Class JEixmci, Book. 'B "^..^ Gopightl^»_ . 4 OLD FRANCE IN THE NEW WORLD QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BY JAMES DOUGLAS, LL.D. THE BURROWS BROTHERS COMPANY 1905 All rights reserved Copyright, 1905, by James Douglas Two O0PI6S iiecttv»xj SEPn 14 1905 /26 2^ 3 PREFACE. A large library always reminds me painfully of a grave- yard, and the rows of neglected books on its shelves of grave- stones. They merely, in most instances, perpetuate the names of men and women who have passed as completely out of the world's ken as the multitudes, whose existence on our planet is recorded on the mouldering stone by a name and two dates. Here and there is a book which is occasionally opened, just as here and there in our graveyards is a monument which marks the last resting place of some one famous for a deed which made his life conspicuous among the thousands who lived and died with- out leaving a sensible impression on their generation. And even these nonentities were in most instances less presumptu- ous than the unread author; for they would have hesitated to appraise the importance of their own past lives at even the value of a tombstone. It was the dead man's friends who, after he had gone, thus endeavored to perpetuate the fleeting mem- ory of a vanished shadow. But the man who publishes his own book is vain enough to erect his own gravestone, and inscribe on it his own epitaph, and therefore he must not complain if it Hes as neglected on the library shelf as the crumbling stones erected over the graves of insignificant people in our cemeteries. Nevertheless, men and women will continue to write books, believing that they are adding something to the world's stock of truth. Should the world think otherwise, they can at least derive some solace from the thought (if they have paid their bills) that they have given remunerative occupation to the printer and bookbinder. Should the above be the fate of my book, it is unkind to bury the names of friends with my own. Yet I cannot refrain from thanking the Abbe Scott, not only for permitting me to copy maps from his interesting- history of the Parish of St. Foy, but even lending me the block of the Portrait of Com- mander Sillery; Colonel Neilson for supplying more than one of my illustrations from his valuable collection of Jesuit memorabilia, secured by his great-grandfather v^hen the Jesuit Estates were sold in 1800; Mr. George lies and Mr. W. D. Le Sueur for reading my proof sheets; and the Burrows Com- pany for being willing to strike off copies of some of the inter- esting illustrations made for their edition of the Jesuit Rela- tions. In my book there are doubtless avoidable and unavoid- able mistakes, and many of my friends will charge me with errors of judgment and opinion. I cannot claim to have had access to unpublished documents, but I have tried to derive my facts and my inspirations from original published sources. The history of Canada was, during the period we have re- viewed, indissolubly associated with that of Quebec, and it con- tinued so to be during the remaining half century of the French Regime. Such books as Sir Gilbert Parker's " In Old Quebec," and the more critical description of the city, " Quebec Under Two Flags," by Messrs. Doughty and Dionne, blend of neces- sity the history of the country with that of the old town well into the period when the possession of Canada passed beyond the control of France. These books and others in the English language tell the story concisely and in a small compass, but none of them are written with the grace and literary skill which distinguish the many memoirs and histories written by French and French Canadian writers. CHAPTER I. Europe in America, or Old France and Old England in New France and New England* The undignified scramble in which the great powers of the world are now engaged for the possession of Africa and such islands of the sea as are still occupied by their aboriginal inhabi- tants, resembles in many of its aspects the race to occupy the New World, in which the maritime nations of the sixteenth century competed. To-day we call conquest "occupation," and the con- quered area, with its subjugated people, ''a sphere of influence." Yet the motives are the same — national aggrandizement and pri- vate gain — disguise them as we may under the cloak of a disin- terested desire to share the blessings of our advanced civilization with our less fortunate fellow men. Our civil methods are less cruel, and the evangelization of the savage is not now generally regarded as a function of the state ; but the actual wishes of the original occupants of the coveted territories, whether they be the blacks of Africa or the tawny children of Hawaii, are as super- ciliously disregarded by us as were the rights of the Indians of America by the faithful children of Spain, or certain of the Anglo- Saxon colonists of the North Atlantic coast and their descendants. Columbus' first memorable voyage was promoted by Spain Tinder the spur of rivalry with Portugal. This insignificant power, since the days of Prince Henry, had gradually crept round the African continent, and opened up trade by sea with India and with the mysterious empires of Cathay and Zepango. Marco Polo's strange adventures in these remote regions had remained so long — just two centuries — unconfirmed that his story had come to be regarded as a myth, and the land of the Great Khan a mirage. But Portugal's maritime achievements and subsequent mercantile success had not only converted a geo- graphical illusion into a reality, but had inspired into mediaeval 8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. commerce a new spirit, as irresistibly progressive as that with which the discovery of printing had reanimated the intellectual life of Europe. Just at this juncture Spain had been fused into a political unit and had sprung into a power of the first magnitude. The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella had united in national wed- lock the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, and had thus so com- bined and concentrated the resources of Spain that she was able to drive the Moors from her borders. This feat accomplished, and a strong patriotic spirit created, national pride could not brook the ignominy of beholding Little Portugal, a tiny strip on the Atlantic seaboard of the Iberian Peninsula, extending her domain beyond the sea. Spain was thus not only prepared but impelled to enter on a career of maritime discovery and foreign commerce. Portugal had sailed to the Orient by an Eastern course. The world is round and therefore the same Orient would be reached by sailing across the sea towards the West. Columbus is supposed to have taken counsel with the Florentine geographer Toscanelli, who had calculated the distance from the Iberian shore westward to the Island of Zepango (Japan) and to Cathay, the domain of the Grand Khan. No suspicion of inter- vening land seems to have disturbed his confidence or affected his calculations. How curiously wrong these calculations proved to be, and how stubbornly confident he was to the last in main- taining his mistake, are not the least interesting and pathetic inci- dents of this glorious era of geographical exploration, inaugurated by Portugal and consummated by Spain. Columbus made land on the Western Hemisphere on the 12th of October, 1492, and returned to Spain with specimens of the productions of his supposed Asiatic discovery. We know that he landed on one of the Windward Islands, and coasted along the shores of Cuba and San Domingo, and that a continent and thou- sands of miles of ocean lay between him and the object of his search. But the same confidence in his own judgment as has characterized the illustrious men, who have achieved great deeds and exerted profound influence in the world, prevented his correct- ing his own miscalculations and reading aright the plain facts of AX AGE OF GREAT NAVIGATORS. 9 his own and others' observation. Nevertheless, the very persistency of the fallacy stimulated the adventurers who, in vessels no larger than schooners and with mere handfuls of men, penetrated fear- lessly into the recesses of a New World, believing that it was the outskirts of that wonderful Asia, and that through it a waterway would be discovered leading directly to the goal.* When it came to be acknowledged that America was not China, and that nature had not cut a canal through its equatorial region, the search for a western passage was shifted northward. Even after Jacques Cartier had told the story of his winter sufferings at the head of a gradually contracting gulf, which receives the waters of the St. Lawrence, the hope was still cherished that this wide inland sea and the mighty river were a channel leading to the tropical climes and treasures' of Asia. The name La Chine, borne by a village a few miles west of Montreal, commemorates the fallacy. After Cartier's time the discovery of the Northwest Passage continued to be the object of search by many an Arctic explorer, from Frobisher to McClintock. All of these sturdy navigators endured hardships from sheer enthusiasm for geographical discovery ; for it was soon recognized that such a route, if discovered, would be commercially valueless. Cartier's thorough exploration of the St. Lawrence from its gulf to the head of navigation at the Lachine Rapids, and his minute description of the severe climate and scanty products of that remote region, not only quenched the last hope of a navigable ocean highway in the temperate zone direct to Asia, but deter- mined the limit beyond which private adventurers were not likely to be tempted to risk life and property in search of wealth. His second voyage, in 1535-1536, may therefore be considered as clos- ing the first great cycle of American discovery. Proud as we may be of our nineteenth century exploits, they sink into nothingness before the exuberant activity and mag- nificent results which rewarded the labors of the explorers of America during these brief forty-two years, which arc without a * The popular idea that he mistook the Island of Cuba for the main land is disproved by his letters to Saint Angel, and it seems probable that he knew, and acknowledged before he died, that he had discovered a new continent, though he did not appreciate its tme geographical position. 10 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. parallel in the history of the world. In our own day, with steam, electricity, and a host of mechanical appliances and means at our command, with a much larger group of commercial nations jostling one another in the race for new markets, and a dozen religious sects competing for the conversion of the miUions of heathen inhabiting the Dark Continent, Africa has not been invaded with the speed and thoroughness with which America was ransacked by those little companies of Spanish cavaliers and other explorers, under the impulse of greed, glory and fanaticism. Judged by its results, the discovery of America was the most momentous event that the Christian era had witnessed. That it poured wealth into Europe and stimulated commerce, was of trifling importance, compared with the liberating influence which the adjusting of political and social life to the new conditions of a New World was to have on human policy and opinions. Yet it hardly produced a ripple on the contemporaneous thought and speculation of Europe. While the maritime nations whose shores were washed by the Atlantic were exploring America, the adventures of their seamen must have been the prominent topics of talk and speculation in their -seaports. We know that the disturbance of the balance of power which the growth of Spain occasioned engaged the anxious thoughts of European states- men; but the scanty and ill-preserved records of these daring voyagers are proof suflicient of the lethargy of the scholars and thinkers of Europe, a few geographers alone excepted, on this all-important subject. It was the period of religious reawakening, a reaction from the decay of faith, which had been the first fleeting consequence of the revival of learning. Men's minds were diverted from physi- cal and philological research to religious and metaphysical dis- cussions. One looks in vain, for instance, through the letters of the freest, broadest, most appreciative thinker of that or almost any other age, Erasmus, for any reflections on the tremendous, world- transforming events transpiring across the seas ; and one gives up the search with a keener and sadder sense than ever of the shal- lowness of human thought, and the narrowness of human vision. THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS. II The revival of learning had, in Southern Europe, exalted literature and art to the position religion had previously held, and shaken men's faith in the Christian creed and the code of morals based on it. The \'atican was as devoted to the worship of art as the Court of the Medici in Florence, and with the same results ; for however completely a true theory and love of the beautiful may harmonize with Christianity, unless sestheticism be kept rigidly subordinate to some higher motive, moral degen- eration seems to be its speedy and inevitable consequence. The most ardent champions of the Papacy do not deny the need that existed of moral reform during the Pontificates immediately pre- ceding and succeeding that of Leo X. The standard of art was never higher, nor its pursuit more lavishly encouraged. On the other hand the standard of morality was perhaps never lower, or the practice of vice more easily condoned. It was Italian luxury and laxity which shocked Martin Luther, the unsesthetic Erfurt monk, so seriously as to undermine his faith. It was Italian corruption, political, social and religious, which excited Savonarola to sacrifice his life in the cause of reform ; and it was the hollowness, hypocrisy, and undisguised license of the Church, under Italian inspiration and example, which Erasmus, himself a curious example of the contradictory tendencies of the age, essayed to stem by satire and sarcasm. Yet, despite the wide depart- ure of ecclesiastical practice from the simplicity of primitive Christianity, the influence of the Church was never greater on the political and social life of Europe than at this critical juncture. When Columbus sailed away from Palos in 1492, Alexander VI. of the house of Borgia had just been elevated to the Pontifi- cate (Aug. 2nd, 1492). He embodied the very genius of selfish family aggrandizement. In November, 1503, when Julius II., the warrior Pope, succeeded Alexander, Columbus was nearing the end of his fourth voyage and of his adventurous career, eating away his heart on the island of Jamaica, the victim of princely ingratitude and his own extravagant pretensions. Julius, during his pontificate, succeeded by masterly states- craft in arraying the powers of Europe against each other, with the distinct purpose of advancing the power of the Papacy. But 14 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. tudes, were the direct agents of three European powers — Spain, Portugal, and France. The EngHsh colonists who followed were not sent forth by their Government, but they recognized fealty to it in a certain sense. As a consequence, the condition of Euro- pean politics determined in every case the fate of America. While the Spanish initiative in the discovery of America was the consequence of her sudden elevation to the rank of one of the Great Powers of Europe, the maintenance and extension of that position, especially when the Spanish King became also Em- peror of Germany, involved her in such costly wars that she was compelled to use her American conquests primarily as a source of treasure, partly won from the soil, and partly extorted from the unfortunate natives by cruel and oppressive measures. As the Spanish immigrants were not agriculturists, and therefore not, properly speaking, colonists, official tyranny, bureaucratic pride and political dishonesty became almost of necessity the features of Spanish rule. The vices of Old Spain were transplanted to the soil of America. They at once took deep root and have borne bitter fruit even to our own day. The supreme control claimed by and accorded to the Church was evinced in the Bull of Alexander VI. promulgated the year after the discovery, which allotted to Spain all lands west of a line drawn from North to South one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. In the following year Spain and Portugal, by the treaty of Tordesillas, agreed that the line of demarcation between their future possessions should be three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, and some years subsequently the Pope confirmed the treaty. Por- tugal therefore elected of necessity as her field of discovery the ocean to the north and south of the West India Islands; but the southern lands alone were those which she ultimately occupied. Cabral, in 1500, sailed for India, but driven on to the coast of Brazil, planted the flag of Portugal within the limit of Portugal's area, and founded Brazil — the only colony Portugal ever main- tained on the American continent. Cabral's discovery was fol- lowed by those of other navigators in these southern seas, notably by the explorations described by Amerigo Vespucci, whose letters, THE AWAKENING OF FRANCE. 15 if not his seamanship, won for him the honor of conferring his name on the New Continent. These tempting tropical lands, whose luxuriant vegetation fired the imagination with visions of wealth beneath the soil as prolific as the foliage which clothed it, stimulated Portugal to claim her heritage to the north as well as to the south of the equator, for the voy- ages of the Cabots had proved that, in that direction also, the land bulged eastward, so far as to throw it within the Portuguese sphere of occupation. She therefore sent forth two expeditions, one in 1^00 and another in 1501, under the Cortereals. But fortunately these navigators confirmed the Cabots' account of the repellent aspect of the country, and repressed all further enthusi- asm for exploration of a region where blustering winds made the sailor's life irksome, and a sterile coast, clad for many weary months in snow and ice, offered the explorer but scant induce- ment to land. North America was thus relieved from Portu- guese domination. What extent of the shore line of our Northern Continent John and Sebastian Cabot, and Caspar and Miguel Cortereal explored, it is beyond our province to discuss; but it is abundantly clear from the failure of either of such active mari- time powers as Portugal and England, in whose interest the navi- gators sailed, to hold or extend their discoveries, that little or no value was attached to what they had found. It is presumable that neither entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as otherwise England or Portugal would have sought by that channel a route to Cathay, and not have left to France the honor of making, a third of a century later, the most famous of all the great voyages for the discovery of a Northwest Passage. When the New Workl was revealed, France had only just thrown off the trammels of feudalism. Louis XL had made him- self really King of France, which was then territorially almost as we know it to-day. P)y cunning and by force, Burgundy, Franche Comte, Artois, Provence, Anjou, Roussillon had, in whole or in part, been brought under his rule. But France then and for several subsequent reigns had no navy, and but trifling for- eign trade and commerce. The duty of the last monarchs of the Valois line was royally fulfilled by maintaining control of con- l6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. tiguous territory, and creating a French nation. Unfortunately, their ambitions phmged them into a succession of ItaHan wars, which strained their resources almost to the breaking point. Nevertheless, one benefit these foreign wars did confer. It was from jealousy and laudable rivalry of his life-long foe in the Italian struggle, Charles V., that Francis 1. was impelled to engage in maritime enterprises, and to seize his share of that New World, which was pouring gold and silver by the shipload into the Spanish treasury. ''Ah, well," this pleasure-loving but shrewd monarch is credited with saying, ''the Kings of Spain and Portugal are dividing coolly the New World between them without offering their poor brother a share. I should like to see the clause of Adam's will which bequeathed to them this vast heritage." Charles V. used his ships as fighting machines in the Medi- terranean, as well as for purposes of commerce in the Spanish Main and the Pacific ; and Francis I. was too acute a soldier and politician not to appreciate the immense advantage which this possession of sea power gave the Emperor in his Italian cam- paign. The imperative necessity therefore lay on him of provid- ing France with a navy, and of encouraging private maritime enterprises. His hatred of Charles V. induced him to resort to disgraceful shifts ; but it was the commercial treaty and political alliance which he made with the Turks under Soliman IL, in order to thwart the noble efforts of the brilliant and much harassed Emperor, who had just freed the Mediterranean from the scourge of Tunisian and Algerian pirates, that awakened France to the value and possibility of embarking successfully in foreign trade. To the same stimulus must be attributed the sending forth of the three expeditions to America under Verazzano, as well as those under Jacques Carrier and Roberval. When France attempted to govern in the New World she imitated Spain more or less in form, but not in spirit. The climatic conditions of the territory she occupied, as well as the natural temperament of her colonists and the classes from which they were drawn, produced a distinct type of colony. The home Government designed to engraft the French bureaucratic system FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIES. 17 on the colonial stock, and even transferred to the forests of Canada all that remained of the feudal customs and land tenure. Her colonial policy was to duplicate as nearly as possible Old France in New France, and to check spontaneous colonial development in strange and untried directions. The English colonies, on the other hand, having been founded as private enterprises, some of them under the protection of Royal charters, were freer than those of Spain, Portugal, and France to work out, amidst their novel environments, an original system of government, and to form distinct social habits and customs ; and therefore though moulded on ancestral models, they were not direct reflections of European originals. Even the Eng- lish colonies, notwithstanding their greater independence of Eu- ropean control, were more or less affected by every complication of Old World politics. The successive wars between France, Holland, and England were waged on both sides of the At- lantic, and are referred to in colonial annals as King James' War, King William's War, and Queen Anne's War. Finally it was as a European war measure that France lent her aid to the revolting English colonies, and it was equally through English sympathy and her direct assistance, that the Spanish colonies were enabled to throw ofif the yoke of Spanish control. Furthermore, American life was from the first inoculated with the ecclesiastical and theological views of Europe in all their absoluteness and their acrimony. The monastic orders car- ried into New Spain their narrow creed and the Inquisition, though the Dominicans, who used so mercilessly and relentlessly this terrible engine for the suppression of heresy on both sides of the Atlantic, were the staunchcst protectors the poor Indians had against their oppressors. In New France the pretensions of| the Church were as vehemently asserted as in Old ; and the quarrel between Church and State was even more bitterly waged. In New England and in Virginia the contention between Puritan and Prelatist was as rife as in the old home from which the Round- heads and the Cavaliers had fled. Thus on the warp of European politics was woven the web of American history. And it has so happened that almost as l8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. soon as European control was thrown off, and the American communities might have shaped out for themselves even more distinct types of political and social life than they have done, there set in that great revolution in economics, through the agency of steam and electricity, which is so rapidly knitting the world into a commercial whole and creating for it a common civiHzation. This revolution is rubbing down, if not obliterating, idiosyncrasies of national character. Through other causes, there- fore, than political control, America is still responding to the impulses of European hfe. On the other hand Europe is and has been vitally moved by America. But so intricate are the direct and reflex waves of influence, sweeping back and fro across the sea, that it will become more and more difficult to trace the origin of that unifying process, now in full progress. The study can, how- ever, best be made where the range of observation is limited. And certainly there is no community on this continent whose history so vividly illustrates as that of the City of Quebec, the passage from feudalism to modernism ; from government by autocracy to gov- ernment by popular vote; from feudal bureaucracy to English colonial rule, and then colonial independence; from ecclesiastical domination to ecclesiastical subordination. There also can be stu- died the racial peculiarities of two of the great peoples of the mod- ern world, passing from hostile antagonism into friendly rivalry, but evincing all the persistence of racial habits and institutions. In the T7th Century, to which the following study will be confined, we shall see how trade monopolies strangled the spon- taneous efforts of the colonists towards industrial and commercial enterprise, and drove the more adventurous spirits into illegal pur- suits of gain ; what a blighting eft'ect the refusal to the people of all participation in government had upon civic and national growth ; and how vain the attempt must ever be to reconcile eccle- siastical and civil authority, where representatives of each are combined in the administration of government. In the little town of Quebec all these experiments were tried, all these forces were in operation ; and the results can there be seen and studied to better purpose than on a larger field and under more complicated conditions. CHAPTER II. The Unsuccessful Attempt to Found the Quebec Colony Under Cartier and RobervaL Cartier's First Voyage. Though Cortereal's and Cabot's reports on the sterile north had not attracted colonists or treasure seekers, they did stimulate the fisher folk of Portugal, France and Spain to extend their quest for cod from Iceland to Labrador and Newfoundland across the Great Cod Banks, and even to penetrate the Gulf of the St. Law- rence. Exactly how far they ventured is a subject of dis- pute. Charlevoix tells us that as early as 1504 Basque, Norman and British sailors fished for cod on the Great Banks along the shores of Canada, and that in 1 507 Jean Denys of Honfleur made a map of the Gulf. He then repeats the stories of exploration of the upper river by Denys, Velasco and Aubert. But these vague traditions are of little value. The actual limits of previous exploration can probably be gathered inferentially, yet with more reliability, from Cartier's narrative. Certain localities on the east coast of Newfoundland and Labrador are by him referred to by names already assigned. But when he sails away south- ward from Port Brest, on the Labrador coast, and makes the northwest coast of Newfoundland ; and subsequently when he ex- plores the Magdalen Islands, and the shore of New Brunswick, he himself assigns names to most of the prominent geographical features. The inference is that the fishermen knew the shores of Newfoundland, the Straits of Belle Isle, and the Labrador coast for a short distance to the west, but that neither curiosity, nor adventure, nor the search for treasure, had induced them to jour- ney further than the abundance of cod and the pursuit of their calling tempted them. From his own hamlet of St. Malo, as well as from all the ports of Normandy, Brittany, Poitou, from the Basque Provinces of Spain, and from Portugal, hardy seamen had 20 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. year after year, for decades past, struck fearlessly out into the angry Atlantic ; had tossed about while fishing on the banks, and, like their descendants of to-day, made the Newfoundland coast in search of bait and to cure their catch. All they knew he knew by hearsay, and perhaps, as rumor says, from personal experience during two fishing voyages ; consequently he was famiUar with all the known localities ; with the precautions to be taken for secur- ing the ships in winter, and in the breaking up of the ice in the spring ; and knew what stores should be laid in for barter with the natives. On the other hand, the migratory Indians, who had for over a generation traded with the fishermen of the Gulf, had either carried or disseminated by rumor so full a description of the white men and their ways throughout the whole valley of the St. Law- rence that, when Cartier ascended it, he excited neither the fear nor the astonishment with which the Spaniards were received in their early exploratory expeditions. These aboriginal hunters may also have interchanged with the Indians of Stadacona and Hoche- laga the seeds of those plants, indigenous to Europe, which Cartier subsequently found cultivated by those more advanced tribes. There is therefore no substantial reason to rob Cartier of the honor of being the first explorer from across the Atlantic to trace the course of the St. Lawrence from the sea to the head of its navi- gable waters. On the other hand, he was not, like Columbus or Cabot, steering for unknown, though conjectured land. Thus the landfall made by Cartier on his first voyage, the Cap de Bonne Vue, was a headland as well known to navigators then as it is to-day; as were also the headlands and inlets of the southeast coast of Labrador within the Straits of Belle Isle. But all beyond was mystery and a void which the imagination could fill with demons or with gold, as people's fancy impelled them. Perhaps Cartier thought the expansion of water within the narrow Straits —the Golf des Chateaux of Cartier and the early fishermen— was part of the great sea of Verrazzano, the Mare Indiciim, which a then recent map, that of the Vicomte Maggiolo, 1527, showed as occupying the space which the central part of our northern conti- nent fills, separated from the Atlantic by but a fringe of seaboard. This sea Cartier may have imagined he had already entered, once cartier's first voyage. 