Landing of the Loyalists, 1783 ([Page 260])
ROMANCE OF EMPIRE
CANADA
BY
BECKLES WILLSON
AUTHOR OF 'THE GREAT FUR COMPANY,' 'LEDGER AND SWORD,' ETC.
WITH TWELVE REPRODUCTIONS FROM ORIGINAL COLOURED DRAWINGS BY
HENRY SANDHAM
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.
35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C., & EDINBURGH
1907
TO MY SON
GORDON
PREFACE
In the following pages is told the history of my native land, as a sagamore of the olden time might tell the legends of the past to the young braves of his tribe gathered round the lodge fire. Though primarily intended for youth, yet there is scarce any one of intelligence and spirit who may not find some entertainment in hearing of the doings of the valiant heroes, the bloodthirsty villains, the virtuous ladies who played their part in the Canadian drama, and then passed for ever away.
Elsewhere I have given the story of Hudson's Bay,[[1]] and what is recounted here of fur-traders and fur-trading forts owes much, as the reader will expect, to my former book.
[[1]] The Great Fur Company 1899.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
[ CARTIER UNFURLS THE FLAG OF THE LILIES ]
CHAPTER II
[ POUTRAINCOURT GOES FORTH TO ACADIA ]
CHAPTER III
[ OF THE DOINGS OF GALLANT CHAMPLAIN ]
CHAPTER IV
[ ROMANCE OF THE TWO DE LA TOURS ]
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
[ STRANGE DOINGS AT PORT ROYAL ]
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
[ KING LOUIS BUILDS A MIGHTY FORT ]
CHAPTER XI
[ HOW LOUISBURG SURRENDERED AND WAS GIVEN BACK ]
CHAPTER XII
[ THE ACADIANS ARE BANISHED FROM ACADIA ]
CHAPTER XIII
[ TERRIBLE FIGHTS OVER THE BORDER ]
CHAPTER XIV
[ HOW THE GALLANT WOLFE TOOK QUEBEC ]
CHAPTER XV
[ LEVIS AND THE NOBLES RETIRE TO OLD FRANCE ]
CHAPTER XVI
[ THE COMING OF THE LOYALISTS ]
CHAPTER XVII
[ HOW CANADA'S ENEMY WAS FOILED ]
CHAPTER XVIII
[ TRAITORS, REDCOATS, AND REDSKINS ]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[ Landing of the Loyalists, 1783 ... Frontispiece ]
[ Jacques Cartier and the Redskins ]
[ "The Order of a Good Time," 1606 ]
[ De la Tour refuses to yield his Allegiance, 1630 ]
[ Maisonneuve covering the Retreat of his Followers, 1644 ]
[ Dollard strikes his Last Blow, 1658 ]
[ "My Guns will give my Answer," Frontenac, 1690 ]
[ Heroic Defence by Madeleine de Verchères and her Brothers, 1692 ]
[ Wolfe's Army scaling the Cliff at Quebec, 1759 ]
[ Laura Secord intercepted by the Mohawk Scouts ]
[ Meeting of the Nor'-Westers at Fort William, 1816 ]
[ The Defeat of Louis Riel, Fish Creek, 1885. ]
THE ROMANCE OF CANADA
CHAPTER I
CARTIER UNFURLS THE FLAG OF THE LILIES
Nearly four centuries ago, in the spring of the year, the banks of the river Thames from Windsor to Greenwich were lined with a multitude of gaily-dressed lieges. Artisans and their wives, tradesmen and apprentices, farmers in smock frocks, gentlemen in doublets and hose, and ladies in farthingales, all came out to snatch a peep of a brave spectacle. From lip to lip ran the news that at last the royal barge in its crimson and gold trappings had set out from Windsor. Bluff "King Hal," as the people affectionately termed their monarch, and his new queen, Anne Boleyn, were that day making their first voyage together down the Thames to the royal palace at Greenwich.
Glance at this spectacle but a moment, for, if an English reader and more familiar with English than with Canadian history, it will serve to fix the date of my story's opening firmly in your mind. The banks are re-echoing with loyal cheers, the State bargemen are plying their oars and the State trumpeters their trumpets, while poor Anne Boleyn, little dreaming of the fate awaiting her, smiles and nods merrily at the crowds who wave their silken kerchiefs in the sunshine. So this first water pageant of the season passes along.
Now, History borrowing something of Romance, has so ordered it that on this self-same day, the 20th of April 1534, when the English King was setting out on the river journey with his new queen, on the other side of the English Channel another and very different embarkation was taking place, and a very different voyage was begun.
The object of this enterprise was far indeed from pleasure, and its consequences were very important and far-reaching, not only to the King of France, but to King Henry the Eighth's successors, the English people and the British Empire of our own day. Different as it was, there was here, too, cheering and waving of caps and cries of "Vive le Roi!" as the soldiers, sailors, and townsfolk on the dock at St. Malo bade lion-hearted Jacques Cartier godspeed on his adventurous voyage to the New World.
At this time, you must bear in mind, more than forty years had elapsed since Christopher Columbus had returned to Spain with tidings of his glorious discovery on the other side of the Atlantic. When Jacques Cartier, son of a Breton mariner, was born, all Europe was still ringing with the news. As the child grew up he heard tales of how often famous mariners had in turn sailed boldly to the west and claimed for Spain, Portugal, and England the lands which might lead to India and serve as gateway to the Spice Islands of the East. Amongst these sailors were John Cabot and his son Sebastian, who, although themselves Venetians, sailed from the port of Bristol and flew the English flag. In 1498 the Cabots explored the whole coast of North America from Labrador to South Carolina, and were the first Europeans actually to land in the country we to-day know as Canada. After the Cabots, who claimed the whole northern lands for England, came, a quarter of a century later, a Florentine navigator, named Verrazano, who declared the entire region annexed to the French Crown. And now, because of Verrazano's claim, King Francis of France was sending Jacques Cartier forth from St. Malo with two little ships and 120 men to explore inland and set up the French flag and a French colony in a New France beyond the sea. So this Frenchman, valiant, lean, and rugged, with his little band of compatriots, sailed away on that April day while Bluff King Hal of England was merrymaking on the Thames, well content with his little isle of England, giving no thought to Empire or distant deeds of discovery and conquest amongst the savage nations of the earth.
Straight towards the setting sun steered Cartier and his men. As they were not buffeted greatly by the waves, in twenty days' time, on the 10th of May, they reached the straits which led to the gulf and river of St. Lawrence. How their hearts leapt when they sighted land! On their left they saw the great island of Newfoundland and on the right Labrador's bleak shores stretched before them. "Surely," cried Cartier, "this is Cain's portion of the earth!" But their spirits rose when they sailed into the Gulf and came to rich forests of pine, maple, and ash, with abundance of blossom and wild berries on every hand. They had been afraid that the interior was as desolate as their first glimpse of Labrador. The few Indians on the banks gazed upon them with a wondering but friendly eye. The explorers were unprepared, too, for the great heat which overtook them. By day the land was bathed in intense sunshine, and at night a gorgeous moon lit up the broad waters, while owls and bats wheeled in air heavily perfumed with wild shrubs and flowers. A bay in which he anchored Cartier called Baie des Chaleurs. Sailing on, he came to a promontory, which he christened Cape Gaspé, where he landed and set up a cross 30 feet high. On its front was a shield with the arms of France. As you travel through Eastern Canada to-day you will frequently come upon crosses by the wayside, where the country folk kneel and say their prayers. This at Gaspé was the first cross erected in New France. While the pious sailors were erecting it a number of red-men flocked near and surveyed the proceeding jealously, as if the white newcomers were about to charm away their land; but Cartier explained as best he could to their medicine-men and distributed amongst them some knives and trinkets, of which he had brought out hither a goodly store.
Having quieted their suspicions, Cartier lured two of the young red-men into his ship, wishing to show them, on his return, to the King. Cartier had meant to continue his voyage much farther westward, but adverse winds met him, wherefore, abandoning this resolution, and taking counsel with his officers and pilots, he decided to set sail for France. As truly as Columbus he had discovered a new world, and from the two natives whom he bore away Jacques Cartier had learnt of the existence of the great river St. Lawrence. So much interest was awakened in France by Cartier's narrative of his voyage, that there was no difficulty about procuring the money for another expedition. The French Court and people were filled with enthusiasm about Canada, and so they continued to be for more than two centuries. How their hope and confidence were rewarded we shall see in due time.
When Jacques Cartier again took his departure from St. Malo, in May 1535, he commanded three ships and 110 sailors. A number of nobles and gentlemen, moreover, belonging to some of the proudest families in France, went with him, eager for adventure. They thought, as marine adventurers often thought in those days, that this time surely they would find the gateway to the passage of Cathay and win wealth untold. But they were not so lucky as at first; the winds were so bad that seven weeks elapsed before Cartier reached the Straits of Belle Isle. From this point the squadron steered for the Gulf St. Lawrence, so named by Cartier in honour of the saint upon whose day it was discovered. Keeping on, as his Indian interpreters bade him do, he sailed up that stream which the Indians called "The Great River of Canada."
Can you wonder at Cartier and his attendant nobles feeling a thrill of excitement as the landscape no white man had ever seen before slowly unfolded itself to view? Opposite the great mouth of the mysterious Saguenay red-men in birch bark canoes came to greet them. Their two interpreters could exchange language with these, although their many months' residence in France had made them very different in appearance from their brother savages of Canada. They wore now slashed crimson doublets and brilliant striped hose, while the massive feathers in their heads caused the Canadian Indians to regard them as chiefs of great renown. Cartier led his ships on to what the natives called "The Kingdom of Canada," which stretched along the St. Lawrence as far as the Island of Montreal, where the King of Hochelaga held his sway. To the fertile Isle of Orleans, which Cartier reached on the 9th of September, he gave the name of Isle of Bacchus, on account of the abundant grape vines growing upon it. From here the explorer could see on the north bank of the great river a towering promontory lit up by the morning sun. This was Cape Diamond, at whose base there crouched the Indian village of Stadacona. Cartier anchored here his little fleet, and the chief of the neighbouring tribe, Donacona, came to greet him, with twelve canoes full of warriors. After a speech of welcome, the women of the tribe, or squaws, danced and sang without ceasing, standing in water up to their knees.
Jacques Cartier was delighted with the country he had discovered, and lost no time in deciding to proceed up the river as far as Hochelaga. Donacona and the other chiefs, on hearing this, did their utmost to dissuade him by inventing stories about the dangers of the river. Perceiving these made little impression on the sturdy sailor, three Indians were forthwith dressed as devils, "with faces painted as black as coal, with horns as long as the arm, and covered with the skins of black and white dogs." Cartier was told that these devils were the servants of the Indian god at Hochelaga, who warned the European strangers that "there was so much snow and ice that all would die." To their astonishment, however, Cartier only laughed at such tricks, and told them that "their god was a mere fool, and that Jesus would preserve them from all danger if they would believe in Him." Wishing also to impress upon them his own great power, he ordered several pieces of artillery to be discharged in the presence of the chief and his warriors; whereupon they became filled with astonishment and dread. Never before had they heard such terrible sounds. What were these strangers who could produce thunder at will? To reassure them, the "pale-face" chief distributed trinkets, small crosses, beads, pieces of glass, and other trifles amongst them and sailed on boldly up the river.
In a fortnight a town, consisting of about fifty large huts or cabins surrounded by wooden palisades, came into view; 1200 souls belonging to a tribe called the Algonquins dwelt here in Hochelaga. The whole population assembled on the banks and gave the visitors friendly welcome. All that night the savages remained on the shore, burning bonfires, dancing, and crying out "Aguaze!" which was their word for welcome and joy. The poor Indians took Cartier and his men for gods. He distributed gifts amongst them and professed to heal their ailments.
Jacques Cartier and the Red-skins
Near the town of Hochelaga was a mountain, to which the Indians conducted their visitors. From the summit this first band of Europeans in Canada gazed down at the wonderful panorama spread before their eyes, glistening rivers, green meadows, and forests of maple brilliant in autumn scarlets and yellows. Naming this lofty eminence Mount Royal, Jacques Cartier and his companions returned to Stadacona. Having decided to spend the winter in Canada, a fort was forthwith built on the shore, but before the little colony could be more than half prepared, a fierce Canadian blizzard was upon them. Never had they known such cold and such tempests. From their lack of fresh food, scurvy rioted amongst them, and out of 110 men 25 died. When the disease was at its height an Indian told them that they could be cured by the juice of a spruce tree. Out of their fort they ran with the axes, and so quickly did they drink the juice that in six days the whole of a great tree had been consumed.
Thus was the little colony made well again. Lest the Indians should know how weak they were during that terrible winter, they continued to dread; but no attack was made upon them, and in the spring Cartier made ready to return to France. This time Donacona and four other chiefs were seized by stratagem and taken on board ship. A cross 30 feet high, with the fleur-de-lys fastened to it, was set up on the shore, and in the middle of May the waters of the St. Lawrence began to bear them down to the Gulf and the open Atlantic. Exactly one month later Cartier was being greeted by the cheers of the people of his native St. Malo.
Alas! Donacona and the other Indian braves whom the French had borne away never returned to Stadacona and their forest haunts. Before Cartier was ready to make another voyage to Canada, five years later, all had pined away and died. It was then that the Sieur de Roberval, a nobleman of Picardy, was appointed by King Francis as lieutenant, with the high-sounding titles of Governor of Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and of Baccalaos, as well as Lord of Norembaga, which latter country existed only in imagination. Roberval meant to have gone out with Cartier, but was detained until the following year. On his third voyage Jacques Cartier visited Hochelaga and tried to pass up the river beyond the village, but the dangerous rapids of Lachine caused him to pause. When he returned to France a year later, he took with him some small transparent stones which he supposed were diamonds, but which were really only quartz crystals; he also carried away what he deemed to be gold ore, but which turned out to be merely mica. On the way back he met the Sieur de Roberval, who afterwards built a fort on the St. Lawrence and explored the surrounding country. But Roberval wrought nothing, and famine at length reduced the survivors to a state of abject dependence upon the natives. In vain Roberval entreated the King to come to his rescue with supplies of colonists, food, and ammunition. Instead of acceding to this petition, King Francis despatched orders for his lieutenant to return home to France. Roberval reluctantly obeyed, and thus this first attempt to establish a French colony on the banks of the St. Lawrence ended in failure.
Cartier was allowed by the King to bear always the title of "Captain." He undertook no more voyages into unknown lands, but died about 1577 in his own manor-house close to St. Malo. While he was thus spending his later years in an enforced retirement, eating his heart out for want of adventure, a daring Spaniard, De Soto, was facing dangers at the other and southern end of the Continent, close to the triple mouths of the Mississippi, which he had discovered.
King Francis of France, years before, had been stricken by death, and thereupon his country became plunged in unhappy civil war. Catholic and Huguenot dipped their blades in each other's blood; but in the midst of the long and deadly strife Canada was not wholly forgotten. Frenchmen still spoke with pride of the valiant Cartier and the flag of the lilies which he had unfurled in the Western world.
CHAPTER II
POUTRAINCOURT GOES FORTH TO ACADIA
It was a terrible era for France. Catholics and Huguenots made fierce war upon one another, and in the midst of all the fighting and murders and massacres such as that of St. Bartholomew, which you may read about in French history, conquest and discovery languished. Although the King, the Court, and the Cardinals had no time to spare to Canada, yet you must not suppose that for the next fifty years there was no connection at all between the New World and France. The red-men, paddling up and down the mighty St. Lawrence, very often met with pale-face mariners eager to exchange guns and hatchets and beads for the furs of the animals trapped in the northern wilderness. Many European ships—often over a hundred sail—came every year to Newfoundland to the cod-fisheries off that coast, and some of these sailed onward into the Gulf and on to Tadoussac, and even as far as Three Rivers. At these places fur-trading stations were set up, and hither repaired each season the hardy mariners, who were not slow to discover more profit in Europe out of sable and beaver skins than out of cod-fish. Those wild animals, whose fur was esteemed in France and other lands, were so plentiful in Canada that in course of time the peltry trade, as it was called, grew to be the principal business of the country. As each spring came round the savage tribes, whose hunting-grounds were far in the interior, would pack their furs in canoes and paddle hundreds of miles down the lakes and rivers to the post where the white trader was awaiting them. When the Indian had bartered his furs, back he paddled again to his own hunting-grounds, and the trader in turn sailed back to France, to return the next season.
Meanwhile, too, English sailors, lieges to the great Elizabeth, had been visiting the New World which Cabot had claimed for England. First there came Martin Frobisher in 1576, who, looking for a short route to India, set foot on the shores of Labrador. Again, on the other side of the continent, Sir Francis Drake, sailing round the world, sighted the snowy peaks on the borders of British Columbia, which afterwards became a part of the Canadian Dominion. Then came Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, with 260 men and several ships, to plant a colony in Newfoundland. Sir Humphrey's sovereign mistress, Elizabeth, had graciously granted him a charter of 600 miles in every direction from St. John's, whereby he became lord and master of what we know to-day as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and parts of Labrador and Quebec. It was on a serene August morning that the fleet reached harbour. Donning his most gorgeous doublet of lace and velvet, and surrounded by his stalwart retainers, Sir Humphrey landed at St. John's and took possession of Newfoundland in Elizabeth's name. When he had reconnoitred the coast, our courtier resolved to return with his people to England for provisions and reinforcements. Nowadays many of our bravest sailors would be afraid to trust themselves in the little ships that formed his fleet. They were very short, curved, and blunt, and, compared to our modern floating castles, were only giant cockle-shells. A few days out a hurricane arose, and in the midst of the raging seas Sir Humphrey's ship, the Squirrel, was doomed. But not even his dreadful fate, when it loomed around him, could fill the brave commander's soul with fear. With waves careering mast-high he sat placidly on deck with a Bible on his lap. "Cheer up, lads," cried he to his sailors, "we are as near heaven on sea as on land." And so the cruel billows rolled over the Squirrel, and it and the brave souls it bore were lost for ever. The expedition from which so much had been hoped in England was an utter failure. It was the sons of France who were destined to found and people Canada, and to perform such deeds of daring valour and endurance as are not to be surpassed in the history of our own island motherland. Englishmen, it is true, were to have all Canada at last, but nearly two hundred years were to roll by before their soldiers could wrest the mainland from their hereditary rivals.
Fifteen years had passed since Sir Humphrey Gilbert went down in the little Squirrel, when a French noble, the Marquis de la Roche, received a commission from King Henry the Fourth of France to colonise Canada. With the commission in his pocket the Marquis knew not which way to turn. It was not easy in those days to find Frenchmen ready to live in a country supposed to be ice and snow the whole year round. But "where there's a will there's a way," and the Marquis at last chose fifty sturdy convicts from the prisons and galleys, and, embarking with his retinue, set sail for the West. A long low sandbank called Sable Island guards the entrance to St. Lawrence Gulf, and here the Viceroy set forty of his convicts ashore while he explored the waters roundabout. At first the marooned convicts were delighted with their freedom. They roamed hither and thither, finding a lagoon of fresh water, frequented by wild cattle and coveys of wild ducks. Sweet berries flourished in abundance. During all that summer the convicts amused themselves, keeping a sharp look-out for the return of their lord and master, the Marquis, who had gone to find them a haven to settle in and build their dwellings. Day succeeded day, week followed week, but the Marquis never came back. A violent storm had arisen which drove his vessel eastward across the wide Atlantic to the very shores of France, where the hapless nobleman was seized by a powerful enemy and cast into prison. Can you not picture the rage and despair of the unhappy men on Sable Island when they realised their plight? Winter was fast approaching, and they had neither proper food, fuel, nor raiment. Quarrelling fiercely, they slew one another, while those who were left, huddled together in rude huts formed of wreckage, lived on raw flesh and dressed themselves in the hides of wild cattle. They gave themselves up for lost, but at length the Marquis de la Roche, far away in France, was able to tell the King of the predicament of the abandoned convicts. A ship was sent out to rescue them, and, like so many wild animals, with long matted hair and beards, they grovelled at the feet of their deliverers. After such hardships as they had undergone, King Henry was not the one to send them back to prison; he pardoned them instead, and all who had survived went back to their homes. De la Roche, broken in health and fortune, died soon after, so this project for starting a colony was, as you see, not a whit luckier than Cartier's or Roberval's or Sir Humphrey Gilbert's had been. Was the next attempt to reap greater success?
