began to grow, Marguerite Bourgeoys
now handed over the boys, who were beginning to be educated with the
girls in the little primary school in the stable, to M. Souart, who,
since the return of M. de Queylus, had been supplanted as curate by
M. Gilles Pérot, and we find him styled in the documents of the time
"former curé--schoolmaster." In this occupation he was assisted by M.
Rémy, a deacon, who was afterwards entrusted for some time with the
primary education of the town. The education was given gratuitously,
but to maintain the schoolmaster, the syndic, accompanied by the clerk
of the court, canvassed subscriptions from private individuals. In
the fall, the Seminary made up the deficit. Marguerite Bourgeoys, and
her four companions, still taught during the day for nothing, without
any assistance as before, but during the night they worked at manual
labour for their support. "Thus," says Dollier de Casson writing of
1652, "what I admire most about these young women, is that being
without goods and willing to teach gratuitously, they have nevertheless
acquired by the grace of God and without being a charge to anyone,
houses and lands in the island of Montreal." In fact on August 29,
1668, Marguerite Bourgeoys bought a house thirty-six feet square
adjoining the "Congregation" from the widow of Claude Fézeret. On
September 21, 1668, she acquired from François Leber a grant of land,
with a house on it, at Pointe St. Charles. The site of this house, with
its buildings, can be seen to this day.
In 1669, she acquired, from Maturin Roulier, another piece of land with
a granary and a meadow, situated in the direction of Sault St. Louis.
All this, added to the original donation from M. de Maisonneuve, and
sixty arpents and more granted through the Seigneurs, out of which
she had put thirty-two under cultivation and on which she had placed
a granary, went in great part to support her community of pious lay
associates. In addition, on July 6, 1672, she bought an arpent of land
adjoining the "Congregation" and built on it a larger establishment,
as the number of her pupils surpassed the limited space of her stable
school.
On October 9, 1668, Laval at Quebec started his "petit séminaire," out
of the boys of which he hoped to draw the nucleus of a Canadian clergy.
He started with six Hurons, to whom were added eight French boys. In
1669 there were three Montrealers being educated there, probably on a
_bourse_ from the king's bounty, viz., Charles Le Moyne, de Longueuil;
Jacques Leber, brother of Jeanne, and Louis Prud'homme. The French
boys, supported by the king's bounty, boarded, however, at the Jesuit
College. Soon others joined, but as it was found that many of them
did not care for study, they were sent to Cap au Tourment, where they
learned mechanical trades and arts suitable to young colonists.
In 1670, there were only five teachers for the many calls on the
education of the girls, so Marguerite Bourgeoys went to France for
assistance, and after six months she saw Colbert, who promised to
assist her so that her congregation in May, 1671, received the approval
of the "Roi Soleil," Louis XIV, who was then with his brilliant court
at Dunkerque. She returned to Quebec in 1672, on August 14th, bringing
back a miraculous oaken statue of the Blessed Virgin, of some eight
inches in height for the church of Bonsecours, already projected in
1651 and to be built shortly. With her came several novices to join her
order, some of noble families, Elizabeth de la Bertache, Madeleine de
Constantin, Thérèse Soumillard, Pierrette Laurent, Geneviève Durosoy,
Marguerite Soumillard, and Marguerite Sénécal, who was the bursar of
the very slender funds of the party.
In addition to the _externes_ the congregation was beginning to have
boarders and was reaching such a point of utility, when she might
extend her work throughout the colony, that she had been persuaded to
ask for the above royal letters patent of incorporation. Her eventual
aim was to establish a regular congregation, with religious vows
of its own. For the present, Laval did not favour such a plan; he
rather wished to avoid a multiplicity of religious congregations in a
poor country, and he would have preferred her companions to join the
Ursulines at Quebec, becoming if necessary a branch establishment.
To this the independent Marguerite Bourgeoys was opposed. The Ursulines
was an enclosed order and the Montreal _congréganistes_ wished indeed
to live in community, but to circulate freely among the people--a new
idea then among religious congregations of women, very untried
and to which consequently the conservative bishop of Petrea was
not favourable. Yet, in 1689, on a visit of Laval to Montreal, the
foundress was authorized to spread her fellow workers over his diocese,
and it was about this time that they began to adopt a form of dress
based on an Acadian model.
The education of Indian children was greatly promoted under the new
policy of Louis XIV, and Laval, in the intention of "Gallicizing" the
natives in language, religion and customs, and eventually of allying
them in marriage with the colonists from France. This had been one
of Laval's objects in founding the "petit séminaire" of Quebec. He
persuaded the Jesuits and the Ursulines to start Indian schools for
Algonquin boys and Huron and Algonquin girls at Quebec. On September
27, 1670, Marie de l'Incarnation announced the marriage of some of her
girls to Frenchmen, with domestic success.