21 he had seen the Gulf expand beyond the range of sight within the Straits ; for this sea of undefined limits Verrazzano had laid down on his map, as he supposed he had seen it beyond the low sandy hillocks of the Carolina coast. Cartier, therefore, instead of keep- ing along the Labrador coast, sailed southward, hoping to get away from the ice and cold, and to navigate open waters through a more genial climate to the Orient, but nevertheless through that great river of which the Indians had probably given the French fishermen some vague conception. Of Cartier himself we know almost as little as of Columbus. In those days the genealogies of men of humble birth and calling, although they might have steered the whole world into unknown waters, were deemed unworthy of record. All that is certain is that the future sailor was born at Saint Malo, probably in 1494, and thus came into the world in the dawn of the day which was to usher in that new era of commercial progress with which his name was to be so honorably associated. By na- ture he was one of those restless spirits whom the past cannot content ; who are not satisfied to plod along the beaten paths and solid ground which their fathers had trodden before them; but who look impatiently onward and outward over the vast ocean, which they imagine wraps within its encircling embrace every mystery which the horizon conceals. We may therefore accept the probable, if unverified, testimony, that before he was forty he had made three voyages across the North Atlantic, and ex- perienced the keen excitements of the fisherman's life, and had, in the employ either of Portugal, or of Francis I., taken part in an expedition to Brazil. The inference is that he had learned, not only the rougher tasks and functions of the sailor's calling, but had been educated in its more recondite secrets, for the general accuracy of his o1)servations, as set down on his three voyages, bespeaks the scientific navigator. Had he not indeed possessed a knowledge of the higher branches of the seaman's profession he would not have been selected to command the expe- dition which, on the 20th of .'\pril, 1534, in two ships of about 60 tons each manned by sixty-one men, sailed away from Saint Malo, after Messieurs Charles de Moiiy, sieur de la Milleraye, 22 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. . and Vice Admiral of France, had administered an oath to the captain, saihng masters and sailors, binding them to comport themselves as true and faithful men in the service of the most Christian King under his command. That first voyage in its incidents does not concern us, except in so far as it afforded preparatory experience for the second. The commentators and critics have not agreed in their identification of all the geographical spots described by Cartier, but it is generally considered that, after exploring the Labrador coast for about one hundred and fifty miles to the west of the Island of Brest, he returned to that well-known port; then struck across the west coast of Newfoundland, and skirted its rocky inlets and bold headlands till abreast of the Magdalen Islands ; threaded his way between these, and still proceeded westward, hoping perhaps to reach the more open waters of the Mare Indicum. Taking this course he sighted, instead. Prince Edward Island and the New Brunswick coast. This he cautiously followed to the north into the Bay des Chaleurs, to which he gave the name that still clings to it. Not finding a passage to the west from the head of this gulf or bay, he seems to have skirted the coast somewhat further ; when, still failing to find the outlet he was in search of, he steered north- erly, and passed to east or west of Anticosti before regaining the Labrador coast. Twice he speaks of looking for the passage. Was he really looking for an opening into Verrazzano's sea to the southwest ? At any rate, after crossing, probably unwittingly, the mouth of the river, he reached the Labrador coast and fol- lowed it to the east; though in crossing the head of the Gulf he traversed the open water, which he was looking for, towards the west. Then he followed the Labrador coast to the east, retracing his own steps for part of the way until he reached Blanc Sablon at the south end of the Straits of Belle Isle. Thence he sailed to France without further adventure, and with favoring winds reached Saint Malo on September 5th. As did Columbus on his first voyage, so Cartier took to Europe, as proof of the value — and very doubtful proof it was — of his discoveries, two Indian boys, who, it was asserted, were willingly entrusted to him by their father, a chief of the last district explored on the south cartier's second voyage. 23 shore, called Honguedo, probably Gaspe Basin. The youthful natives played a notable part in Cartier's second voyage, and it was probably from their information that he was then enabled to sail straight into the St. Lawrence. The writer of the second voyage admits that they had been forcibly taken and carried away against their will, and the will of their parents. Cartier's Second \'oyage. On Cartier's second voyage stormy weather scattered the fleet, which was not reunited until all three ships reached the rendezvous at Cape Blanc Sablon. The coast to the west of this was more or less familiar as far as Cape Thiennot, which was recognized as having been the scene of a friendly interview with the savages on the first voyage. Coasting some twenty miles further they anchored in Saint Nicholas Harbor, which Father Charlevoix says is the only spot which retained its name to his day, and then entered the maze of the Mingan Islands. At this point he learns from the two Indian lads, whom he had captured the year before, that Gaspe Basin lay to the south, and that the intervening land was an island — the same island they had partly explored on the first voyage and named Assumption. The youths also told them of the great river ahead, and of the Bourgade of Stadacona, and evinced an accurate knowledge of the geography of the upper St. Lawrence. Cartier discovered subsequently that his captives were of the same tribe as the Indians of Stadacona, and that one of Taignaogny's brothers was actually there. They coasted along the low sandy shores of Anticosti to its northwest extremity, saw the low lands of the southern shore of the St. Lawrence, and remarked the bolder character of the northern ; returned to it, and followed it to a group of islands (Seven Islands), evidently hoping to find a passage to the north, even after they had distinctly understood that a large river flowed from the west. The idea of a great sea, on which floated as islands all the land which they had hitherto explored to the north and south, seems to have possessed Cartier's mind. It was expressed, as we have seen, on the map of 1527; was confirmed doubtless by the rumors of the great inland lakes, which had beguiled the 24 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Spanish adventurers far to the South, and now tinctured all Car- tier's theories. Columbus before he died may have doubted whether America was part of the Asiatic continent, and Cartier's mistaken suppositions were partially corrected after he had reach- ed Hochelaga, and had seen the Lachine Rapids, and learned the precise distance of the great lakes, as we read in the letter of his nephew, Jacques Noel, in 1587. Before he died he would probably have revised the account of his own voyages as given by his historigrapher, and eliminated the mention of Canada as an island which so bewildered Father Charlevoix. According to Lescarbot, Francis L, in his commission to Jacques Cartier, prior to the third voyage, speaks of Cartier as having discovered the large countries of Canada and Hochelaga, making a part of Asia in the west They were, therefore, probably supposed to be islands floating in the great sea of Verrazzano (Berrendana). The delusion of a northwest passage, as we know, died very hard. We need not follow Cartier step by step up the river. As he approached his destination, the distinguishing landmarks are more correctly described and more easily identified : the Saguenay, the Isle aux Coudres (Hazel Nut Island), which Cartier calls *'the beginning of Canada," the Isle de Bacchus or Orleans, and at last *'a very fine and pleasant bay," which could be none other than that glorious expanse of water, with its beautiful setting of island, fertile shore, frowning cliffs and towering mountains — the Harbor of Quebec. He saw the promontory of Quebec first from one of Chief Donnecana's canoes, and on the fourteenth moored his ship between the sheltering banks of the little river Lievre or the brook Saint Michel, a mile or so above the mouth of the St. Charles, into which his ships had been carried by the ascending tide. His fleet had sailed out of the harbor of St. Malo on the 9th of May, met at the rendezvous of Le Sablon, within the Straits of Belle Isle, on the 6th of July, and now on the 8th of September, escorted by a fleet of canoes, the first European came within sight of Stadacona. Cartier's first care upon approaching what he evidently regarded as the end of his voyage was to find safe winter quarters for his three small vessels. This he did on the 14th of September in the River St. Charles, which he named cartier's second voyage. 25 in honor of the saint day — the St. Croix. His three ships' were small craft, and were manned by crews of seventy-five men, the very signatures of seventy-four of whom have been preserved. We can calculate the size of the three ships, the "Hermine," the "Petite Hermine," and the "Emerillon," by accepting the displace- ment of Columbus' ship, the "Santa Maria," as 212 tons and its length as being 84 feet by 26 feet beam. The "Grand Hermine," of 106 tons, must have been 67 feet long by 23 feet beam; the "Petite Hermine," of 60 tons, must have been 57 feet by 17 feet beam, and the "Emerillon," of 40 tons, must have been 48 feet by 15 feet beam.* The old mistake of supposing that Cartier anchored his ships and stowed them for winter quarters at the junction of the St, Croix and the St. Lawrence, some miles above Quebec, is hardly worth contradicting. It is certain that, within a mile or so of the mouth of the St. Charles, a name substituted for that of St. Croix by the Recollet Fathers in honor of Charles des Boiies, father of the mission of that order in Canada, Cartier made prep- arations to pass the winter with his ships. At about half a mile from the mouth of the river its banks approach, and at this point there was in early days a ford, and later a bridge of boats. The present Dorchester Bridge, connecting Bridge street in the sub- urb of St. Roch with the Beauport Road, crosses the embouchure of the river at about 500 feet below the old ford, which was at the foot of Crown Street, near the Marine General Hospital. Above the ford the river describes a letter S, forming two long loops. At the turn of the first loop two brooks, the St. Michel and the Lairet, have cut their channels through the alluvial mud into the St. Charles. The tide rises to a depth of ten feet over the muddy bed of the St. Michel, and here, therefore, between its protect- ing banks, where, during low tide, the ships would rest safely on the soft, level, muddy bottom, and where neither the flood nor tlie ice floes would endanger their safety, was just such a refuge as ♦The linear dimensions — viz., lenpth and beam — nre in proportion of the cube root of the tonnaf^e for similar models. The builders' old measure — B. O. M. — for determining tonnajre, is to multiply the length, minus three-fourths of (he breadth, by the breadth, the product by one-half the breadth, and then to divide by 94; the quotient is the tonnage. 26 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Cartier sought. That this was the scene of his first winter's suf- fering and disappointment is by some supposed to be confirmed by the finding, in 1843, by Mr. Joseph Hamel, the City Surveyor, of the timbers of a vessel of about the size of the 'Tetite Her- mine," just protruding from the mud at about 200 feet from the mouth of the creek. A division was made of what was recovered of her hull and tackle between the museum of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec and that of St. Malo. The portion assigned to St. Malo is still to be seen there, but that deposited with the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec was destroyed, with nearly the whole of the Society's collection, in the fire of the Parliament Building in 1854. As we shall see, the "Petite Her- mine" had to be abandoned in the spring for lack of sailors to man her, twenty-five of Cartier's little company having succumbed to scurvy and privation during the weary and distressful winter months. After first caring for his ships, like the good sailor that he was, Cartier must have looked with uneasy foreboding on the scene surrounding him. He was encircled by swamp covered with a dense growth of dogwood, spruce and cedar, except where here and there a patch of swampy meadow refused to nourish even brushwood. The swamp extended southward to the base of the rocky ridge, which he could see terminated in the high bluff upon which Donnecana's stockade was built. The low lodges were of course hidden among the big trees covering the ridge. The same swampy ground stretched back some dis- tance from the banks of both the St. Charles and the St. Law- rence in distressing monotony, but with the advantage of en- abling him to see the approach of the Indians from almost every direction. To the north the land was covered with a dense forest of pine and hardwood, as it rose with a gentle slope to the base of the Laurentide Range. It was mid-September, and then, as now, the maples were clad in their gorgeous autumnal tints, in comparison with which the tropical forest, with all its vaunted wealth of foliage and flowers, is colorless. But this very splendor, due to a touch of the early frost, must have warned him to return, while there was yet time, and join the fishing fleet on cartier's second voyage. 27 its homeward voyage to Old France. The temptation may have been strong, but the enthusiasm of the explorer and the resolu- tion of the commander not to retreat until he had fulfilled his commission, for the execution of which he had laid in fifteen months' provisions, overcame the prudence of the navigator, The advancement of the season, therefore, merely stimulated his impatience to explore the river above Stadacona. When Cartier first entered the river, in the middle of August, his captive Indians told him that they were ascending to the great river of Hochelaga, and on the way to Canada, and that the river would gradually diminish in width as Canada was ap- proached, that its waters would become fresh, but that its source was so distant that no one to their knowledge had ever reached it. Hochelaga, consequently, became the possible goal of his expedition, and as soon as his tw^o large ships were safely moored, he began making preparations for this further exploration, for which he solicited the assistance of Donnecana and his tribesmen. Then commenced the first contest in northern latitudes between the will of the European and the wit and the finesse of the red- man. It was the first, but not the last, and the victory was then, as ever afterward, on the side of the man with the superior tools, whether ships, weapons of war, or railroads. The two captive lads now appear as prominent characters in the drama. On the approach of the ships to the east end of the island of Orleans they had left the ships with their compatriots after appeasing the fears of the Indians. Their superior knowl- edge, despite their youth, must have given them a prominent place in the council chamber of the tribe. They had spent eight and a half months in France, and though ignorant of the French lan- guage and puzzled by much they saw, they had learned to appre- ciate the power of their captors, and to doubt the unselfishness of their motives in thus intruding on their ancestral domain. They had noticed how very rlifferent the methods of trade pursued in France were from the simple system of barter with which they had previously been familiar, and they had, perhaps dimly, per- ceived the value attached to money, and the trials and hardships endured in earning it. They had seen the Malouin fishing smacks 28 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. returning with the Terreneuvais, some weeks after their own ar- rival in France, for it is the wind of St. Frangois (Oct. 4th) that wafts them back to their homes. And two months or so before they themselves had sailed, they had seen these same fisher folk bid good-bye to the sad, white-capped matrons and little ones, and sail away on their perilous venture under the protection of the Holy Virgin, the ''Star of the Sea," before whose image on the great gate of St. Malo they offered their orisons. These fisher- men presumably combined with their maritime vocation that of the trader, and brought back peltries and seal skins bought from the Labrador and Newfoundland Indians, and at times a native or two. Taignoagny and Domagaya watched all this with Indian stolidity, seemingly indifferent to everything around them ; but they must have shrewdly decided either that trade with the French was a boon to be coveted, and therefore to be secured, exclusively, if possible, by themselves and their friends; or else that there was danger to be apprehended from these white men, their ships, their cannon and their seeming numbers. When, therefore, their advice was asked in the Council Lodge of Stadacona, it must have been given in favor of dis- couraging all further exploration and aggressiveness by these strangers, whether regarded as welcome guests or feared as future foes. Whatever the motive, the decision reached was that Cartier must be prevented from ascending the river to Hochelaga. The effusive friendliness of the first greeting was therefore succeeded by reserve. They would not approach the ships until Cartier had convinced them of his friendly intentions. They then objected to the display of weapons, whose dangerous character they had been informed of, but had not yet expe- rienced. They professed to be appeased only when Cartier, ap- pealing to his quondam captives, explained that gentlemen in France always carried their arms. Before separating the Cap- tain and Chief Donnecana renewed their protestations of friend- ship, and all of Donnecana's people gave three shouts in a loud voice terrible to hear. Thus ended, with fair words and false intentions, that first treaty between the whites and the North American Indians. cartier's second voyage. 29 The next day, the i6th of September, Cartier and his crew were busy making the two larger ships safe within the harbor and river, the smallest being left in the stream for the Hochelaga trip, when Donnecana and his two captives, with ten or twelve chiefs, came on board, while a multitude of 500 savages and men, women and children surrounded the ship. The chiefs were feasted and the usual presents given, after which the subject uppermost in the minds of all — the journey to Hochelaga — was broached. Taignoagny explained that Donnecana had forbidden him to accompany Cartier, as the river was dangerous ; but Cartier repeated his determination to go alone, even if Taignoagny should not accompany him, his instructions being to ascend the river, unless prevented by some insuperable obstacle, and that there- fore as far as Hochelaga he would go. The Indians returned discomfited to their lodges. On the 17th new tactics were resorted to by the savages. A girl and two boys, one of them said to be the brother of Taignoagny, were given Cartier as a bribe to induce him not to proceed. In return Cartier gave the Indians two swords and other trifles, but expressed anew his determination to see Hoche- laga. Failing by bribery, the sorely puzzled savages essayed fear. Two Indians disguised with horns were sent as emissaries of the great god Cudragny to warn Cartier of the perils of ice and snow which would beset him on his western journey ; but Cartier retorted that his priest had consulted Jesus, and that they were promised fine weather, with which assurance the In- dians were obliged to be satisfied. So the farce finished by Taig- noagny telling Cartier that he must proceed alone, as they were forbidden by Donnecana to accompany him. The priest, whose intercourse with the Deity was used as a counterpoise to the methods of the Indian god Cudragny, was probably as fictitious as the revelations which the red men al- leged to have been received from the latter. Nowhere else is his presence referred to. In the following winter, during the terrible visitation of scurvy, the narrative tells us that "our Captain, in view of the sickness and sufTcring, commanded all to pray, and had an image of the \'irgin exposed on a tree at an arrow flight 30 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. from the fort, and he ordered mass to be said the following Sun- day, when all who could go, both sound and sick, went in proces- sion, singing the Penitential Psalms and the Litany, and praying the Virgin to intercede with the child Jesus for us. Having said mass, our Captain vowed to make a pilgrimage to Notre Dame de la Roquemada if God would permit him to return to France." If priests had been in the company, mass would not have been an ex- traordinary ceremony, and Cartier would not have himself offi- ciated. If mass was celebrated the consecration of the elements must, of course, have been omitted. On another occasion Cartier is said to have explained to the Indians through Taignoagny, when they wished to be baptized, that he would return, and would then bring priests and the holy oil with which the sacra- ment could be efficaciously administered. This they believed, as several young people had witnessed the ceremony in Brittany. Who were these several youths? If the passage is correctly reported, it would confirm the previous impression that the inter- course of the French with the Indians of the Gulf and of the Gulf Indians with those of the river had been intimate. The Abbe Faillon, in his ''Colonic Fran9aise en Canada," argues that Dom Guillaume le Breton, the Captain of the ship ''Emer- illon," and Dom Anthoine were priests, as the title *'Dom" is given to priests of the Order of Saint Benoit. But a priest would not likely be in command of a ship, and, had they been ecclesias- tics, their names would have been among the nobles at the head of the list of Cartier's crew, instead of at the foot. When Cartier made his first and second voyages, despite the pious formulas used, religious propagandism had not acquired the importance it attained when the Lutheran revolt had become more wide- spread, and Catholicism, under the stimulus of Loyola, had awak- ened to the necessity of reform. All being ready, Cartier set sail without his Indian guides to explore the river above Stadacona. The principal geographical features of the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal are so much more distinctly marked, and the scenery is so much more contracted, that the identification of localities is easier than when we are dealing with Cartier's itinerary of the Gulf. The accuracy cartier's second voyage. 31 of his description of the upper river confirms the honesty of the narrative of the whole voyage and attests his powers of judicious observation. Both banks of the river above Stadacona seemed to be peopled by Indians who supplied him with fish and muskrats, and evinced no hostility. On the 28th, nine days after starting, they entered Lake St. Peter, and being unable to find a deep channel out of it, Cartier left the "Emer- illon" in charge of ten of her crew, and proceeded in the boat with twenty-six sailors, and with the gentlemen adventurers, and with Jalobert, the Captain of the "Petite Hermine," and the same Guillaume le Breton whom Faillon, on the ground of his being styled Dom, supposes to have been a priest. On October 2nd they reached Hochelaga, where one thousand savages were gath- ered on the banks to greet them "with all the fervor of a parent welcoming a child." They belonged to the Bourgade of Hoche- laga, the situation of which Cartier describes with much detail. Cartier gave to the mountain above the river, at whose base the stockaded village of Hochelaga then lay, and over which the com- mercial metropolis of Canada is now rapidly spreading, the name it still bears. And for once the matter-of-fact narrator breaks almost into enthusiasm, as he describes the glorious view which opened upon them as they ascended the mountain. But it must have been a disappointment to see the broad navigable river con- tract at the foaming rapids of Lachine, and hard to abandon all hope, however faint it may have been growing, that perchance it afforded a navigable waterway to China. On October 2nd Cartier, his noble companions, and his twenty-six men took leave of their savage friends. The Indians were sorry to see vanish these wonderful beings, with their metal weapons and ornaments, their fire-creating arquebuses, their curious musical instruments, and the magical control over disease, which, as medicine men, they seemed to possess and which they practised so generously. As their power to hurt or to helj) must have seemed irresistible, the desire to retain them as allies must have been no less strong than their dread of them as foes. The descent by the swift current above tidewater was easy. On the 4th they rejoined the "Emerillon" on Lake St. Peter, and found 32 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. that their companions had not been molested. They then returned to Stadacona, stopping only to explore the St. Mau- rice, which they thought might lead them into that mysteri- ous Saguenay country, whence they understood came the cop- per ornaments and weapons the Indians set such store by. This strange confusion between the Saguenay region and the Upper Lake Region runs throughout the whole narrative. On the nth of October they rejoined their fellows on the little affluent of the St. Croix, and found that during their absence they had built a stockaded fort and mounted on it the artillery from their ships. Champlain in the next century found the remains of the chimney near the little Lairet creek, and spoke of it as marking the site of this the first European habitation on these shores. Chief Donnecana, accompanied as usual by Taignoagny and Domagaya, made haste to pay a visit of ceremony and to invite Cartier to his poor abode. The invitation was accepted, and the visit paid on the following day, when Cartier, the chief pilot of his fleet, and fifty sailors marched half a league to the Demeur- ance of Stadacona, which was probably on the promontory over- looking the two rivers. The savages received him with the cus- tomary dances, and exhibited, as proofs of their valor, five dried scalps. They admitted at the same time that one of their war parties had been almost totally exterminated two years pre- viously on the St. Lawrence by the Toudamans — a tribe no com- mentator has been able to identify, though Lescarbot says that it occupied the country opposite the Batiscan, and in that case between the Bourgades of Stadacona and Hochelaga. If so, it was probably occupied by an offshoot of the Iroquois stock, among whose branches hostilities and jealousy were already brewing. What Donnecana had in view was probably to initiate a negotiation for an offensive alliance against their enemies. As Cartier did not respond, the coolness apparent in the subsequent conduct of the Indians may have dated from this ceremonial visit. Cartier devotes several chapters to the religious beliefs and some of the manners and customs of the Indians of Stadacona, but his observations were probably as imperfect as his deductions were certainly incorrect. Unfortunately, he gives no such vivid cartier's second voyage. 