In that summer of 1599, when the convicts were still on Sable Island, to the north of them, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, fur-trading ships pressed forward under full canvas to the westward. These ships were owned by two men of King Henry's Huguenot subjects, named Pontgravé and Chauvin, who had formed themselves into a partnership to buy and sell furs. No trader could lift a finger in those days without a royal charter or patent, and these men were influential enough to get a charter from the King bestowing upon them the exclusive right to the fur trade of Canada. It was hardly likely they could really make good such a right, or that the other Frenchmen who had been buying furs from the Indians would thereafter stop buying them on account of it. But it was a safe precaution, and made their rivals' operations illegal. On their part Pontgravé and Chauvin promised the King that they would settle in Canada 500 colonists. In this they were promising more than they could perform; the most they actually did do was to induce sixteen men to remain all winter at Tadoussac, with insufficient food, clothing, and shelter. Alas! when the ships from France appeared in the St. Lawrence next year, the last year of the sixteenth century, they found most of the sixteen dead. Their surviving companions had married native wives and gone to live in the wigwams of the Indians. Once more you see this enterprise had not fared any better than those which had gone before, and, like the others, Chauvin died recognising bitterly that his scheme was a failure.
How was it with his partner, Pontgravé? Pontgravé was only a trader, but he was of dogged tenacity. He saw that if Canada could be colonised by his countrymen, there was a great fortune to be made out of the fur trade, and the way to do it, he reasoned, was to bring his chief rivals together to form a company, so that, instead of being enemies, all would work together to keep out the smaller traders or "pirates," and gradually establish proper trading-posts in Canada. An influential and wealthy old soldier named Aymar de Chastes, Governor of Rouen, interested himself in the scheme, and, being high in favour with the King of France, he procured a charter and set about seeing if he and his friends could not succeed where the others had been so signally defeated.
We have now reached the point in our story at which Samuel de Champlain, the real founder of New France, enters upon the scene. For Aymar de Chastes, casting about for an experienced and adventurous spirit to help in the new enterprise, bethought him of a valorous naval captain who had recently returned from Mexico and the Spanish main, ready for anything which would fill his purse or increase his renown. Captain de Champlain was a truly great man, no mere hot-blooded, roystering swashbuckler, as many adventurers were in those days, but romantic, pious, and humane. He was then about thirty-six years old. Offering with alacrity his sword and his skill on an exploring expedition up the St. Lawrence, Champlain went, in company with Pontgravé and another adventure-loving nobleman of the Court, Pierre du Gast, better known as the Sieur de Monts. When these pioneers reached Tadoussac they left their ships and ascended the river in boats to the farthest point yet reached, the Rapids, just above Hochelaga, now the city of Montreal. Just as Jacques Cartier had done nearly seventy years before, Champlain toiled up the forest-clad slopes of Mount Royal in order to obtain a good view of the surrounding country. He, too, was charmed with all that met his eye, and having drawn up a map and written down a narrative of all he had seen, Champlain and his companions re-embarked in the autumn, when the Canadian woods were brilliant in their browns and purples, yellow and crimson foliage, and sailed back across the salt seas to France. What was their mortification to discover that during their absence their patron, De Chastes, had died, and the company he had exerted himself to make prosperous was all but broken up. But Champlain was not to be beaten. He showed his narrative and his maps to the good and wise King Henry, who was perfectly satisfied of his good faith, and agreed to allow De Monts and his friends to continue the work of colonising Canada and organising the fur trade. De Monts, who was a Huguenot, was forthwith appointed the King's Viceroy in New France, on condition that he and the others bore all the cost of the expedition, and by and by, in the spring of 1604, four vessels once more sailed away. It was arranged that two of the ships should engage in the fur trade on the St. Lawrence, while the other two were to carry out the colonists, soldiers, work-people, priests, gentlemen, and, as always happened, as always must happen, a few rogues, to whichever spot De Monts selected for the purpose. The little fleet steered farther south than was done in the last voyage, and thus it came to pass that it finally reached that part of New France then called Acadia, and to-day marked Nova Scotia on the map. How it came by its name of Nova Scotia you shall hear later on. One day, just before De Monts and his heterogeneous crew landed, they anchored in a harbour where one of their sheep (moutons) jumped overboard. So De Monts, who was not without a vein of humour in these matters, christened the harbour Port Mouton. All were delighted with the beauty of the landscape, the grassy meadows, the silvery streams replete with fish, the wooded mountains.
Besides De Monts and Champlain there was a third leader of the expedition, a certain rich nobleman of Picardy named Baron de Poutraincourt. It was Poutraincourt who named the place where he wished to found a colony Port Royal. It was, wrote Champlain afterwards, "the most commodious, pleasant place that we had yet seen in this country." Unhappily the leaders could not instantly make up their minds, and the landing and settlement actually took place many leagues farther along on the banks of a river which now forms the boundary between the two great countries of America and Canada, which river was then, and ever since has been, called the Holy Cross (Ste. Croix) River. What a scene of joyous bustle ensued! Eighty people disembarked from the ships, and were soon hard at work building the little fort and houses of the first French settlement on the coast of the North-American Continent. While the colony was thus industriously making ready for the winter, Champlain, thinking he might be better employed, went off exploring the coast in his ship, sailing up and down what was destined to become long before he died the territory of New England.
Great trials were in store for the little colony. Very quickly the settlers found that Holy Cross River was a very uncomfortable place, lacking sufficient shelter, with little or no fuel handy. What was far worse than the winter's cold, scurvy broke out amongst them, and by the time the leaves were putting forth their first blossoms thirty-six persons had perished of this disease. Poutraincourt's choice, Port Royal, after all, was best, and there in late spring they began to construct a town near what is now called Annapolis. De Monts and Poutraincourt returned in the autumn to France, and after much labour and trouble managed to induce a large number of mechanics and workers to come out to Acadia. It must be confessed that there were on board Poutraincourt's ship, the Jonas, which sailed from Rochelle in May 1600, some very reckless, unruly characters. But their leader felt convinced that they would make good colonists, if they were only shown the way. Amongst those to help him he had brought a very clever man, Lescarbot, a lawyer and poet, full of enthusiasm for the new project.
In the meantime what of the founders and original settlers of Port Royal? Thinking they had been deserted by their leaders, and lacking provisions and clothing, they became almost as discouraged as the poor convicts had been on Sable Island.
As the summer season wore on they constructed two little craft—the very first ships ever built in Canada—and straightway sailed for the Newfoundland fishery banks to seek some of their countrymen, leaving two only of their number and a wise old Indian chief, named Meinbertou, to greet the newcomers on board the Jonas. A peal of a cannon from the little fort testified to the joy of its inmates that the long-expected succour was at last at hand. A party was sent to overtake the little Port Royal ship to bring back the colonists. No sooner were they landed than Poutraincourt broached a hogshead of wine, and Port Royal became a scene of mirth and festivity. When Champlain and Poutraincourt went off to make further exploration, Lescarbot was left in charge of the colony. He set briskly to work to show the people how they should become prosperous. He ordered crops of wheat, rye, and barley to be sown in the rich meadows and gardens to be planted. Some he cheered, others he shamed into industry, never sparing himself, so that by and by it was not wonderful that everybody loved the merry, witty, bustling Lescarbot. Not a day passed but he set going some new and useful work. Until now the people had ground their corn with hand-mills, as their fathers and grandfathers had done for hundreds of years; Lescarbot showed them how to make a water-mill. He also taught them how to make fire-bricks and a furnace, and how to turn the sap of the trees into tar and turpentine. No wonder the Indians, astonished to see so many novel industries growing up before their eyes, cried out, "How many things these Normans know!" When the explorers returned to Port Royal, rather dispirited, Lescarbot arranged a masquerade to welcome them back, and all the ensuing winter, which was extremely mild, was given up to content and good cheer. Then it was that Champlain started his famous "Order of a Good Time," of which many stories have come down to us. The members of this order were the fifteen leading men of Port Royal. They met in Poutraincourt's great hall, where the great log fire roared merrily. For a single day each of the members was saluted by the rest as Grand Master and wore round his neck the splendid collar of office, while he busied himself with the duty of providing dinner and entertainment. One and all declared the fish and game were better than in Paris, and plenty of wine there was to toast the King and one another in turn. At the right hand of the Grand Master sat the guest of honour, the wrinkled sagamore, Membertou, nearly one hundred years old, his eyes gleaming with amusement as toast, song, and tale followed one another. On the floor squatted other Indians who joined in the gay revels. As a final item on the programme, the pipe of peace, with its huge lobster-like bowl, went round, and all smoked it in turn until the tobacco in its fiery oven was exhausted. Then, and not till then, the long winter evening was over.
'The Order of a Good Time' 1606
What jolly times those were! If only they could have lasted! Port Royal might have become a great city and Acadia a populous province. But bad tidings for Port Royal came from France. The next ship that sailed into the harbour brought word that De Monts' charter had been revoked by the King, and his friends would support his scheme with no more money. So there appeared nothing to do but to bid good-bye to Port Royal and their Indian friends, who watched them depart with sadness, promising to look after the fort and its belongings until the white men should return from over the wide sea.
Champlain had already in his heart chosen another field—the lands far inland on the St. Lawrence; but as for Poutraincourt, he swore to deal a blow at his enemies in France and come back to take deep root in the fertile Acadian soil. While, therefore, Champlain was with his followers founding Quebec, and De Monts, discouraged, had lost all interest in Acadia, Poutraincourt busied himself to such purpose that three years later (1610), in spite of all the baffling obstacles he met with, he set out again for his promised land with a fresh shipload of settlers.
At this time King Henry the Fourth was surrounded by members of the Society of Jesus (called Jesuits), who had made themselves already very powerful in the politics of Europe. The King ordered Poutraincourt to take out a Jesuit priest to Acadia, but Poutraincourt, distrusting the Jesuits, evaded the priest who had been chosen to accompany him at Bordeaux, and took out one of his own choosing instead, Father La Flèche. What was their joy when they landed in midsummer to find everything at Port Royal just as they had left it! One may be sure the Indians gave their pale-face friends a cordial greeting. Old Membertou, still alive, embraced Poutraincourt and declared that now he was ready to be baptized a Christian. The christening duly took place, and the ancient sagamore was renamed Henri, after the King, and his chief squaw was christened Marie, after the Queen. There were numerous other Indian converts, and great celebrations took place, for the colonists were religious enthusiasts and believed such doings would give great satisfaction to the King.
But, alas, the King was never to hear of it! Even while all this was happening, while the future of the colony promised so well, a terrible blow had fallen upon it and the realm of France. The brave and humane Henry the Fourth had been stabbed to death by the dagger of the assassin Ravaillac. The new King, Louis the Thirteenth, being only a little boy, all the power and influence of the Court fell into the hands of the Queen Dowager, Marie de Medici, a false and cruel woman. Her closest friends and advisers were the Jesuit priests. Now these Jesuits, although professing Christianity and brotherly love, held in horror anybody who did not think exactly as they did. They wanted especially, by whatever means, to make converts of the Canadian savages. They wanted too, being very ambitious, to get the direction of the affairs of the New World into their own hands.
Yet ignorant of the royal tragedy, Poutraincourt sent his son, Biencourt, a fine youth of eighteen, back in the ship to France, to report to his Majesty the success at Port Royal in converting the natives. Whereupon the Jesuits decided that the time had come to supplant Poutraincourt. They announced that they would send back two of their priests with young Biencourt. A number of rich and pious Catholic ladies of the Court, headed by Madame de Guercheville, interested themselves so far in the work as to buy up all the rights of Poutraincourt's friends and partners, including De Monts, as proprietors of Acadia. Henceforward Poutraincourt was to be under the dependence of the Jesuits. That was the unwelcome news his son sailed back to tell him. The two priests whom he was obliged to receive—Biard and Ennemond Massé—were the very first members of their famous order to engage in the work of converting the North-American Indians. You will see as our story progresses what a terrible and dangerous task this was, and how it demanded men of boundless zeal and courage to undertake it.
Under the circumstance, quarrels were to be expected; and quarrels enough came. The Jesuits at Court, finding Poutraincourt insubordinate, seized the trading vessels destined for Port Royal on one pretext or another, and brought about so many imprisonments and lawsuits, that at last Poutraincourt was ruined. No longer could he send out supplies of provisions, and his people at Port Royal had to subsist through a whole winter upon acorns, beech-nuts, and wild roots. When Madame de Guercheville and her Jesuit friends had thus crippled poor Poutraincourt, she withdrew the priests to other localities named in her charter, over which she really supposed she had control. As for the sturdy old sagamore, Membertou or Chief Henri, he soon breathed his last. On his deathbed he prayed to be buried with his forefathers, but of course the priests overcame his scruples, and his wrinkled body was laid in the little cemetery at Port Royal.
You may be interested to know what were the French Jesuit rights in North-America. The charter the young king, or rather the Queen Dowager, gave to Madame de Guercheville actually included nearly all the territory from the St. Lawrence River to Florida. Was there no one at hand to remind the crafty Marie that the continent she thus complacently handed over was not hers or her son's to bestow; that the English had a far better right than the French to its possession; that in that very year an English colony had been settled in Virginia, chartered by King James the First of England? Curious to relate, the land which the English king granted was as wide in extent, in truth it was almost the very same region as that claimed by the French. So here we have the cause and beginning of a quarrel which occasioned seas of bloodshed, and was to last, very nearly without interruption, for just a century and a half, between the French and the English colonists in North-America.
In the spring of 1613 the Jesuits despatched a new expedition under a courtier named La Saussaye, who, having landed at Port Royal to take on board the two priests there, sailed on and founded a new colony at Mount Desert, now in the American State of Maine. They had just commenced to erect buildings and put up the walls of a fort, when, greatly to their surprise, a strange war-ship appeared in the little harbour. It drew nearer, and they saw, with misgivings, the blood-red cross of St. George floating from the mast-head. The captain of the war-ship turned out to be Samuel Argall, a young and daring English mariner, who had joined his fortunes to those of Virginia. While he was cruising with sixty men off the coast of Maine on the lookout for codfish, some friendly Indians boarded the ship and told him that French intruders were hard by, building a fort. By no means a kind, indulgent young man was Argall, and his eyes kindled angrily.
"Oho!" he exclaimed, with an oath, "how dare these rascals venture into King James, my master's territory!" Whereupon, stimulated by hopes of plunder, he unmuzzled his fourteen cannon and assaulted and sacked the yet defenceless French settlement, killing several, including one of the priests, and making prisoners of the rest. This done, he destroyed every trace of the colony. Fifteen Frenchmen, including La Saussaye, he turned adrift in an open boat, while the others he took back with him to Virginia. Those whom Argall abandoned to their fate would surely have perished had it not been for friendly Indians, who gave them food and helped them on their way north. There they eventually met a trading vessel and were carried back to France. As to the prisoners, on landing at Jamestown they were treated as pirates by the English settlers there. Although afterwards released, the Virginian governor, Sir Thomas Dale, was so incensed at hearing from one of them about Port Royal, that he bade Argall return, with three armed ships, and sweep every Frenchman out of Acadia. Argall carried out his instructions only too well; he set fire to the fort and settlement of Port Royal, and in a few hours the entire place, the gallant Poutraincourt's hope and pride, was a mass of smoking ruins. Luckily for themselves, most of the French happened to be away in the forest at the time, and so saved their lives. Some took permanent refuge with the Indians, and amongst these was young Biencourt. Others found their way to the colony which, as we shall now narrate, Champlain had by this time formed far away at Quebec. But it was all over with Port Royal, at least for the present. With a heavy heart Poutraincourt sailed away to France, and soon afterwards in battle laid down his life for his sovereign.
So ends the first chapter in the story of that part of Canada then called Acadia. We will return to it again, for the adventurous young Biencourt is still there roaming in the woods with a handful of faithful followers, ready to found Port Royal anew. In the meantime what was happening to Champlain, who a few years before had sailed a thousand miles up the mighty St. Lawrence to found a colony? It is high time that we should now turn to his adventures.
CHAPTER III
OF THE DOINGS OF GALLANT CHAMPLAIN
When the Sieur de Monts abandoned Acadia, thinking, as indeed it seemed, an evil spell had been cast upon it, he turned his attention to Quebec and the river St. Lawrence. Here, far inland, was a fair region which promised wealth and glory, and over this region he appointed Champlain his lieutenant. Of the two ships which De Monts fitted out one was for the fur trade, of which King Henry, ere his heart was pierced by the dagger of Ravaillac, gave him a monopoly for one year; the other was to carry colonists to found a new French settlement. You have seen how one after another the French colonies had, from this cause or that, come to destruction; but with such a wise and strong head as Samuel de Champlain, one now was expected to bear better and more lasting fruit. Truly, whatever their faults, the founders of New France were very determined men, arising fresh after each disaster, resolved to people with their countrymen the great Western wilderness. When Champlain's ships, once safely through the Straits of Belle Isle, reached Tadoussac, Champlain left there his associate Pontgravé to barter for furs with the Indians. He himself continued his voyage up the river until he came to the spot where Jacques Cartier had passed the winter of 1535, and with his men consumed a whole spruce-tree in order to drive away the scurvy.
It was at Quebec (a word meaning in the Indian language a strait) that on the third day of July 1607 Champlain gave orders to disembark. In the shadow of the towering rock of Cape Diamond, the first thing to be done was to clear a site and erect cabins for shelter. As his men toiled on unceasingly the natives gathered round in wonder and admiration. They were unaccustomed to much manual work themselves, their squaws doing most of the labour. They saw in a few short weeks the bastions of a fort and cannon set up. Scarcely had the workmen completed their task and got all snug and tidy for the winter than a plot was formed amongst some of Champlain's followers to kill him. The leader of the plot was a Norman locksmith, Jean Duval, a brave and violent fellow who had served with Champlain in Acadia, and was impatient under any kind of authority. According to the plan the conspirators drew up, their leader was to be shot, the stores pillaged, and then they were all to fly to Spain with the booty. Lucky it was for the great and good pioneer that one of the plotters, filled with remorse, went to Champlain a few days before the mutiny was to be carried out and confessed all. Champlain with great promptitude seized Duval and hanged him to the nearest tree, but the rest he only sent back to France, where the good King, at his request, pardoned them. Meanwhile Pontgravé had collected and sailed away with his cargo of furs. Spring came; the snows melted and were replaced by green meadows and blossoming trees; everywhere the birds sang. Champlain, without waiting for Pontgravé's return, set off up the river and soon met again friendly Indian chiefs of the Algonquin and Huron tribes, who told him terrible tales of their sufferings at the hands of their enemies the Iroquois or the Five Nations. In their despair these chiefs sought out the Man-with-the-Iron-Breast, as they called Champlain, on account of the steel breast-plate he wore, and asked his help against the blood-thirsty Iroquois. These men of the Five Nations, Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, lived in the forests south of Lake Ontario, and were perhaps at once the most intelligent and the most cruel of all the Indians on the continent. It was the Iroquois who had destroyed the old Huron towns of Stadacona and Hochelaga which Cartier had seen and described, and as they bore the Hurons and Algonquins an implacable enmity, it was natural that they would extend this enmity to the pale-faces who had now come to dwell in the Huron country. They might, it is true, have been propitiated; but Champlain did not stop to consider any questions of policy: he favoured at once the idea of alliance with the surrounding red-men, an alliance which was to cost him and his new colony a bloody and fearful price. Champlain, then, made three warlike expeditions into the country of the Iroquois during the next six years. In the first he paddled in canoes up the Richelieu River and came to a beautiful lake, to which he gave his own name ("Lake Champlain"). Meeting a party of Iroquois of the Mohawk nation or tribe, he fell upon them suddenly. The Mohawks fancied at first that they had only to do with Algonquins, and felt confident of victory, until the Frenchmen's muskets rang out; then not fast enough could they flee in panic from the magic bullets, leaving many slain, including their bravest chiefs. Champlain had only 60 Frenchmen and Indians, while the Mohawks numbered 200; but his victory was complete; not one of his force was killed, and the town of the enemy was wiped from the face of the earth. Notwithstanding Champlain's protests, the Algonquins insisted on torturing one of their Iroquois captives to death by every device of savage cruelty. Mercy was not in their code; they neither gave it, nor, when captured, expected it.