Laval also induced the Sulpicians at Montreal to undertake the work for
the children of those Algonquin and Huron parents who had been captured
by the Iroquois. The city archives contain the contracts of July 16,
1669, by which Jacques Akimega, thirteen years of age, and Louise
Resikouki, an Algonquin girl of twelve years, bind themselves to be
lodged and educated like French people till eighteen years of age, at
the seminary on a gift of 500 _livres_, provided by Dollier de Casson
on the stipulation that if the contract was broken the money shall go
for the education of other savage children.
Other Indian girls being forthcoming, Marguerite Bourgeoys undertook
their training at the congregation, and on November 14, 1672, we have
the contract of marriage between one of them, Marie Magdalene Catherine
Nachital, and Pierre Hogue, born at Belle-Fontaine, near Amiens.
One of the pupils of the congregation, called Gannensagouas and
baptized Marie Thérèse, after the queen of France, later in 1681 made
her religious profession as a nun in the congregation order, by that
time erected.
But the work of Gallicizing and civilizing these wayward,
liberty-loving, capricious children of the woods was an ungrateful
task. Most of those who entered the cloister of the Ursulines were like
birds of passage and they flew over the cloister walls to escape the
melancholy of their restrained lives, even when their parents did not
take them away. Nor did the Jesuits succeed any better. The Sulpicians
made a bold attempt by taking their Indian school into the country. M.
de Fénelon, one of their number, was charged to form an establishment
under the name of La Présentation at Gentilly, situated on the bank of
the St. Lawrence above Lachine, and in addition he secured a concession
on January 9, 1673, of the three islands opposite between Lachine and
Cap St. Gilles, which had been granted originally to Picoté de Bélestre
and were now exchanged for land on the island. These islands were then
named the Iles de Courcelles, after the governor general, and on one of
them at a place called the Baie d'Urfé, after the name of one of the
Sulpician missionaries, an Indian mission was established. We may here
mention the Jesuit missions, on the south shore facing Montreal of the
seigneuries of Madeleine la Prairie and St. Lambert, which commenced
with a few savages in 1669, the progenitor of the fifth site, the
Caughnawaga reservation, as known today.
NOTE
Caughnawaga, or Sault St. Louis, an Iroquois reservation, situated on
the south bank of the St. Lawrence, about ten miles above Montreal.
Area, 12,327 acres. Population in 1905, 2,100, all Catholics except
five or six families. The language is the Mohawk dialect. The sault (or
rapids) was an old seigniory, or concession, granted to the Jesuits
in 1680. To Père Ruffeix, S. J., is due the idea of thus grouping the
Iroquois neophytes on the banks of the St. Lawrence to guard them
from the persecution and temptation to which they were subject amid
the pagan influences of their own villages. In 1667 the missionary
prevailed upon seven communities to take up their residence at La
Prairie, opposite Montreal. Other Christian Iroquois from different
localities soon came to join the settlement, and in 1670 there were
twenty families. As the proximity of the whites was prejudicial to
the Indians, the mission was transferred, in 1676, several miles
higher up the river. This second site is memorable as the scene of the
saintly life and death of Catherine Tekakwitha (died 1680). In 1890
a granite monument was erected on the site, in memory of the humble
Iroquois virgin. In 1689, to escape the threatened attacks of their
pagan tribesmen, the Christian Iroquois sought refuge in Montreal,
where they remained eight or nine months. When the danger had passed
they founded another settlement a mile or two above the last. In 1696
another migration took place to a fourth site. Here it was that Père
Lafitau, S. J., discovered the famous "ginseng" plant, so valuable in
the eyes of the Chinese. The discovery created a great sensation, and
was for a time the source of lucrative commerce. The fourth site still
proving unsatisfactory, the settlement was moved to the present site
of Caughnawaga in 1716. From 1667 to 1783 the mission was conducted
by the Jesuits; from 1783 to 1903 by secular priests and oblates.
In 1903 it was again confided to the Jesuits. Among the more noted
missionaries were Fathers Bruyas, S. J.; Chauchetière, S. J.; Lafitau,
S. J.; Burtin, O. M. I.; Marcoux, who composed an Iroquois dictionary
and grammar; and Forbes, who drew up complete genealogical tables of
the settlement. The Indians are intelligent and industrious. Some are
engaged in farming, others take rafts down the Lachine rapids. The
industries are principally bead work and the making of lacrosse rackets
and snowshoes. Besides the presbytery, dating from 1716, and the church
built in 1719 and restored in 1845, there are in the village the ruins
of a French fort of 1754, two schools and a hospital. The government by
chiefs was, in 1889, replaced by that of a mayor and council. Note by
Joseph Gras, S. J.
N. B.--Joseph Gras, S. J., the writer of this monograph, is assistant
missionary at Caughnawaga.
[Illustration: LA TORTUE
The old flour mill about 1676. Walls of solid stone]
[Illustration: LA TORTUE
Another view of the same house showing stream running underneath]
[Illustration: THE SITES OF THE SOUTH SHORE INDIAN SETTLEMENT, SAULT
ST. LOUIS VILLAGE, IN ITS VARIOUS REMOVALS FROM LA PRAIRIE TO THE
PRESENT CAUGHNAWAGA]