33 description of their stockades and lodges as that which enabled us to identify the Hochelaga Indians as a branch of the Huron stock. He dilates on their avidity for Christian conversion, and their desire for baptism, which, owing to their polygamous and otherwise immoral habits, he was forced to refuse them. All of which, considering the abstruseness of the subject, and his ig- norance of the language, compels us to believe that he must have drawn largely on his imagination, unless his two captives had, during their few months' enforced residence in France, become adept interpreters. It is not fair to assign the religious aspira- tions and efforts of the early explorers entirely to hypocritical motives, or to suppose their interest in the cause of religion assum- ed merely to stimulate the zeal of French supporters, and, in Car- tier's case, forward plans for another expedition. For it must not be forgotten that, despite the laxity of morals in Europe, there still remained some of the power of mediaeval Christianity, and that license in conduct and spasms of emotional piety were then, as in other times and places, strangely and incongruously associated. The life and character of Francis L, Cartier's patron, afford a glaring exemplification of this inconsistency. Cartier interlarded his narratives with a due allowance of traveller's tales about pig- mies and one-legged men and other monstrosities. Even so un- critical a commentator as Father Charlevoix expresses the opinion that these marvels are due to defective observ-ation, or a too excited imagination, or to the misunderstanding and exaggeration of the reports of others. They do not detract, however, from the in- trinsic credibility of the narrative in regard to matters of direct observation. Through the machinations of his quondam captives, so Cartier believed, the alienation of the Indians of Stadacona, or, as he expresses it, of Canada, assumed so grave and menacing an aspect that, fearing hostilities, he protected his fort by a deep ditch, a drawbridge, and a stronger palisade. lie tried to frighten the savages by blowing trumpets, and he made the utmost parade of his forces by changing watches. But no attack was made, and gradually the friendly relations were restored. There was jeal- ousy among the natives themselves, as we may judge from the 34 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. fact that the warning he received of the suspected treachery of Donnecana was given by the chief of the neighboring vil- lage of Hogauchenda. Where that village was he does not tell us, but he says that in the district of Canada — that is, west of Isle aux Coudres — there were several communities hving in vil- lages not stockaded. His description carries us back to those eras and scenes in prehistoric America when the aborigines were struggling to rise out of abject savagery and work out an original system of civilization, only to be checked in its de- velopment in North America among the Iroquois, and summarily strangled in Mexico and Peru, by coming into contact with for- eign and uncongenial races. "To the west of the Island of Orleans," Cartier tells us, "there is a basin which forms a natural harbor, into which the river flows in a swift, deep current between high bluffs, and the soil on the shore is rich and cultivated. Here is built the town of Stada- cona and the lodges of Chief Donnecana, and of the two lads we captured on our first voyage. But before reaching Stadacona four villages are passed, those of the Ajoaste, the Sternatas, the Tailla, who have built on a hillside, and the Satadin." As that of the Tailla is distinguished as being built on a hill, we may presume that it alone stood on the south shore, the others on the Beauport Flats. "Then Stadacona is reached, beneath whose high bluffs towards the north is the river and harbor of St. Croix, where our ships lay high and dry from the i8th of September to the i6th of May, 1536. This place passed, the villages of Feguenonda and Hochalai are reached, the former on high land, the latter on a plain." All we know is that Hochalai was above Cap Rouge. On his third voyage in 1540 Cartier started on what he intended to be a preliminary survey of the St. Lawrence above the Lachine Rapids. After leaving their winter quarters at Cap Rouge, the narrative says, "they proceeded up the river, and the Captain paid a visit to the Lord of Hochalai, whose abode is between Canada and Hochelaga." The resemblance of the name Hochelaga and Hochalai stamps their inhabitants as belonging to Iroquois stock, if not to the Huron tribe. Whoever they were that inhabited the stretch of the Great cartier's second voyage. 35 River near Quebec, its topographical features made it as con- spicuously important to the Indian economist and strategist as it has proved to be ever since. The flats of the north shore and of the valley of the St. Charles are the first large areas of low cul- tivable land on that side as you ascend the river from the Atlantic. They were, therefore, selected as the most suitable site for a group of villages, while the heights of Quebec and Levis, contracting the river which flows between, gave the position strategical value as a vantage ground from which to watch the movements of friends or foes. Here, therefore, on one of the few cleared and cultivated spots in the boundless wilderness which had been for- ever, and was still, slumbering under the oppressive silence of almost unbroken forest, there were associated in communities men and women in sufiicient numbers and sufficiently advanced in art and intelligence to co-operate for peace and war, storing in sum- mer provisions for the winter, tilling the soil with small wooden implements not bigger than a sword, and raising corn, pumpkins and tobacco, which latter Cartier and his crew essayed to smoke but did not relish. When, therefore, the first white men ascended the river they found at and around Quebec a population which occupied a higher plane in the scale of civilization than the wan- dering, hunting tribes around them. This spot, therefore, so con- spicuous in later days, had an unwritten history of its own, but its annals are not recorded in even archaeological remains. The first chapter of tlie authentic story is a very sad one. Soon after the return of the exploring party winter set in. The ice grew thicker and thicker on the St. Charles, and snow fell deeper and deeper over the whole country. Fears must have seized the little company, almost the only European denizens on the whole continent, lest they should be buried in the beautiful, glittering masses which everywhere enveloped the world in their soft folds. It was so relentlessly cold that it must have seemed impossible that summer heat could ever again unlock the streams and melt the great drifts, which piled higher and higher over their ships and grew up into a wall whose combing summit towered above the stockade which thcv had erected as a defence against their suspicious neighbors. And as the December days shortened 36 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. new horrors faced them. Disease broke out in the Bourgade of Stadacona — perhaps an epidemic caught from the Europeans, which found a congenial nidus in the Indian constitution and car- ried off fifty victims. Cartier forbade all intercourse between his men and the stricken savages, but ere long a new and terrible disease developed in his own company. From his description there can be no reasonable doubt that scurvy had broken out in his crew, probably occasioned by the cessation of all traffic in fish and fresh meats with the natives. There is no proof that it was the same disease which had ravaged the Indian village itself. Scurvy was, no doubt, prevalent during seasons of scarcity in Stadacona. The Indians suffered from it, and they also knew its cure; but it usually did not break out so early in the winter as December, for the summer supplies, despite the characteristic im- providence of the natives, would hardly then be exhausted, and the St. Charles would still be swarming with tommy-cod. The disease among Cartier's men made such havoc that by the middle of February, out of the two hundred and ten composing the crews of the three ships, there were only ten sound sailors. Eight had died, and the lives of fifty more were despaired of. One and another continued to fall ill, until there were but three strong enough to assist their helpless mates. Before the death list was closed twenty-five had died and lay unburied, stiff and stark, con* cealed in the snow drifts. To add to their despair, they began to fear lest the savages, becoming aware of their weakness, should attack and overwhelm them. To avert this con- jectured danger and hide their helplessness, Cartier drove them from the ship whenever they appeared, and thus, in his ignorance, deprived himself of the only available remedy — fresh food and vegetable diet. At length, one day, meeting Domagaya, who had been himself a sufiferer, he ascertained that the medicine by which the savage had been cured was a decoction of the boughs of annedda — probably the balsam. Two squaws were sent to collect the remedy and to make the necessary infusion, under the beneficial influence of which health speedily returned. The balsam, therefore, became a standard remedy for scurvy. Colston, in describing the hardships of the whalers of 1612 in cartier's second voyage 37 Newfoundland, tells us that divers died of scurvy, whereto turnips were an excellent remedy — not less efficacious than "Cartier's tree" (Prow^se's "History of Newfoundland," p. 128). Thus this first long winter spent by Europeans on the upper St. Lawrence wore aw^ay amidst distress and despair. But they were brave men, and bravely bore their terrible hardships. There is not a hint of insubordination. February, the shortest month of the year, is, in this semi-arctic region, the longest and dreariest; but in March the great change comes. Every Canadian can appreciate the revival of hope and courage as winter merged into spring, and snow and ice vanished, the glittering pall appearing to evaporate under the bright sun- shine as spontaneously as a fleecy cloud dissolves in the blue sum- mer sky. Their numbers had been so reduced that there were not men enough remaining to man the three ships, and the commander decided to abandon the "Petite Hermine." But was he to return with no spoils or evidence of success? The products so far of the costly journey were geographical information and very problem- atical promises of prospective gain from the fur trade. The palp- able results had been money spent, twenty-five men dead and one vessel abandoned. As a cargo he brought home neither gold nor silver nor precious stones. So he determined to carry with him the old Chief Donnecana, who could speak with authority of the fabu- lous resources in gold and rubies of the Saguenay, and of a white race which inhabited that mysterious country, and of the mon- strous beings who lived without food. Donnecana could also relate what he had himself seen of the still more marvelous land of Pequemains. where dwelt a one-legged race. Possibly he hoped to compel the old chief, if once his captive, to show him the site of the Saguenay treasures, so as to render his voyage somewhat more fruitful than it had so far been. Be the motive what it may, he devised a scheme to entrap the chief and his two former captives. The people of Stadacona, suspecting treachery, had ceased to visit the vessel. On the other hand, Cartier's appre- hensions had been excited by the unusual gathering of Indians at Stadacona, though tlicse, probably, w^re only parties of hunters returning from their winter chase. His fears of Donnecana were 38 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. fanned by the insinuations of his new alhes, the inhabitants of Stadin — doubtless the same as the Satadin previously mentioned as the nearest village to Stadacona, in the chain of the unstockaded groups of lodges which lined the south shore. They, in return for their friendship, were allowed to dismantle the abandoned ship for the sake of its nails. In furtherance of his design against Donnecana, he opened negotiations with the wily Taignoagny, through his body servant, Charles Guyot, who was a favorite of Donnecana's and had been his guest. The ostensible subject of the negotiations was the capture and disposal of an obnoxious rival, a chief called Agona. Cartier assured the Stadaconians that his intentions were to carry to France no adults, but only youths, who would be instructed in the French language. Nevertheless, he expressed himself as willing to transport their enemy to an island off Newfoundland, where he would cease troubling them. Their apprehensions being thus allayed, Donnecana and others consented to at- tend the ceremony of the elevation of a high cross on the 3rd of May, the Feast of the Holy Cross. On the cross was inscribed, not Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, but ''Franciscus Rex Dei Gratia Francorum Rex Regnat." After the ceremony the great men of the tribe accepted the invitation to a feast, during which Donnecana, two other chiefs, and Taignoagny and Domagaya, were seized. Until the ships sailed on the 6th of May the unfortunate captives, closely guarded, were allowed to have intercourse with their people, who were thus induced to supply them with food for the voyage. In return Car- tier distributed to their wives and children a few trifles; cheered them by the promise of a return the following spring; and then, with the remnant of his crew, sailed away. Their own con- sciences may have been easy. They were certainly thankful to escape ; but they left heavy hearts and streaming eyes on the banks of the St. Lawrence, and in the minds of the Indians a sense of wrong which may have been the source of the traditional hatred of the Iroquois against the French. Cartier but followed the ex- ample of Columbus and of others before him, as his example has so often been followed since by travelers and explorers, who have cartier's third voyage 39 not realized that, beneath the red or black skin, may beat as warm a heart as ever throbbed in the white man's bosom, and that, despite what may seem impassiveness, the family affections of the savages are their strongest emotions. In this instance, as often since on this continent, we have the pitiable sight of the civilized Christian playing the part of the savage — outwit- ting him in negotiation, and violating his rights by superior force, while raising over him the Cross of the Prince of Peace, and pre- tending to be actuated by motives of the purest philanthropy and religion. The return voyage was uneventful. Cartier sailed to the south of Newfoundland by the channel whose existence he merely sus- pected the year before, and cast anchor in the harbor of St. Male on the 1 6th of July. Cartier's Third Voyage. Cartier's report cannot have been encouraging, and it is not surprising that the Government did not enable him to ful- fill the promise given to the bereaved Indians that their chiefs and relations would be restored to them within twelve moons. That he himself indulged in any glowing forecast of the regions he had discovered and named New France is im- probable. He was honest enough to tell the truth. Had he not been, the truth could not have been suppressed ; for what his comrades endured must have been told, embellished with exaggerated details, and for proof of their story they had but to point to the twenty-five sorrowing households in the little Breton town. In the Introductory Dedication of the nar- rative of the second voyage to Francis I., the motives for further exploration were set forth. Foremost stands the duty of spread- ing the True Faith. As it originated in the East, traveled west- ward from Asia into Europe with the sun, it was, he said, ''the mission of the True Church to carry it still further westward to those far western wilds so as to embrace in her fold those western heathen to the confusion of the wicked Lutherans." But under- lying that pious motive was the dread of Spain's territorial ex- pansion in the Western Hemisphere and of her constant commer- 40 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. cial growth, both of which France was ripe to emulate. Possibly this potent reason would have added sufficient weight to induce Cartier's royal master to divert some funds from his belligerent and amorous enterprises towards the equipment of a third expedi- tion, had not the clouds of war begun again to gather. There had been a long peace between Francis I. and his implacable enemy, Charles V. It had lasted from 1529 to 1536, as the result of the Treaty of Cambrai negotiated by Louise of Savoy, Francis' moth- er, and A/[argaret of Austria, Charles V's aunt, two clever women who had succeeded when professional diplomats had failed. But both had passed away, and their restraining influence over the revengeful passions of the King had died with them. And to the passion of revenge that of jealousy was soon added, for Charles' brilliant, disinterested and successful foray against the pirates of Algiers in 1535 had won him the plaudits and the thanks of Christendom, and increased his influence in the Mediterranean. These feelings had operated as an incentive to explora- tion when Cartier sailed out of St. Malo in 1635, but ere he re- turned in 1636 Francis I. had already invaded Italy, and Charles was massing his troops to enter Provence. Had Cartier planted his Cross as a sign of French sovereignty on a gold or a silver mine, instead of a snowdrift, the demands of war might have yielded to the claims of commerce. But as he could promise only the slight and uncertain gains of a trade in furs, it is not surpris- ing that the onerous expenditure and the all-absorbing excitement of a foreign war obscured the importance of his discovery, with the result that four years elapsed before he again sailed forth on his third voyage. By that time another hollow peace had been ratified between the two European sovereigns, with all the usual insincere demonstrations and formalities of affection and good faith. Meanwhile the unfortunate savages had been exhibited at Court ; instructed in the mysteries of the Faith ; baptized in the Cathedral of St. Malo on March 25, 1538; and had sickened and died. Only one — a girl — survived to see Cartier's ships set sail in 1641 for her old home. Cartier's previous voyages had proved, if not the full agricultural capabilities of the valley of the cartier's third voyage 41 St. Lawrence, at least the fertility of the land and the adaptation of the climate for the cultivation of certain valuable products. They had also admitted him to the portal of a vast region, which such Indian rumors as he had been able to interpret described as abounding in mineral wealth ; and this was the prize for which alone adventurers were willing to risk a fortune. The prospect, therefore, seemed to warrant the establishment of a colony, and the third expedition was consequently planned on a broader basis than the first and second. The accounts of the third expedition are, however, fragmentary. In the French archives there are certain patents appointing Roberval to the position of Lieutenant-General of the Army in Canada, Cartier to the post of Captain-General and Master Pilot; but the narrative of Cartier's voyage and that of Roberval exist only as a translation by Hakluyt, and the narrative of the first is broken off in the middle. The course of events seems to have been as follows: In January, 1540, Francis I. appointed Jean Francois de la Roque Seigneur de Roberval, a Picardy gen- tleman — who probably earned the distinction by contributing money for the expedition — Lord of Norembegue, and his Viceroy and Lieutenant-General of the armies in Canada, Hochelaga, Sagucnay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Cap Rouge, Labrador, the Great Bay and Baccalaos. The appointment was confirmed by let- ters patent under the hand and seal of the Dauphin in the follow- ing month. There is the usual preamble as to the religious motives for sending forth the expedition. By the same instrument the \^iceroy is permitted to enlist in the holy cause, from the prisons of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen and Dijon, fifty prisoners under sen- tence of death — hardly the most fitting instruments for the Holy Work. The only condemned prisoners considered unfit were those under sentence for lesc-majeste, heresy and counterfeiting. There was so little public enthusiasm for the enterprise that Roberval found it impossible to fulfil tlic royal injunction to hasten his de- parture and sail in the spring of 1540. It was probably difficult to secure an able commander, for it was not until the 19th of the following October that Francis I. conferred on Cartier an inde- pendent commission as Captain-General and Master Pilot, without any reference to Roberval, instructing his bailiffs at the same time 42 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. to supply him with the fifty criminals already promised to Rober- val, or perhaps an additional contingent. In the same patent he is authorized to keep his old ship the "Emerillon" as adourb to the fleet. On the 20th of October this commission was confirmed by the Dauphin, and additional instructions given as to the conditions on which the prisoners were to be selected. Such importance was attached to this jail delivery that one suspects it was an experi- ment made with a view of feeding the prospective colony with this troublesome element of French society, should it be found that change of environment produced in the transported convict a change of heart. Motives of economy can hardly have been the only incentive to a policy so fraught with danger to the enterprise. During the winter five ships were equipped, provisioned and manned for two years, but Roberval had been unable to collect the artillery and ammunition, without which he, as Lieutenant- General, could not fittingly assume command of the army. And therefore, as the King was impatient, Cartier set sail with the five ships from St. Malo on the 23rd of May, 1541, and Roberval went by land to Honfleur, whence he expected to proceed immediately with one or two ships and his armament. Stormy weather separ- ated the fleet, and a month was spent at the rendezvous at Carpont, near the mouth of the Straits of Belle Isle, by the first arrivals, waiting for their comrades and for Roberval. They employed their time in filling their water-casks, which had been so completely drained on the long voyage, that to save the domestic animals, which they were taking to stock the Canada farms, they had been obliged to share with them their cider and other strong beverages. It was the 23rd of August before they cast anchor in the harbor of Stadacona. Agona, Donnecana's old rival and after the capture his substi- tute, came off with some canoes full of men, women and children to welcome their king and their kinsfolk. But they were greeted with the news that Donnecana was dead, and that the other nine were so happy that they had refused to return. Cartier evidently did not expect that even the ignorant savages would be credulous enough to believe that their chief would forego his honors at home for the comforts of France. They feigned to believe the tale cartier's third voyage 43 that the other nine (eight of whom were really dead, and the ninth prudently detained at St. Malo) had refused to leave the palaces of France for their native lodges. Chief Agona displayed satisfac- tion, so Cartier surmised, at the death of his rival, and crowned the French commander with a chaplet of wampum. The latter never- theless judged it wise to give his doubtful friends a wider berth than on his previous voyage ; so, instead of again laying up his ships for winter in the St. Charles, he selected a harbor some nine miles above Quebec, where the stream had cut through the cliff, which extends as an unbroken wall from the Stadacona promon- tory to that point. It had probably been decided on as the site of the prospective colony, as Cap Rouge is specifically mentioned as one of the regions over which Roberval is to reign. Above the stream and its narrow stretch of enclosing meadow, then thickly covered with hardwood forest, the steep banks again confined the St. Lawrence, but the Cap Rouge stream which flows with so gentle a fall over the low divide, separating the Valley of the St. Lawrence from that of the St. Charles, leads to the belief that the depression was once a watery channel, and the ridge between Cap Rouge and Quebec an island. At the mouth of the stream Cartier safely moored three of his ships, leaving in the river the two which he proposed sending back to France. The site was one of the best he could have selected, for fertile land, fit for cultivation by his future colonists, extended along the river bank over the low divide into the beautiful carse of the St. Charles. He had probably discovered on his previous voyage that intimate intercourse between the Indians and his former well-disciplined crews was not conducive to either, good morals or good health : and as the men he now commanded con- sisted of far inferior material, and as, moreover, he had every reason to expect that his treachery would provoke reprisals, there were strong prudential reasons for establishing himself at a safe distance from the families of Donnecana and the other captives. As an additional inducement to select this side, Cap Rou,Q:e was near the Bourgade of Hochalai, whose chief had on the previous voyage shown himself not only friendlv to Cartier, but hostile to Donnecana, and would therefore probably barter food for trinkets 44 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. during the coming winter. Having landed his artillery, he built a rude fort, and unloaded the ships which were to return to France. No time w^as wasted, and on the 2nd of September the two ships, under command of Mace Jalobert, his brother-in- law, and Etienne Noel, his nephew, set sail for France with news of what had been done, and of the non-arrival of the Viceroy. Cartier then set twenty men to work clearing an acre and a half of ground, and sowing it with turnips, while others cleared paths up the overhanging cliffs to the east, and built a fort on its summit to protect the colonists from attack by the Stadacona Indians. While cutting through the slates they found there the very regular and pure quartz crystals which still go by the name of **Cape Diamonds," but which they imagined to be the real gem, also some iron pyrites, or, more probably, scales of mica, which they mistook for gold. But Cartier had more important work to do than even gathering gold, alluring as that pursuit was. Before the winter set in he wished to make a preliminary exploration of the country above Hochelaga in order to see for himself the char- acter of the rapids which had to be passed in reaching what he supposed would be the headwaters of the Saguenay. Thus equip- ped with information he could, during the approaching winter, prepare for a summer exploration of the western country. So he started with two boats, leaving the fort under the command of the Viscount de Beaupre.* Both boats ascended to the foot of the first rapids, where one boat was left, but the current was so swift that they were unable to propel the single boat with which Cartier tried to proceed. He therefore landed and started to ascend the banks of the river, but soon desisted. As no mention is made of Hochelaga, in which he toolf so intense an interest on the previous journey, it is questionable whether the rapids he was attempting to scale were really those at Lachine, or whether he was ascending the Ottawa, or possibly even the St. Maurice. On his way up the river his former friend, the Lord of Hochalai, received him cordi- ally, and the Indians where he made his last halt gave him both * The account of this boat journey is so much less precise than that given during the second voyage of the expedition over the same ground that it seems im- probable that the same hand wrote the two narratives. roberval's failure 45 provisions and information. But on his return he found the Chief of Hochalai absent. He learned afterwards that he had descended to Stadacona to concert measures with Agona against the strang- ers. His original uneasiness was converted into apprehension on reaching Cap Rouge by the sullen behavior of the Indians, who ceased to bring provisions to the fort, and by the accounts given by some of the company who had gone to Stadacona of the gather- ing of the savages there, evidently with hostile intention. Here the narrative suddenly closes, and the next glimpse we get of Cartier is in the account of Roberval's outward voyage in the spring of 1542. On the 2d of June, 1542, Roberval's fleet of three ships, carry- ing as colonists two hundred men, women and children, entered the port of St. Johns, Newfoundland, where he found seventeen fishing vessels. The writer of the fragment dealing with Rober- val's attempt to colonize Canada thus tells of the meeting of the Viceroy with his Pilot-General : "During our long detention in the Port of St. Johns, Jacques Cartier and his company entered the harbor on his return from Canada, whither he had been sent as the pioneer, with a fleet of five ships. When reporting to the General he told him that he was carrying back with him some diamonds and a quantity of gold ore which he had found in Can- ada. On the following Sunday we tested some of the ore and found it good.* He reported to our General that the scanty force he had could not successfully oppose the Indians, who prowled about their encampment and harassed them without cessation. On that account he was returning to France. Nevertheless he and all his company had only praise to bestow on the country they had abandoned, by reason of its fertility. But when our General, whose forces were ample, ordered him to return with him, Cartier and his comrades, inflated witli pride, and anxious to reap the glory of their discoveries, escaped secretly the following night, sailing away to Brittany unceremoniously, and witliout leave- taking." It would be an ignominious ending of a brilliant naval career if the incident was accurately recorcled. This reference, • If mica, it would have passed unaltered through such heat as they could apply. 