During the next three years Champlain was kept very busy in explorations, in attacking the Iroquois, and in protecting his colony. During this time he returned to France, and was favourably received at Fontainebleau by King Henry, who listened with interest to Champlain's tale of his adventures in "New France." But in spite of royal favour, Champlain had so many rivals and enemies that, like Poutraincourt in Acadia, he found it impossible to get the charter renewed, and so his friend and patron, De Monts, was obliged to try and get along without it. Equipping two more ships, he sent Champlain back with them to Canada.
The great ambition of Champlain's soul was to find a passage through the continent to China. At last it seemed to him that the friendliness of the Hurons and Algonquins would furnish him with the means of attaining this desire. He had just made arrangements with the chiefs, when the news came to him of King Henry's assassination, and he felt it was necessary for him to return without delay again to France. De Monts, his patron, still enjoyed the title of Lieutenant-General of New France, but his resources and influence had been sadly crippled by the King's death, and the cost of keeping up Quebec, Tadoussac, and Acadia was very great. He had no longer the monopoly, that is to say, the sole right of buying and selling Canadian furs—it was a right thrown open to other traders; and when Champlain on his next voyage back from France once more sailed up the St. Lawrence, he found many strange fur-traders trafficking with the savages.
The leader had now more to do and think about than ever; he wished, moreover, to prepare a fitting home for a fair and youthful partner who was ever in his thoughts. During his absence in Paris he had espoused a charming Huguenot girl named Helen Bouillé, daughter of the murdered King's private secretary. Her name survives to-day in "Helen's Island" in the river opposite Montreal. So many traders did Champlain find in the vicinity of this island, that he built a fort there and resolved to turn the site of Hochelaga into a trading station. Two uneventful years passed by, and then, in the very year Argall was destroying hapless Port Royal (1613), Champlain's imagination was kindled by the astonishing tale of a certain Nicholas Vignau. This adventurer had passed a winter amongst the red-men of the upper Ottawa River. Vignau told his chief that, in company with some Algonquins, he had once arrived at a remote sea-shore, where his eyes had beheld the fragments of a wrecked English ship. Champlain's heart bounded with joy; he thought his hopes were now about to be realised. Taking Vignau, two white followers, and an Indian guide, the explorer passed the dangerous rapids of the Ottawa and made the acquaintance, one after another, of its lakes, cataracts, and islands. He pressed on, passed the Rideau (Curtain) Falls, so named because of the resemblance of this sheet of water to a great white curtain. He and his awe-struck companions stared at the raging, foaming cauldron of the Chaudière, close to where the city of Ottawa, capital of the Canadian Dominion, now stands, while the Indians cast into the waters gifts of tobacco and other things to propitiate the angry god of the waters. At last the party reached Allumette Island. Here dwelt a friendly Algonquin chief named Tessouat, who received the Frenchmen hospitably and invited them to a banquet. Tessouat knew Vignau; he knew also how he had passed his time amongst the men of his tribe. So when Champlain related at the feast what Vignau had told him of his journey to the sea-shore, Tessouat bluntly told his guest that Vignau, though a pale-face, was a liar, and that he had never been on such a journey. For a while the shock of this discovery overwhelmed Champlain with rage and sorrow. Tessouat was so indignant at the way the French leader had been deceived, that he wanted Vignau to be put to death, but Champlain was of too noble and forgiving a nature for that, and contented himself with rebuking the offender. At the same time, although Vignau confessed his falsehood, we are able to see to-day a certain foundation for his story which was obscured from Canada's founder. We happen to know now what Champlain centuries ago did not dream of: that only three hundred miles separate Allumette Island from the southern end of the great inland sea, Hudson's Bay. This body of water two or three brief seasons before had been discovered by an Englishman, who, like Champlain, had tried to find a short route to China and the East Indies.
In 1610 Henry Hudson, in the pay of the Dutch, sailed up the river which now bears his name, and paved the way for the Dutch colony, afterwards called the New Netherlands. A year later, in the service of England, he sailed northwards in the Half Moon, passed through the narrow Hudson's Straits, and so on into the ice-bound inland sea. There his terrified crew mutinied, turning their brave commander adrift in an open boat, together with his son and two of his faithful companions. Thus perished Henry Hudson, who was never heard of again. As for the craven mutineers, when they stole back guiltily to England, they were seized and made to pay the penalty of their crime. Three ships were sent out to search for Hudson, but, alas, it was then too late.
Of this inland sea Vignau may have heard stories from the Indians. It may be that those who told him had really seen the wreck of poor Henry Hudson's boat on the shores, but this we shall never really know until the great Day of Judgment comes, when the sea gives up its dead and all secrets of the deep are known.
In the discovery of Lake Ontario, two years later, Champlain found some compensation for his disappointment. He was the first European to visit the "freshwater sea," as he called it. He penned a description of all he had seen, and carried it to France, where it was eagerly read. One of Champlain's mottoes was that "the salvation of a single soul was worth more than the conquest of an Empire." Up to now Quebec had been wholly without priests, but when Champlain returned to the colony he brought out four priests of the Order of the Recollets, pious men who had taken vows of poverty and self-denial. These set about converting the savages to Christianity. One of them, Joseph Le Caron, went forward to the distant Huron country, which had not yet been visited by any European. Champlain himself accompanied the priest from Quebec. On reaching the rapids just above Montreal, the Governor held a conference with the Hurons, who had come from their homes in the West to meet him and induce him to fulfil his pledge to attack the Iroquois. This expedition was one of the most fateful episodes in Champlain's life. He knew nothing about Iroquois history or character. If he had had any suspicion of what his present action was to cost his countrymen in Canada, he would rather have died than provoke the enmity of so terrible a foe. Champlain chose this time to take a most round-about route, measuring full 300 leagues, he and his men often carrying on their backs the canoes and baggage, living on coarse food, and suffering many hardships. Even the priest was obliged to take his share of the hardest work, paddling his oar until the sweat mantled his brow, staggering through the forest with a load such as a mule might carry, and with it all obliged, with the whole party, to hasten at full speed for fear of falling behind into the hands of Iroquois. In those days when there were no roads and hardly even any long paths, travellers made their way by following the rivers and lakes in canoes. When they came to the end of one waterway and wished to reach the beginning of another, they followed what were called the portages or carrying-places, paths in the woods, sometimes only a few yards long and sometimes as long as nine or ten miles.
For many weeks did Champlain sojourn in the Huron country, and then, in early autumn, he departed from their chief town, Carhagonha, on Lake Simcoe, with several hundred red warriors, to inflict chastisement on the painted warriors of the Five Nations.
Crossing Lake Simcoe, Champlain and his followers travelled slowly and with much hardship through the country north of Lake Ontario, until by this very roundabout route the whole party came in a month's time to the fort of the Onondagas, which they intended to attack. As they drew near, the French and Indians fell in with outlying bands of this tribe, capturing many prisoners. Champlain strove unceasingly to induce his Huron allies to show mercy to the captives, but the Indian warrior always deemed mercy a pitiful sign of weakness. He wanted not only to cut off the hands and feet of the male prisoners, gouge out their eyes and burn them alive, but to torture the women and children as well. Only was it when Champlain threatened to withdraw his French soldiers altogether that the Huron chiefs consented to confine their barbarities to the men alone. When the allies got closer to the Onondaga fort they found it was much more strongly defended than they had supposed. It consisted of four rows of strong stakes, and a thick wall made of heavy branches of trees. On the top of this wall were gutters of wood to conduct water to any part which the enemy should set on fire. The water was drawn from a small pond inside the fortification, where all the Onondagas were assembled in little houses, having a large store of bows and arrows, stones and hatchets. Provisions, too, were plentiful, for the Indian harvest was just over. Champlain saw at once that to take such a fort was not an easy task, and advised his Indian allies to be prudent. But the young Hurons were foolhardy and rushed at the four-fold palisade with ear-splitting war-whoops, flourishing their tomahawks. The consequence was as Champlain foresaw: they were shot down or killed by a shower of stones by the enemy. After a time, when they had lost heavily, the Hurons were ready to listen to reason. A plan was devised. In the night-time Champlain had a high wooden platform built; upon it he placed several of his musketeers so that they could fire into the fort, while 300 Hurons were stationed close by to set fire to the palisade. These measures might have succeeded, but the wind unluckily was in the wrong direction and blew the flames of the Huron torches away from the fort. Champlain himself, while trying to make the unruly Hurons obey his orders, was twice wounded, and many of his followers were killed. Then it was that the foolish Huron chiefs became disheartened. They lost faith in the "Man -with -the -Iron -Breast" and decided to give up the attempt and retreat homewards before the winter set in. In vain Champlain besought them; they were obdurate. As it was, when they got to the place, eighty miles away, where their canoes had been left, high winds and snowstorms had begun, and their wounded, including Champlain, suffered much. Solemnly had they promised the French leader that after the attack on the Iroquois they would carry him down the St. Lawrence to Hochelaga, but now they became traitors to their word and refused him even two guides for such a journey. There was nothing else to do: Champlain was obliged to go back with them and spend the whole of the succeeding winter in their lodges. On the way they made many halts to allow the Hurons time to procure stores of fish and game, which were very plentiful in the region north of Lake Ontario. Not until two days before Christmas was the journey ended.
Champlain was not idle that winter, for when his wounds had healed he moved amongst the tribes, making himself acquainted with the country and the language. The woods were filled with June flowers ere he returned to Quebec, where he had been mourned as one dead. You can imagine how rejoiced were the band of martial pioneers there to see their leader once more alive and well. They cheered and sang songs and waved flags in his honour, and even discharged the great cannon, whose echoes startled the Indians prowling afar on the green banks of the St. Lawrence.
Verily the part which Samuel de Champlain and his little band of Frenchmen had played in giving armed assistance to the Hurons and Algonquins was to have terrible results. It threw the Iroquois into friendship with the Dutch and other enemies of the French, who supplied them with firearms. It caused them to bear a hate to Champlain and all his countrymen almost as great as the hate they bore to the dusky Hurons.
All this time Champlain, great as was his ambition, can only be regarded as the agent or manager of a company of men in France whose first wish was to make money out of the fur trade. These men in their hearts had very little sympathy for Champlain's schemes of colonisation and conversion of the savages, and, becoming dissatisfied with the profits Champlain was making for them, they tried repeatedly to procure his recall. In order to baffle the intrigues against him and explain to the King himself the importance of Canada to the kingdom of France, Champlain sailed away yet again for home, leaving sixty men, the entire French population of Canada, behind him in Quebec. By his zeal and eloquence he was able to obtain some fresh supplies for his colony, and also some more soldiers and workers. Amongst these was an apothecary named Louis Hébert, who is often spoken of as the first emigrant to Canada, because he took with him his wife and two children, intending to settle as a farmer on the land. Direct descendants of Hébert are alive in Canada to this day. Two years later Champlain managed to bring a body of eighty colonists out to New France, and the next year (1620) his own wife, Helen de Champlain, accompanied him for the first time to the colony. This time he had triumphed over those who wished to depose him, and was now confirmed in his title of Viceroy of New France, and all seemed in the general rejoicings on his return to promise well for his enterprise. Not only the French in Quebec, but the Indians were delighted at the beauty and manners of the Governor's wife, then only twenty-two years of age. They tell of her that she wore always a small mirror suspended from her neck, according to the custom of the ladies in those days. When the red-men who drew near her looked in the little mirror they saw each, to his astonishment, his own face reflected there, and went about telling one another that the beautiful wife of the white chief cherished an image of each in her heart.
Once in Quebec, Champlain lost no time in laying the foundation of a Government House, since known as the Château of St. Louis, reared on the heights of the rock. This building came to be the residence of every succeeding Governor of Canada for two hundred years, until one night it was wholly destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. In the year it was begun, too, the Recollet priests began to build their convent, and other large buildings arose.
So now you see quite a flourishing little town was fast growing up in the midst of the Canadian wilderness. But with the advancement of his schemes came many new troubles for the lion-hearted Champlain. In the first place, the Indians had acquired a passion for strong drink—"fire-water" they called it,—and although people of their fierce, reckless disposition should never have been allowed to touch a drop, yet the fur-traders were so callous and greedy as to be always ready to supply them with gallons and hogsheads of the fatal brandy. The consequences were what might have been expected, and Champlain was very angry as he looked upon the scenes of riot and bloodshed. But his efforts to keep liquor from the Indians only made the traders hate him more bitterly. To this source of anxiety was added another: the bloodthirsty feud between the Iroquois and the Algonquins and Hurons, which occasioned constant bloody massacres and made the life of the French colonists at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Tadoussac one of never-ending danger. On a certain night a band crept down the St. Lawrence silently to Quebec, having sworn an oath to wipe the city of the pale-faces from the face of the earth. But the stone buildings, the cannon and muskets in the hands of the determined Frenchmen daunted them and they beat a retreat. Not to be wholly balked of blood, they fell upon the Algonquins, who were bringing furs to Quebec, slaughtering them without mercy. Then there were plots against Quebec, even amongst the tribes which Champlain considered friendly, for savages were, and ever will be, fickle, and often the most trifling incident will tempt them to treachery.
Meantime Champlain's friends in France, the associated merchants, had lost their fur-trading monopoly because they had failed to fulfil their pledges. In consequence of this, the monopoly was handed over by the King to two Huguenot gentlemen, William and Emery de Caen, an uncle and nephew. The uncle was a merchant and the nephew was a sea captain, and, although Protestants themselves, they were charged not to settle any but Catholics in the colony. This arrangement turned out a very bad one. The Huguenots and Catholics quarrelled in New France, as they had been quarrelling in Old France, and finally, so violent grew the disputes, that the King joined the two associations into one under the title of "the Company of Montmorency," with Champlain still as Viceroy. Matters thereafter went so much more smoothly that Champlain decided to take the opportunity of paying another visit to his native country. With him he took his beautiful young wife, Helen de Champlain, who had had nearly five years amongst the Indians and the rough fur-traders, and had endured many hardships and faced many dangers. You must bear in mind that when she sailed away she left behind only fifty of her fellow-countrymen in Quebec. This is a very small number, but they were for the most part very much in earnest, very hardy and rugged, and inspired by Champlain in a strong belief in the future of the country. Before we have finished our history you will see whether that belief was justified or not.
CHAPTER IV
ROMANCE OF THE TWO DE LA TOURS
Two years did the doughty hero Champlain linger in Old France. To everybody he met, king, courtier, priest, and peasant, he had but one subject: Canada, never ceasing all this while to urge the needs of the colony across the sea and to further its interests by tongue and pen. It needed all his influence. The Duke of Montmorency, becoming disgusted by the perpetual squabbles of the merchants, sold his rights as patron of Canada to the Duke de Ventadour, a religious enthusiast, whose passion was not trade nor settlement, but saving human souls. Although bred a soldier, he had actually entered a monkish order, vowing to spend the rest of his days in religious exercises, and it was this nobleman who now sent out to Quebec the first little body of Jesuit priests, five in all, that arrived in that colony. Now these Jesuits were the very last people either Champlain or the Huguenots wanted in Canada. They belonged to a very powerful, crafty order. They could sway both king, queen, and minister to their wishes. De Caen and the Huguenot traders received the five priests when they arrived at Quebec as coldly as Poutraincourt had done in Acadia, but the Recollets generously gave them shelter in their convent until they could build one for themselves. This they soon did on the very spot where, ninety years before, Jacques Cartier had laid out his little fort. These five priests were destined to have some thrilling experiences and to meet with terrible ends, all of which you shall hear in due time.
Meanwhile Champlain at home in France saw with eagle eye that Huguenot and Catholic could never live together in peace across the wide waste of waters. They were always quarrelling. The colony did not grow as it should, in spite of the fact that in a single year 22,000 beaver skins were sent by the De Caens to France. Nor was religion attended to as devoutly as he thought the Huguenots ought to attend to it. But perhaps this was because the Huguenots did not acknowledge the authority of the Pope. So he wrote strongly to De Caen about it, and the letter fell into the hands of the most powerful, most crafty man of that era, far more powerful than King Louis the Thirteenth himself. Cardinal Richelieu was the King's Prime Minister. Having at length accomplished great things for his master in France, Richelieu now turned his attention to Canada. With a stroke of the pen he abolished the monopoly of the De Caens and founded the "Company of the Hundred Associates," with himself at the head. Thence-forward no Huguenot was to be permitted to enter the colony under any conditions. The new Company was given a perpetual monopoly of the fur trade and control of other commerce, besides being made lord of an enormous territory extending from the Arctic Ocean to Florida. Moreover, the Company was bound to send out at once a number of labourers and mechanics and 4000 other colonists. Champlain was made one of the Associates, and continued in his command of Quebec. Canada was now to be governed directly by the King, just as if it were one of the provinces of Old France, and nobles were to be created who would take their titles from their estates.
All then seemed bright and rosy for the colony on the St. Lawrence. But the best-laid plans, you know, "gang aft agley"; Richelieu, with all his strength and cunning, had no power over English ships, and English sailors would only laugh at his pretensions. At the very moment when Champlain saw all his hopes about to be realised, the most cruel blow that had yet fallen fell upon him. War had been declared between France and England, and King Charles of England, seeing his American colonies already prosperous, wished to extend his royal sway over the whole continent. Thus, while the little band of Frenchmen in Quebec were nearly starving, owing to supplies running short during the winter of 1628, and were straining their eyes for the arrival of the great fleet of eighteen ships sent out by Richelieu, an English admiral sailed coolly up the St. Lawrence. Sir David Kirke commanded a stout little fleet for King Charles, and it occurred to him that it would be very good policy to capture Quebec. Imagine the dismay of Champlain, the priests, the traders, farmers, and soldiers of the colony when, having waited for succour until long past midsummer, the oncoming ships turned out to be English, and they received a summons from the English admiral to surrender! How weak his fort was Champlain well knew, but that did not prevent him from replying firmly and with dignity to the summons, saying that he would defend his post until death. Secretly he hoped that the French fleet he expected would come in time. Although he intended to take Quebec, Kirke did not press his advantage just then. He had now a far better plan: to lie and wait for this same French fleet, and cripple the colony in that way. His reward duly came. Off Gaspé, Kirke met the squadron from France, and after a fierce struggle captured all the ships but one, together with much booty.