46 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. however, tells the tale of the winter's experience at Cap Rouge. The colonists probably did not suffer from the scurvy. Late as it was when the turnips were planted, the acre and a half must have yielded some crop. Moreover, Cartier had learned the efficacy of balsam leaves, and if he came to the determination early in the winter to abandon the attempted colonization, he doubtless converted the stock of farm cattle into food. Mean- while, instead of disease, he had to combat the ceaseless activity of the Indians, who, as was their wont, would pick off wanderers from the camp, and by their numbers must have made the com- mander anxious even as to the safety of his fort and of his ships ; for the Indians of the Upper St. Lawrence had united with those of Stadacona in harassing the settlers, as we infer from the warning given by the historian of Cartier's third voyage. After describing the cries and expressions of joy to which the Indians who had gathered at the foot of the rapids gave utterance on perceiving Cartier's presence, he adds : ''None the less, one must beware of all their charming demonstrations of pleasure, for they would fain have killed us, as we learned subsequently." It is no wonder, therefore, if, discouraged by Roberval's absence, alarmed by the gathering numbers and the open hostility of the natives, depressed by the gloom of the long winter, and anxious to reap as speedily as possible the glory and profits of his min- eral discoveries, he remanned his ships on the opening of naviga- tion and started for France ; and as little wonder that, once under way, with the vision of their happy St. Malo families and homes before them, and the Indian war whoops still ringing in their ears, Cartier's crew, if not Cartier himself, refused to return under a commander who, by his previous hesitation, inactivity and im- providence, made failure under his leadership a foregone con- clusion. While Cartier's five ships were thus on their way to France, Roberval and his two hundred colonists in their three ships were ascending the St. Lawrence under the pilotage of Jean Alphonse Xaintongeais. Toward the end of July the Governor-General landed his motley crew and their scanty stock of provisions at the mouth of the Cap Rouge rivulet, at the spot previously occupied by roberval's failure. 47 Cartier. His preparations were commenced on a much more sub- stantial scale than those of the cautious sea captain. On the site of Cartier's fort, on the heights overlooking the valley of Cap Rouge and the St. Lawrence, he built a fortification, which his enthusias- tic chronicler says "was beautiful to look upon, and of surprising strength, within which were two corps de logis dwelling rooms and an annex of forty-five by fifty feet in length, which contained divers chambers, a dining-room, a kitchen, offices, and two tiers of cellars. Near them he built a bakery and a mill, and dug a well." In the valley below he erected a two-story house in which to store the provisions he imprudently had not brought. And, having done all this, he renamed the country "France Prime," not being satisfied with the more euphonious name "La Nouvelle France," which Cartier had already given. On the 14th of September, find- ing probably that his provisions were already running short, he sent back to France two of the three ships, under command of Monsieur St. Terre and Mons. Guinecourt, with instructions to return laden with provisions the following spring, and to learn the value of certain mineral specimens, either sent in their care or previously carried to France by Cartier. Evidently Roberval's faith had become shaken, after further exploration, in the genuine- ness of Cartier's diamonds and gold found in the red shales of Cap Rouge. How many men were detailed for the two ships is not told, nor whether they were drafted from the better class of his company or from the criminal element. If, as was probable, they were drawn from the former, those who remained must have been as hopeless a lot of colonists as ever landed in Botany Bay. The ships had hardly left before the colony w^as put on short rations. For a time the Indians exchanged fish for trinkets, but when the winter set in fresh meats and vegetables failed, scurvy again attacked and carried off fifty of the miserable, half-starv^ed crew, who must have thought with regret of even the prison fare of France. For they were not men of the same stamp as Cartier's crew on his second voyage, nor did they bear their sufi^erings as heroically. Crime and punishment varied the monotony of their ■winter's experience. One man, Michel Gaillon, was hanged for 48 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. theft, he having the ignoble notoriety of being the first criminal executed in New France. Several were chained and imprisoned ; others, females as well as males, were whipped; and "by these means," the chronicler quaintly tells us, ''they were enabled to live in peace and quietness." The ice began to melt in April, but when spring re- turned, the General could muster only one hundred men, seventy of whom he took with him in eight boats to explore the province of Saguenay, leaving thirty to protect the fort and the ships, under the command of the Seigneur de Royeye. These thirty were to remain at their post until the first of July, when, if the expedition did not return, they were to be at liberty to sail to France in the two ships, or more probably one of the two, which he left them. As he was said to have arrived with three ships, and as he dispatched two to France on the September previous, and left two at Cap Rouge, he must have built one vessel at least during his nine months' residence at Cap Rouge, and thus inaugurated an industry which was in after days to become the principal support of Quebec during the winter months. Whither Roberval went is very doubtful. He makes no mention of Hochelaga, and therefore he probably did not ascend the St. Lawrence to the Ottawa. He probably attempted to explore the St. Maurice and thus reach the country of the Saguenay, which seems to have had such a fascina- tion for these early explorers, and the position of which was so little understood. Wherever he may have gone, this ex- ploratory expedition was evidently disastrous. It contained too many gentlemen to permit good discipline, for we are told that on the 14th of June four of these worthies returned, with others of less note, and brought the sad news of the loss of a boat and eight of the crew. And they were followed on June 19th by five others, who were the bearers this time of twenty-six pounds of wheat, and instructions from the General to wait his return until the 22nd of July before sailing. And here the narrative, evidently written by one of the thirty left at the fort, and translated by Hakluyt, sud- denly breaks of¥, and the curtain falls on the first act of the roman- tic drama of French colonization in the New World. The interval proved to be long ere it again rose on the same ROBERVAL S FAILURE. 49 scenery, but on new actors. What befell Roberval's colony, the Viceroy himself, and his Pilot-General, cannot with certainty be determined. Lescarbot, and the historians of the follow ing century, narrate so many incidents which we now know to be fiction that little credence can be given to their statements. Champlain tells us that Roberval compelled Cartier to return to the Island of Orleans, where they built a house and resided, until, his ^lajesty removing him for important service, this enterprise, deprived of its vigilant superior, gradually came to naught. Lescarbot seems to quote Cartier when he asserts that Cartier was sent to assist Roberval in withdrawing what remained of his colony, a service which occupied eight months. Cartier had previously resided, he says, seventeen months in Canada, which is the sum of Cartier's two winter campaigns in the country. If Cartier was really sent to rescue Roberval, the voyage must have occurred in the summer of 1543, for, by letters patent on April 3rd, 1544, Robert Le Goupil was appointed Judge to settle a pecuniary claim made by Cartier for expenditure over receipts, and Cartier and Roberval were summoned to appear as witnesses. It is likely, therefore, that Roberval was unable to reach Cap Rouge before the eve of St. Magdalen, the 2nd of July, and that his impatient colonists, taking advantage of his per- mission, sailed for France with two ships in port, that he found his boats unseaworthy, or his forces too weak to man them, and that he was obliged to face another winter of cold and starva- tion, under the constant risk of annihilation by the Indians. As he did not follow his advance guard in 1542, Cartier may have been sent to his rescue in the spring of 1543. It is strange that so memor- able an event as the first attempt at colonization by France should have been recorded in so incomplete a manner, and that the records themselves should have been first preserved in a fragmentary con- dition only, in a translation in Hakluyt's collection of voya,2:cs. Further research in the French archives may unearth the complete narrative, but whatever additional information may be discovered, it would not alter the conclusion that the plans were ill-laid, the material enlisted ill-suited, the enterprise ill-conducted, and the result a lamentable failure. Rol)crval and his aristocratic com- 50 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. panions evidently aspired to rival their Spanish cousins, but they lacked both their opportunity and their indomitable vigor and energy. Cartier alone stands forth, eminent in seamanship, dis- cretion and power of organization. Though Lescarbot, writing eighty years after Cartier, and with a strong prejudice against the St. Malo Captain, charges him with faint-heartedness for failure in his colonial schemes, for which he asserts he was fully provided and equipped on his second expedition, there is no evidence, either in Cartier's own narrative or other contemporaneous documents, that he was entrusted with civil authority as Governor of a colony, or that on him or his colonists were conferred any trading privil- eges, or that the expedition was other than an exploration under- taken at the expense of the State. CHAPTER III. What Happened on the St. Lawrence Between 1544 and 1608. The sixty-five years which intervened between Cartier's and Roberval's futile attempts to colonize the valley of the St. Law- rence, and the actual foundation of Quebec by Champlain, con- stitute the dark age of Canadian history. The French govern- ment was during this period haunted by a desire to reoccupy the abandoned territory, but did nothing. Not so, however, French sailors. They carried on a desultory trade with the Indians, as we learn from a letter written by Jacques Noel, Cartier's nephew, in 1553 to Moses Growte, correcting some inaccuracies on a cer- tain map of North America, by reference to his own observations and to a map of his uncle's, which he says has been lent to his two sons, Michael and John, then in Canada. The writer promises that if, on their return, he learned from them anything new worth recording, he would communicate it. There is no reason to sup- pose that any of these traders extended their operations beyond Hochelaga, the limit of Cartier's explorations. They more prob- ably confined them to the mouth of the Saguenay, for Tadousac was a great center of Indian barter when Champlain founded his colony in 1608. It was tlien, no doubt, as Lake St. John now is, a rendezvous of the Algonquin tribes, who hunted for skins over the Labrador promontory and wandered northwesterly to the land of their distant kinsfolk tlie Crces. But during this blank in the annals of the St. Lawrence a revo- lution was being enacted there, which these transitorv- visitors from Europe did not deem worthy of recording, but which was to have momentous effects upon the fate of both the white and the red men east of the Mississippi for nearly two centuries. From the facts bearing on the Indian inhabitants of the St. Law- rence valley, scattered through the narrative of Cartier's voyages, 52 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. we may deduce the following conclusions: That there were either sedentary or wandering branches of the Stadacona Indians on the south shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and that they differed in language and habits from those of the north shore of the Gulf: — that the Stadacona Indians were sedentary and cultivated land : — that, as Cartier thought it necessary to specify that certain of the surrounding villages were unenclosed, we may infer that Stadacona was stockaded: — that there was jealousy be- tween the Stadacona Indians and their near neighbors, though from their common practice of Hving in villages, there is reason to suppose that they were racially allied and differed from the wan- dering tribes of the Algonquin stock : — that there was a chain of villages between Stadacona and Hochelaga inhabited by Indians of similar habits and customs, and, therefore, of like lineage : — that towards the close of this first attempt of colonization by France one, at least, of these communities allied itself with Stada- cona to oppose the French intruders : — that at the junction of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa was the largest and most powerful of these families or tribes, living in a stockaded village and exercis- ing a certain control, if not coercion, over the Indians of the lower St. Lawrence : — that, if there was not hostility, there was at least acute distrust of each other by the Indians of Stadacona and Hochelaga. The inference is that all these Indians were of one race but of different tribes, and that there were operating causes of disunion under which they were segregating themselves into hostile groups. That they were all of the same race Cartier himself believed, for to the narrative of his first voyage he, or his historiographer, Appends a list of words which he calls *'Le Langage de la terre nouvellement descouverte, appellee Nouvelle France," and he closes his second with another list of words and phrases from ''Le Langage des pays et royaume de Hochelaga et Canada, autrement appellee par nous la Nouvelle France." The majority of the words for the same object in the two lists closely agree. As he met on his first voyage only some travelling bands of the Indian tribe of Stadacona, and as the second list of words is stated to be from the language of Hochelaga as well as of Canada, LANGUAGE AND RACE. 53 we have thus corroborative evidence that the language of both bonrgades was substantially the same. That the Indians of Hochelaga belonged to the great Iroquois family, the minute description of the stockaded village and of its internal organization leaves no room for doubt; and if all the Indians of both Hochelaga and Canada, that is, of the whole valley west of Isle Aux Coudres, spoke the same language, then the whole of the St. Lawrence between the Gulf and Ottawa was occupied by one or more tribes of this powerful race. Mr. J. C. Fillings in the preface to his bibliography of the Iroquoian Languages (Bulletin of the Smithsonian Institute, 1880) referring to the Cartier vocabularies, says : "To the Iroquoian perhaps belongs the honor of being the first of any American family of languages to be placed on record." Sir Daniel Wilson, in the pro- ceedings and transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, com- pares Cartier's words for the numerals with corresponding words in the dialect of the Huron Indians of Lorette, near Quebec. The resemblance is occasionally so close as to support a presump- tion of Indian linguistic affinity despite the dissimilarity between some of Cartier's words and their representatives in the modern dialect ; a dissimilarity so wide that the imagination of the most in^renious philological casuist would find it difficult to bridge it. Among the numerals, are the following: Hochelaga and Canada. Lorette, Modern Huron. In another table Sir Daniel Wilson gives, on the authority of Mr. Horatio Hale, the corresponding words from Cartier and the language of the Wyandots, a branch of the Hurons, now living in Anderdon township. Ontario. Here again we find close Resemblance, and, as might be anticipated, wide divergence; for apart from the change whicli would inevitably take place in un- written speech in the three intervening centuries, Cartier's philol- ogists cannot have followed very definite rules in expressing the sounds of the Indian language by the European ali)habct, nor I. — Secata . 3. — Asche . . 5. — Ouiscon 10. — Assem . Skat. Achin. Wisch. Asen. 54 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. could he have had much opportunity of correcting the idiosyn- crasies of individual pronunciation or the peculiarities of dialect of his few guides, by any widely extended comparison. Charlevoix's evidence, though given in 1744, is not of much value. He says the inhabitants of Hochelaga spoke the Huron language. Cartier's evidence is of more value when he states specifically that the vocabulary he gives is that of words and sentences spoken by the inhabitants of the two villages and tribes of Stadacona and Hochelaga. The incidental references to cor- respondence in manners and organization confirm the linguistic evidence of the racial unity of the two communities, and of their essential differences from the Indians of the Algonquin stock which then inhabited the north shore of the Gulf and of the lower St. Lawrence. Lescarbot, after describing Champlain's trip to the Huron country and its stockaded towns, of which he had heard from the lips of Champlain himself, said : "I am confirmed in the opinion that Jacques Cartier correctly described the stockaded bourgade of Hochelaga, notwithstanding the denial of Champlain and others that any such town ever existed, simply because they found no remains of it, and no tradition of its existence." Les- carbot rightly attributed Champlain's not being able to find at Quebec the famous antidote for scurvy, known to Jacques Car- tier as ^'annedda," to the fact that the Indians who knew of it by that name had been exterminated, or at any rate had dis- appeared. The disappearance of Hochelaga can be interpreted only on the supposition that its inhabitants were driven away by hostile tribes, and all vestige of the bourgade destroyed by the vindictive conquerors, in accordance with the general habit of con- quering Indians throughout the North American continent. Nicholas Perrot, an Indian trapper and interpreter, who wrote towards the close of the seventeenth century, says : ''The coun- try of the Iroquois was originally Montreal, and Three Rivers and he then proceeds to explain their migration by a tradition that the neighboring Algonquins, being hunters and more manly than their agricultural neighbors, asked a party of Iroquois to accompany them on a hunting expedition, when out of jealousy THE VANISHING OF HOCHELAGA. 55 caused by the better luck of the Iroquois, the Algonquins killed some of their Iroquois companions. A bitter feud arose, which led to the driving of the less warlike Iroquois, first to the north shore of Lake Erie, then to the south shore of Lake On- tario. In their various migrations and wars the Iroquois acquired the valor and skill which subsequently m.ade them the dominant power. When Champlain visited Stadacona and Hochelaga in 1608, only 65 years after Roberval withdrew his company of unsuccessful colonists, the Iroquois name of Stadacona had given place to the Algonquin name of Quebec (see note). There were then on the St. Lawrence no populous stockaded villages occupied by a sedentary population possessing the social and political organ- ization, crude yet distinct, of the departed race. He found only scattered bands of nomadic Algonquins. The Huron inhabitants of the bourgade of Hochelaga (if we assume they were Hurons), had migrated to the shores of the Georgian Bay on Lake* Huron ; but the descendants of Donne- cana — where were they? Were they with their kindred on Lake Huron, or had they been driven from their picturesque fastness or voluntarily abandoned it in favor of the more temperate valley of the Mohawk? Indian tradition assigns as the cradle of the Huron-Iroquois race the land south of the St. Lawrence and between it Note. — We assume that Champiain means, when he says it was so called by by the Indians, that Quebec was its Indian name, as Kebe-Kebec is the Micmac word for a contracted water-way. We may accept that as the origin of the name in preference to the fanciful myth that Champlain or one of his comrades, on first seeing the magnificent promontory jutting out between the St. Lawrence and the St. Charles, exclaimed "Que Bee !" Hawkins, in his " Picture of Quebec," reproduces from Ednionstone's ** Heraldry," the mutilated seal of William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk — who lived in the reigns of Henry V, and VI. The word Quebec occurs in the inscription on the seal. According to Ferland and Faillon, one of de la Pole's titles was "Count of Bri-Quebec" — a name probably therefore contracted into Quebec. The two syllables which compose the word Quebec occur frequently in Norman and Breton names, Caudebec — Briquebose — Briqueville — as well as Briquebec — or as it is sometimes spelled, Bricquebec, near Cherbourg. The Algonquin name Kebec must therefore have sounded so familiar to the Champlain crews, or to Breton or Norman traders or fishermen who preceded him, that they adopted it as transfer- ring an old name to their new home. They may not have called it Quebec in memory of Briquebec, but may merely have adopted the native name because it re- minded them of a familiar spot beyond the seas, and was suitable to the locality. 56 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. and the sea. Another tradition places the cradle of the race on the Lakes, and makes the tribe migrate first towards the sunrise as far as the sea before they return to their ancestral inland home (Beauchamp's Iroquois Trail, page ii). Whichever tradition reflects the truth they both assign to the Iroquois stock a tem- porary abode where Cartier found them dwelling in the first half of the sixteenth century. In further confirmation of this tradition we find Indian tribes belonging to the same stock occupying the seaboard as far south as Florida. The Cherokees, for instance, possessed ethnical traits and exhibited linguistic pe- cuHarities which linked them to the Iroquois stem. They also displayed all the native prowess of the stock from which they sprung. But while these offshoots of the race, as we presume them to have been, remained on the seaboard, the race itself developed into its most distinctive type in the tribes of the Huron and of the Iroquois Confederations. The Hurons, when first known distinctly as such, occupied the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay and were at bitter feud with their brethren of the Five Nations, whose stockaded towns ex- tended over the Genesee and Mohawk valleys, south of Lake On- tario, almost from the Niagara river to the Hudson. There was another tradition current among the Hurons, as recorded by the Recollet and Jesuit missionaries, namely, that they had been driven from their former abode on the St. Lawrence by the Senecas. The Wyandott historian, Peter Dooyentate, states that the Senecas even occupied with the Hurons the Island of Montreal (Sir D. Wilson, Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. 2). If, as is almost certain, the stockade of Hochelaga was inhabited by the Hurons, it is not a forced conjecture to suppose that the In- dians of Stadacona belonged to another but unfriendly branch of the Iroquois family, possibly the ancestors of the Senecas. Their vacillating relations with Cartier would be thus explicable. At first friendly, they assumed a suspicious and almost hostile attitude as soon as he expressed a determination to ascend the river to the headquarters of the Hurons. If they had hostile designs against the Hurons, they would employ every device of Indian diplomacy to prevent the Frenchmen with arquebuses and cannon from form- THE IROOUI5 CONFEDERACY. 57 ing friendly relations with their foes. Their omission to propose an offensive alliance and a warlike expedition, as the Algonquins did to- Champlain in the next century, may have been due to the promptness with which Cartier acted, and the indifference he dis- played to their co-operation. Iroquois tradition dates the formation of their great con- federacy back to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, but though the first imperfect measures of union may then have been formed, the growth and consolidation of its power was gradual. Even after its normal development was interrupted by European inter- ference, we see the Five Nations absorbing a sixth, and strength- ening the depleted forces of the confederacy by the incorporation, after their defeat, of a distant and previously hostile branch of the race. Although, therefore, the confederacy may have been estab- lished in the IVIohawk country and the ground work laid of its future power, it was probably only beginning to experience the enormous force inherent in consolidation when Cartier found the Iroquois occupying the valley of the St. Lawrence. Its astute statesmen, for such they doubtless were, had formulated the distinct policy of gathering into a restricted area of superior agricultural capabilities and strategical position, the most power- ful and war-like members of the great scattered family. Of these members the Hurons were the most conspicuous, but they were probably so powerful and numerous as to be unwilling to merge their independence in the rising confederacy, and abandon their favorable site at the junction of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence. Yet if they refused to enter, and declined to consolidate their forces with those of the confederacy, their separate existence would, from the Iroquois point of view, be a standing menace. They would be certain to become the nucleus of another con- federation which would be hostile to, if not destructive of, that already formed ; the aim, therefore, of the Mohawk chiefs would be to annihilate, if they could not absorb, their separated brethren. Cartier tells us that the Ilochelaga tribe whom we have supposed to be Hurons was already so strong as to dominate the Indians of Stadacona and the lower St. Lawrence. The Moliawk confederacy had thus allies already made, or tribes inclined to 58 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. be allies, in the kindred Indians to the east of Hochelaga. In the interval between Roberval's departure and Champlain's ap- pearance on the scene the Mohawk confederation probably sw^ept down on Hochelaga, and, with the aid of the Stadacona-Iroquois, dislodged the Hurons and obliged them to migrate to some other locality. For their new seat the Hurons would naturally choose some locality situated at what they considered a safe distance from the Iroquois canoes, where they would have space in which to grow and opportunity to create, by affiliation, another confederation with which to oppose their implacable enemies. No better spot could have been selected than the shores of the Georgian Bay. Between them and their enemies there lay not only Lake Ontario, but the whole Peninsula of western Ontario, peopled by the Neutres, the Tiontates or Petuns, and other tribes of the Iroquois stock, who, if not their allies, dreaded the power of the confederacy as acutely as they did themselves. The story of what befell them in their retreat on Lake Huron and how at length they returned to the St. Lawrence under the protection of the French, forms an interesting and pathetic part of the history of New France during the seventeenth century. In fact, that history was shaped in a great measure by the complica- tions which sprung out of the French entanglements in Huron wars and politics. These subsequent events are matters of history. The tragedies, however, which were enacted in this dark comer of the continent during the half century or more of obscuration, following Cartier's and Roberval's departure, can be a subject for speculation only. But it is a dramatically interesting one. We cannot imagine that the small migratory bands of hunters with- out organization or pojicy, whom Champlain found on the St. Lawrence, destroyed the stockaded town of Hochelaga after sub- duing the populous tribes of Stadacona and its vicinity. It was only when the combined strength of the Iroquois of the East and of the West had crushed the Huron Iroquois that the poor wandering Micmacs, or whoever the Algonquins may have been, ventured to enter on the vacated territory. The Stadacona In- dians may have been Senecas, but, whether they were or not, if they were the allies of the Mohawks in this their first Huron CONSOLIDATION. 59 war, it was in obedience to the wise policy of consolidation that they abandoned their home, which was too far from the centre of consolidation to be safe, and removed to some territory contigu- ous to that already occupied by the confederated nations. More- over, if they were the tribe afterwards known as the Senecas they became the left wing of the forces of that powerful group of war- like communities, and occupied the shores of the beautiful lake of that name to the west of the Onondagas, who probably then occupied the country- between Oneida and Cayuga lakes. They therefore formed the westerly bulwark between the other mem- bers of the compact and the Hurons. They must have been the most obnoxious of all the Iroquois nations to that most harassed member of the family. It was consistent therefore with the ex- istence of this grudge that when the Hurons in 1616 secured the co-operation of Champlain in one of their war-like expeditions they should lead him to attack the Senecas. If my supposition be correct, the 65 years of dense obscurity covered the critical period in the history of the IMohawk con- federacy. It had, we may assume, been created and its general policy formed during the previous centuries.