What a plight was the brave Champlain now in! Cut off from all communication with France, for at least ten months must his forlorn band wait before assistance could arrive. He set to work to grapple with the difficulty by sending all his men farming, and hunting, and fishing. Very little land was cleared as yet; it hardly seemed worth while clearing it as long as the dreaded Iroquois were allowed to shoot the farmers as they worked, and afterwards to swoop down and burn up the crops. Worst of all to Champlain's mind, the Hurons and Algonquins whom he had befriended chose such a time as this to manifest their enmity to him. Instead of helping, they refused him succour. But food of some sort must be got. He set his people digging up wild roots in the woods, and despatched a boat down the river to search the gulf for a friendly trader or fisherman who would give them dried codfish. At the end of a long year of hardship, when no French ship came to his relief, Champlain was ready, in sheer desperation, to march his hungry little garrison against the Iroquois, capture one of their towns, and pillage it of corn. But before he could really carry out this dangerous scheme the English admiral once more showed his face in the St. Lawrence. This time it seemed far better to surrender to such an enemy as the English than to perish miserably from starvation in the wilderness. Kirke offered honourable terms, and Champlain, perceiving how utterly useless was resistance, gave up for a time the fort, magazine, and dwellings of Quebec. On the 24th July 1629 Champlain and ten priests and a number of others embarked on board one of the English ships to be carried to England, and from thence to France. For the first time in its history, the flag of England was hoisted, amidst great cheering on the part of the lusty English mariners, over Quebec.
You must not suppose the English abused their victory. All the settlers who chose were allowed to remain on their property. Lewis Kirke was installed as English Governor, and treated all with kindness, giving them bounteous provisions.
On the way down the river the ship bearing away Champlain met, near Tadoussac, Emery de Caen, returning with supplies for Quebec. Too late! Kirke turned his guns on the Frenchmen, and De Caen was forced at the cannon's mouth to surrender. But although he did so, young De Caen told the Englishman that which completely spoilt Kirke's rest that night. "I have heard," quoth De Caen, "that peace hath been declared between the two Crowns, and that when you captured Quebec and the sixteen French ships, King Louis and King Charles had been friends for a good two months. You have, therefore, done a gross and unlawful thing."
De Caen spoke not falsely, for so it turned out to be. When Kirke anchored in Plymouth harbour he learnt, to his chagrin, that peace had really been made some time before, and that all conquests from France must be restored. The doughty, scarred old Governor, Champlain, posted in hot haste to London, and unfolded the tale of Quebec's surrender to King Louis' ambassador. But, strange as it may appear, King Louis was in no hurry to get back Quebec into his hands again. It seemed to His Majesty, fond of his ease and pleasure, that all Canada was far more trouble than it was worth. The capture of Quebec did not mean the loss of the whole of New France. Several places in Acadia still belonged to King Louis, besides the Island of Cape Breton. But even these possessions only seemed to promise more expense and bloodshed and wrangling.
In the meanwhile another personage—a Scotsman—had appeared on the scene and laid claim to a large part of the country. Sir William Alexander was a man of letters and a successful courtier. Being a great favourite of old King James the First, as long ago as 1621 that monarch had listened graciously to Alexander when he averred that, by reason of Cabot's discoveries, the whole North-American Continent belonged to England by right. "As there is already a New England, your Majesty should go further and found a New Scotland." King James desired nothing better. He gave Sir William a grant of the Acadian Peninsula and a great deal of the adjoining mainland for his ambitious and patriotic purpose. As the King was fond of Latin, instead of New Scotland the country was christened Nova Scotia. The English set out modestly at first to people the country. As Sir William was satisfied for some years in sending out a trading ship each year to Nova Scotia and in exploring the region, there was no fighting, or even ill-feeling, between the French and the English. When in 1625 King James died, King Charles not only confirmed Alexander's charter, but actually allowed his enterprising subject to establish an Order of Knights-Baronets of Nova Scotia. Any wealthy and respectable person could, by paying a certain sum towards the funds of the new colony, obtain an estate of 18 square miles and become a baronet; and over one hundred persons did this, and some of their descendants are baronets in Great Britain to this day.
Sir William had no desire to drive away the French settlers in Acadia, which, you remember, was more or less in the hands of Biencourt, son of Poutraincourt. Besides Biencourt there lived in Acadia at this time the two La Tours, father and son. Claude de la Tour, the father, was a brave and courtly Huguenot. He occupied a trading post on the borders of what is now Maine; while Charles, his son, held a strong little fort called St. Louis, near Cape Sable. When Biencourt died he bequeathed his title and all his interests in Acadia to young Charles, because he had been his friend and companion from boyhood.
You have seen that soon after this a war broke out between France and England—the war in which Admiral Kirke captured the French fleet and summoned Quebec to surrender. On board one of the captured ships of the French fleet was the hope of Acadia, in the person of Claude de la Tour. He had gone home to France, and was now bringing out men and arms and provisions to make Port Royal strong enough to resist the new English pretensions to this fair region. While the valiant Champlain saw himself shut up starving in Quebec, Claude de la Tour was buffeting the waves on the way to England as Kirke's prisoner of war. De la Tour, being a Protestant of noble birth and of charming manners, was well received in London, and made much of. The very best people were anxious to make his acquaintance. He, on his side, found the English most agreeable, and ended by courting one of the Maids of Honour of Queen Henrietta Maria and marrying her. Sir William Alexander quickly saw how useful he would be, and soon had him created a baronet of Nova Scotia. After this La Tour took service in the English Royal Navy, and having obtained a grant of territory in Nova Scotia, undertook to found there an English settlement. Not only this, but he promised to bring his son into the English service. Sir William Alexander readily agreed to the plan of making La Tour's son, Charles, a baronet also, and this was accordingly brought about.
All this while young Charles de la Tour, rightful lord of Acadia under Poutraincourt's charter, knew nothing of his good fortune or of these proceedings on the part of his father. It remained for the elder De la Tour to break the glad news to his son. Two ships of war were put under his orders, and in these, with his pretty young English bride and many Scotch colonists, the old man set sail. His task turned out to be a far harder one than he had thought. When he got to his destination on the other side of the Atlantic he demanded an interview of his son, who was, surprising to relate, most ungrateful. What astonished him most was to find his father in command of an English ship, and wearing the dress of an English Admiral. Claude began by telling his son Charles of the flattering reception he had met with in London, and the honours that had been heaped upon him.
"I am an English Baronet," he exclaimed, embracing the youth, "and, what is more, so also are you. Rejoice, therefore, at the good fortune that has befallen us, and fly the proud blood-red cross of St. George from yonder staff."
But Charles, far from showing joy, seemed thunderstruck. Disengaging himself from his sire's embraces, he replied haughtily that "if those who sent you on this errand think me capable of betraying my country, even at the solicitation of a parent, they have greatly mistaken me. I am not disposed to purchase the honours now offered me by committing a crime. I do not undervalue the proffer of the King of England; but the Prince in whose service I am is quite able to reward me; and whether he do so or not, the inward consciousness of my fidelity to him will be in itself a recompense to me. The King of France has confided the defence of this place to me. I shall maintain it, if attacked, till my latest breath."
De la Tour refuses to yield his Allegiance. 1630
After this, what could the disappointed father do but return crestfallen to his ship? After writing his son a letter urging him to obedience, Sir Claude bethought him of the effect of cannon and muskets as arguments. He would bring the ungrateful youth to reason by force. Thrice he landed his soldiers and sailors and tried to storm Fort St. Louis; but in vain. His men were repulsed, and soon became disgusted with the whole enterprise. Eventually they all repaired to Port Royal and took up settlement with the other Scotch colonists there. It might be supposed that in this extremity the young English girl to whom Sir Claude had promised power and luxury on his Nova Scotian estates would now desire to return to England, and he begged her to do so. But she refused.
"I have shared your prosperity, Sir Claude," she said gently, "I will now share your evil fortunes."
And evil, indeed, they turned out to be.
In 1632 came the shameful treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, by which Canada and Nova Scotia were ceded back to France by King Charles, who was afraid that by his refusal he would not receive from King Louis the wedding dowry promised to his sister, Queen Henrietta Maria of England. This treaty made a great difference to the fortunes of the Frenchmen in the New World—to Champlain and the De la Tours. It deprived Sir Claude of his hopes, even of his refuge at Port Royal. Not daring or wishing to return either to France or England, he was obliged to throw himself on his son's protection. Charles gave him and his pretty stepmother a house hard by Fort St. Louis. He was rewarded. The story of Charles de la Tour's loyalty reached the ears of his monarch, who graciously made him a Lieutenant-Governor, and sent out men, stores, and ammunition of war to uphold his faithful subject in the lands and forts he had guarded so zealously.
We must now, for a little while, leave Charles de la Tour and his fortunes. We will return to them anon, but meanwhile it behoves us to see what was happening to Champlain and Quebec. You will remember that the great Cardinal Richelieu had placed himself at the head of the Company of the Hundred Associates. He had made Canada a royal province, with a nobility of its own and with Champlain as Viceroy. The war with England and the captures of Kirke brought this great scheme to a halt for some years, but the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye was signed at last, and the Hundred Associates were ready to begin their operations. By the end of May 1633 Champlain was back again in his fort on Cape Diamond. This time he had with him two hundred persons and great equipments. In his Company also were a number of Jesuits, to take the place of the Recollets. With such zeal did they administer their charge that life at Quebec became pious and orderly, and many Indian conversions to Christianity were made. A new fort was built at the old trading station of Three Rivers, at the mouth of St. Maurice River, as a protection against the Iroquois, but otherwise not very much happened worth describing here during the last two years of Champlain's life. The veteran was now but two years short of the allotted span, and could survey the fruits of his long labours in Canada with satisfaction. He had not, it was true, made Canada full of towns and cities and filled her countryside with prosperous farms and peasantry. But he had trod out a path through the forest and had sown the seed of future greatness. If only he had not also sown the seed of future hatred—if only he had made the Iroquois a friend instead of a foe! Nevertheless, when he fell sick on Christmas Day 1635 and his heroic spirit passed away for ever from the land he loved, Samuel de Champlain had well earned the name by which he is to-day called on the banks of the St. Lawrence, the "Father of Canada."
In his prime Champlain had a handsome countenance, a noble and soldierly bearing, and an iron constitution. In an age when fifty miles was considered a great journey, he travelled many thousands by sea and by land, crossing the ocean at least twenty times to defend or promote the colony's interests in Old France. His wife survived him nearly twenty years, and having founded a convent at Meaux, in France, became herself a nun, and as Sister Helen, beloved by the other nuns, she died.
After Champlain's lamented death a new Governor, Charles de Montmagny, a pious soldier and knight of Malta, was sent out to Canada. On his landing at the foot of Cape Diamond a striking scene took place. Amidst a crowd of black-robed Jesuits and soldiers in brilliant uniforms and the officials and people in their gayest apparel, Montmagny knelt down at the foot of a cross marking Champlain's grave and cried out, "Behold the first cross that I have seen in this country. Let us worship the crucified Saviour in his image." The procession straightway climbed the hill to the church, chanted the Te Deum, and prayed for King Louis. Montmagny was a devout believer in the Jesuits, who ruled with great severity. If a French colonist failed to attend church regularly, he was sent off to prison. They cared nothing for the good things of this world; their only desire was for the salvation of souls. It mattered nothing to them whether the Company of the Hundred Associates made money out of the buying and selling of furs or not. The great ambition of the Jesuits was to make Christians out of the Canadian savages, however remote, and as the Iroquois absolutely refused to be converted, and hated the Jesuits, the priests did not hesitate to join hands with the Hurons and Algonquins to destroy them. So there began to rage a terrible war. The Iroquois, who if not more numerous, were braver and fiercer than the Hurons, swore by the great Manitou never to bury the war-hatchet as long as a single Huron was left alive above the ground. Assault followed assault, the Iroquois braves coming close to the walls of Quebec and burning and torturing their prisoners under the very eyes of the horrified "black robes." On their part the priests, besides being pious, were very brave men and cared nothing for danger. They would push fearlessly past the Iroquois concealed in ambush and carry the gospel amongst the most distant tribes. After a time their letters home describing their adventures made a great stir in France, and a number of wealthy and influential people came forward to help them in their great work. It was at this time that the famous colleges and convents and hospitals of Quebec were founded. The Marquis de Gamache founded a Jesuit college; another priest-nobleman, Noel de Sillery, built a home for Indian converts; the Duchess of Aiguillon, a niece of Cardinal Richelieu, provided the money for the Hotel Dieu, or God's Hospital. Then there was a wealthy young widow, Madame de la Peltrie, who, having no children of her own, decided to devote her life and fortune to establish a seminary for young girls in Canada. In the summer of 1639 she arrived in Quebec in company with Marie Guyard, a silk manufacturer's daughter who had taken vows as a nun and became "Mary of the Incarnation," the Mother Superior of the Ursuline Convent. All of these as soon as they had landed fell down and kissed the earth and evinced great enthusiasm over their future work. When they visited the first Indian settlement, we are told by one of the priests that Madame de la Peltrie and the rest embraced the little Indian girls, "without taking heed whether they were clean or not." Yet at home in Paris these fine ladies would probably not have cared to take the poor dirty little French children to their bosoms.
The Jesuits quickly spread themselves everywhere. No hardship, no danger, no cold was too great for them. Amongst the Huron Indians they soon found their greatest success. There numbered 30,000 Hurons before disaster befell them, considered the most intelligent and progressive of the Canadian Indians. Three fathers, led by the indomitable Jean de Brébeuf, went forth to establish missions amongst them. Brébeuf came of a noble family in Normandy, a tall strong man, who seemed born for a soldier. He could perform wonderful feats of strength and endurance. He penetrated the wilderness in spite of every obstacle, and established a mission at Thonatiria, on Georgian Bay. At first the Jesuits were opposed by the tribe, who foolishly regarded all their sacraments and services as the deeds of sorcerers. Whenever any evil happened to any of them, when the crops were frost-bitten, or even when a child fell ill, the Hurons put it all down to the incantations of the "Black Robes," as they called the missionaries. But gradually the Jesuits lived down all such prejudice. The Hurons saw they were strong, wise men, and at last placed themselves unreservedly in their hands. While the Jesuit fathers made their central station at St Mary on the Wye, a little river emptying into Matchedash Bay, they founded other missions, St. Louis, St. Jean, St. Michael, St. Joseph, in all the country round about. In course of a very few years the missionaries came almost to be the rulers of all the tribes there settled. But the Iroquois hate against the Hurons was fast fanning into flame. Having sworn vengeance upon them because of their alliance with the French, sooner or later they would find them out, and then, alas, the most dreadful, thrilling scenes in the whole history of Canada would happen. While the Hurons and their ministering Jesuits were living in fancied security in their corner of the west, the French in Quebec and Three Rivers were in constant dread of the Iroquois. Day by day the redskins grew bolder. At first, terrified by the French cannon and muskets, they did not venture to approach too near the walls of the French forts. But by degrees that fear wore away, and the sentries, looking out from the bastions, would often see a dozen or two Iroquois braves lurking about the fort in the hopes of catching some straggler unawares and scalping him. One day indeed they were rewarded. Two Frenchmen named Godefroy and François Margerie were captured and dragged away to their lodges. The Iroquois chief, summoning all his forces, prepared a plan. He resolved to offer peace to the French at Three Rivers if they would give up their Indian allies, the Algonquins, against whom and the Hurons the Iroquois were engaged in a war of extermination. As Margerie spoke the Indian tongue, he was told that his life for the present would be spared, that he was to go under a flag of truce back to the fort at Three Rivers and offer these terms to his countrymen. If he did not return, his fellow-captive, Godefroy, would be tortured and slain. The heroic Margerie did not shrink from his task. He journeyed back to the fort and urged the Commandant to reject so dishonourable a proposal. Then, fully counting the cost of his action, he returned to the Iroquois and to his companion Godefroy. Luckily for him, in the meantime, the Governor arrived from Quebec with soldiers to reinforce the garrison at Three Rivers. The Iroquois perceived that it would be hopeless now to storm the fort, and wisely decided to accept ransom for their prisoners. So the brave Margerie and his friend, who had boldly faced death, were now free.
CHAPTER V
THE FOUNDING OF MONTREAL
Of all the great cities of the world you will not find one that has had so romantic a beginning as Montreal. The stories sent home by the Jesuits had stirred all France, and made the more pious and enterprising spirits more than ever resolved to teach the wicked redskins a lesson in Christianity and plant the fear of God in their hearts. The French said they did not believe in treating the savages of the New World in the cruel way the Spaniards had done in Peru and Mexico; they preferred to win them over to civilised ways by kindness and the force of good example.
One night a certain Jerome de la Dauversiére had a dream after he had returned from his office in the little town of La Flèche, in Anjou, where he was receiver of taxes. In this dream an angel came and told him that the surest way to win the red-men of Canada over to Christianity was to set up a great mission on the Island of Mount Royal. This island in the river St. Lawrence, you remember, Jacques Cartier had visited one hundred years before, and had been struck not only by its beauty but by the friendliness of the Indians who lived there. Their town they called Hochelaga. Since Cartier's time Hochelaga had mysteriously vanished (probably owing to one of the frequent redskin feuds), and the French Governor and people of Quebec had made as yet no settlement there. Dauversiére, who was a very holy and zealous man, went to Paris, and to Father Olier, a friendly priest, related his dream. It appeared that the worthy father also had had a vision, in which Mount Royal was pointed out as the future scene of pious labours. Whereupon the two set to work and formed a company of forty persons to build on this island, 3000 miles away, in the heart of New France, a French town, well fortified and able to resist the onslaughts of the infidel savages. The Company of the Hundred Associates agreed to sell them the land, for, of course, the Hundred Associates at this time controlled all the land of New France under a charter from King Louis. All that the promoters of the plan had finally to do was to find a proper person to take charge of the new settlement, which it was decided to call Ville Marie de Montreal, or, as we would call it, Marytown of Mount Royal, in honour of the Holy Virgin. They were fortunate to find just the one they sought in Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a brave and pious soldier, who was forthwith appointed the first Governor of Ville Marie.
With Maisonneuve, when he sailed away from France in the spring of 1641, went Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance. This young woman had dedicated her whole life to nursing the sick and teaching little children, and was to take charge of a hospital in the new colony.
Slow sailing it was in those days, and when Maisonneuve's ship reached Quebec the sweltering heats of August oppressed the city. Governor de Montmagny bade the pioneers welcome, and, after listening to their scheme, told them flatly that he thought it was all a mistake. Instead of venturing their lives so far inland amongst the treacherous Iroquois, much better was it to choose a spot nearer Quebec for their town. But Maisonneuve and his companions, although prevailed upon to spend the winter in Quebec, were resolved to reach Mount Royal, even though, as Maisonneuve said, "every tree on the island were an Iroquois." And so in the spring all set off boldly up the Great River. When they saw the leader's resolution, Governor de Montmagny, Father Vimont, Superior of the Jesuits, and Madame de la Peltrie, head of the Ursuline Convent, consented to accompany them in their ship.
On the 17th May the memorable landing took place. All of the expedition—some fifty in number—fell upon their knees, and from their lips fell a prayer of thankfulness to Almighty God. But they did not deceive themselves as to their danger. They all knew—even the women—that there was to be more work and fighting than praying. As yet no treacherous red-man, tomahawk in hand, lurked behind the tall trees, but the alarm was sure to come, and no time was to be lost. So to the task of chopping and hewing and hammering they flew without delay. The site was quickly enclosed with palisades and several cannon brought from the ship and put in position. As for the hospital which Mademoiselle de Mance had been given the money to build, it could safely be reared outside the walls, being of stone and almost a little fortress of itself. For two centuries and a half this hospital withstood all the attacks of the Iroquois, until a mighty city pressing in upon it forced it to a peaceful surrender to the interests of trade and commerce.
Winter came and went. Spring found Ville Marie quite snug and comfortable, and the inhabitants wondering where the Iroquois were. They had not long to wait. A solitary Algonquin one day fled within the palisades for refuge. He told Maisonneuve that he was being pursued by the Iroquois, coveting his scalp. In a few hours his pursuers had discovered Ville Marie, and, shaking their tomahawks at its inhabitants, vowed vengeance on the bold pale-faces who had ventured to settle in a part of Canada which they had cruelly decreed should for ever remain a desert. Thereafter they patrolled the borders of the town, watching stealthily where they might strike down man, woman, or child. No longer was it possible in safety to sow or reap. Nor were the wooden palisades strong enough for protection. Stout walls and bastions were needed, and accordingly stone was quarried across the river, and willing hands toiled night and day to build what was henceforth little more than a prison. When the colony was two years old, the Iroquois summoned all their braves.