* That policy was to incorporate into the confederacy friendly branches of the par- ent stock, on consideration of their adopting its principles and merging their own individuality into the unity of the league, but ruthlessly to crush and, if possible, annihilate all rivals. The con- * Mons. Laverdiere in the note to page 1032 of his edition of Cham- plain, in explanation of Champlain's statement that the Iroquois were weary of the war which had been waged for over 50 years, says: *' This passage give us, at least approximatelv. the date of the famous quarrel to which Nicholas Terrot and the Relation of 1660 refer, and which made of the Algonquins and the Iroquois irre- concilable enemies. This would assign the date 1570 to this profound division, if indeed, it was not a revival of an older feud, for the Indians whom Cartier found in the country, and who appear to have been called ' les bons Iroquois,' alreadv had as enemies, as early as 1535, a nation living to the south, then called the Touda- mans (the same doubtless as the Tsountouans or Tsonnontouans). with whom they were constantly at war." I think it more likely that the Toudamans were a band of the Iroquois who became involved in the impending racial war. Father Le Jeune, in the Relation of 1633, says that a Huron, "Pierre Paste dechouan," told him that his grandmother used to relate with pleasure the aston- ishment with which the Indians saw the vessel in which the French arrived moving like a floating i,Iand. Father Lalemant, in Chapt. II. of the Relation of 1660, repeats the same tradition as Perrot. 6o QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. federacy probably then consisted of not more than four so called nations. But just as it was becoming sensible of the power of combination, there sprang up on the St. Lawrence another high- ly organized nation with similar institutions and instincts, and presumably kindred aims, which would be sure to gather to itself, in a rival and necessarily hostile combination, the tribe or tribes, presumably the Senecas, occupying the lower St. Lawrence. There were already signs of co-operation at the period of Cartier's third voyage. We have seen how the chief of Hochalai was com- bining with the chief of Stadacona against him. There was evi- dently, therefore, danger to the Mohawk supremacy in any other confederation, whether it were grouped around the Stadacona or the Hochelaga tribe. And so, by means of diplomacy and war the Huron hopes and Huron influence were crushed and the Iro- quois of Stadacona were first secured as allies, and then drawn in from the St. Lawrence and incorporated into the Mohawk confederacy. The St. Lawrence allies then formed the fifth na- tion of the league, and added greatly to the terror which its valor and discipline cast over the whole middle section of eastern North America. It is strange that events and incidents so im- portant and so recent should have failed to be recorded by the missionaries, who not long after made their abode among the Hurons ; for oral tradition is almost undying among the Indians, and there must have been aged men and women on the Georgian Bay who had been born at Hochelaga and remembered the great migration. But the spirit of historical criticism was not strong in the early colonists of New France, even Champlain being no exception. Thus it came about that a complete revolution of the most momentous kind, and one which produced grave con- sequences during the early course of Canadian history, remains imtold and can only be guessed at — a curious example of how short a space of time may suffice for great national changes to take place, and all record of them to be obliterated, if neither architectural monuments nor written literature exists to commemorate past or record current events. We can only con- jure up in imagination what happened : the formal councils in the lodges of the Iroquois and Hurons ; the protracted negoti- AN ERA OF STRUGGLE. 6i ations between the rival confederacies ; the gravity and earnest- ness of the warrior delegates as they discussed the alternatives of peace or war; the care with which the leaders elaborated their plans of campaign, after all possible alliances had been secretly made ; the attack in force upon the Hochelaga stockade ; the failure to de- stroy it by a coup de main, followed by the ceaseless harassment by small bands of Iroquois of every party of Hurons venturing beyond the stockade, till their fields lay waste and the river with its fish, though under their very eyes, became virtually inaccessible. The Hurons were evidently too strong to be conquered and anni- hilated, and too independent to accept absorption, but yet too weak to become aggressive. The war was doubtless waged with the same fiendish ingenuity and barbarous cruelty with which the sec- ond war against the same Hurons in the next century was prose- cuted. Hochelaga was probably not abandoned till the retreat of those of its defenders who survived became the one alternative to annihilation. When they decided to abandon their magnificent position, magnificent then as now, at the meeting of the two great water-ways, they must have escaped at a moment when their ene- mies were off the watch. The line of flight must have been by canoe up the Ottawa and the Mattawa through Lake Nipissing and down the French river into land-locked recesses at the Georgian Bay, which they evidently thought would be a safe re- treat. While these politicians and warriors in the dense forests of America were framing policies, negotiating alliances, plotting one another's destruction, waging war with relentless ferocity, and watching with sleepless vigilance their opportunity to kill and torture ; while their fleets of canoes were stealthily moving to points of attack or noiselessly carrying them to some secluded place of safety; wliilc the game of statecraft and of war was being played with no great world looking on to applaud or condemn, but with an energy as intense and with cunning as astute as if the drama were being enacted on a vaster field and the issues were of world-wide interest, the same qualities were being exercised on the other side of the sea, but amidst different surroundings and with different results. Nevertheless what transpired during those six- 62 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ty-five years in the hidden recesses of that great silent land — the building up of the Iroquois confederacy, the migration of the Hurons to the Georgian Bay, and the abandonment of the St. Law- rence were incidents of no slight importance in giving shape and direction to the early history of New France, New Amsterdam and New England. In Europe at the same time opposing powers and principles were gathering themselves together into hostile camps and pre- paring to transfer their quarrels to the new world, where they would invade those same dense forests and traverse those same watery highways in alliance with the Indian braves, who were simultaneously being consolidated into antagonistic groups. The reformation in religion was only one expression of the great revolution in thought and morals which had been slowly working in Europe. No sooner had it become the issue, than it divided Europe into two sections, along lines mainly racial. Italy and Spain felt feebly the new impulse ; France was convulsed, but the old thought succeeded in repressing the new. In Germany, the Netherlands, England, the Lowlands of Scotland, and Scan- dinavia, the love of liberty proved stronger than the love of art, and the appeal to private judgment more attractive than the claims of tradition. Some of the Swiss cantons originated a nevv^ faith; others adhered to the old. The lines of cleavage did not follow with sufficient accuracy geographical or racial lines to permit of absolute generalization; but, roughly speaking, the so-called Latin races remained true to the old Church; the Teutonic race adopted widely different systems of theology and of church government. When the Reformation, using the term in its popular sense, was accepted by a nation at large, there followed in its wake a more or less radical political revolution. The abandonment of traditional religion seemed al- ways to result in a weakening of faith in the established political system, and a desire to throw off the trammels at once of govern- mental subjection and ecclesiastical control. In fact, religious re- volt was usually preceded by a movement in the direction of politi- cal freedom. Absolutism in an extreme form continued to oppress Spain, and OPPOSING POLITICS. 63 was riveted by her on her American colonies. A more moderate phase of it gained the victory in France, and was transferred to New France. The gradual change from mediaeval monarchy to constitutional rule, and from Romanism to ritualistic Protestant- ism, was worked out in England, with one great oscillation toward extremes, in politics and religion. Strange to say, the conflicting tendencies were represented in her two groups of North American settlers — those of Virginia and of Ply- mouth Bay. Thus were all the contending forces which were disrupting Europe transferred to our Western wilds — here on an open field, under entirely new conditions, to wreck or to build into mighty nations, the weak, isolated communities which for a time could barely support life in the hard struggle with savage nature and more savage men. Here also was to be gradually evolved a solution which has never yet been completely realized in Europe — a free church in a free State. It was a conception so foreign to the mind of the sixteenth century, that, though con- formable to the principles of Protestantism, and certainly to the conception of the primitive church, it was far from being acted upon even in the Puritan colonies. Nevertheless its gradual realization marked the steps towards real freedom and prosperity in the North American settlements. It was during the interval between Cartier and Champlain that the schism occurred in Europe which led to the foundation of New France under most intimate church and State alliance, and of New England under principles the outcome of which was the complete dissociation of Church and State. Here, there- fore, in the dense forests of that section of the New World which had escaped absorption because of its forbidding climate and aspect, representatives of the two extreme wings of the parties then dividing Europe were about to try the great experiment as to which is most conducive to national progress and human hap- piness — individual freedom of thought and personal participation in government, or the waiving of private judgment in obedi- ence to tradition, ecclesiastical authority, and paternal rule. The lines of demarcation were more clearly drawn in North America than in Europe, for there was no mixture of op- 64 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. posing religious elements in either of the two communities of New France and New England. The New England colonists might dispute with one another on nice points of theology, but they were at one in their hostility to papacy and prelacy. And during the sixty-five years of obscuration of the St. Lawrence region, the civil war which had raged in old France, between the Huguenots and the Catholics, had terminated with results so disastrous to the former that a royal decree ordained that no heretic should be al- lowed to contaminate the soil of New France, or instill false doctrines into the fallow Indian mind. Nor was the arbitrary exclusion of the most active element of French society resented ; for Frenchmen were as a nation indifferent, and French Prot- estantism was perhaps more political than religious. It is certain that Henry IV. would not have found the French so willing to follow him obediently into the fold of dissent as the English were to be guided by Henry VIII. Henry HI. was assassinated by a tool of the monkish faction because he had made concessions to his Huguenot subjects. When, therefore, Henry IV. ascended the throne, his conviction of the vast preponderance of public opinion in favor of the old faith must have been one of the arguments which drove him to renounce the Protestant cause, of which he had been so illustrious a champion. Another doubtless was the determination to be king in the same full sense in which his pre- decessors had been, and not a monarch subject to a Parliament, as he would necessarily be if a Huguenot king. Of the two evils, he preferred to share his power with the church rather than with a popular assembly. The maximum demands of the church he could calculate on ; the extravagant and ever-multiplying demands of the Parliament, who could estimate ? For the same reason he riveted on New France a large measure of ecclesiastical domination, in order that he and his successors might continue to exercise ab- solute monarchical rule. CHAPTER IV. Early Trading Companies and Champlain's Apprentice- ship, 1 608- 1 6 12. Cartier's voyages, though temporary failures, had a notable influence. The experience of the gentlemen adventurers who had accompanied Roberval was so dif¥erent from that of the Spanish colonists of rank that France decided she must offer inducements in the way of trade monopolies if her great domain was to be ex- plored and colonized by private enterprise. Yet, even without this stimulus, the commercial spirit which was awakened under Francis I. never again slumbered, though to the French merchant foreign commerce seems not to have been as congenial as domes- tic trade. The French sailor has never been lacking in daring or >seamanship. No service ever demanded these qualities in so high a degree as the Newfoundland fisheries ; and it was the Norman, Breton and Basque fishermen who first followed the Portuguese in drawing on the almost inexhaustible treasures of these prolific banks. The French seaman has always been more ready to risk his life than the French merchant to venture his savings in foreign trade. Whenever the latter did so it was usually as a member of a corporation or of a chartered company with exclusive state privileges and monopolies, not as a private individual. The association of merchants and manufacturers for mutual protection and for regulation of prices was a phase of commercial life all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. The Hanseatic league was a closer and more comprehensive corporation than any created since. In the twelfth century we find the Basque fisher- men combining for defense and aid, and even pooling their profits. Yet it was not until the sixteenth century, after the discovery of America and a sea route to the Indies, with the consequent com- mercial ascendancy of Spain and Portugal, that the English, 66 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. French and Dutch were instigated by jealousy and legitimate rivalry to extend their commerce beyond the seas. That these merchants should combine was an inevitable consequence of the incessant wars in which the rival nations were engaged, of the ambiguous distinction between piracy and legitimate naval war- fare, and of the resulting insecurity of the ocean highways. There was safety in numbers of ships and division of risks. But the motives and methods of the national companies differed as widely as the national characteristics of their shareholders. Pierre Bon- nassieux, in his work, ''Les GrandesCompagnies de Commerce," draws broadly the distinction between the French and the Eng- lish and Dutch trading companies. He says, "When we come to investigate the fundamental features which distinguish the French companies from the Dutch and English, we find that the French commercial companies were with few exceptions the direct crea- tion of the government. While private initiative and public opin- ion contributed to the formation of the great companies of the other powers, we see the government of France always at the head of every enterprise of this kind. As a result this royal inter- vention proclaims itself in privileges and favors of all kinds. No country has suffered in like manner from monopolies so rigorous, privileges so extreme, as France under the Old Regime. The absence of all spirit of freedom of trade in the nation at large, the vicious system of land tenure in the colonies, with the consequent blight of all energy and perseverance among the colonists, relig- ious intolerance, and above all commercial exclusiveness were the consequences of such a system of state initiative and control. Trade is still held in low estimation in France, and rarely will a man of great wealth or social position take an active part in the management of a great company." What is true in this respect to-day was curiously exemplified four centuries ago, when the King, to combat the social prejudices against trade, offered titles of nobility to commoners willing to risk a certain sum in enter- prises which the government was fostering. No country can without fear of challenge claim priority as the initiator of great commercial companies. Though it was the success of Spain and Portugal that stimulated other countries^ SCHEMES OF COLONIZATION. 67 we do not find that these pioneers did much to favor commercial corporations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The com- pany of the Portuguese ^lerchants created in 1443 by Prince Henry of Portugal to found factories in Africa and traffic in gold and slaves for importation into the Iberian Peninsula ; the conces- sion given to certain Flemish merchants by Charles V. to supply the Spanish colonies with negro slaves, and the Brazil Company, created by Portugal in 1649, which secured to her control of a vast section of South America, then in danger of falling under Dutch influence, appear to sum up their attempts in that direction. It is lamentable that the first chartered company should have been organized to deal in human flesh, and that one of the first of the English naval heroes should have been a slave hunter and a slave trader."^ In the sixteenth century France was the first Western power to obtain by capitulation from the Porte certain exclusive trade rights in the Levant, and to confer on an organized company a monopoly of trading in that region. The Frenchman also opened up a trade in coral on the African coast. The list of so-called "Regulated Companies" organized in England in the sixteenth century is the most memorable. It comprises the African Com- pany, organized in 1536, the Russian Company, in 1556, the Levant Company, in 1581. The constitution of these ''Regulated Companies" allowed any member to trade, within the sphere of the company's rights and privileges, on his own account. The Levant was the last of these important corporations, and the famous East India Company was the first of the great English Stock Companies. It dates its birth from the very last day of the sixteenth century. But all these corporations were trading, not colonization, companies. It was France who took the lead as a colonizer through cor- porate co-operation. She had contemplated, as we have seen, founding a colony in Canada under Carticr and Roberval. But the enterprise did not assume the character of a commercial com- ♦Sir Humphrey Gilbert sincerely assigned the sowing of Christianity as the first duty of the explorer. Vet, judged by the standards of to-day, Sir Humphrey, freebooter and slaveholder, was hardly a model disciple of Christ. 68 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. pany. The ships and funds were provided by the French Govern- ment. The loss through the failure of this attempt may have determined the Government not to use the public funds again directly for colonization purposes. The next colonization schemes were those of Admiral Cohgny. The Government did not sup- port, nor yet overtly oppose, the two disastrous enterprises con- ceived and supported by the Huguenots — the first to Brazil under Villegagnon in 1555, the second to Florida under Ribout in 1560. The motive was to escape religious persecution, and had they survived, they could have been sustained only as industrial and commercial enterprises, under Huguenot influence and with Hu- guenot capital. France might thus have claimed to be innocent of disregarding the Bull of Alexander VL They failed, however, and the French Government decided to restrict its sphere of oper- ations on the North American Continent, to the land lying to the north of the sphere assigned by the Pope to Spain and Portugal. The growing importance of the Newfoundland fisheries also at- tracted her to those less genial regions. After Roberval's failure the French had never actually re- treated from the St. Lawrence as traders, for Cartier had pointed out the road to the Saguenay and indicated the rich fur country of which it was the outlet. But no active attempt to found a settlement was again made in the sixteenth century. Hakluyt has preserved for us two letters of Cartier's nephew, Jacques Noel, which refer to certain operations in Canada ; and according to Lescarbot, the said Jacques Noel and his relative, the Sieur de la Journaye, obtained from Henry HI. in 1588 a monopoly of the fur trade, on condition of their establishing a colony in Canada. This commission, if really given, was cancelled before its expiry, for Henry IV., in 1598, conferred the commission of King's Lieu- tenant, with all the high-sounding powers and privileges with which Roberval had been endowed, on Le Sieur Marquis de la Roche de Bretagne. Lescarbot, commenting on this, considers that it was a proof of the want of French public spirit in maritime affairs, that in 1585 the Sieur de la Journaye Chaton and Jacques Noel, nephews and heirs of Cartier, lost the exclusive privileges of trading with the Indians, which had been granted them for A QUESTION OF MONOPOLY. 69 twelve years, at the instigation of the merchants of St. Male. The heirs of Carrier based their claim on the fact that they were endeavoring to carry on, at their own expense, the exploration begun by their illustrious uncle ; that they had lost a fleet of three or four boats by fire, and that it was only fair that the King should renew in their favor the commission granted to Cartier, considering that he had expended on the expedition of 1640 six- teen hundred and thirty-eight livres more than he had received. This is the only hint we find that Cartier himself enjoyed any trading privileges. The St. Malo merchants claimed that the monopoly was unfair to their mariners, who had invested money in the fur trade. Lescarbot says : "It is argued that we must not tamper with the liberty common to all men who are willing to engage without trammel in foreign commerce ; but I want to know which is to be preferred — the propagation of the Christian religion and the spread of French influence, or the selfish interests of a greedy merchant, who does nothing either for God or the King. As a result, that beautiful Dame Liberty prevents these poor, erring souls becoming Christians, and has interfered with the planting of French colonies, where our own people would have found homes, instead of being driven to carry aching hearts into Germany, Flanders, England and elsewhere. And it is due to this same Dame Liberty and the jealousy of our merchants that beaver skins are selling to-day at eight and one-half livres ($1.70), while at the date of Jacques Noel's commission they were worth about fifty sous (two and a half livres). Of a cer- tainty, if we deem the Christian faith and religion to be of any account, it is worth while contributing something to those who risk their lives and fortunes in advancing its interests and the public weal." The arguments pro and con have very much the ring of the arguments for and against trusts and monopolies in the present day. The trade, however, on the Banks had grown so active tliat the idea of colonizing Canada was probably never completely lost sight of. Gosselin, in his Marine Normandc, says: "There was great activity in cod fishing, for from 1543 to 1545 two vessels sailed daily during January and February of 70 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. those years from the ports of Rouen, Havre, Harfleur and Dieppe. After this trade languished, but shortly revived with augmented activity, and large ships even up to 150 tons burden were built for the Newfoundland fishery after 1 560. This seems to have stimu- lated the Government to re-occupy Canada, for in the Archives of Rouen there is a notarial check for the sale from Robert Gouel to Guilleaume le Beau, the Receiver-General of Finance of the King, of a quantity of tools for transportation to New France, whither the King will send them shortly for his services. This purchase was supplementary to the purchase of a supply of arms, for on April 7th Johan Garnier, Lieutenant of the Company of Captain Legrange, gave a receipt to the same Guilleaume le Beau for 400 livres to be spent in the purchase of arquebuses and ammunition needed by the French infantry, which it was the pleasure of the good King to send shortly to New France for the defense there- of." No record of the contemplated expedition has been found, and the project, it is probable, was not unwisely abandoned as being on too small a scale for success. The Sieur de la Roche enjoyed but an empty honor in his commission, for he never extended his viceroyalty beyond Sable Island, where he left part of his miserable colonists to starve. One year sufficed to extinguish his hopes, and sweep away a large share of his fortune, for in 1599 his commission was cancelled, and certain exclusive rights of trade in furs with the Indians of the Saguenay were given to Sieur Chauvin, "a man well skilled in navigation and who had served his Majesty faithfully in bygone wars, even though he was of the so-called Reformed Religion," so says Champlain. He associated himself with the Sieur du Pont- grave, another confessed heretic. Their main object being to trade with the Indians of the Saguenay for furs, they built a small house at Tadousac, and took the initial steps towards founding a settlement at that point, which since the days of Cartier had been the rendezvous in springtime of the Indian and French traders. Another partner was Pierre Dugas, Sieur de Monts de Saintonge, who will reappear in our narrative as a promoter of more import- ant schemes, but who accompanied this expedition rather out of curiosity than with any commercial object. IX THE ST. LAWRENCE. 71 Both Pontgrave and he clearly saw that, as the rocks of Tadou- sac could hardly support the stunted spruce, an agricultural col- ony there would thrive but poorly. Champlain quaintly remarks that Tadousac is more noted for its cold than for any other of its products, inasmuch as, for every ounce of frost that other localities can furnish, Tadousac can supply a pound. The two junior partners, moved by these considerations, suggested that Chauvin, as he had on a previous voyage ascended the river to Three Rivers, should explore the main river in search of a more eligible site. The views, however, of that thrifty adventurer were limited to making money out of the fur and fishing trades. He did not aspire to founding an empire, and therefore refused to do more than build a house to protect the unfortunates who were to be left behind to face the misery of the winter. This done, the three partners sailed back to France. The winter quarters of the set- tlers in this dreary wilderness proved warm enough, but food was scarce. Eleven died, and the remainder had to leave their shanty and live on the charity of the Indians. But spring returned, and with it the ships. A second prosperous voyage was made in 1600, and a third on a more extensive scale was being planned, when Chauvin was seized with a mortal illness, and the enterprise died with its founder. All that Champlain can find fault with in the organiza- tion of the undertaking is that a heretic should have been sent forth to convert the Canadian Indians to the Holy Catholic Apos- tolic and Roman Church, — a paradox no doubt, if we are to take seriously the religious platitudes with which all the commercial concessions are prefaced, and which a free thinker like Marc Les- carbot, and libertines like Francis I. and some of his successors, used as glibly as any of the ecclesiastical statesmen or the really pious Recollet and Jesuit missionaries. It is not accidental that these pioneers should have been heretics. That same spirit of inde- pendence which instigated the revolt against the authority of the Church and against monarchical absolutism impelled them to seek fortune in new and more hazardous ventures than their more conservative fellow merchants of the Catholic faith. Chauvin dead, another suppliant for exclusive trade privileges 72 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. immediately appeared in the person of Sieur Commandeur de Chaste, Governor of Dieppe, who promised, in return for the usual monopoly, to explore the upper St. Lawrence and its rapids, v^hich had heretofore impeded all advance beyond the old stockade of Hochelaga. The undertaking was onerous, so de Chaste asso- ciated with himself some responsible merchants of Rouen, and gave the first command to Pontgrave, Chauvin's old lieutenant, who had navigated the river as far up at least as the Saguenay. While the expedition was being fitted out de Chaste met a sailor who had just returned from a voyage of two and a half years to Brazil and the South Seas, and whom he rightly judged to be well fitted to take an active part in his venture. As soon as the latter had obtained his discharge from naval duty he joined Pontgrave and set sail for the St. Lawrence. This was in 1603. The ad- venturous seafarer, then in the prime of Hfe, was destined to justify de Chaste's judgment of his character and to fill ably the place de Chaste had dreamed of himself occupying. His name was Samuel de Champlain, and the record tells us that he was born at Brouage, a seaport of Saintonge, not far south of La Rochelle, in the year 1567. Fortunately for posterity the sailor was also a scholar and a most graphic writer. For twenty-nine years, until 1632, three years before his death, we have in his own words the charmingly told story of the vicissitudes of the struggling colony of which he was the parent, and over which he watched with all a parent's solicitude until the close of his life. The incidents of this his first voyage to the St. Lawrence were given in detail in his work, "Des Sauvages," and repeated in the more condensed narrative of his voyages, published in 1632. Pontgrave was in command and Champlain his lieutenant. They opened trade with the In- dians at Tadousac ; then ascended the river, cast anchor at Que- bec, by him first mentioned under that name, where the river of Canada (St. Lawrence) narrows to some 3,000 feet in width. Above Quebec Champlain describes minutely the features of the river and its tributaries, the Batiscan and Richelieu ; he also men- tions Montreal, but tells not a word of the vanished stockade of Hochelaga. They made an unsuccessful attempt to mount the CHAMPLAIN, NAVIGATOR AND EXPLORER. 