"Let us destroy these insolent Frenchmen," said their chief; "let us carry off their white girls to drudge for us in our lodges."
Maisonneuve covering the Retreat of his Followers, 1644
Maisonneuve, hearing that they had collected a large force, unwisely sallied out to give them battle. It was springtime, but the deep snow had not yet melted. The little company of French settlers, their hearts beating high with valour and courage, looked about for the foe. Not finding him at first, they were drawn farther and farther into the surrounding forest. Then it was that the redskins, hidden behind trees, darted forth a volley of arrows, and the founders of Ville Marie became an easy target and fell by the dozen. They were unused to this kind of warfare, the only kind the red-men really knew. Maisonneuve, shocked but undaunted, gave the signal for retreat, and the French drew back to the walls of Ville Marie, dragging their dead and wounded with them. Close followed the enemy with ear-splitting yells and flourishing their blood-stained tomahawks. Maisonneuve, pistol in hand, was the last man to enter the gate. Just as he was crossing the threshold an Iroquois chief sprang forward to drag him back, but quick as the savage was, not quick enough was he. The Governor's pistol rang out, and the chief dropped in his tracks. His baffled companions, shrieking in anger and dismay, saw the gates of the little town shut, and for that day the rest of its defenders were safe. To-day, if you should chance to visit the great city of Montreal, you may see the very spot where this encounter took place. It is called the Place d'Armes, and in the middle is a bronze statue of the brave Maisonneuve, on whose pedestal is a representation of his narrow escape from death.
Such terrible experiences were not confined to Montreal alone, or even to Quebec and Three Rivers. About the whole country the Iroquois prowled like wild beasts. Especially did they frequent the northern outlets of the Ottawa River to waylay the friendly Hurons in their passage to the St. Lawrence, bringing furs for barter to the French. Observing this, Governor Montmagny set about building a fort at the mouth of the Richelieu River, and notwithstanding the attempts of 700 Iroquois to destroy it and kill the workmen, it was completed in a short time and christened Fort Richelieu. Forced to retreat, the savages managed to carry off with them a Jesuit priest, Father Isaac Jogues, and two young students named Goupil and Couture, who were coming down the river with a party of fur-hunters. They did not kill their prisoners at once, as they expected, but, after putting them through a course of dreadful tortures, carried them to the home of one of their tribes, the Mohawks. After cutting off Goupil's thumb with a clam-shell, so as to prolong the pain, they scalped him and flung his body down a steep waterfall. Couture, adopted into the tribe, turned Mohawk in order to save his life.
After a time Father Jogues was taken by the Iroquois in one of their trading visits to the Dutch of New Netherlands, now called New York. This is the first time any of the French in Canada had any communication with the European settlers to the south of them, in what are now known as the United States. The Dutch Governor of Albany took pity on the poor Jesuit priest and helped him to escape. Ultimately he was sent back in a ship to France, where he thrilled the King and Court by the sight of his wounds and the story of his wonderful adventures. Never once had he lost courage, but went on baptizing Indian children and giving the sacrament to the dying. Once when no water was forthcoming to baptize a Huron prisoner in the throes of death, Jogues shook off a few scant drops of dew which still clung to an ear of maize that had been thrown to him for food.
After all the intrepid father's starvation and sufferings you would think he had had enough of mission work amongst the red-men and would remain in a peaceful French curacy for the rest of his days. But that is because you do not understand what kind of men these Jesuit priests were. Undaunted by pains or privations, they wished nothing better than to be martyred in the cause of their religion. Isaac Jogues went back again to Canada a year later. In his absence the Mohawks had made peace with the French, and the intrepid priest took up his residence in one of their villages. When it became necessary to visit the Governor of Quebec on business, Jogues left behind him a small box containing a few medicine bottles and other simple things. No sooner was the priest's back turned than the medicine-man or sorcerer of the tribe, who hated the missionaries because they exposed their foolish practices, told the Mohawks that this innocent box contained magic, which would bring all of them ill-luck, disease, and death. Some believed this story, others were incredulous; so that when Father Jogues came back, he found the village divided on the question of killing him or sparing his life. He was invited to a feast, which he dared not refuse. As he entered, a tomahawk clove its way to his brain, and the priest was made a martyr at last. Poor brave Father Jogues was the first to suffer martyrdom in New France. The savages cut off his head and fastened it to a long pole, and the savage children threw pebbles at it in sport.
Alas, the fate of Jogues was destined to be that of the other priests who had established missions in the Huron country.
"Do not imagine," wrote the Father Superior, "that the rage of the Iroquois and the loss of many Christians and converts can bring to nought the mystery of the Cross. We shall die, we shall be captured, burned, and butchered. So be it. Those who die in their beds do not always die the best death. I see none of our company cast down. On the contrary, they ask leave to go up to the Hurons, and some of them protest that the fires of the Iroquois are one of their motives for the journey."
In the summer of 1648 the Hurons wished very much to pay a visit to the French in Eastern Canada. Many canoes had they full of furs which they could exchange for the kettles, hatchets, and knives of the traders. They resolved, therefore, to brave the Iroquois and make the long journey. Five distinguished chiefs accompanied 250 of their best warriors, and by the middle of July, Three Rivers was reached in safety. The Hurons ran their canoes ashore amongst the bulrushes, and began to spread on their war-paint and adorn themselves with feathers and wampum so as to make a distinguished appearance at the fort of the pale-faces. Suddenly an alarm was sounded. The Iroquois were on their track. Snatching their arms, the Hurons ran to meet the foe. This time the Iroquois were outnumbered and were defeated, and the Hurons eventually set out for home, flushed with victory and bearing a number of Iroquois scalps.
At home news of a terrible disaster awaited the victorious Hurons. Taking advantage of their absence, the Iroquois had attacked the Huron town of Teanaustaye, or St. Joseph, where the Jesuit, Father Daniel, was in charge. St. Joseph was one of the chief towns of the Huron nation; it had 2000 inhabitants, and was surrounded by a strong palisade. But on one fatal July day it was all but defenceless: scarce a warrior was to be seen. The arrival of the Iroquois flung the crowd of old men, women, and children into a panic. Daniel, in all his radiant priestly vestments, came to meet the foe at the church door, undismayed by their dreadful war-whoops. There he died. A dozen Iroquois bent their bows and pierced him as he stood, while the chief, armed with a gun he had bought from the Dutch, sent a bullet through the brave priest's heart. The town was set on fire. When the flames reached the church, Daniel's body was thrown into it, and both were consumed together. Nearly one thousand Hurons were killed or taken captive.
Eight months passed, and in the early spring-time the Iroquois came again. This time the Indian converts at St. Mary on the Wye saw heavy smoke curling above the forest three miles away, and cried out, "The Iroquois! the Iroquois! They are burning St. Louis!" And so it was. Had the Hurons acted with better judgment and more valour they might have averted their doom. But ever since the massacre and destruction of St. Joseph they seemed to have lost spirit. The two priests who were stationed here, Brébeuf and Lalement, did their best to arouse them, but they would not take measures to foil an Iroquois assault. Brébeuf and Lalement, implored to flee while there was yet time, both scorned such counsel. Uttering savage yells, the Iroquois swarmed towards the palisades, hacking at them with their hatchets, and they broke through at last, burning and slaying. The two brave priests were seized and stripped and beaten with clubs along the road to St. Ignace, which post the Iroquois had also captured. The fate of St. Mary itself was now trembling in the balance. Here were some 40 Frenchmen, well armed, and besides a large Huron population, 300 more Huron braves were outside the gates, hoping to waylay some of their victorious foes. A battle between the two tribes of red-men ensued, and although this time the Hurons fought with a will, they were obliged at last to give way. Hundreds had been killed or lay weltering in their blood. Only twenty were captured alive by the Iroquois. The enemy's chief was badly wounded, and they themselves had lost a hundred of their best warriors in this fierce battle. You may imagine how the French and Christian Indians shut up in St. Mary waited for the issue of the fight. When they knew that their outer guard was defeated, they gave themselves over to prayer, believing all was lost. They well knew how inflammable were their palisades of wood. When a hundred torches came to be applied only a miracle could save them. At this critical moment panic seized the Iroquois camp. A rumour had spread that a mighty army of Hurons were descending upon them, and they resolved, in spite of their chiefs, to retreat at once. But before fleeing from their imaginary foe, they took nearly all their prisoners and thrust them, bound hand and foot, into the bark dwellings of St. Ignace. They spared neither men nor women, young nor old, not even tiny babes. When they had done this they applied the torch to the town.
Of the two priests, the giant, Jean de Brébeuf, was led apart and fastened to a stake. From thence he called to the others, exhorting them to suffer patiently and God would reward them. They tortured him, but he still stood erect, tall and masterful, and addressed his people. For this the angry Iroquois cut away his lower lip and thrust a red-hot iron down his throat. Round the naked body of Father Lalement they tied strips of bark steeped in pitch and set him in a blaze. As if this were not enough agony, on the heads of both they poured boiling water and cut strips of flesh from Brébeuf's limbs.
"You told us," cried the fiends, laughing, "that the more one suffers on earth the happier he is in heaven. We wish to make you happy. We torment you in this way because we love you; and you ought to thank us for it!"
Still from Brébeuf came no sign of flinching. Baffled in devising further tortures, they cut off his head and tore his body in pieces. The heart of this great man, the founder of the ill-fated Huron mission, was seized by an Iroquois chief and devoured. His friend Lalement, after being tortured all night, was killed by a blow from a hatchet.
Two or three days afterwards, when the fleeing Iroquois were leagues away, the Jesuits at St. Mary came to the smoking ruins of St. Ignace. The scorched and mangled remains of the two martyrs met their horrified gaze. These they carried back to St. Mary and buried, all but Brébeuf's skull, which they preserved as a holy relic. At the Hotel Dieu at Quebec it is shown to the visitor, enclosed in a silver bust of the martyr, which his family sent to the good nuns from France.
Upon the Hurons such a disaster as this told with crushing force. Flight from their country was all they could think of now. Two weeks later they abandoned for ever fifteen towns to roam northward and eastward in the barren, inhospitable wilderness. In various places the fugitives found refuge, some with this tribe, some with that, but as a strong, separate nation they soon ceased to be, and the fort and mission of St. Mary on the Wye was left solitary in the middle of a great waste.
All the love and labour of the Jesuit missionaries for ten years had been in vain. With aching hearts the priests resolved to break up the mission and betake themselves to some less dangerous and more useful station. Several of them followed the wandering Hurons, but a number of priests, with forty soldiers and labourers, established themselves on St. Joseph Island, at the entrance of Matchedash Bay. It is one of three—now known as Faith, Hope, and Charity—islands. Here they toiled, together with a number of Huron converts, in building a stronghold which would defy the dreaded Iroquois. Six or eight thousand souls came to people the island. There not being food for so many, what with hunger and disease, by springtime half had perished. The despairing survivors, resolving to brave the surrounding Iroquois, who roamed on the mainland, and escape, one by one fell into the hands of their lynx-like foes. No refuge was there for the poor persecuted race but in the shadow of the French guns at Quebec.
"Take us to Quebec," cried one of the Huron chiefs to the Jesuit fathers. "Do not wait until war and famine have destroyed us to the last man. We are in your hands. Death has taken more than ten thousand of us. If you wait longer, not one will remain alive."
At last the Jesuits resolved to grant their petition. On the 10th of June 1650 the whole population of St. Joseph (or Charity) Island embarked in canoes, which were packed with all their earthly goods, and paddled sadly towards the east. On the Ottawa River, which was now desolate of native hut or wigwam, they met a large party of French soldiers and Hurons on the way to help the Huron mission.
Too late! The mission, with all its forts and settlements, had been abandoned for ever. The entire party kept on to Montreal, where the Hurons could not be induced to stay because it was too open to Iroquois attacks; and about the end of July the great heights of Quebec came in sight. All disembarked and were hospitably received by the Governor, the priests, the nuns, and the people. Yet the new arrivals could not have come at a worse time, for food was scarce and nearly all were poor.
CHAPTER VI
THE FURY OF THE IROQUOIS
When the poor harassed "Black Robes" and their panic-stricken Indian charges finally rested under the sheltering walls of Quebec, Montmagny was no longer Governor. He had, after twelve years' service, gone back to France, and a new Governor had arrived in his stead. But the Indians still called the new Governor, and all the Governors who came afterwards, by the name of "Onontio." They were told that Montmagny in French signified "Great Mountain," Onontio in the Huron tongue, and supposed it was a title bestowed by the pale-faces on all their rulers in Canada.
Despite the unspeakable horrors, bloodshed, and martyrdom related in the last chapter, nothing of lasting value was accomplished by the hapless mission to the Hurons except a knowledge of the great Lake Superior, which an interpreter, named Jean Nicollet, had discovered a few years before.
Season now followed season, and each saw the French but little better than prisoners in their three towns on the St. Lawrence. If they ventured very far out of these fortified posts, it was only to give the Iroquois a chance to spring upon them and bear back their scalps in triumph to their lodges in the wilderness. The French might have made a treaty of alliance with their English neighbours in New England, who had now set up a number of towns and were flourishing, although they too were at the mercy of the surrounding savages. But the French Governor made it a condition of the treaty that the New Englanders should help Canada to exterminate the terrible Iroquois. This the English colonists were loath to do; they had no wish to bring the Iroquois tomahawks down upon their heads also, as the French had done; and so the plan fell through. After a time one of the Iroquois tribes, having lost a great many of their fighting men in the long war, began to think of making recruits. The idea occurred to them that the unfortunate Hurons and Algonquins, who had joined their fortunes to the French, would be the very men for their purpose, if they could only induce them to desert the alliance. Forthwith they sent courtiers to announce to the Hurons that they no longer bore them any grudge and were willing to adopt them—to receive them into the bosom of their lodges. But it soon appeared that all the Iroquois were not unanimous in their approval of this plan, and as their treachery was well known, the Hurons and Algonquins, now settled on the Isle of Orleans near Quebec, naturally hesitated about accepting the offer. The few foolish ones who trusted in Iroquois good faith were actually tomahawked by their so-called friends on the way to the Iroquois lodges. In attempting to punish a band of Iroquois ambushed near his fort, Du Plessis Bochat, the Governor of Three Rivers, lost his life; Father Buteaux was killed on his way to his mission, and another priest, Father Poucet, was borne away to a Mohawk village, and after being tortured was sent back to Quebec to offer peace to the French. Peace was indeed welcome, but the French were naturally still suspicious. The truth was that the Iroquois were then too busily engaged in destroying the Eries, a tribe which had burned one of their most illustrious chiefs, to spare time to massacre the pale-faces. As the chief, a Seneca, had stood with unquivering nerve at the stake he had cried out, "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!" for he knew the Senecas would avenge his death. Much, then, as the Governor, De Lauzon, wanted peace, neither he nor his Indian allies knew how far they could trust the Iroquois. It was at last decided that if the Onondagas, one of the five Iroquois nations, would receive a Jesuit mission, a body of Hurons should be sent under escort to be adopted into their tribe. From the Onondagas there came a message to say they would agree to this, and in June 1656 the expedition set out from Quebec. It consisted of a large body of Hurons, as well as Onondagas, fifty French soldiers, led by the brave captain, Dupuy, and two priests, Dablon and Chaumonot. Scarcely was the party well under way, when a band of Mohawks fell upon them, and before they pretended to discover that they were attacking members of their own confederacy, they had killed and wounded a number of Onondagas. Profuse excuses and apologies followed, the Mohawks explaining that they took them, the Onondagas, for Hurons. The expedition was suffered to proceed. The truth is, the Mohawks were jealous of the Onondagas in obtaining an alliance with the French and Hurons. To show their power and their contempt of the pale-faces, they continued their journey eastward to the Isle of Orleans, and under the very guns of the fort of Quebec surprised the defenceless Hurons who dwelt there, and fiercely murdered or captured all they came upon, even the women and children. In broad daylight they paddled their fleet of bark canoes in front of Quebec, laughing and yelling defiance to the French, and making their unhappy captives join in dancing and songs of triumph. The Governor this time was a weak man, and all he could do was to wring his hands and regret bitterly that he had ever sent any mission to the Onondagas. He began to fear for their safety.
Not wholly unfounded were the Governor's alarms. At first all went smoothly enough with the little band of Frenchmen in the heart of the Onondaga country. This particular tribe of the Iroquois appeared delighted at the coming of the French. But quickly signs of danger began to multiply. The pale-face soldiers grew aware that a plot was on foot to murder them in the little fort they had built, close to where the present prosperous city of Syracuse now stands. Dupuy, being an able and courageous man, resolved by some means or another to foil the savages and escape back to Canada. This is the stratagem he hit upon; it was the custom of these Indians to hold mystic feasts, at which it was a point of honour to eat everything that was set before them by their hosts. If a man failed to eat the whole of a dish—even to the fifth helping—it was taken by the host as a personal insult. Dupuy planned such a feast, and arranged to stuff them so plentifully that not a single brave would be capable of rising from the banquet. The plan worked perfectly, the Indians not observing that the French concealed most of their food instead of eating it, so that by midnight the gorged and drunken Onondagas were sunk in a gluttonous sleep. Dupuy had taken good care beforehand to build secretly within his fort a number of large, light, flat-bottomed skiffs, and now when dawn came the Frenchmen stole away, carrying these with them to the Oswego River, reaching Quebec at last, in spite of ice and rapids, with the loss of only three men, who were drowned. The Indians pursued, but their birch-bark canoes were useless on the icy stream, and they had to give up the chase.
The escape from the Onondagas was a very clever and daring deed, and shows the material the colonists of New France were made of in those days. A deed still more daring and important was to follow. The Iroquois threw off the mask and determined to deal the French in Canada a deadly blow. A mighty force of the Five Nations was organised, to meet at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers, and swoop down first upon Montreal and then upon the other settlements. It so happened that there lived in Ville Marie at this time a young nobleman, Daulac des Ormeaux, who chose to be known to the other colonists as Adam Dollard. Having left France in order to escape the consequences of some rash act, he burned for some chance to retrieve the honour of his name. The valiant youth now saw with joy the long-looked-for opportunity arrive at his door, and he obeyed the summons. From the Governor did Dollard obtain leave to lead a party of volunteers against the savage foe. Gathering sixteen gallant fellows about him, all swore a solemn oath to give or take no quarter, but by sheer force of their arms break the force of the blow which was about to descend on their beloved town. A mad enterprise truly did it seem, but for sheer valour nothing finer has been known since fearless Leonidas and his handful of Greeks held the pass at Thermopylae. The seventeen heroes, together kneeling, took the Sacrament at the hands of the pale priest, and set forth for the Long Sault (or Rapids) of the Ottawa. There in the dense woods they found a disused old Indian stockade by which the invading host had to pass. Entrenching themselves as well as they could, they waited. A few friendly Hurons and Algonquins joined them, wondering at the hardihood of the pale-face warriors, and shamed into lending them a helping hand. The storm broke. A horde of 700 screaming savages, picked men of the Iroquois, flung themselves upon them. Easy work it seemed to crush out this feeble band. To their astonishment, Dollard and his men beat them back. Again and again they came on, and again and again were they repulsed. By this time, appalled at the fearful odds against them, the friendly Indians had fled from the side of the besieged, all but one Huron chief, Annahotaha, and four Algonquins. These stood firm. Every loophole in the stockade darted its tongue of fire; so faultless was the aim that nearly every time a musket rang out an Iroquois fell dead. Fortunately Dollard had brought plenty of ammunition. Some musketoons of large calibre, from whose throats scraps of lead and iron belched forth, slew and wounded several of the enemy at a single discharge. Thus three days wore away and still the terrible struggle came to no end. In the intervals, by day and night, Dollard and his men offered up prayers to Heaven on their knees in the melting snow. Their food was now gone, and, worse still, they had no water. No hope now remained save to keep the Iroquois a few hours longer at bay; they were certain only of a martyr's reward. On the part of the besiegers so many men had they lost that they sickened of the fight, and some amongst them even counselled going home. But other chiefs shrank from such a disgrace.
"Shall we," they cried, "confess ourselves beaten by so paltry an enemy? Our squaws would laugh in our faces! Let us now rather band ourselves together and storm the fort of the white men, at whatever cost."
A general assault was made. So high by this time was piled the bodies of the Iroquois, that their fellows could now leap over the stockade. Dollard fell, and one after another of the exhausted defenders was slain, although each fought like a madman, a sword or hatchet in one hand and a knife in the other. Amongst the heap of corpses one Frenchman still breathed, and he was dragged out and tortured. This was the end; thus perished Dollard and his valiant sixteen, whose names are imperishably written in the annals of Montreal. Nor did they offer their lives to the Iroquois hatchets in vain. The Iroquois had been taught a lesson, and to their lodges the tribe slunk back like whipped curs. "If," said they, "seventeen Frenchmen, four Algonquins, and one Huron can, behind a picket fence, hold seven hundred of our best warriors at bay, what defence would their hundreds do behind yonder ramparts of stone?" And so the colony of New France was saved.
The cowardly native allies of the French in this fight were not to escape the penalty of their treacherous desertion. The Iroquois turned upon them, burning some on the spot, and making captives of others. Five only succeeded in escaping to carry the tale of the defence, the butchery, and the martyrdom to Ville Marie.
It seemed, however, as if Canada had only been saved in order to perish from other causes. The colony was impoverished and torn, besides, with civil and religious dissensions. The Society of Notre Dame of Montreal, those rich and influential persons in France who had founded the city, now wearied of their enterprise. It was turned over to the great Seminary of St. Sulpicius, and a number of Sulpician fathers were sent out to take charge and to found a seminary in Montreal. Amongst these was the Abbe de Queylus, who hoped the King would eventually make him a bishop. But the Jesuits were too powerful not to prevent any priest but a Jesuit from receiving such an appointment, and at last succeeded in getting François de Laval, Bishop of Petræa, appointed to control the Church in Canada. A striking figure was Laval, playing a great part in the early history of Canada; but in spite of his virtue, he was narrow-minded and domineering, perpetually quarrelling with the various Governors of the colony during the next thirty-five years.
So desperate did the people of New France become at the dangers which surrounded them, at the quarrels between the Bishop and the Governor, at the excesses of the fur-traders, who insisted on intoxicating the Indians and themselves with brandy, that it hardly needed the terrible earthquake which took place in 1663 to make them lose heart altogether. The total population then was some two thousand souls, and the Company of the Hundred Associates had been found powerless to settle, develop, and defend the country properly. Thinking only of the profits of the fur trade, it had shamefully neglected its promises, and when any of its officials made money in Canada, they at once went home to spend it. All this was pointed out by the Marquis d'Avaugour when the Governorship at last fell from his hands; and remembering that others, including Laval, had made the same charge, Colbert, the new Minister of young King Louis the Fourteenth, decided to plead the cause of Canada to his master. It was on his advice that King Louis resolved to take the government directly into his own hands. By royal edict was revoked the charter of the Hundred Associates, and three men appointed as a Sovereign Council in Canada to carry out royal authority. These three officials were the Governor, the Bishop, and the Intendant, the latter having charge of the commerce and finances of the colony. To the post of Governor the Sieur de Courcelle was appointed, and Jean Baptiste Talon became Intendant. The office of Bishop, of course, continued to be filled by Laval.
Dollard strikes his Last Blow, 1658
And now the drooping fortunes of New France began to revive. Soldiers and settlers began to pour into the country. Besides De Courcelle, the King sent also his Viceroy for the whole of his Trans-atlantic domains, the veteran Marquis de Tracy, to report to him personally upon the state of Canada. When De Tracy set sail a throng of eager young nobles accompanied him. Their imagination had been stirred by the tales they had heard of the country by the St. Lawrence River. They thirsted for adventure and renown. There came also the famous disbanded regiment, called the Carignan-Callières, after the names of its commanders, the first regiment of regular troops ever sent to Canada by the King. It had lately been serving in the wars of France against the Turks, and had provoked the admiration of the Turkish Sultan.
On the last day of June 1665 a brilliant scene was witnessed in Quebec. On that glowing summer's day the gallant Marquis and the troops landed at the flowery base of towering Cape Diamond. What a different scene was now presented from that which had taken place but a few seasons before, when the impudent Iroquois had shaken their hatchets from their canoes at the trembling and helpless Governor! The population had doubled as if by magic; thousands were on the ramparts shouting a welcome to the broad white standard blazoned with the arms of France, which floated proudly from fleet and fortress. The river-banks echoed with the hoarse note of cannon. The bells of the church and seminaries pealed in a frenzy of joy. Tracy, a giant six feet and a half high, and his officers stepped ashore, all gorgeously attired in crimson and white and gold. In the vanguard of the procession which climbed that day the heights of Quebec were twenty-four guards in the King's livery, followed by four pages and six valets. On arrival at the square, Laval, in his resplendent pontificals, received them, and noted with pleasure that the old marquis, although suffering from fever caught in the tropics, knelt on the bare pavement. A new order of things everywhere was begun. With the 2000 settlers came young women for wives, as well as horses, oxen, and sheep in abundance. It became Tracy's duty to look to the colony's protection in order that it might increase and multiply, and the only way to accomplish this was by curbing the power of the Iroquois. No time was lost in taking measures to this end. The forts at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were strengthened, three new forts, St. Theresa, Sorel, and Chambly, were built on the Richelieu River. Reports of the arrival of the troops, and of all their preparations, naturally spread far and wide amongst the Indians, and very soon four of the Five Nations thought it prudent to sue for peace. The fierce Mohawks alone remained defiant; they were not to be cowed by all this martial pomp, and at last Courcelle, the Governor, with Tracy, the Viceroy's, permission, resolved to chastise them as soundly as they deserved. He would take them when they least expected it: surprise them in their lodges in the depths of winter, when his soldiers could travel over the frozen rivers as though on a paved highway. Many who had had experience of winter journeyings in Canada sought to dissuade him from the attempt, but the new Governor was anxious to distinguish himself, and win the approval of the Viceroy and his King. Early in January he and his 500 men began to march. Before they had reached Three Rivers many had their ears, noses, and fingers frozen, while some of the newly-arrived troops were so disabled by the cold, that they had to be left behind. But the old Indian fighters and native Canadians, of whom there were nearly a hundred, pressed forward bravely in the van, in spite of the heavy loads which all were obliged to carry. For six weeks they travelled to reach the Iroquois lodges, but they lost their way, and came at last to the Dutch settlement of Schenectady. Here they learnt that the Mohawks had gone far afield on a war-like expedition, and that the country they were now in belonged to the Duke of York, afterwards James II. New Netherlands having thus passed into English hands, Courcelle and his troops were asked to quit the territory at once. There was nothing, therefore, to do but to steal away to Canada, whence they had come. It was not an easy feat, for a body of Mohawks hung at their heels tomahawking stragglers. The cold was intense, and, to make matters worse, the provisions gave out. Sixty men perished on the march. Nevertheless, unlucky as Courcelle had been, his expedition had served to convince the Mohawks that they and their families were no longer safe in their lodges. There was no telling what these Frenchmen would do next, so they sent a deputation to offer peace. The Viceroy, in his turn, sent a priest as his ambassador to visit their deputation, but he had scarcely left when tidings came that a party of seven French officers out hunting near Lake Champlain had been set upon and killed by the Mohawks. A cousin of Tracy's had been captured, and a nephew had been slain.
"Now, by the Virgin!" cried the sick old soldier, bringing down his giant palm on the table, "they have gone far enough. Recall the holy father. We must teach these savages a lesson." But the cup of his anger was not yet full. A couple of boastful Mohawk deputies arrived in Quebec and came to his house. When the indignant Tracy happened to mention the murder of his nephew, one of them actually had the effrontery to laugh and exclaim, as he stretched out his arm, "Yes, this is the hand that split the head of that young man!"
The Viceroy, veteran soldier as he was, and used to deeds of violence, shuddered with horror.
"Very well," he said, "never shall it slay any one else. Take that base wretch out," he added to one of the guard, "and hang him in the presence of his fellows!"
It was September. Tracy himself and Courcelle, commanding 1300 men, put the heights of Quebec behind them. Traversing mountains, swamps, rivers, lakes, and forests, they held steadily on their way to the country of the Mohawks. When the gout seized the commander they bore him on a litter, a mighty load. All day long were the drums beating and the trumpets blowing; when provisions had grown low, luckily they came upon a huge grove yielding chestnuts, on which they largely fed. The Mohawks heard of this martial procession and were terrified. They had no wish now to face the French, whose numbers rumour magnified, and whose drums they took for devils. At the last moment they retreated from their towns, one after another. Tracy pursued them, capturing each place as he arrived at it. At the fourth town he thought he had captured them all, but a squaw told him there was still another, and stronger than any they had yet seen. To this town he sent an officer, who prepared for an assault, but, to the surprise of the French, they found within only an old man, a couple of aged squaws, and a little child. These told the French that the Mohawks had just evacuated, crying, "Let us save ourselves, brothers! The whole world is coming against us!" All loaded with corn and provisions as it was, to the town the French that night applied the torch. A mighty bonfire lit up the forest. In despair at losing all their possessions, the two squaws flung themselves headlong into the flames. All the other places were destroyed, and then, chanting the Te Deum and reciting mass, the victors set out on the return march. They had burned the food of the Mohawks, who they knew must now feel the dread pangs of hunger. Terrible was the blow, and the Mohawks suffered much that winter. Their pride was humbled. By these means was a treaty of peace between the French and all the Iroquois declared, and for twenty years Canada enjoyed the sweets of peace.
Old Marquis de Tracy had done his work well, and could now go back to France with his resplendent bodyguard, his four pages, and his six valets, and leave Courcelle and Talon to rule Canada alone.
After this, when they went amongst the Iroquois, cross and breviary in hand, Jesuit missionaries met with no danger or refusal. They made many converts. Not content with their labours amongst the tribes close at hand, they pierced the distant forests north of Lake Superior, established permanent missions at Michilimackinac and Sault Ste. Marie, which joins the Lakes Huron and Michigan. On the banks of the St. Lawrence a new era began. For when the Carignan-Callières regiment was disbanded, the soldiers turned their swords into ploughshares, and the wise and prudent Intendant, Talon, had the satisfaction of seeing farms arise in the wilderness and yield abundant harvests. Talon's hand was seen everywhere; he spared no pains to make Canada prosperous and self-supporting. He set about establishing the fisheries in the St. Lawrence river and gulf, and encouraged the seal-hunts, by which much oil was obtained and exported to France. He ordered the people to grow hemp, and taught the women to spin wool. He also devoted much attention to the timber trade, and to him is owing the first tannery seen in Canada. By the year 1688 as many as 1100 vessels had in a single season anchored in the Quebec roadstead, laden with every kind of merchandise. According to a letter written by one of the chief nuns, "M. Talon studied with the affection of a father how to succour the poor and cause the colony to grow; entered into the minutest particulars; visited the houses of the inhabitants and caused them to visit him; learned what crop each was raising; taught those who had wheat to sell it at a profit; helped those who had none, and encouraged everybody."
But in nothing were Talon's efforts so extraordinary to us as in his providing wives for the colonists of New France. In his first few years of office 1200 girls were shipped out from France. These French maidens were chosen from the country rather than from the city, strong and accustomed to work. But there was also a consignment of "select young ladies" as wives for the officers. When they arrived in Quebec or Montreal, the girls, tall and short, blonde or brunette, plump and lean, were gathered in a large building, and the young Canadian came and chose a wife to his liking. A priest was in readiness, and they were married on the spot, in batches of thirty at a time. Next day, we are told, the Governor caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money. Besides this bounty, twenty livres were given to each youth who married before he was twenty years old, and to each girl who married before sixteen. All bachelors were heavily taxed. To be unmarried was regarded by the Intendant and the King as a crime. In short, as has been said, the new settler was found by the King, sent over by the King, and supplied by the King with a wife, a farm, and even a house.
Now amongst free-born Britons all this royal interference would have been resented. Britons like to manage their own private affairs. They would call Louis the Fourteenth's system "paternalism," and in truth the system was a failure, because it discouraged the principle of independence. No spirit of self-reliance was stimulated amongst the people. They looked to the Government for everything, not to themselves. The result was that many of the strongest and most self-reliant amongst the young men preferred to live a life of freedom and adventure in the wilderness, hunting, fishing, and trading, rather than suffer the constraints imposed upon them by the well-meaning Talon. Thus came about the creation of a famous class called the coureurs de bois, or bushrangers, who at last spread themselves all over Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, owning no laws but their own, living like Indians, taking unto themselves Indian wives, and rearing half-breed children. Talon and all the Governors, Intendants, and Bishops were very angry with these men, who thus set the wishes of the good King at defiance, and made many laws against them. But in vain! The bushrangers, valorous, picturesque, and their companions, the voyageurs, continued to flourish almost until our own day.
CHAPTER VII
STRANGE DOINGS AT PORT ROYAL
We left the loyal, undaunted Charles de la Tour, whom his Huguenot father, Sir Claude, had tempted in vain to enter the English service, master once more of Port Royal in Acadia, and in high favour with King Louis the Thirteenth. All Acadia as well as Canada was given back to the French by the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, and King Louis and his Court were now inclined to abandon their policy of indifference and begin the work of colonising anew. In the spring of 1632 a nephew of Richelieu's, Captain de Razilly, arrived in Acadia with a shipload of colonists, including artisans, farmers, several Capuchin friars, and some gentry. Amongst the latter were Nicholas Denys and an extraordinary person, Charles de Menou, Chevalier de Charnisay.
The new Governor-General of Acadia was so struck by the natural beauties of La Heve that he fixed his residence there, in preference to Port Royal, which the Scotch had taken care to dismantle before sailing away. Naturally young De la Tour was very jealous at Razilly's coming. He thought the King ought to have appointed him Governor, instead of giving him the mere lordship over a limited territory. With Razilly's death in the following year De la Tour thought his chance had come. But again his hopes were frustrated. It appeared that Razilly had ceded all his rights to Charnisay, his Deputy-Governor, whose first act was to remove from La Heve and take up residence at Port Royal, where he built a new fort.
From this time forward Charnisay and De la Tour were sworn enemies. De la Tour believed in his heart that it was Charnisay's aim to dispossess him of those rights which he had acquired in Acadia by so much energy and sacrifice. It is certain that Charnisay had much more influence at home in France than had his rival. The King tried to settle the dispute by fixing the limits of Charnisay's government at the New England frontiers on the one hand, and at a line north from the Bay of Fundy on the other. Westward of this line was to be De la Tour's province. But in vain. Both rivals appealed to their monarch, and Charnisay's friends having poisoned the King's mind by alleging that De la Tour was a Huguenot in disguise, orders were sent to his foe to arrest him and send him a prisoner to France. By this time De la Tour was dwelling with his young wife and children, his soldiers and Indian followers, in a strong fort he had built at the mouth of the St. John's River, to which he had given his own name. When, to his amazement, he heard that his foe had succeeded in depriving him of his rank as King's Lieutenant, of his charter, and of his share in the fur trade; that Charnisay had, moreover, orders to take him a prisoner to France, his indignation was overwhelming. He took instant measures. Having strengthened Fort la Tour, he defied his enemy to do his worst.
Charnisay was a crafty man and moved slowly. Not until the spring of 1643 was he ready to wreak vengeance on the "traitor," as he called De la Tour. The snows had scarce melted, the trees were putting forth their first pale verdure, when De la Tour perceived several armed ships creeping stealthily into the harbour. Aboard these ships were 500 men whom Richelieu had sent to Charnisay to overpower the loyal subject who had, in a time of stress and temptation, held all Acadia for the French King. Duly the attacking force landed, and Charnisay, his eye kindling with hate and expected triumph, himself led the assault. But he deceived himself: the fort proved too strong and the besieged too valiant. After an hour of hot fighting, Charnisay was fain to acknowledge himself baffled. Yet although he could not storm the fort, he had another resource. He could, he thought, starve it into capitulation. Thus was begun a close siege by sea and land. But in spite of Charnisay's care, a loophole in the line of ships was left, and through this loophole one day De la Tour's keen vision saw, far on the horizon, the long-expected ship, with provisions, merchandise, and gunpowder for Fort de la Tour. To reach that ship was now the hope of De la Tour and his wife, no whit less valiant than himself. In it both would sail to Boston, and there seek to obtain reinforcements from the sturdy New Englanders. In his hazardous extremity De la Tour remembered the lesson his father, now dead, had tried to teach him, and what he had tried to forget all these years, that he was a baronet of England, doubly so, once in his own right and once by right of inheritance. By virtue of the rank the English King had given him, King Charles's transatlantic subjects would not refuse him succour. The next night, therefore, De la Tour and his lady slipped unperceived into a waiting boat and rowed with muffled oars through the blockade. The captain of the St. Clement was delighted to see De la Tour. Placing himself under his orders, they sailed for Boston, where, although they dared not give him direct assistance, the Puritan elders of the new town had no objection to striking a bargain, and at a good price permitted their visitor to hire four stout ships and seventy men. Sailing back with his force, De la Tour was able now to make his enemy flee before him. The siege of his own fort being raised, he followed the foiled Charnisay to Port Royal, captured a shipload of rich furs, and would have taken Charnisay himself and his settlement, had it not been for the scruples of his New England allies, who succeeded in patching up a peace. But none knew better than De la Tour that there could be no lasting truce between him and Charnisay.
While his wife went to France to obtain help, the brave Charles set about strengthening Fort la Tour. Once across the Atlantic, Madame de la Tour had a narrow escape from falling into the hands of their enemy, Charnisay, who had also gone to France on the same mission. But she eluded her enemies as well as the King's officers sent to arrest her, and reached England in safety. After many months, she took passage home in a small vessel. She had many adventures. Once she hid in the hold of the vessel while her enemies searched for her. The ship suffered delay after delay ere, to her joy, Fort la Tour at length was reached. Her husband received her with raptures, and at once set out to bribe the Boston folk once more to lend him a helping hand to avert the danger which again threatened him. Now was Charnisay's opportunity. Hardly was his rival gone than he mustered all his ships and men and fell upon the fort. What an easy prey it seemed! Charnisay forgot that a woman sometimes can play a man's part. The fort received him with so hot a fire—so hot that thirty-three of his men were slain—that Charnisay, with loud curses, withdrew to his ships. Long he lay in wait for De la Tour, who dared not now return, and after a second onslaught on the fort, Charnisay began in earnest to despair of success. At this critical junction a scoundrelly traitor, bought by Charnisay's gold, appeared in the fort. In vain the heroic woman spurred on her valiant band to repel the invaders. The latter had been told that her food and powder were nearly spent, and finally, at a signal, the traitor threw open the outer gates of the fort, and the host of the enemy rushed in. Yet even then for three days Madame de la Tour kept them at bay, and Charnisay at last, weary of the bloodshed, was fain to offer her fair terms if she would surrender and depart. She hesitated a moment, but, to spare the lives of her brave garrison, she caused the gates of the inner fort to be opened, and so yielded.
Then it was that Charnisay covered his name to the end of all time with the blackest infamy. His eyes dwelt on the smallness of the garrison, and, ashamed of the terms he had offered, he cried out, "I have been deceived! I have been deceived! Take these wretches out and hang them all one by one!" He ordered a halter to be placed about the neck of the splendid heroine, their intrepid mistress, Marie de la Tour. He forced her to witness the cold-blooded murder of her men, so that she swooned with horror. To Port Royal Charnisay then bore her away, where she fell ill, and in three short weeks was dead.