73 rapids, then returned to Tadousac, took on board a cargo of furs, and sailed for Harfleur, only to find that de Chaste had died on the 13th of May, 1603, shortly after their departure, and while the ships were battling with the wintry gales in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. With de Chaste expired his commission and all efforts by his partners to Hve up to it and fulfill its conditions. At once another actor steps upon the stage. De Monts, Chauvin's old partner, had been satisfied with his one trip to Tadousac for a pastime. His commission was dated the same year that Chauvin's expired. It is certain, therefore, that these enterprising Huguenots wasted no time, and were as diligent in business as they were fervent in spirit. Associating with himself in the enterprise a number of merchants of La Rochelle and Rouen of his own faith, he sent one vessel to trade with the Indians at Tadousac, while he, with the aid of Champlain, the old pilot, Pontgrave, and Sieur de Poutrincourt, undertook the hopeless task of founding a colony on the Atlantic seaboard, as a medium for spreading the Holy Catholic faith, though it was at the same time to be conducted on the principles of religious liberty and equality, which the reformers were then talking so much about, and themselves practising so indifferently. He enlisted a number of artisans and peasants, and for their spiritual guidance employed both a Roman Catholic priest and a minister of the reformed faith. The whole company composed a crew of as incompetent settlers and as incongruous leaders as ever started out on a bootless errand. Champlain may not have been a man of sound doctrine himself. If he was not slightly infected by the new notions, he was at least a liberal Catholic and a shrewd man of the world ; in any case his reflections on de Monts' failure can hardly be gainsaid. They were to the effect that the example of two opposing religions is never conducive to the glory of God in the sight of the heathen, whom the belligerent mission- aries are endeavoring to convert. "I have seen our curate and our missionary coming even to blows in defense of their opinions. I cannot venture to decide which was the bravest man, and which gave the hardest knocks, but this I do know, that the minister often grumbled to Dupont about having been beaten, and yet 74 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. insisted on discussing the points in controversy." The Indians took sides, and the French colonists stood up for their respective opinions and champions, while Dupont and Champlain had to do their best to make peace between the warring factions. One of Champlain's comrades in Acadia, and one of his close friends, was that good-natured philosopher and skeptic, Lescar- bot, who, reflecting on the same subject, says ''it is difficult— well nigh impossible — to make all men think alike, especially on mat- ters subject to diverse interpretation. The Emperor Charles V., after the diet of Augsburg, and, after trying in vain to effect the impossible, in molding men's opinions into one fashion, retired from the world and buried himself in a monastery, employing his leisure in making clocks; but ere long he found it as difficult to make all his clocks strike in unison, though designed on the same model and manufactured by the same hand, as he had found it to secure harmony in the opinions of his subjects." Even that earn- est Recollet missionary, the Reverend Father Sagard, cannot help joking upon this subject, when he tells us that, a priest and a min- ister dying within a short time of one another, their irreverent flock buried them in the same grave and watched to see whether they, who during life had quarreled so incessantly, could at length rest together in peace. The Breton merchants, meanwhile, were opposing these mon- strous monopolies ; the clergy at the same time were representing the absurdity and wickedness of subsidizing heretics to spread the true faith ; and thus, through one influence and another, de Monts' commission was revoked. His failure to reconcile the ir- reconcilable must have persuaded even so pronounced a lati- tudinarian as Henry IV. of the impossibiHty of combining mem- bers of opposing religious sects in colonization enterprises, one of the avowed purposes of which was always to evangelize the na- tives. Champlain's experience in Acadia, of the intractable char- acter of clergymen, whether priests of Rome, claiming in- fallibility by virtue of their ordination by a bishop of apostolic descent, or ministers, basing their infallibility on their interpreta- tion of the Bible, must have influenced him when he came himself to be a commander. He may have had Huguenot leanings. He RIVAL CREEDS IX THE WILDERNESS. 75 probably had; but as a Governor, under commission from a Ro- man Catholic king and statesman, he recognized the incompata- bility of theological discord and civil harmony, and consequently acquiesced in the provision that excluded Huguenots from the future colony of Canada. Mankind has not yet learned to prac- tise the forbearance necessary to real civil and religious liberty; nor, in the height of the contest between the forces of tradition and of reason, when each side had to stand by its position without faltering, could it be expected that allowance would be made for possible error in one's premises or conclusions ; or the least distrust be admitted as to the validity of one's authorities. The innumerable compromises upon which tolerance must rest were not in accordance with the spirit of the age. The tone of half cynical open-mindedness which we enjoy in Erasmus, and yet cannot admire, even when compared with the uncompromising bigotry of his opponents in his own church, could not express the spirit of a revolutionary period. Such men as the narrow-minded Carmelite, Egmont, whom Erasmus has pilloried to all ages as the embodiment of ignorance and spleen, were fighting for the very life of the venerable institutions of which they were the servants, and of necessity they were bigoted. On the other hand Luther and Calvin and John Knox knew instinctively that they were the pioneers of a great movement, which was to liberate man from the bondage of caste and superstition, though they could not possibly foresee the full political result of the theological controversy they had excited. Their thoughts were concentrated on the divine message they believed they were delegated to deliver as they read it in the Bible. In their own estimation, they were more directly under the divine guidance than the priests. They were quite as certain as any priest could be of the impregnability of their as- sumed position — in other words, as bigoted. For in a time of re- volution toleration is the most intolerable of all vices. It is cow- ardice under the garb of charity. Champlain was not bigoted. None of his actions reveal him in that character. But, on the other hand, neither was he an eighteenth century skeptic, nor a nineteenth century lacitudinarian in theology and politics. He was a soldier and a civil governor, 76 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. and knew the value of harmony and obedience. It is only as time advances that we can see in his narrative a tendency towards greater rigidity. He had seen the freebooter Argall sweep down upon his old friends at Mount Desert and Port Royal in Acadia in 1613-1614, destroying and relentlessly carrying them off into cap- tivity in the name of God and Protestantism. And what he wit- nessed in the neighboring colony of New England must have convinced him of the wisdom of maintaining uniformity of eccle- siastical rule, even if he could not command absolute unity of theological opinion in the little community which he governed. He could not, from his point of view as a Frenchman imbued with the spirit of French bureaucracy, duly appreciate the merits and foresee the ultimately beneficent consequences of the New England system in its application to matters of state as well as of Church. What did happen before Champlain's death was that the theological intolerance of Massachusetts grew to such a height, and the theological ferment waxed so hot, that Roger Williams could secure the freedom he demanded only by branching off from the Colony of Plymouth and founding a church and state of his own in Rhode Island; that Thomas Hooker was driven to plant the New Hartford Colony, where he could breathe more freely apart from the narrowness of the Massachusetts churchmen ; while John Davenport was moved to go forth into the wilderness and establish the colony of New Haven under a rule still more the- ocratic than that of the original Massachusetts system, though it also made church membership the qualification of citizenship. Champlain, however, had occasion to learn, before he ended his career, that peace and harmony do not always prevail even within the bosom of the Holy Roman Catholic Church itself ; for, while maintaining unity of doctrine, its officers in New France and else- where found themselves widely at variance as to the expediency of certain rules and practices. A tonsure will no more circumscribe men's thoughts than a soutane or a cowl obliterate human passion. But to return to Champlain's apprenticeship for the work that lay before him. For three years he shared the fitful fortunes of his countrymen in Acadia, employed chiefly in exploring the deep CIIAMPLAIX SAILS FOR QUEBEC. 77 indentations of the rugged coast of the present New Brunswick and Maine. When he returned to France in 1607 he reported himself to his master, de Monts. Just at that moment a pious woman, Madame de Guercheville, wife of the Duke de la Roche- foucault de Liancourt, in the fulness of her zeal for the spread of Christianity among the Indians through the agency of the Jesuits, was contemplating the devotion of 3,600 livres to that good end, under the direction of Father Coton. De Monts tried to induce the pious almoner to invest her funds in his venture, and Cham- plain must have added his persuasion, for he reflected long after- wards that all the misfortune that befell the French in Acadia; Argall's victory; the transportation of the captives to Virginia, and a host of other mishaps would have been avoided had the good lady given her 3,000 livres towards the foundation of Que- bec, so far from the seaboard, and beyond the ken and rapacity, as she thought, of the English colonists. But she was too orthodox to entrust her contribution for foreign missions to an avowed Huguenot and his lukewarm lieutenants. De Monts was com- pelled, therefore, to depend upon his own resources. Upon Champlain's advice he abandoned the Atlantic coast in favor of the St. Lawrence. Champlain's argument was that the English were fishing at a distance of only thirteen or fourteen leagues from Mount Desert, and that the Atlantic settlers were therefore in constant danger from their rapacious instincts and habits. Under this new project, de Monts, in 1608, fitted out two vessels in Honfleur, committed the command of the expedition to Champlain, and entrusted one of the ships to Pontgrave, as well he might, for that old sailor had taken part in three previous enterprises, knew every feature of the gulf and river, and was thoroughly acquainted with the habits and tastes of the Indians. The aim of the expedition was to colonize as well as to trade, but again money-making was more important than empire-making to the men who had risked their fortunes in the enterprise; and it is not surprising to find that for many a year the higher motive was subordinate to the meaner. Pontgrave preceded Champlain. who reached Tadousac on the 3d of June. His lieutenant had before his arrival, in pursuance of tlie King's orders, forbidden Basque 78 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. vessels, already in the port, to trade for peltries with the Indians ; but the Basques, under their leader Darache, not only disregarded his command, but fired on Pontgrave's ship, wounded him, killed a number of his crew and boarded his vessel, from which they removed the cannon and all dangerous weapons. Champlain, not wishing to run the risk of wrecking his whole enterprise, com- promised with the unruly aggressor, and, while a schooner of twelve or fourteen tons was being built in which to pursue his journey up the St. Lawrence, he explored the Saguenay. On June 30th Champlain left Tadousac, and sailing up the South Channel, anchored on the 3d of July at Quebec, and at once chose a spot for his first building. Champlain tells the story of his voyage in detail in his edition of 1613, but, in the narrative published in 1632, he dismisses in very few words what must be regarded as one of the most momentous of the many epoch-making voyages of that age of adventure, seeing that in digging the foun- dation of his "habitation," he founded the capital of New France, and gave birth to a new power in the Western World. ''I selected," he says, *'a spot where the river is narrowest, and which the natives called Quebec, and there I commenced to build and cultivate a patch of ground, after clearing away the forest." But he adds : "While we were moiling and toiling amid hardship and worry, many looked back to France to see what was there being done towards furthering the enterprise." Unquestionably this was the attitude from first to last — looking to France to see what was being done, and to inquire what was to be done next. Quebec in truth was for many a day a mere trading post ; as clearly, therefore, as the material available permits, we must learn the character and constitution of those trading companies which nominally support- ing it, in reality retarded its development ; and of those earlier trading and colonization enterprises whose rapid succession we have briefly described. In the instructions given to Cartier and Roberval, as we have seen, there is not a hint of any inducement, in the shape of mon- opoly in trade or exemption from duty or imposts, offered to mer- chants to engage in their voyages. Cartier's first and second voy- ages were simply voyages of discovery; the third, under or in AX EMPTY COMMISSION. 79 co-operation with, Roberval, was undertaken to found a colony at the expense of the Crown, though perhaps Roberval and some of his noble associates contributed. It was so costly that the Home Government does not appear to have ever repeated the experiment in North America. The profits of the trade in furs were suffi- cient to induce the merchants of the northern ports of France to engage in it, either exclusively, or as subsidiary to their fishing enterprises, without inducement from Government. But what the successors of Francis I. wanted was to found a colony beyond the sea without drawing on the public treasury. To induce mer- chants to undertake responsibilities as colonizers which could hardly fail to be detrimental to their interests as fur traders, the Government adopted the plan of constituting monopolies within certain territorial limits, to which were attached, not only freedom from duties and imposts in France, but high and important powers of control and administration within the vast domain so con- ceded. Noel's monopoly, to which we have referred, prob- ably did not involve colonizing conditions, and was speedily repealed. Henry HI. was induced, however, to extend wider privileges to the Sieur de la Roche only ten years later. The terms of his concession indicate already the pattern on which French colonies were to be constituted, and although his enter- prise was a most unhappy failure, still, as foreshadowing the future policy of France in the New World, the terms of the deed are worth quoting. The document commences by recounting Francis I.'s effort to found a colony under Roberval, and his (Henry's) ambition to carry out his ancestor's project. To that end he confers on the Sieur de la Roche like powers, and consti- tutes him Lieutenant-General of the said country of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland, Labrador, the Rjver of the Great Bay of Norembegue, and the land adjacent to the said provinces and rivers, which are of great length and extent, and nevertheless uninhabited by the subjects of Christian princes. Within the limits of his jurisdiction dc la Roche is given authority to exercise ample civil and religious jurisdiction, to make laws, statutes and ordinances, enforce obedience, punish or pardon delinquents, remit penalties; it being always understood that these powers arc 8o QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. not to be exercised in any countries under control of any other prince or potentate who is a friend, ally or confederate of France. In order to increase the good will, courage and loyalty of those who shall take part in the said expedition, and likewise of those who shall remain in the country, there is conferred on him the power to cede portions of the land which he shall have acquired in the proposed exploration, with full rights of property to the per- sons on whom they shall be bestowed and to their successors, namely, gentlemen and those whom he shall judge to be persons of merit ; such grants to be in the form of fiefs, seigneuries, chdtel- leniesy comth, vicomtes, baronnies and other dignities in fealty to us, as he may judge suitable to the particular services of each in- dividual, on condition of their serving in the defence of the said countries. On others of meaner condition the land shall be con- ferred, subject to such charge and annual rent as he shall pre- scribe. "Nevertheless," the commission adds, ''our intention is that they shall be relieved from the payment of dues for the first six years, or for such other terms as our lieutenant shall deem right and necessary ; but these exemptions are in no case to include free- dom from military service. Also on the return of our said lieute- nant he may distribute to others who have taken part in the voyage the gains and profits accruing from said enterprise, giving one third to those who make the voyage, retaining one third to cover his own costs and expenses ; the other third to be applied to works for the common advantage, on fortifications, on the expenses of war; and that our lieutenant may be the better aided in the said enterprise, power is given him to seek the assistance of, and enhst in the army, all gentlemen, merchants and others, our subjects, in person or by representative, who wish to take part in the said voyage, to pay for crews or equipments, and to furnish ships at their own expense. But what we do forbid in express terms is that they trade without the knowledge or consent of our said lieutenant, under penalty of forfeiture of their goods and vessels on discovery of their crime." The commission was signed by Henry IV. on the 12th of January, 1598. No benefit accrued to de la Roche or any of his associates from these magnificent concessions and high-sounding titles, but the document defines the lines on DE MOXTS RECEIVES A COMMISSION. 8i which statesmen had already determined to estabHsh a colonial system. The intention of the Crown was to relieve itself of the risk and expense of colonization by offering tempting commercial terms together with governmental powers to the adventurers, and then to repeat in the colonies the administrative and land systems of the mother country. Not the remotest suggestion occurs of con- ferring even a shadowy semblance of self-government on the col- onies. Lescarbot in the dedication of his charming "Histoire de la Nouvelle France" to Louis XIII. in 1612, refers in a half-concealed vein of sarcasm to the methods pursued by France when he says : *'There are two motives which ordinarily induce Kings to engage in conquest — zeal for the glory of God, and desire for the increase of their own glory and grandeur. Our kings, your predecessors, were long ago induced, under this double stimulus, to extend the bounds of their realm, and to create at little cost to themselves, but by means both just and legitimate, new empires to be hence- forth subject to them." What Lescarbot describes as the system practised by Francis I., Henry III., and Henry IV., was continued by Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. The next concession is that made by Henry IV. to Sieur de Monts. This document has also been preserved by Lescarbot, who sees in de Monts' plan another expedient for founding a stable colony in lands beyond the sea, without drawing on His Ma- jesty's coffers. The preamble, as usual, recites the religious motive which actuates the King, the commercial advantages which* will accrue from taking possession of La Cadie, and trading with its people, and the reasons for appointing Sieur de Monts the King's lieutenant over the territory between the 40th and 46th degrees North Latitude. Then follows a recital of the ample powers del- egated to De Monts in peace and in war, and instructions as to the cultivation of the land and the exploitation of the mines, from which the King reserves a tithe of gold, silver and copper. He is instructed to build forts at once and garrison them, and to expel from his domain all vagrants and vagabonds, and to perform a multitude of acts which might safely have been left to the future and to his discretion to do or not to do. The original concession signed at Fontainebleau on Nov. 8th, 1603, seems, however, to have 82 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. omitted the most important provision, namely, the consideration. This is embodied in a supplementary document, signed in Paris by Henry IV. on the iSth of December of the same year. After reciting the tenor of the previous concession, he adds : *'To facili- tate the enterprise, and aid those who are associated with him, and afford them some mode and means for meeting the expense, we have thought it fit to concede and guarantee to them, that none of our subjects, except those who join with him in sharing the cost, will be permitted to trade for furs or other merchandise during a period of ten years, in the lands, harbors, rivers and routes of approach throughout the extent of the country under his control. This we command." Then follows the authority to enforce the exclusive concession granted for ten years for the trade in furs and other things with the Indians from Cape Race to the 40th degree of North Latitude, including all the coast of Acadia, Cape Breton, the Bay of St. Clair and Chaleur, the Island of Perce, Gaspe, Tadousac and both banks of the River of Canada, and all the rivers and bays on either side. The penalty for infringement of the concession and disobedience to the edict, is confiscation of vessels, stores, arms and cargo for the benefit of de Monts and his associates, and a fine of 30,000 Hvres ; and de Monts is empowered to seize all trespassers and their property, and to deliver them for trial to the proper authorities. In addition to these trade mon- opolies, Henry, by Patent dated the 8th of February, 1609, grants de Monts exemption from certain import duties. The Patent ex- plained that certain officers have obliged de Monts and his as- sociates to pay the same import dues on merchandise when coming from New France as are levied on the same goc^ds imported from Spain and other foreign countries, and have even levied ad- ditional dues on de Monts' goods when passing from province to province in France. An instance is quoted of twenty-two bales of beaver skins seized for duty at Coudre sur Narreau. To avoid in future such impediment to de Monts' operations, it is ordered that merchandise imported from Acadia, Canada and other locali- ties within his jurisdiction, shall not pay a heavier subsidy than the entry dues, and those payable ordinarily on goods passing from one province to another in France, and which are products of the ENGLISH COLONIZATION. 83 same, and the decree orders the restitution of the twenty-two bales that had been seized. The ill-starred adventures of de jMonts and his associates in Acadia and on the coast of ]\Iaine have already been referred to, and we have mentioned how he was induced by Champlain to turn his attention to the Upper St. Lawrence, as a better field for colonization and trade. The trading privileges were cancelled at the instigation of the merchants of St. ^lalo after he had en- joyed them for three years. The grounds of their protest were, that, owing to de Monts' monopoly, the price of beaver skins had risen; that the freedom of trade was forbidden in regions which had been open to the merchants of northern France from time im- memorial; and, as a crowning argument, that de Alonts had been for three years enjoying trade privileges, and had made no converts to Christianity. One would not suppose a suggestion of this nature would have carried much weight, coming as it did from money-making merchants, who had been for a full century in contact with the Indians of Labrador and Newfoundland, with- out giving thought to, or spending a livre on, the spiritual ad- vancement of the natives. But any argument is good enough to support a foregone conclusion. Nevertheless, on the representa- tion to the King by Lescarbot and others of de iMonts' friends, of all that the latter had done, His Majesty in 1607 renewed the privileges of exclusive traffic in beaver skins for one year. Les- carbot may well say "this was surely but a weak foundation on which to build a great project, and little time was allowed." A great project it proved to be, for, as we have seen, Quebec was founded within the year. Though France took the lead as a North American colonizer, England followed close on her track. She created in 1606 two companies whose representatives and successors were to exercise an incalculable influence over the destinies of mankind, — the South Virginia, or London Company, and the Company of Plymouth Adventurers. Neither was the actual corporation under which the Northern and Southern English colonies subsequently held title, nor were they really the first corporate bodies which tried, under English auspices, the experiment of combining trade 84 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. and colonization on the East coast of North America. They were the offspring of the heroic but futile efforts made by Raleigh and his lieutenant in the previous century, to found a colony in Vir- ginia. The provisions of the Charter granted Sir Walter in 1583- 1584, expressed conclusively the spirit which even then guided England in her colonization schemes. The Charter grants to the colonists "all the privileges of free denizens and persons native of England, in such ample manner as if they were born and per- sonally resident in our said Realm of England." And they were to be governed according to such statutes as shall be by him or them established, provided they do not contradict the law of the Realm. The same principles and powers underlie the constitu- tions of all the subsequent colonies. The contrast between these simple and liberal charters and the concessions, edicts, and ordi- nances, under which the neighboring French colony was governed, accounts for the opposite course followed by the respective nations from their birth until to-day. The colonization of both Virginia and Massachusetts was un- dertaken by trading companies, but the policy of these companies, however mistaken in many respects, was widely different from the purely selfish objects of the French companies. Moreover, they were popular in every sense, for the reorganized London Company enrolled as its shareholders 659 individuals and 56 trade guilds. Holland did not escape the epidemic of colonial expansion, but her only attempt to gain a footing on the North American conti- nent was fated to have very slight results, for it is difficult to trace the impression made by the Dutch, except in the nomenclature of localities. It was in 1609 that the United Neth- erland Company landed a shipload of Walloons, and founded a port and factory at the mouth of the Hudson. England had claimed the territory by right of discovery, and had ceded it to one of the two companies which she had chartered three years pre- viously. But the Dutchmen remained on the Hudson and the Mohawk until 1664. In their dealing with the Iroquois, whose hankering for fire- arms they were only too willing to gratify, the Dutch settlers THE DUTCH COLONIES. 