Alas, poor Marie de la Tour! Her husband was now an exile from Acadia. By the capture of the fort he had lost not only his wife, but all his merchandise, jewels, plate, and furniture worth ten thousand pounds. His debts to the Bostonians being heavy, he became bankrupt. So while Charnisay flourished and grew rich at Port Royal, reigning supreme throughout Acadia, Charles de la Tour was a wanderer on the face of the earth. As a coureur de bois he hunted and bartered for furs in the far north. Years passed, when, through a faithful follower, tidings reached him which filled his breast anew with hope. His enemy was dead, drowned in an Acadian river in the very flush and midsummer of his success, which, however, by the wildest extravagance, he had grossly abused. No sooner did De la Tour learn of this event than he took ship immediately for France and poured out the story of his wrongs at the foot of the throne. The King acknowledged the injustice with which his faithful subject had been treated, and, to make amends, created him sole Governor of Acadia, with a monopoly of the fur trade. Once again back in the colony he loved, his fortunes grew bright. His coffers soon filled with gold. But the sight of the widow and children of his life-long enemy troubled him. He knew that they regarded him as profiting by their misfortunes. To make what reparation he could, he presented himself before Madame Charnisay. She did not spurn his attentions, and so he courted, then wedded her, and took her children under his protection.
And now, you will think, this surely is the end of the drama. Nay, there is more to come. Charnisay in his day had had many dealings with a certain merchant of Rochelle named Le Borgne. This fellow now came forward with a trumped-up tale for De la Tour's undoing. He swore that Charnisay had died owing him a quarter of a million livres, and this story he duly unfolded before Cardinal Mazarin, the great Richelieu's successor. Mazarin, an intriguing bigot, suspected De la Tour's loyalty and religion, and ended by giving Le Borgne power to seize the dead Charnisay's estate. On the strength of this authority a force was got together, and Le Borgne sailed away to oust De la Tour and make himself, if possible, master of Acadia. He fell first upon Nicholas Denys, who commanded a fort under De la Tour, captured him, took Port Royal, and made all in readiness to storm Fort la Tour. Matters were in this posture when, like a bombshell, burst a surprise for all parties.
At this time, far away across the Atlantic in England, the Civil War had come to an end. King Charles was beheaded, and Oliver Cromwell ruled in his stead as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. When war broke out with Holland, Cromwell despatched a fleet to capture the Dutch colonies in America; but not long after the ships arrived at Boston, where they were to be joined by 500 of the English colonists, the latter were chagrined to hear that the war was over. The New Englanders had, however, in the meantime been petitioning Cromwell to make himself master of Nova Scotia, which they said was English by right and a source of danger to themselves. A glorious opportunity was now at hand of carrying out their schemes. The expedition intended for the Dutch was turned against the French in Acadia, and both De la Tour and Le Borgne were compelled to surrender. Nova Scotia once more flew the English flag, and at Port Royal an English Governor was installed, who made the settlers understand that no harm or oppression should befall them.
When these things happened, in the year 1654, De la Tour was long past his prime. After waiting a year he began to see how hopeless it was to expect that France would do anything to save Acadia. He crossed the ocean, this time to England. As Sir Charles de la Tour he obtained audience of the Lord Protector and stated his case fully and frankly. "I am the man for that country, my Lord. For more than sixty years I have laboured there, and settlers and Indians know me. With me it may prosper; without me it is nothing." Cromwell was a keen judge of character. He liked De la Tour's address, and decreed that he should come into his own again. An English Company was formed, consisting of De la Tour, Thomas Temple, one of Cromwell's colonels, and a Puritan minister named William Crowne, to take over the whole of Acadia, both the peninsula of Nova Scotia and the mainland. The partners were given besides the usual trading monopoly. Great projects were planned, and so firm was Temple's belief in Acadia's future that he spent his whole fortune in developing the estate. Long before his death, in 1666, Charles de la Tour sold out his interests to his partners. He divined further trouble, for the Restoration of Charles the Second put a new aspect on the situation. His seventy years of strenuous life made him long for peace and quiet. But the worst he did not live to see. A year after De la Tour died, King Charles put his royal hand to the disgraceful Treaty of Breda, by which all Acadia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, was given back to France, and Temple became a ruined man.
For forty-three years did Nova Scotia remain in the possession of the French. At length in 1713, by the Treaty of Utrecht, it passed to Great Britain, and in British possession it remains to this day. The New Englanders never ceased to regard French Acadia with jealousy. There were constant quarrels about the boundary-line between it and New England, and many deadly raids on both sides. Among the chief characters of Acadia at this time was the Baron St. Castin. He was a French noble who flung off the mantle of civilisation when he arrived in Canada with the Carignan-Callières regiment, and, marrying a squaw, took up his residence with the Indians. St. Castin dwelt in a strong fort on the Penobscot River and made himself lord and master over hundreds of Abenakis Indians. He was greatly dreaded by the English of Maine and Massachusetts.
During this long period, while Frontenac was ruling far away in Quebec, the population of Acadia slowly increased. Settlement was made at Chignecto and in the district called the Basin of Minas. It was the descendants of these settlers whose opposition to British rule caused them in the next century to be banished from the country.
In the meantime you must bear in mind that by water more than a thousand miles separated Port Royal from Quebec. Communication was slow and difficult. There was no high-road, and consequently the colonists on the St. Lawrence showed for a long time hardly more interest in Acadia's fortunes than if it were one of France's far-distant West Indian possessions. Louisburg, that mighty fortress which was to awaken their interest and to centre in itself so much of the power and glory of New France, was not yet built. It was not yet even a dream.
CHAPTER VIII
THE COMING OF FRONTENAC
While the wise and prudent Intendant, Talon, was playing his part of official father to the people, Governor Courcelle was busy with his own duties at Quebec. He found that the Iroquois, although they had buried the war-hatchet, had begun to injure Canada's interests in another way by inducing the Northern and Western Indians to trade with the English colonies. Courcelle made up his mind that the proper policy for the French was to secure a stronger hold on the more distant tribes. A fort and military station was built at a spot on the north shore of Lake Ontario where Kingston now stands. Expeditions were despatched to open up communication with the great and unknown territory west and south of the great lakes. Such was the beginning of a great era of discovery, associated in Canadian history with the name of Frontenac, Courcelle's successor, whose name in Canadian history stands second only to Champlain. It was during Courcelle's governorship, in 1669, that Charles the Second of England granted a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, who thereby acquired the right to trade for furs in the mighty region bordering upon Hudson's Bay. But although England thus planted her foot in the far regions of the north, it was to a couple of intrepid French Canadian bushrangers that the idea of the Company was due. The names of these bushrangers were Pierre Esprit Radisson and Chouart de Groseilliers, both emigrants from France. At an early age they had been thrilled by the tales of life and adventure in the distant wilderness across the sea. They were hardy and enterprising, well fitted for the arduous life-work which was before them. From a western tribe of Indians called the Assiniboines, Radisson and Groseilliers first heard of the character and extent of the great inland sea to the north, which had long before been named by the English marine explorers Hudson's Bay. Not only did they glean a description of the inland sea, but they also succeeded, while on their wanderings, in obtaining information how they might reach it, not as the English might do by sea, but overland.
In August 1660 the two adventurers found their way back to Montreal after over a year's absence. They were accompanied by 300 Indians and 60 canoes, laden with furs, out of which they made a handsome profit. But they had to reckon with the jealous fur-trading proprietors of Quebec, who sought to restrict them from adventuring into any new fields, and so many obstacles did the pair meet with, that in order to carry out their scheme and establish trading posts on Hudson's Bay they gave up their overland scheme and decided to throw in their lot with the English. They crossed over the ocean and had an interview with King Charles's cousin, the gallant Prince Rupert, and the result was all their hearts could wish for. Money for the enterprise was found, and an English association founded under charter from the King, which took the title of the Merchants and Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay, but better known to us as the Hudson's Bay Company.
On a June morning 1668 the Nonsuch, a ketch of only fifty tons' burden, left the Thames for Hudson's Bay. At the end of September it passed safely through Hudson's Straits, and all hands were ordered ashore in Rupert's River to begin the construction of a fort and dwellings, called after King Charles. It was made of logs, in the fashion of those made by the Jesuits and traders in Canada. As some protection from sudden attack it was enclosed by a stockade.
This, at Rupert's River, was the first of the forts and stations of the Hudson's Bay Company. After a time other forts and "factories," as they were called, began to dot the shores of the bay.
Radisson and Groseilliers did not continue very constant in their allegiance; sometimes they were English, sometimes they were French. They were rough-and-ready adventurers both; and it all depended whose purse was largest to command their services. Radisson, however, ended his days in the receipt of a pension from the Hudson's Bay Company.
Naturally, the French were not at all pleased at this enterprise which the English had set on foot, and soon began to take measures to get the fur trade of the most distant parts into their own hands.
Governor Courcelle despatched an explorer, a brave fellow named Nicholas Perrot, to summon deputies from the far western tribes to a conference, and take them all under the protection of King Louis. It was while on this expedition that Perrot heard from the Indians of a mighty river flowing southwards, which they spoke of as the Mississippi, or Father of Waters. The rumour caused great interest in Canada. It was not long, as we shall see, before another expedition started from Quebec to ascertain what truth lay in the story. But that was in Frontenac's time.
Louis de Buade, Count of Frontenac, was a grandson of one of the knightly paladins who had fought with Henry the Fourth in the wars of the League. He was a very shrewd, courageous, and ambitious man. He entered upon the government of Canada, as he entered upon everything he undertook in his life, with great enthusiasm. In almost his first letter home he wrote: "I have never seen anything so fair or so grand as the site of Quebec. That city could not have been better placed had it been purposely founded as the expected capital of a great Empire." Soon after lie arrived, Talon retired from his post of Intendant, fearing a conflict with the indomitable spirit of the new Governor. For Frontenac, with all his excellent qualities, could endure no opposition. He chafed at any criticism of his authority. And opposition and criticism were to be his lot for years. He soon became engaged in bitter disputes with the officials of the colony, with Bishop Laval, who was as stern and unbending as himself, with the new Intendant, Duchesneau, and with the Governor of Montreal. Frontenac disliked the Jesuits; he was constantly seeking to curb their influence. This unhappy three-cornered conflict lasted all through Frontenac's first governorship of ten years. He became more and more despotic, banishing members of the Council who offended him, and finally sending Governor Perrot of Montreal, as well as a hostile priest named Fenelon, back to France, where the former was imprisoned in the Bastille.
He had many enemies, but Frontenac had also many friends. These idolised him, and to one, the brilliant and adventurous La Salle, he stood firm as a rock. We have seen how Frontenac's predecessor, Courcelle, had planned a fort on Lake Ontario. This plan Frontenac warmly approved, and believing the post ought to be a strong one, he sent 400 men to construct the works and to serve as garrison. He also established another fort at Niagara. The project of discovering the vast stream which the Indians called the Mississippi also greatly interested the Governor, and a strong and able priest, Father Marquette, and a fur-trading explorer named Jolliet left the St. Lawrence in its quest. Frontenac, La Salle, and the others still cherished in their hearts a vision of a short route to China. At that time no one knew how far away the Pacific Ocean lay—no one dreamt that thousands of miles of mountain range and prairie separated Quebec and New York from its shores. Marquette and Jolliet, with a few followers, pushed on to the north-west of Lake Michigan. After much paddling and many portages their canoes brought them at last into the swelling flood of the greatest river in the world. What emotions they felt! In wonder and triumph they descended the Mississippi, and during the month which followed, passed the mouths of three other great rivers, the Illinois, the Missouri, and the Ohio. They had many talks with friendly Indians on the banks; they saw much beautiful scenery and many strange sights. At last they drew near to the mouth of the river of Arkansas, where savages who had never so much as looked on the face of a white man were not so friendly. Jolliet and his companion deemed that they had gone far enough. By this time they had made up their minds that the great river emptied not into the Pacific ocean but into the Gulf of Mexico. Reluctantly they turned back, and not till the following summer did the two explorers reach Canada again. All through this memorable journey Jolliet had noted down in a book a description of all that had attracted his attention, besides sketching carefully a map of the course. This book he guarded jealously, intending it for the eyes of the Governor, of King Louis, and the people of France. Alas, just as he had run Lachine rapids and was in sight of home, his canoe capsized and the precious volume floated away on the rushing waters! It was a cruel disappointment for Jolliet. Frontenac received him graciously, heard his story, and reported what he had heard to his royal master. As for Jolliet's companion, Father Marquette was wholly worn out by his exertions. Less than two years later he lay down and died by a little river pouring into Lake Michigan, baffled in his dream of converting whole tribes of Indians in what was then the Far West. Neither he nor the Canadian-born Jolliet have been forgotten in this region. To many towns and counties have their names been given, and their statues in bronze and marble are to be seen in several places in America to-day.
Jolliet and Marquette had begun the work; it now remained for another strong, ardent, adventurous spirit to continue it. Such a one was close at hand in the person of Réné Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. As a young man he had come to Canada from his native city of Rouen, filled with the most romantic ideas of winning fame and wealth in the wilderness. To learn the Indian language and ways he had left the towns and led the roving life of a bushranger, making long, lonely canoe journeys and dwelling in the Indian wigwams. He, too, had heard of the Father of Waters, the vast Mississippi, and tried to reach it, but, as we have seen, Jolliet was there before him. But La Salle did not accept Jolliet's conclusions. He refused to believe that the Mississippi emptied into the Gulf of Mexico—he thought it led to the Pacific. He was full of faith in the existence of a short route to China. When any one met him on his return from an expedition, however short, they would jokingly ask him, "Venez vous de la Chine?" ("Do you come from China?") La Salle had bought an estate not far from Montreal, and this estate came at last to be called in derision La Chine, and Lachine it is called to this hour. But La Salle was not the kind of man to be discouraged. He was determined to settle the matter one way or another, and into his plans Frontenac entered heartily. But for some years other work claimed La Salle's attention—work of a pioneering sort. He believed that before the French could lay strong hands on the west, where the English had already begun to penetrate, forts and stations ought to be built and a firm alliance made with the Indians. With Frontenac's approval, he assumed control of Fort Cataracoui, on Lake Ontario. Once in his hands, La Salle tore it down, built a stronger one of stone, and rechristened it in honour of his patron, Fort Frontenac. Moving westward, he began to clear land and to build small ships to carry the cargoes of furs he had bargained for. The first he built on Lake Erie in the year 1679 he called the Griffin, in which he sailed to the Green Bay Mission on Lake Michigan. There the Griffin was packed with costly furs and bade God-speed on her return voyage eastward. Weeks passed, then months and years, but the Griffin never came back. Her timbers and the bodies of her crew have long rotted somewhere at the bottom of one of the Great Lakes. The loss was a sad blow to La Salle; it was one of the first of that series of great misfortunes which followed him through his career until he was cruelly done to death by foul traitors in the remote forest.
But by this time La Salle was not alone in his wanderings. In Henry de Tonti he had a fiery and trusty lieutenant, and a devoted follower in a Recollet friar, Father Hennepin. Before coming to Canada, Tonti had lost a hand in battle, its place being supplied by one of steel, covered by a glove. The Indians stood amazed at the blows Tonti could deal with his mysterious gloved hand, blows which would have shattered their own members to fragments. Tonti often had reason to bless his hand of steel. Three years after the ill-fated Griffin went down, La Salle saw his way clear to carry out his great purpose. He embarked on the waters of the Mississippi on a voyage to its source. The explorer, with Tonti and his party, met with a friendly reception from most of the Indians on their journey. Some were disposed to be hostile, and when this happened to be the case, strong, quick paddling soon put the French out of their reach. Finally, on the 19th of March, as the sun shone hot and trees and flowers were in bloom, their canoes entered the mouth of the Father of Waters, which is divided into three channels. La Salle, in his canoe, entered one, Tonti the second, and Captain d'Autray the third. All disembarked, and on some high, dry ground La Salle caused a column to be raised, and upon it this inscription was placed:
LOUIS THE GREAT,
King of France
and of Navarre,
reigns.
The ninth of April 1682.
La Salle took possession of the country for the King, and bestowed upon it the name, in his honour, of Louisiana. It took the explorers a full year to get back to Quebec, for the current was strong and the difficulties many. There he received a warm reception. But nothing could console him. Much to his sorrow and dismay, he found a new Governor installed. The enemies of Frontenac, headed by Laval, had triumphed, and the greatest and strongest man in Canada had been recalled by the King. Never could this measure have happened at a worse time. For, while La Salle had been absent, after years of peace, the restless Iroquois had dug up the war-hatchet. Upon a pretext of having received offence from the Illinois tribe, which was under French protection, they threatened to deluge the land in blood. To this policy they had been urged by the English Governor of New York, Colonel Dongan, who saw with alarm the growing enterprise, both in fur trade and exploration of the French. While he continued in Canada the doughty Frontenac was more than a match for the Iroquois chiefs. He sent for them instantly to Fort Frontenac, saying that if they had been wronged by the Illinois he would see that they had proper satisfaction. The Iroquois, having the English Governor at their back, at first returned a defiant answer. "If you want to see us, friend Onontio," they said, "you must come to our lodges." With flashing eyes and with knitted brows, Frontenac sent back the messenger to the Iroquois commanding them to keep their hands off his Indians or take all consequences. He had, he said, asked them to come and meet him at Fort Frontenac. Now he added, if the Iroquois wished to see him, they would have to come to Montreal. His sternness and the fear of his displeasure overcame the braves of the Five Nations. Changing their tone, they sent an embassy to Montreal, promising the peace which they hated. Scarcely had they done so than Frontenac the Lion was replaced by La Barre, the Lamb.
Like every one else, La Salle, on learning the evil news, saw the folly and danger of the change. To France straightway he sailed, where the King heaped him with honours, and, seizing the opportunity, he unfolded a project for establishing a French colony in Louisiana. Ships were freely given him and many soldiers and supplies to reach the Gulf of Mexico by sea. But La Salle, though he never would admit the fact, was no sailor. His navigation was fatally at fault; he wholly missed his intended destination, the mouth of the Mississippi, sailing hundreds of miles beyond. He landed, and through the forests and swamps, and stricken with fever, he led his colonists. After much miserable wandering, in which most of the little army perished, his followers mutinied. La Salle was murdered and his corpse flung to the jackals and vultures.
Far more successful were the adventures of the Chevalier de Troyes. The Chevalier de Troyes was a Canadian nobleman who had long fought for his king, and had seen service on many of the bloody battlefields in Europe. Now, when age began to creep upon him, and scars lined his cheek and brow, he had retired to his estate on the banks of the silvery St. Lawrence, to spend the rest of his days in peace and the companionship of his books. In his retirement the news of the increasing power and wealth of the Hudson's Bay Company reached him; it told him that unless this power was checked the prosperity of the French fur-hunters and fur-traders would be utterly crushed. An idea flashed across the brain of the Chevalier de Troyes, who believed he now saw an opportunity of winning enduring distinction, to rival, and may be surpass, the exploits of Champlain, La Salle, and the other hero-pioneers of New France.
In the depths of winter he summoned all his dependants and all whom his eloquence could attract, locked up his library, and set out for Quebec on snow-shoes. From the Governor he procured, on Christmas Eve 1685, official permission to steal upon the English and drive them, at the point of the sword, from the shores of Hudson's Bay. He was empowered to "search for, seize, and occupy the most advantageous posts, to seize the robbers, bushrangers, and others whom we know to have taken and arrested several of our French engaged in the Indian trade, whom we order him to arrest, especially Radisson and his adherents, wherever they may be found, and bring them to be punished as deserters, according to the rigour of the ordinances." The rigour of the ordinances was but another word for death.