85 troubled their neighbors of New France and France's Indian alhes not a Httle ; while the trade and land regulations of New Netherland were almost as liberal as those of France. Holland cannot be said, therefore, to have created an independent phase of North American colonization, or to have left the impress of her institutions on the rising communities of the Continent, CHAPTER V. Quebec as a Trading Post Under de Monts' Company and Under Free Trade. Champlain showed keen insight when he selected as the seat of empire the cHlfs overhanging the narrow stretch of the mighty river, the most defensible site from a military point of view, and the best fitted by nature both as a port and as a center of trade. In a few sentences Champlain tells how they spent the first sum- mer at Quebec. "The Island of Orleans is distant from Quebec but a league. On arrival I went in search of a spot for our house. I could find none more suitable or better situated than the part of the Promontory of Quebec, so called by the Indians. A forest of birch trees and vines covered it. At once, therefore, I set some men to felling the trees, others to sawing planks, others to ex- cavating for the cellar and digging a trench, and part I sent back to Tadousac for those of our comrades who had been left behind and for the stores. My first care was to build a house within which to store our provisions. This was promptly and compe- tently done through the activity of my men, and under my own supervision. Near by is the St. Croix River where of yore Car- tier spent a winter. While carpenters toiled, and other mechan- ics were at work on the house, the others were busy making a clearance about our future abode ; for as the land seemed fertile, I was anxious to plant a garden and determine whether wheat and other cereals could not be grown to advantage." Champlain, in his edition of 1613, gives both a picture of the habitation and a map of the harbor. He seems to place his residence on the ex- treme point of the jutting promontory, between the St. Lawrence and the St. Charles, and therefore on the beach where St. Peter and St. Paul streets now meet. The beach was narrow and the cliffs rose sheer above it. There is not at present, nor can there have been then, any ledge above the high tide level on which to THE FOUNDING OF A CITY. 87 erect a dwelling, safe from the ice, which must have piled up high against the cliff during the winter. The site generally assigned to the habitation, namely, between the old cul de sac and the foot of the ravine (now Mountain street) leading to the summit of the cliff, or about where the Church of Notre Dame de la Victoire stands, is, therefore, the more probable location. When Champlain is arguing for the St. Charles, which he calls La Petite Riviere, as we still call it, as being the scene of Cartier's first win- ter quarters, he mentions that the shallows of that stream are 1,500 feet from his habitation, which he says is further up the river, meaning doubtless the St. Lawrence. This would confirm the traditional site of the habitation. Champlain designates a point B. as that w^here they cleared away the forest to plant corn. It is the level ground occupied by the Ursuline Convent and Garden, which was, we may suppose, selected on account of its good soil by both the explorers, and approved of for the same reason by the good Sisterhood. Another point, G., would seem to indicate the place where they cut grass for their animals, and where, prob- ably, there were natural meadows or some old clearings. It is on the slope of the second hill from the Garden, G., and therefore where the glacis of the citadel has now been graded. The old Iroquois town of Stadacona perhaps stood there, and only brush- wood had grown up over the open space occupied by their lodges and the cultivated field of Donnecana's tribe. Hardly had the work of building commenced when their black- smith, one Jean Duval, began to hatch a scheme to kill Champlain, seize the property, and turn it over on behalf of Spain to the Basque or Spanish fishermen at Tadousac, or more probably to use it for piratical purposes. Duval enlisted four of his com- panions in the conspiracy, but they hesitated so long as to the best manner of dispatching Champlain that one of the ships ar- rived from Tadousac, and a conspirator, Antoine Natel, confided the whole plot to the Captain. At Champlain's suggestion the conspirators were induced to go on board the ship to a convivial gathering, and were then arrested. As there was no prison in Quebec, and as their presence there would interfere with the progress of the habitation, he took them to Tadousac and handed 88 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. them over to the charge of Pontgrave, he himself returning at once to Quebec. Pontgrave followed with the prisoners, Cham- plain having wisely concluded that the trial and execution should take place at the scene of the conspiracy itself. For the trial of the captives he created a tribunal, consisting of himself, Pont- grave, the doctor, the captain, the mate and some of the sailors. The verdict was death. The sentence was carried out in the case of Duval, who was hanged and whose head was afterwards ex- posed on the highest pinnacle of the habitation as a warning. The carrying out of the sentence was suspended in the case of the accomplices, who were sent to France to be dealt with by de Monts, or as the law might dictate. It was a sad introduction to Champlain's administration, and may have awakened in him gloomy forebodings ; but happily the subsequent story of his rule, and the whole history of the City, have not justified any misgiving which may have oppressed him; for the French population of Quebec may well be proud of its comparative freedom from crime. On Sept. 1 8th Pontgrave sailed for France with three prisoners — of the five Duval had been hanged; the informer, it may be assumed, was pardoned. The residence had not yet been completed, and cold weather was approaching, so there must have been in- tense activity, not only in building but in laying stores against the winter. There were Indians camped near by, probably around the point on the St. Charles Basin, engaged in catching eels, between the middle of September and the middle of October. Cartier says that smoked eel was their principal food till February, when they started on their moose hunting expeditions; whoever, therefore, the Indians were that succeeded Donnecana's tribe, they looked to the same source of supply. Champlain describes the habitation, and depicts it in his rough drawing, as consisting of three separate houses, joined together. Each was three toises (i8 feet) long by two and a half (15 feet) wide. In the courtyard was erected a store house, and over it a watch tower, which he styled a colomhitre; a gallery on a level with the roof of the store house surrounded the three houses, and gave access to their second stories. On an esplanade in front of one or both sides, were mounted five cannon, and further protec- Champlain's First Battle with the Iroquois. Champlain, Edition of If) 1:5. ( lianiphnin's nal)ilatii)ii. < liam])laiii. I'.dilion ot hil;] A DISTRESSING WINTER. 89 tion was af¥orded by the palisade and a ditch sixteen feet wide and six feet deep. Champlain's habitatioji was dear to him, and he con- tinued to add to it ; for when Father Sagard arrived in Canada on the eve of the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in 1623, he found it to be a "really fine house, surrounded by a strong wall, surmounted, landward, by two small towers built as a precau- tion but he adds that, "despite these precautions for safety, it w^ould not be difficult to take the place by storm, even without the aid of artillery." Lescarbot tells us that twenty-eight men remained to winter at Quebec. Champlain did not let this first season pass without com- mencing his agricultural experiments, for on the first-of October he sowed wheat, and on the 15th, rye, and on the 24th planted some grape vines. Beyond this advertisement of his desire to test the farming capabilities of the country, he records only the principal meteorological events of the season. On the 13th of October there was a white frost, and the leaves were falling on the 15th. On November i8th snow fell in quanti- ty, but it thawed in a couple of days. A furious snowstorm set in on February 5th, which lasted for forty-eight hours. In February the locksmith died of dysentery, brought on, as Champlain thought, by eating too freely of smoked eels. Les- carbot tells a doleful tale of the suffering of the residents. According to him they could not find Cartier's remedy, the an- nedda. We can only suppose that they could not identify it themselves, and that the native race who were in occupation in Cartier's time having disappeared, there was no one to point it out to them. With no provision made against scurvy, and no amusement to drive away homesickness, the plight of the little band was hardly less pitiable than that of Cartier's crew on the neighboring St. Charles in the previous century. What they lacked was fresh meat and vegetables, for they had bread enough to dole out even in charity to a family of starving Micmacs, who, rather than die of hunger, risked crossing from the south shore on the floating ice. The poor wretches, to the horror of the French, were driven to sustain life by eating the decayed carrion with which the fox traps were baited. 90 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. And so the winter wore away. Spring was early, for the snow had melted by the 8th of April ; but the cold continued, and the trees did not bud until well on in May. With the advent of Spring and vegetation, and presumably fresh fish, scurvy, which Champlain supposed to be a maladie de la terre, disappeared. So utterly ignorant was he of the aetiology of the disease, that, in quoting the instance of an Indian who died of it from eating salt meat, he concludes that salt meat is not a remedy. On second thought he wonders whether it is not perhaps the cause. He may have acted on this hypothesis, as during the following three win- ters the health of his post seems to have been excellent. On the 5th of June, 1609, when the Sieur des Marais, son-in-law of Pont- grave, arrived from France, he found only eight haggard represen- tatives of the twenty-eight hearty men whom Pontgrave had left to face the rigor of the winter, and of these eight, Champlain says, one-half were ill. Des Marais had parted from his father-in-law at Tadousac, whither Champlain at once went. After consultation, it was decided that Champlain should fulfill the promise made the summer previous, to accompany the Montagnais and the Hu- rons on a warlike expedition against the Iroquois. He there- fore lost no time in returning to Quebec, equipping a chaloupe, and starting up the river. At a league and a half above the river of Sainte Anne de la Perade, he met between two and three hun- dred Indians, Algonquins and Hurons, coming to claim the ex- ecution of his pledge. Then followed a long pow wow, and a return to Quebec with his Indian allies in his trail, where for three days there was dancing and feasting, with renewed promises of fidelity and of aid on both sides. What happened in this raid against the Iroquois affected most intimately and most momentously the fortunes of Quebec, for it determined the attitude of the French as friends of one section of the Indian population of the continent, and as enemies of another, and that the most powerful of all. It is not unlikely that it also embittered the relations of the Indian to the Euro- pean over the whole North American continent, for there had been previously little animosity between the Indians and the French in Acadia. It made what might have been the peaceful trading post A FATEFUL CAMPAIGN. 91 of Quebec a center of almost constant hostile preparation, and converted the future Province into a military colony, where mili- tary considerations were always uppermost, and the pursuit of trade and commerce was held in smaller esteem than the profession of arms. A further effect was to aggravate the inimical feeling between the French colonists and the English, converting mere dislike, arising out of commercial rivalries, into hatred and suspicion. Champlain's active alliance with the ene- mies of the Iroquois, both of the Algonquin and the Huron stock, and the inauguration of his governorship by an act of war, gave direction to the whole policy of France in the New World. What his motive was has been a subject of endless speculation. Perhaps he acted merely from impulse, not from policy. Every Spanish explorer had been a conqueror. Champlain had served his ap- prenticeship under Spanish and Portuguese leaders. He was a Frenchman in an age when France was always at war, and when war was regarded as the only calling becoming a gentleman. If he had a policy, it was dictated by considerations of trade. He had ad- vised de Monts and Madame de Guercheville to devote their ener- gies and funds to the development of the interior of the Continent, where they might expect to be beyond the reach of English inter- ference and encroachment. He had done this when the James- town settlement was in its infancy, and, under Ralph Lane, threatened with the untimely fate of Sir Walter Raleigh's Roan- oke Company, and before Argall had so ruthlessly harried the French posts on the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia. But he appreciated the indomitable and pushing character of the Eng- lish, and may have apprehended that they would sooner or later be the dominant power on the Atlantic seaboard. If so, some line of demarcation would necessarily have to be drawn, and a sphere of influence, if not of possession, prescribed within which the mer- chants of the rival nations miq-ht trade. Such a line would naturally be the l^pper St. Lawrence and the Lakes, whose exist- ence he knew of, though he dreamed not of their extent. He was the accent of a tradinc: company, and tlie commercial interests of his company were rightlv his first concern. If he enlisted on the side of the company a powerful tribe to the north of the 92 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Lakes, and also the enemies of the Iroquois in the interior of the Acadian Peninsula, he would monopolize the furs of his aUies and secure the trade of the vast interior, the illimitable extent of which, as described by the natives, must have set his imagination aglow. Should the English occupy the coast, let them ally themselves, if they would, with the Five Nations, and get what profit they could out of the fringe of territory between the Atlantic and the Lakes. He and his company, controlling the trade of the interior, would not begrudge it to them. He may not have formulated the forecast in so many words, but dreams of empire haunt the waking and sleeping thoughts of empire builders, and prescience akin to inspiration directs their plans. Moreover, the less pre- cise the geographical knowledge of such a pioneer as Champlain, and the slighter his acquaintance with the hmits of trade, the wider the scope for the play of his imagination. Whatever his motives may have been, the war on which he so lightly entered was still in progress when France — a cen- tury and a half later — retired from the Great River and the Lakes. The details of this interminable struggle, with all its picturesque but horrible interest, it will not be our province to de- scribe ; but as Quebec was the base of French warlike operations, we shall again and again see the motley host clustered there for the fray. To fight the first battle there went some three hundred savages in their canoes, and Champlain, Pontgrave's son-in-law, Des Marais, Laroutte, the pilot, and nine men, in one of the shallops. Pontgrave accompanied them as far as the River of St. Croix. A number of the Indians deserted at the mouth of the Richelieu. Champlain was obliged to send back all but two volun- teers with the shallop, from the foot of the Chambly Rapids, so that when they all embarked in twenty-four canoes above the Rapids, there were with the three Frenchmen only fifty-six In- dians. They met a band of the enemy on the warpath on the shores of Lake Champlain, which appropriately derives its name from its discoverer. The Iroquois fled before the deadly fire of the three Spanish arquebuses, loaded with four balls to a charge. It was their first experience of fire-arms. Yet before they themselves had acquired them, and learned their use, they had dis- nomma faln^lc Croix, que I on a transfcre a 15. Iieucs audc/Tus Qjiebtc. Map of the Environs of Quebec. Prom Champlain, Edition of Ifil.S, INDIAN BARBARITIES. 93 covered that numbers could successfully face even powder and shot. But on this the first encounter, the terror of these strange beings and their mysterious, murderous weapons, quenched the courage of these the bravest of the Indian braves. In the sug- gestive drawings with which Champlain illustrates his narrative, he always depicts his men in full panoply of war, with helmet and steel cuirass, he himself being distinguished by the plume in his hat. In reality they probably did wear armor of some kind. On the evening of the victory Champlain witnessed for the first time one of the peculiar horrors of Indian warfare — the torture of a pris- oner ; and, being a chivalrous man, the terrible spectacle must have made him reflect on the incongruity of fighting side by side with such allies — whether aiding them in their quarrels, or re- ceiving their aid in his. Barbarous as war is at the best, its bru- tality was displayed in all its most revolting features in Indian hostilities; and though Champlain probably did not fully realize the crime he was committing in setting the example of enlisting savages as his allies in war, the abominable spectacle must have excited in his mind a serious feeling of disquietude. As a consequence of his action the Iroquois sought the friendship of the Dutch and the English, and became their allies. But, apart from the direct results of such iniquitous coalitions, the fact that the white man was willing to embroil himself in their quarrels and use his weapons at their dictation, on one side or the other, must have done more to make them objects of suspicion and dread than their aggressiveness as traders and colonists. It was not until 1622 that the first terrible massacre of the In- dians was perpetrated in Virginia, and it was fourteen years later before the Pequod war broke out in New England. It would be unfair to trace back either calamity to Champlain's alliance with the Hurons, Algonquins, and Montagnais ; but had he held aloof from all participation in aboriginal politics and quarrels, and ex- ercised toward all alike that forbearance, tact and sympathy with Indian habits and tastes which made the French so much more successful and humane in their treatment of the aborigines than the Anglo-Saxon, there would not have been any direct in- centive towards the alliance of the Iroquois and the English. On 94 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the contrary, the example of the French would have been con- ducive to friendly relations between Europeans and the whole native population of the American continent. On the return from Lake Champlain the Hurons and Algon- quins left the army at the Chambly Rapids, after making the most profound protestations of friendship, and begging Champlain to visit their land and treat them as brothers, which he promised to do. The Montagnais, who stayed at Quebec only long enough to regale themselves on bread and peas, persuaded Champlain to give them patenotres (chaplets) with which to adorn the decapi- tated heads of their enemies. With these mounted on poles, and decorating the bows of their canoes, they approached Tadousac. As an acknowledgment of their indebtedness, and a pledge of friendship, they graciously sent him the head and arms of one of their unfortunate foes. These Champlain presented to the King — a more appropriate offering than either the donor or the receiver was aware of, considering the later consequences of the sum- mer's work. The gift, however, did not shock the King, who accepted it as an emblem of the habits of his new subjects. After Champlain's return to Quebec a large band of Algon- quins moved down the river, expressing themselves as full of regret that they had been too late to take part in the discom- fiture of their enemies, and presenting in token of their gratitude a more acceptable present than heads and arms — a gift of furs. Shortly afterward Champlain proceeded to the post at Ta- dousac, where, after Pontgrave had joined him, they both decided to return to France. They must have been anxious to know whether Henry IV. had been induced, in spite of the pro- test of the Malouins, to renew de Monts' trading privileges. They decided to put the Quebec post in charge of Captain Pierre Chavin of Rouen, and to leave with him fifteen men, all provision having been made for their welfare, and the store stocked with more suitable food than on previous occasions. Owing doubtless to this circumstance, the health of the sixteen was unimpaired in the following Spring. Champlain and Pontgrave took a boat to Tadousac on the ist of September, and set sail thence for France. Not a word is said in either of Champlain's narratives as to the BUSINESS PERPLEXITIES. 95 financial results of the year's work, secrecy then, as now, being one of the maxims of trade. On their arrival, both went to the Company's headquarters at Rouen to consult de ^lonts' partners, Collier and Gendre, before reporting to de Monts himself. Then Champlain, at an audience with the King, described his adven- tures and presented his ^lajesty with a girdle embroidered with porcupine quills. They determined to maintain their Quebec establishment, and to continue the exploitation of the Great River under the guidance of Champlain in alliance with the Hurons. It was therefore decided to send Pontgrave to Tadou- sac, and he was commissioned to lay in a cargo consisting in part of merchandise for barter and in part of provisions. In return for undertaking and preparing to explore the Great River and open channels of trade never before tapped, de Monts claimed a new concession, his old having expired a twelvemonth ago; but the petition was rejected. Though the refusal to renew de Alonts' privileges may have been forced on Henry by the necessity for propitiating the merchants of Normandy and Brittany, and though it must have jarred on his good nature to deny a request to one so conspicuous for public spirit and public services, he did not, in so doing, contradict his principles. There are traceable in Henry's schemes the germs of a freer trade policy than has even yet found acceptance in France. To close the St. Lawrence to all the world save a company of greedy traders would naturally be repugnant to the mind of the monarch who agreed to Article IV. of the Treaty with Sultan Achmct I., "that all the nations of Europe, the English included, should trade freely in the Levant under the flag and the protection of France, and under the direc- tion of the counsel of France." But although de Monts' petition was refused, he and his as- sociates bravely determined to carry out their plans, and Cham- plain and Pontgrave sailed away fmm Honflcur. During his win- ter in France Champlain seems again to have endeavored to in- duce Madame de Gucrchevillc to enlist in his schemes, but with no better success than formerly. His ships carried provisions sufficient to maintain the little colony for another winter, ar- tisans to extend it, and merchandise for traffic. But contrary 96 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. winds having driven him into an EngHsh port, he returned to France, and it was the 8th of April before he finally set sail for the Colony. He made a short voyage, and arrived in Tadousac on the 27th of April, but, quick as he had been, the unchartered traders had already preceded him. Here he found the Montag- nais Indians eager for traffic, but still more eager to enhst him in their wars ; and he made a one-sided promise to accompany them in the following year on an expedition to a great sea whose further shore you could not see — evidently, either the Hudson Bay, or Lake Mistassini. But Champlain's immediate object was to ac- company the Hurons to their home on the Georgian Bay and fight with them against the Iroquois. As he says, "he rejoiced at having two strings to his bow, for if one snapped, he could play upon the other." The young Sieur Pierre du Pare had come down from Quebec and relieved his anxiety as to the welfare of his comrades. The winter had been mild and short. They seldom lacked fresh meat, and though there had been some sickness, all were well again. He had learned, as he says, that with health and fresh food, life could be preserved as well in Canada as in France during the long win- ter months. He left Tadousac after only a two days' rest, and reaching Quebec found his little colony of fifteen under Pierre Chavin all alive and in good health, as reported. A chief called Batiscan with his band of savages was there ready to welcome him with songs and dances. They were speedily joined by sixty Mon- tagnais, willing to aid him if he would aid them with his arque- buses against their foes. He was now a competitive trader, and he tells us how he cajoled the wily savages. 'They said, 'See how many Basques and Malouins there are here now, and they all offer to be our allies and to fight for us. What do you think ? Speak the truth.' 'No, they won't,' I answered, and I pointed out that their only object was to wheedle them out of their furs. The Indians were convinced and said, 'You speak truly. They are nothing but women and only want to make war upon our beavers.' They made some other jokes and talked over their plans for making war. They agreed to leave and await me at Three Rivers, thirty leagues above Quebec, where I promised to SECOXD ATTACK OX THE IROQUOIS. 97 join them with four boatloads of merchandise to be exchanged for their peltries, and for those of the Hurons, who were to join us with 400 warriors at the mouth of the Richelieu, as had been agreed upon the year before." To what degree the expiry of de Monts' concession had induced Champlain the year before (1609) to join the Hurons and some of the Algonquin tribes in their war upon the Iroquois, as a means of cementing friendly trade rela- tions, it is not easy to determine ; but we see clearly from his jour- nal, that he considers that the strongest weapon he could now wield against his French rivals in business was an offensive and defensive alliance with the enemies of the Iroquois. Do what he might, however, the competition was sharp and ruinous, for Lescarbot, after quoting other reasons which the mer- chants of St. Malo used against de ^lonts' concession, says, "I am not retained to defend his cause, but this I do know, that to-day, with trade free, beaver skins sell at twice the price to the Indians which they formerly did, for the greed of the mer- chants is so uncontrollable that, in bidding against one another, they spoil their own game. Eight years ago a beaver skin could be had for a couple of loaves or a knife, but to-day an Indian de- mands fifteen or twenty. And, in this year of grace 1610, there are traders who have given all their goods gratuitously to the savages simply to hurt the trade of the Sieur de Poutrincourt (Sieur de Monts' old partner in Acadia). Such is the envy and avarice of men." The summer was spent, as was the last, in war against the Iroquois. Ascending the river Champlain was joined by the Montagnais at Three Rivers. While they and some of the rival traders were camped at the mouth of the Richelieu, an Algonquin canoe arrived and warned him that the Iroquois to the number of one hundred were strongly barricaded in the neighborhood. Champlain and some of his men followed the Indians to the at- tack. The savages rushed impetuously ahead, and were being severely handled by the Iroquois when Champlain and his men came to their assistance. Before the fight closed, by the assault of the palisaded enclosure, a young trader from St. Malo, called Gibraire (Gabriel), one of his rivals, was moved by the sound of 98 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. battle to follow and engage in the fray. A complete rout ensued, and fifteen prisoners were taken. One was at his request given to Champlain; the others suffered, some of them at once, others subsequently at the hands of the squaws, the usual exquisite tor- ture. Then trade succeeded war, and, as not infrequently hap- pens, those who had been backward as warriors succeeded best as merchants. Champlain bemoans the fact that his rivals, who had risked nothing as explorers or as soldiers, nevertheless se- cured the bulk of the peltries. Whether, on the whole, Champlain was as successful in trade as in war during that summer he does not tell, but, on arriving at Quebec, he decided to return with little delay to France. Pont- grave wished to winter in Quebec, but Champlain argued that, from appearances at the moment — ^by which we may presume he meant a scarcity or high price of skins — nothing would be gained by his remaining. He further urged that his testimony as to the effect on trade of the ruinous competition created by the Norman and Breton merchants, might aid his employers in plead- ing for a concession. The argument convinced Pontgrave and he consented to accompany his chief. When these questions were settled, Champlain says : "We resolved that Du Pare, who had wintered in Quebec with Captain Pierre, should be left in charge, and that Captain Pierre should return to France by reason of cer- tain business which required his presence there. We therefore left Du Pare in command of sixteen men, whom we admonished to live wisely in the fear of God, to obey their chief and leader, Du Pare, as though he were ourselves. All of which they prom- ised to do, and pledged themselves to abide in peace one with another." The garden was well stocked when they left early on August 15th, 1610, despairing evidently of gathering more furs by a longer stay on the river. How it befell the Tadousac post he does not tell, but probably ill, for de Monts' privilege, as we know, had expired, and trade on the St. Lawrence from the mouth to the Lakes being free, it had been, as usually happens, overdone. Champlain remarks with a certain ill-disguised satis- faction, on "the loss which a number of merchants had sustained, who had laid in great stores of merchandise and equipped a fleet PLANS FOR EXPLORATION. 