Fourscore Canadians were selected to make up the expedition against the Hudson's Bay Company's posts by the Chevalier de Troyes. For his lieutenants the leader chose the three sons of a nobleman of New France named Charles le Moine. One, the eldest, a young man of only twenty-five, was to bear an enduring distinction in the annals of France as one of her most able and intrepid naval commanders. This was the Sieur d'Iberville. His brothers, taking their names, as he had done, from places in their native land, were called the Sieurs de Sainte-Hélène and de Marincourt. Thirty soldiers were directly attached to the Chevalier's command, veterans who had, almost to a man, seen service in one or other of the great European wars. That they might not be without the ministrations of religion, Father Sylvie, a Jesuit priest, accompanied the expedition.
"The rivers," writes a chronicler of the Troyes expedition, "were frozen and the earth covered with snow when that small party of vigorous men left Montreal in order to ascend the Ottawa River as far as the height of land, and thence to go down to James's Bay." At the beginning of April they arrived at the Long Sault, where they prepared some canoes in order to ascend the Ottawa River. From Lake Temiscamingue they passed many portages until they reached Lake Abbitibi, at the entrance or most southern extremity of which they built a small fort of stockades. After a short halt they continued their course onward to James's Bay.
First doomed to conquest by Troyes and his companions was Moose Factory, a stockade fort with four bastions. In the centre stood a house 40 feet square and as many high, terminating in a platform. This fort was escaladed by the French late at night, and of the palisades short work was made by the hatchets of the bushrangers.
Not a man amongst the garrison appears to have attempted a decent defence save the chief gunner, whose skull was split into fragments by Iberville, and who thus perished bravely at his post of duty. A cry for quarter went up, and the English were made prisoners on the spot. They were sixteen in number, and as the attack was made at night, they were in a state of almost complete undress. Troyes found in the fort twelve cannon, chiefly six and eight pounders, three thousand pounds of powder, and ten pounds of lead.
It is worth telling that this conquest was made with an amount of pomp and ceremony calculated to strike the deepest awe into the hearts of the fifteen unhappy traders, who knew nothing of fighting, nor had bargained for anything so perilous. For so small a victory it was both preceded and followed by almost as much circumstance as would have sufficed for the Grand Monarque himself in one of his theatrical sieges. The Chevalier announced in a loud voice that he took possession of the fort and island "in the name of his Most Christian Majesty the Most High, Most Mighty, Most Redoubtable Monarch Louis XIV. of the Most Christian names, King of France and Navarre." According to romantic custom, a sod of earth was thrice raised in the air, whilst a cry of "Vive le Roi" rang out over those waters wherein, deep down, lay the bodies of Henry Hudson and his brave followers.
Flushed with his triumph, the Chevalier de Troyes next bethought him of an attack on either Fort Rupert or Fort Albany. He did not long hesitate. News came that a boat containing provisions had left Moose Factory on the previous day bound for Rupert's River. Iberville was therefore sent with nine men and two bark canoes to attack a sloop belonging to the Company, then lying at anchor at the mouth of the latter river. Fourteen souls were aboard, including the Governor. To accomplish this feat it was necessary to travel forty leagues along the sea-coast. The road was extremely difficult, and in places almost impassable. A small boat was built to carry a couple of small camion. When he had arranged all his plans, Troyes left for Fort Rupert.
Ste. Hélène was sent on in advance to reconnoitre the English fort. He returned with the information that it was a square structure, flanked by four bastions, but that all was in a state of confusion owing to repairs and additions then being made. The cannon had not yet been placed, being temporarily accommodated outside on the slope of a redoubt.
Ere the attack, which could only have one issue, was made by the land forces, Iberville had boarded the Company's sloop, surprised captain and crew, and made all, including Governor Bridgar, prisoners. Four of the English were killed.
On the heels of this exploit, Iberville came ashore, rejoined his superior, and overpowered the almost defenceless garrison of Fort Rupert.
The French forces now united, and Ste. Hélène having been as successful as his brother in securing the second of the Company's ships, all embarked and sailed for the remaining post of the Company in that part of the Bay.
Neither Troyes nor Iberville knew its precise situation; but a little reconnoitring soon discovered it. Fort Albany was built in a sheltered inlet forty yards from the borders of the Bay. Two miles to the north-east was an estrapade, on the summit of which was placed a seat for a sentinel to sight the ships expected from England, and to signal them if all was well. But on this morning, unhappily, no sentinel was there to greet with a waving flag the Company's captured ship, on the deck of which young Iberville held vigilant and expectant watch.
Two Indians, however, brought Governor Sargeant tidings of the approach of the enemy, and his previous successes at Moose and Rupert rivers. The Governor immediately resolved upon making a bold stand; all was instantly got in readiness to sustain a siege, and the men were encouraged to behave with fortitude. Two hours later the booming of cannon was heard, and soon afterwards a couple of skirmishers were sighted at a distance. Despite the Governor's example, the servants at the fort were thrown into the greatest confusion. Two of their number were deputed by the rest to inform the Governor that they were by no means disposed to sacrifice their lives without provision being made for themselves and families in case of a serious issue. They were prevailed upon by the Governor to return to their posts, and a bounty was promised them. Bombardment by the French soon afterwards began, and lasted for two days, occasionally replied to by the English. But it was not until the evening of the second day that the first fatality occurred, when one of the servants was killed, and this brought about a mutiny. Elias Turner, the chief gunner, declared to his comrades that it was impossible for the Governor to hold the place, and that, for his part, he was ready to throw himself on the clemency of the French. Sargeant, overhearing this declaration, drew his pistol and threatened to blow out the gunner's brains if he did not return to his post, and the man slunk back to his duty. The French now profited by the darkness to bring their cannon through the wood closer to the fort; and by daybreak a series of heavy balls struck the bastions, causing a breach. Bridgar and Captain Outlaw, then at Fort Albany, were convinced that the enemy was undermining the powder magazine, in which case they would certainly all be blown to pieces.
From the ship the French had thrown up a battery, which was separated from the moat surrounding the fort by less than a musket-shot. None ventured to show himself above ground at a moment of such peril. A shell exploded at the head of the stairway and wounded the cook. The cries of the French could now be distinctly heard outside the fort—"Vive le Roi, Vive le Roi." In their fright and despair the English echoed the cry "Vive le Roi," thinking thereby to propitiate their aggressors. But the latter mistook the cry for one of defiance, as a token of loyalty to an altogether different monarch, and the bullets whistled faster and thicker. Sargeant desired to lower the flag floating above his own dwelling, but there was none to undertake so hazardous a task. Finally, Dixon, the under-factor, offered to show himself and placate the French. He first thrust a white cloth from a window and waved a lighted torch before it. He then called in a loud voice, and the firing instantly ceased. The under-factor came forth, fully dressed, bearing two huge flagons of port wine. Walking beyond the parapets, he encountered both Troyes and Iberville, and by the light of a full moon the little party of French officers and the solitary Englishman sat down on the mounted cannon, or on the ground beside it, broached the two flagons and drank the health of the two kings, their masters.
"And now, gentlemen," said Dixon, "what is it you want?"
"Possession of your fort in the name of his Most Christian Majesty, King Louis the Fourteenth."
Dixon, explaining that he was not master there, offered to conduct this message to his chief, and in a very short time the French commanders were seated comfortably within the house of the Governor. The demand was here repeated, it being added that great offence had been given by the action of the English in taking captive three French traders, the previous autumn, and keeping them prisoners on ground owned and ruled by the King of France. For this compensation was demanded, and Sargeant was desired at once to surrender the fort. The Governor was surprised at such extreme measures, for which he was totally unprepared, but was willing to surrender upon terms of capitulation. On the following morning these were arranged.
It was agreed that Sargeant should continue to keep all his personal effects; and further, that his deputy, Dixon, three domestics, and his servant should accompany him out of the fort. It was also agreed that Troyes should send the clerks and servants of the Company to a neighbouring island, there to await the arrival of the Company's ships from England. In case of their non-arrival within a reasonable time, Troyes promised to assist them to such vessel as he could procure for the purpose. The Frenchmen also gave Sargeant the provisions necessary to keep him and his companions from starvation. All quitted the fort without arms, save Sargeant and his son, whose swords and pistols hung at their sides. The Governor and his suite were provided with passage to Hays Island, where he afterwards made his escape to Port Nelson. The others were distributed between Forts Moose and Albany, and were treated by their captors with considerable severity and hardship.
Having attended to the disposition of his prisoners and their property, Troyes, accompanied by Iberville, departed on 10th August for Montreal. The gallant Chevalier and his associates would have been glad to have pursued their successes by crossing the Bay and capturing York Factory. But although two ships belonging to the Company had fallen to their lot, yet they could find none competent to command them. The distance between Albany and Port Nelson was by water 250 leagues, and the road overland was as yet unknown to the French. But it was not their purpose that it should long remain so. In a letter to his official superior at Quebec, Troyes, who wanted to plant the fleur-de-lys over the whole bay, boasted that the next year would not pass without his becoming acquainted with it.
Wherefore Troyes suffered himself to be prevailed upon by Iberville and be content with the victories already won. They carried with them in their journey more than 50,000 beaver skins as a trophy of their arms. Many of the Hudson's Bay Company's servants were employed in bearing the spoils. During the dreary march several of these unhappy captives were killed through the connivance of the French with the Indians; and the survivors reached Quebec in a dreadfully emaciated and halt condition.
You may believe that the victories of the Chevalier were blazoned to the skies. He was hailed in Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec as equal to any of the heroes of olden times, and his return was celebrated with great pomp. As to his future, the career of the Chevalier de Troyes ended abruptly and tragically in 1687, when he and all his men, to the number of ninety, were massacred by the Indians at Niagara.
Governor la Barre, as you have heard, was an altogether different sort of man from Count Frontenac. The Iroquois tribes, especially the Senecas, who had now become the strongest nation, noticed the difference at once when they resumed negotiations. Instead of the dignity of command, La Barre wheedled their deputies, sending them away from Montreal loaded with presents. Soon afterwards, when he despatched a trading expedition to the Illinois region, the Senecas stopped it in its course, overhauled the canoes, and confiscated all the valuable goods with which La Barre (with an eye to great private profits) had packed them. Such a high-handed proceeding touched the Governor in a very sore place—his pocket. He became very wroth with the rascally Senecas, and swore to punish them for their knavery and presumption. A force of 900 men being raised, La Barre himself led them to the land of the Senecas on the south side of Lake Ontario. But so badly laid and badly carried out were his plans that, having got as far as the spot, since called the Bay of Famine, Governor la Barre called a halt and there encamped. Each day saw some of the soldiers stricken down by death and disease. The prospect was so gloomy that finally La Barre thought it best to come to terms with the enemy, and he therefore patched up an inglorious peace.
The name of the Seneca deputy at the peace conference was La Grande Gueule, or Big Jaw, so called from his gift of sustained eloquence. Big Jaw openly boasted that the Iroquois had not the slightest intention of sparing the Illinois tribe, whether the French liked it or not. Frontenac would have smitten the fellow down where he stood, but La Barre was obliged to pocket this affront, and the next day the remnant of his troops, full of anger and indignation, marched away.
Such a peace could not, of course, long endure. The Iroquois torch had been kindled, an evil wind was blowing, and it would take more than La Barre's feeble efforts to extinguish it. Tardy in war and too eager for peace had the Governor shown himself, and when he returned to Quebec found, to his mortification, that the King, his master, had superseded him. His instant return to France was ordered, the Marquis de Denonville being appointed in his stead. Little pains did His Majesty take to conceal his dissatisfaction with the treaty, or his anger at the abandonment of the Illinois.
The new Governor very quickly found that the English colonists were intriguing with the Iroquois, upholding and encouraging them in acts of hostility against the French. War, and war in earnest, had to come, and when 800 fresh soldiers arrived from France, Denonville began to prepare for it. In this he had the loyal support of the brave and wise man who also came out as the new Governor of Montreal, De Callières. Unluckily, Denonville began with an act of treachery. It was a strange deed for a soldier and a Christian. A number of Iroquois chiefs were enticed to Fort Frontenac, where they were seized, and, after being flung into prison, were sent to France to work all the rest of their days in the galleys. What a fate for such haughty braves, who never worked, but left all labour to their poor squaws! What wonder the revenge of the Iroquois was terrible!
Creeping along the St. Lawrence with his army, Denonville crossed Lake Ontario, built a new fort, and leaving 400 men to guard it, marched towards the Seneca lodges. In the middle of July 1687 a hot battle took place with 800 Senecas, in which, after losing six men killed and twenty wounded, the French drove the foe into the forest. Four hundred thousand bushels of Indian corn (maize) and several herds of swine were found and destroyed. In the meantime, however, while the Senecas were being punished, the danger to Montreal and the other towns was imminent, owing to their being without strong military protection. To defend Chambly 120 bushrangers were armed, and on the island of Montreal, Callières built twenty small forts for the inhabitants to take refuge in, should the Iroquois descend upon them in force. For by this time, as you can imagine, the whole of the Five Nations were blazing with rage, as if they had been so many bloodthirsty wolves. Even in their rage they were cunning. They had no intention of attacking Canada in force; that was not their method of warfare. Crossing the border silently in batches, each singled out his prey, some sleeping village, or mayhap an unsuspecting farm. Next day a few mangled corpses here, a heap of smoking ruins there, told the terrible tale of the Iroquois raid.
After a time the wiser heads amongst the Five Nations began to consider whether a conquest over the French would not make the Colonial English (whom they called Ang'ais or Yankees) too powerful. Suddenly they openly professed a desire for peace. A deputation was sent to Canada to say that, strong as the Iroquois knew themselves to be, they did not mean to press for all the advantages they had the right and power to demand. "We know," they said, "how weak you are. We can at any time burn the houses of your people, pillage your stores, waste your crops, and raze your forts." To this boasting Denonville replied that Colonel Dongan of New York claimed the Iroquois as English subjects. "If you are English subjects, then you must be at peace with us, for France and England are not now at war." "Onontio," exclaimed the chief of the Envoys, "the Five Nations are independent! We can be friends to one or both, or enemies to one or both. Never have we been conquered by either of you."
In the end a truce was proclaimed, but truce or no truce, a great many skirmishes and massacres still went on, on both sides. All they could do to prevent a peace being signed, the Hurons of Michilimackinac, allies of the French, did. To them peace meant utter ruin; their numbers were too few, and they well knew Denonville could not protect them from the fury of the Iroquois. Amongst the Hurons was a tall chief famous for his prowess in war and his gift of eloquence. He was, according to those who knew him, the bravest and most intelligent chief on the whole Continent. Kondiaronk, or "The Rat," was mortally offended that the French should have made even a truce without so much as consulting the wishes of their native allies. To take his revenge on Denonville, he resolved to make peace impossible. When the Iroquois envoys were on their way to Montreal to sign the treaty, "The Rat" lay in ambush with a band of his trusty Hurons. He surprised and made them all his prisoners, slaying one. When they angrily explained that they were peaceful envoys, the crafty Kondiaronk professed to be greatly surprised, because, said he, "the French Governor himself sent me here on purpose to waylay you. But if, as I believe, what you say is true, behold, I set you at liberty! May the gods curse Onontio for having committed such an act of treachery!" Thus saying, he loaded the deputies with gifts and bade all but one go free. After which Kondiaronk, glorying in his perfidy, hastened to Michilimackinac, shaking his fist in triumph and crying, "I have killed the peace!" He spoke then the truth. The Iroquois prisoner he took with him, under the pretence of adopting him in place of one of his Hurons slain by the deputies on being attacked, was handed over to the French Commander of Michilimackinac as a spy. In vain the victim protested that he was an envoy of peace between the Five Nations and the French. In vain did he try to explain the circumstances of his capture. Kondiaronk laughed in his face, telling the French Commander he must have taken leave of his wits, and the unhappy wretch was led to the stake. An Iroquois captive was released by Kondiaronk and bidden to return to his tribe with this message, that while the French were making a show of wishing peace, they were secretly slaying and capturing the men of the Five Nations.
Months passed while the Iroquois brooded on vengeance. Denonville's protestations were received in contemptuous silence. There was now nothing to prevent formal war, for France and England had recommenced hostilities. King James the Second had fled from his throne and palace to France. William of Orange, the mortal enemy of King Louis, reigned in his stead. A new English Governor, Andros, was sent out to New York to foment the deadly feud between the Iroquois and the Canadians.
In the month of August 1689 burst at last the storm of the Iroquois' hatred and revenge. One night, during a heavy shower of hail, 1500 dusky warriors crossed Lake St. Louis, landing silently and stealthily on the beautiful island of Montreal, the "Garden of Canada." By daybreak they had grouped themselves in platoons, one platoon around every large dwelling for several leagues along the road at Lachine almost to the gates of Montreal. The inhabitants of Lachine were wrapped in sweet slumber, soon and ruthlessly to be exchanged for that other slumber which knows no mortal awakening.
Let us conjure up the terrible picture. At each door, in war-paint and feathers, stands a group of savages with upraised hatchets and huge mallets. The signal is given; it is the dread Indian war-whoop; the next moment doors and windows are driven inwards. Sleeping men, women, and children are dragged from their beds. In vain they struggle in the hands of their butchers, in vain they appeal to those who know no pity. They might as well appeal to wild beasts. A few houses resist their attacks; when these are fired 200 unhappy beings, the hope and pride of the colony, are burnt alive. Agonising shrieks rend the air. The knife, the torch, and the tomahawk spare none, not even the little children. Those who do not now die under their tortures are led away to nameless cruelties, which will furnish rare sport to the lodges of the Five Nations.
Such was the awful massacre of Lachine; such the vengeance of the Iroquois. So swift and sudden had been the blow that the citizens of Montreal were paralysed. All that dreadful day the savages moved on, and for many days afterwards, and none came to arrest their course. Governor Denonville, to whose policy the calamity was due, seems entirely to have lost his nerve. A few miles from Lachine a body of 200 troops, led by a brave officer named Subercase, asked to be led against the murderers of their countrymen. But Denonville, in a panic, ordered Subercase to take refuge in Fort Roland. All were forbidden to stir. Another body of men, commanded by one Larobeyre, attempting to reach Fort Roland, were set upon and cut to pieces. More than half the prisoners were burnt by their conquerors. Larobeyre, wounded and unable to flee, was led captive to the Iroquois wigwams and roasted alive at a slow fire. The bloodthirsty tribes remained by the St. Lawrence as long as they pleased; their ravages of the countryside continued for many weeks. Not until October did the last of them disappear. A small party sent by Denonville to make sure that they had really gone, came upon a canoe bearing twenty-two departing Iroquois paddling across the Lake of the Two Mountains. The chance was not one to be foregone. Too long held in check, the Canadians drew near the savages, who fired upon them without damage. Then with a fierce joy the white men singled out each his man, raised their muskets, and when the explosion came eighteen Iroquois toppled over into the lake. But considering the hundreds of Canadians who had been massacred, this was a paltry retribution indeed.
What wonder now that the men and women of Canada longed for the strong right arm and sagacious brain of Frontenac! Is it any marvel that they rejoiced to hear that, menaced with the loss of his North-American dominions, King Louis had entrusted the gallant, fiery old soldier once more with the government of New France. Frontenac's return was hailed by all, nobles, soldiers, merchants, artisans, farmers, even by the Jesuits, who five years before had striven to send him away. He was escorted to the fort with a multitude of torch-bearers. Well he knew what a great task awaited him. He had now to battle not only with the Iroquois, but with the Anglo-American colonies, the Yankees, as they were called by the Indians, just as his master, King Louis, had to combat five powers at once—England, Germany, Holland, Spain, and Savoy.
Was Frontenac equal to the task? Was the strain now to be placed on his shoulders too great for the powers of a hero seventy-two years of age? That question let the next chapter answer.