99 of vessels in the hope of doing a profitable traffic in furs" ; adding that "their preparations were out of all proportion to the amount of trade, so that some of them will remember for many a day the ruin which overtook them here." The losses were probably not confined to his rivals. What business arrangements were made during the winter of 1610-1611 we are not told. We know that no concessions were granted, but the old partnership between de Monts, Collier, and Poutrincourt was maintained. Before Champlain sailed in the spring he married the Demoiselle Helene Boulle, a daughter of the secretaire de la chamhre du roi (secretary of the King's chamber). It was rather a contract of marriage than a marriage itself, for the girl was only a child of twelve. It is stated that by way of dot de Boulle extended material assistance to the Canadian schemes of de Monts and Champlain. De Boulle was a Huguenot. Whether it was a marriage or a betrothal, it did not detain him, for the lover set sail on the ist of March. Being beset v/ith ice, he did not reach Tadousac till the 13th of May. Snow covered the ground, but early as it was, and expeditious as he had been, three trading vessels had reached the Saguenay before him. They had gained nothing by haste, however, for the Indians, who had be- come masters of finesse, refused to trade till the whole fleet had arrived, and until, under the stimulus of many bidders, the price of their wares should rise. Leaving Pontgrave at Tadousac to get what share he could of the trade, Champlain himself pro- ceeded to Quebec. His Indian friends of the year before were there to welcome him. He had already acquired some knowledge of the Richelieu and Lake Champlain, and may have foreseen that the English would pre-empt wliat traffic there was with the Iroquois, and the seaboard tribes. He therefore looked toward the north and wished to explore, by way of the St. Maurice from Three Rivers, that vast country where the Saguenay Indians hunted, hoping to tap it at some inland point not so easily reached as was Tadousac by his rivals in trade. He therefore proposed such a summer voyage to his dusky ally, P.atiscan, but his su.cf.trestion was met by an ofifer to guide him thither next year, not tliat summer. The Indian probably divined his motive, and was by no means in- ^' OF C. 100 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. clined to further any scheme for monopoHzing trade. There was at the post the agent of another company, *'a young man from Ro- chelle named Trefort," who offered to accompany him on his summer expedition, but Champlain very naturally refused: he had his own plans and motives for the trip, and had no notion of being any one else's guide, especially if it were to his own preju- dice ; if the young man were bent on going, there were other com- panions for him to choose from ; certainly he, Champlain, was not going to help him to find new paths for commerce. Clearly de Monts' rivals had followed him above Tadousac, and were not only watching every motion of his agents, but were inculcating danger- ous precepts and suspicions in the minds of the Indians. Cham- plain therefore made haste to assemble his Huron allies at the rendezvous at the foot of the rapids near old Hochelaga, where the year before they had agreed to meet on the 20th of May. While waiting for them, he was joined on the ist of June by Pontgrave, who had been unable to do anything at Tadousac. The buyers were too many, and the price of furs was probably higher than he had been accustomed to pay. But his rivals had been equally un- fortunate, for a goodly company followed him up the river to com- pete with him there for trade. A few days afterward four or five more barks arrived, the owners of which had been unsuccessful at Tadousac. At length the Hurons arrived, and with them the French lad v^^hom Champlain had entrusted to them, and who in the interval had learned their language and appeared habited in native cos- tume. On the other hand the Indians welcomed with joy the hostage whom they had delivered to Champlain in the previous summer, and who had returned from France with many a story of French greatness and of Champlain's influence. They testified their satisfaction by turning their back on the other traders, whose presence in such numbers had aroused their suspicion or their cupidity, and making a treaty with Champlain. In confirmation they gave him one hundred beaver skins, and subsequently traded for all they had, which was little. Then followed a nocturnal council in which Champlain took part, pledging his faith to aid them. The deliberations turned on the point as to whether they NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE HURONS. lOI should allow the boy of a certain rival French trader to winter with them, as Champlain's emissary had done the previous year. Champlain dare not avow his jealousy of his French brethren, lest he should v/eaken the Indians' fear of that little band of white faces isolated in a boundless wilderness; but he dexterously managed to frustrate his rival's scheme. Then came other bands of Indians from the distant lakes with a few beaver skins, where- upon fresh protestations of friendship and pledges of assistance were given, and another youth was assigned to the Hurons. Thus passed the summer in the neighborhood of the Lake of the Two Mountains. Little actual business was done; not many beaver skins were obtained; but the prudent leader was gathering information; promoting a good understanding with the Indians who lived to the north of the river and the lakes; and weakening the influence of his French competitors in trade. In Quebec he saw to the repairs of the habitation; planted some rose trees; loaded a cargo of oak, which he hoped would prove acceptable in France for wainscoting; then paid a visit to the company's other trading post at Tadousac, where, after taking counsel with Pontgrave, he decided to return to France, which he did in the ship of a certain Captain Tibaut of Rochelle, presum- ably one of his rivals, nevertheless a friend, arriving at La Rochelle on September lo, 1611. He told de Monts the story of what had happened, of his plans for the future, of the treaty with the Hurons, involving a promise to help them in their wars if they would accord him preferences in trade ; of the advan- tage this would give the society over their rivals, apart from the fact that a post on one of the great lakes, far above marine navigation, would be inaccessible to the casual trader. De Monts, with his habitual energy and courage, was ready to risk more, even though the past season had been so disastrous, and though the maintenance of the two posts at Tadousac and Quebec, and the founding of two others, one at Mont Royal and one in the country of the Hurons, would draw heavily on his pecuniary re- sources. His more prudent partners, however, did not share his enthusiasm, and refused to participate in the risk. Thereupon de Monts, nothing daunted, was proceeding to negotiate with them 102 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. as to the terms upon which they would be wiUing to sell out their interest in the Habitation de Quebec, when circumstances oc- curred — Champlain's narrative does not explain what they were — that obliged de Monts to change his mind, and to retire finally from the struggle which he had waged uninterruptedly against adverse fortune for twelve years, and from the heroic but futile attempt to found a new France in the New World on the basis of a narrow trade policy. Yet of all the pioneers of France in this New World of ours, none is more worthy of honorable re- cognition, and none has received it less than de Monts. His own personality has always been overshadowed by that of his more active associates, Poutrincourt, Champlain, even Pontgrave. Champlain now steps forward as principal, not as a subordi- nate : as the lieutenant of the Prince de Conde, not as the mere manager of a mercantile company. But whatever his role, our eyes are riveted on him as the chief actor on the stage, one who never failed to play his part with energy and courage, if not always with judgment. Upon the dissolution of the old company of de Monts, Collier and le Gendre, Champlain determined to carry on the enterprise himself, if he could command the means. He was the more im- pelled to persevere by the glowing report sent him from the lake country by some of the men who had accompanied a small Huron band up the Ottawa, and had met the main body of the Indians descending to the rendezvous. On returning, his messengers had found him gone ; but his competitors were there, and tried to wean away his allies, who were naturally disheartened at his non-appear- ance and by reports of his death. His men had taken upon them- selves, in his absence, to promise that in the following spring he would join them and wipe out their enemies. This pledge he deter- mined to redeem. The objects of his special aversion, because prob- ably his keenest rivals, were the merchants of St. Malo. The reason they alleged against privileged companies trading in the St. Lawrence, apart from the general principle, was that if the right to trade was to be confined to those who made discovery, then St. Malo, the birthplace of Jacques Cartier, should decidedly have the THE DE MONTS COMPANY SUPERSEDED. 103 preference. Champlain found the argument so hard to answer that for once it ruffled his imperturbable good humor. One reason why de Monts' partners hesitated to incur further risk may have been the altered status of the Protestants of France, to which body de Monts and probably his associates belonged. For the same reason it was politic on Champlain's part to seek support, not from merchants, but from a statesman of the Royal House ; one who, commanding influence at court, could procure concessions when mere traders could not, and effectually resist the protests of merchants of provincial towns. Such a partner was Charles de Bourbon, the Count de Soissons. He, however, died on November 12, 1612, and his commission as governor w^as transferred by the Queen Regent to Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Conde. He appointed Champlain his lieutenant. Up to this date Quebec had been a mere trading post, consisting of a single habitation, protected by a palisade like the Hudson Bay posts of the present day. Although it had entered the plans of de Monts to found a colony in the full sense of the term, the effort had evidently not been seriously made. The very short tenure of his slight concessions, and the refusal of a renewal, w^ere cause enough to deter him from so costly an undertaking. Women and children were not sent out by him, nor yet were there any priests, who, despite the Huguenot proclivities of de Monts and his partners, would certainly have ac- companied any band of permanent colonists ; for Champlain, a Catholic himself, would not have led forth a body of Frenchmen with their families to live and die without the consolations of religion. The little band of laborers and mechanics, who occupied the habitation as de Monts' employees, found more or less occupation in supplying the post with meat by hunting and fishing; in lumbering: in boat and ship building; in cultivating the little garden ; in traffic with the Indians, and in doing nothing, which is still the most congenial occupation of all such small com- munities isolated in the wilderness. We know the names of two only of these first inhabitants of Quebec — Captain Pierre Chavin, and Captain Du Pare. We know that one of them at anv rate was not a permanent resident ; the task of defending the post dur- 104 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ing the long, weary winter was not a grateful one, and Champlain did not impose that duty on the same members of his crew year after year. It is true the house was comfortable ; the climate was understood, and the season for fishing and the habits of the game, which, though not plentiful, was by no means scarce, had become known ; consequently neither cold nor scarcity of fresh provisions, bred disease, not one death being reported after the first year's attack of scurvy. Nevertheless, the task of wintering in Quebec was not a pleasant one. The habitation as yet was prob- ably the only house; for we are not led to suppose that the free traders from St. Malo and La Rochelle, though they watched Champlain's every movement and dogged his steps, built any per- manent structure on the Quebec beach. Notwithstanding there had been three years of free trade, and the ships of their rival fleets came year after year in increasing numbers, there is no men- tion of their crews wintering on the river. On the contrary Champlain says "they exposed themselves to needless danger from, the ice through their insatiate greed, and their haste to be first at the trading points." Probably for four years there was actual freedom of trade on the St. Lawrence, for Champlain's commission as lieutenant of the Count de Soissons is dated in October, 1612, or more than a year after his return to France with Captain Tibaut of La Rochelle. During that year of disappointment and of anxiety while trying to organize a new company under his own control ; and of revived, though interrupted hopes, when he succeeded first in interesting in his enterprise the powerful Charles de Bourbon, Governor of Dauphin and Normandy, and then the uncle of that nobleman, Henry of Bourbon, the Governor of Guyenne, the in- dependent traders had undisputed control both of the lower and of the upper reaches of the river. With the year 1612 passed the initial stage of the history of Quebec, for with the appointment of Henry of Conde as Governor and Lieutenant-General of New France, and Champlain as his lieutenant, the old tradinsf privileges, though with a restricted area, were again granted. They do not appear in the concession of Charles of Bourbon, but in Charles' commission to Champlain, REGULATION OF THE ST. LAWRENCE TRADE. IO5 dated October 15, 1612, authority is delegated him to pursue all trespassers within described limits. He is instructed, by peace- able means or by war, to bring the Indians to a knowledge of the true faith ; but if possible to live in amity, and to trade with them. To that end he is to push discovery and exploration, but es- pecially of the country above Quebec and of the rivers flowing into the upper St. Lawrence, in the hope of finding a route to China and the East Indies, and of discovering mines of gold and other metals. He is thus commissioned to do what only in our own generation has been accomplished. The commission proceeds — "and wherever the said Champlain shall find Frenchmen or men of other nations trading or holding any communication with the Indians at or above Quebec, which district is reserved by Her Majesty, the Queen Regent, he is authorized to seize these ves- sels, merchandise, and all their property, and to take the ships thus captured to France to one of the ports of Normandy, where they will be condemned by the proper tribunal." A compromise was thus established between Champlain and his rivals of St. Malo and La Rochelle. The river was to be open to free trade as high as Quebec. The old post of Tadousac, which had been frequented by merchants and sailors since the time of Jacques Cartier, was to remain open, but the country west of Quebec, which it was the intention of the new company to penetrate, and to which Champlain with justice laid claim, on the ground that he and his old associates had already risked much in exploring it, was to be closed to outside traders. Quebec would thus continue to be virtually a frontier post of the trading company, and, as we shall see, its growth was to be dwarfed by the swaddling clothes of trade restrictions and selfish trade regulations for many a year. CHAPTER VL Canadian Adventurers Under the Prince of Cond^ and the Arrival of the RecoIIet Fathers, J612-I6t8. The second company of Quebec adventurers, though as strenu- ously bent on trade as its predecessor, was moved by a more determined spirit of colonization, and by a more sincere, though not very ardent, desire to Christianize the Indians. The very transitory concessions under which de Monts ventured to com- mence trading on the upper St. Lawrence in 1608, and the dis- astrous competition he had to meet after one year of protection had elapsed, did not encourage him to expend money on a coloni- zation scheme which could not by any possibility redound to his profit. And it must be remembered that individually no French- men then left the mother country — few do even yet — at their own risk and on their own initiative, to sink their fortune in the wilds of an unknown and barbarous land. Even English colonists of that date emigrated as members of an organization, as shareholders, for instance, in trading companies, such as that of Virginia, or as a congregation of worshippers, following their pastor and retaining their ecclesiastical identity. This was the case with some of the New England settlements. De Monts and his associates were Huguenots. In attempting to colonize Acadia he had made the unfortunate experiment of associating in the work of evangelization Roman Catholic priests with Protestant divines. He had found that they were more active in quarreling with one another than in converting the heathen, and he was not prompted, therefore, to repeat the at- tempt to mitigate the cold of a Canadian winter by the heat of ecclesiastical polemics. There was sure to be discord enough in the habitation without infusing the bitterness of religious controversy. Consequently he omitted from his crew all clergy, both Catholic and Reformed. There was no missionary spirit PLANS OF COLONIZATION. 107 among the Protestant communities of Europe, and least of all in France, where the whole energy of dissent was expended in the arduous task of propagating opinions and practices which were not in harmony with the taste of the masses, and in fighting with carnal weapons for liberty of conscience and politi- cal freedom ; both of which would have followed sooner or later, had the reformers gained the upper hand and influenced the opinions of the whole of the French people. Worried by past failures and struggling with a difficult financial problem, de Monts took no other steps towards fulfilling the very religious aims assigned by the least religious of monarchs as the prime motive for striving — principally at other people's expense — to extend the domain of France. The King's professed object was the conver- sion of the savages. It would be presumptuous to assert that even Francis I., with all his moral obliquity, was not sincere in his de- sire to bring the blessings of Holy Church, which he had himself often found consolatory, within reach of the benighted heathen. De Monts and his associates, however, must have appreciated the utter impossibility of winning over the red man to the philosophy of Calvin, or of influencing his imagination by the bare and bald form of worship which the Huguenots had substituted for the im- pressive and highly dramatic ritual of Rome. Consequently, when Henry IV. died under the hand of the assassin, and they had lost his support, which was at least sympathetic, if not active, and which would certainly have protected them from injustice, the company, and even de Monts himself, probal)ly decided that the true policy was to spend as little, and save as much as they honestly could, during the brief term of life that their enemies would allow to their organization. The political status of their successors, Charles of Bourbon, and, on his death, another Bourbon, Henry, Prince of Conde, both princes of the blood, was widely diff'erent. Nevertheless, the progress of coloniza- tion under the new organization was but little more rapid than under de Monts. In 1622 Cliamplain said the population of Quebec was only 50 persons, including women and children ; by 1624 it had increased to 61 ; in 1626 to 65, and when in t62(S Louis Kirke captured Quebec the whole population, including a family I08 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. at Cap Tourmente, was between 55 and 60 ; though, if the priests and friars and the French to the number of 20 in the Huron coun- try be included, the number of inhabitants in the whole of Canada must be reckoned at about 100. All these, not excepting the priests, were dependent for their support on the company. There was no inducement offered to casual self-supporting immigrants to establish themselves in the country. When Champlain returned to Quebec in Pontgrave's ship on May 7, 1613, he had been absent for twenty-one months. For two winters, therefore, the little company of pioneers, which he found safe and sound, had been left to their own resources, unless possibly Pontgrave had visited them in the summer of 161 2. They were not, however, without news of the outside world, for the skippers of St. Malo and La Rochelle had taken advantage of Champlain's detention in France to ingratiate themselves with the Indians, and to push their trade even with the remoter Ottawa and Huron tribes. It was the last year that they could traffic untram- meled, for, though the terms of the Association under the Prince of Conde permitted any merchant to be a member and to share in its trade, this provision did not satisfy the merchants of Rouen and St. Malo. It was probably limited by conditions that made the concession valueless, though the company would seem to have been constituted on the plan of the English Regulated Companies of the sixteenth century, which allowed any member to trade on his own account within the sphere of the company's operations. This concession was all the merchants could wring in the mean- time out of the Government. Under it three vessels from Rouen, one from La Rochelle, and another from St. Malo were fitted out, one of the conditions being that the crew of each vessel should furnish four men to Champlain in the exploratory and predatory expedition which he had promised the Hurons to make into the country of the Iroquois. At this stage of progress the Parliament of Rouen interfered, forbidding the publication of the King's de- cree within the limits of its jurisdiction, as being an infringement of its prerogative, though, if Champlain's suspicions were correct, the action was taken at the instance of the merchants of St. Malo. The Parliament having been persuaded to withdraw its opposition, CHAMPLAIN AT SAULT ST. LOUIS. 109 Champlain's concession was published in all the ports of Nor- mandy. There embarked with him a certain L'Ange, a Parisian and a poet, who, having just indited an ode to Champlain as a pre- face to his volume of travels published in the same year of 161 3, was now bent on assisting his hero to discover the road to the Orient. In his apostrophe to Henry IV. he avers : Si le ciel t'eut laisse plus long temps ici bas, Tu nous eusse assemble la France avec la Chine. Had heaven but left thee longer here below, France had been linked to China before now. They arrived at Tadousac the 29th of April, by the same tide as the Sieur de Boyer of Rouen who had sailed before them, and who, we may presume, was one of the partners. The next day two vessels of St. Alalo came into port, which had sailed be- fore the Parliament of Rouen had permitted the King's commis- sion and the concession of the company to be published in Nor- mandie. The owners promised to respect the privilege granted to the company, but Champlain nevertheless lost no time in push- ing on to Quebec. Even there he only tarried six days before ascending the river to Sault St. Louis, where he hoped to find Hurons willing to guide him into the interior. In this he was disappointed ; one band was awaiting him, but they had taken two prisoners, and must hurry home that their women might have the pleasure of torturing them. Another band descended the Ottawa with a i)altry lot of furs, but they complained of ill- treatment at the hands of the French traders the year before, and would not accept Champlain's protestations of friendship and promise of aid as sincere. At length he secured two canoes and one Indian as a guide, with which to explore the Ottawa and verify the wonderful talcs told by Nicolas de Vignau, the Frenchman who had wintered with the Indians in 1611-12, and who had seen with his own eyes the great north sea, perhaps the Hudson P)ay. The summer was spent in exploring the Ottawa, and incidentally proving the said Nicolas de Vignau to be the most no QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. impudent and consummate liar that Champlain had met for many a day. On returning to Sault St. Louis, or probably his quarters on the island of St. Helen, a spot of pleasant associations, as he named it after his wife, he was met by L'Ange, who told him of the arrival of the Sieur de Maisonneuve, with a passport from Mons. le Prince, as proof of membership, and three ships. Cham- plain had already warned the Indians against trading with un»- authorized merchants, but on Maisonneuve's arrival he introduced him to the savages as a friend; and if he was the Sieur Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, who in 1641 helped to found Montreal, he was worthy of the title. The Sieur de Maisonneuve offering him a passage to France, two vessels were left at the Sault, till the Indians should return from the wars with, it was hoped, more peltries than they had yet produced. Champlain and L'Ange then dropped down the stream with their host, and, pass- ing Quebec, reached Tadousac on the 6th of July. There they remained, either to trade or because the weather was unfavor- able, until August 8, when they sailed for France. Thus another year passed uneventfully over Quebec. As it was at the headwaters of free trade, many a captain of St. Malo and La Rochelle anchored in the stream in the hope of doing some business with the Indians ; but Champlain and Maisonneuve, aided by Sieur Georges of Rochelle, Sieur Boyer of Rouen, and members of the company, stopped all descending traffic. We can imagine the angry protests of the disappointed competitors for the fur trade, as around their camp fires under the cliffs, groups of sailors and traders discussed their hardships with one another and with the residents. Champlain spent, doubtless not unwillingly, well-nigh the whole of the next two years with his wife in France, though the troubles of the company fully occupied his time. He found it very difficult, as promoters of monopoly find it to-day, to per- suade the advocates of competition that their interests and the public good are forwarded by a restrictive or protective policy. The merchants of La Rochelle, the stronghold of Huguenot in- dependence, seemed to be most reluctant to join the association, and delayed so long in claiming their one-third, that the com- THE RECOLLETS INVITED TO CANADA. Ill pany was formed without them, and a one-half interest, instead of one-third, was assigned to the merchants of Rouen and St. Malo respectively. Finding themselves excluded, the traders of La Rochelle obtained from the Prince, by fraud — par surpris, as Champlain calls it — a license for one vessel, which, as he says, ''was by the kind permission of God, wrecked near Ta- dousac." The company confiscated its cargo, though the catas- trophe did not happen within the sphere of their privileges ; l)ut as the court confirmed the confiscation, we may assume that the company acted within its rights. There is no reason for attribut- ing the seizure to religious bigotry, as is done by Abbe Faillon. Besides acquiring an extension of the franchise for his com- pany to eleven years, and regulating the conduct of its affairs, Champlain took the first step towards converting his trading post of Quebec into a settled community, and really founding a colony, by making provision for religious instruction and civil administration. His patron, Charles of Bourbon, was an ardent Catholic prince, and Champlain adhered to the ancient faith, though most of the company's supporters were Huguenots. No drastic measure had yet been proposed to exclude the Re- formers either from participation in the affairs of the company or from becoming members of the colony, but Champlain's recol- lections of de Monts' attempt to introduce freedom of worship at Port Royal deterred him from making a similar experiment at Quebec. Yet while he determined to seek the services of a Roman Catholic organization, he selected a branch of the more tolerant Franciscan order in preference to Madame Guercheville's ad- visers, the Jesuits, with whom his intercourse had probably not been altogether pleasant. Champlain commenced his inquiries in 1614, and was led to negotiate first with the papal nuncio, and then with the General of the Franciscans, through the Sieur Houel, secretary of the King, and Comptroller General of the Saline de Brouagc. The General of the order, Pere de Verger, hesitated for a time to embark on this new mission, and thus the sailing of the four Rccollet missionaries was delayed until 161 5. The men chosen were Father Denis Janiay, commis- sionnaire ; Monsigneur Jean d'Olbeau, prefect, to be his successor 112 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. in case of death ; Joseph Le Caron, and Pacifique du Plessis. They sailed from Honfleur with Champlain himself in the ''St. Etienne" of 315 tons burden, under command of Pontgrave, and landed at Tadousac on the 26th of May. Father d'Olbeau, in his eagerness to reach his mission, hurried forward alone in the first boat leav- ing for Quebec; the others followed several days later, when Champlain had completed his preparations for his voyage to the Sault St. Louis. We may therefore infer that Tadousac was, even at this date, better supplied than the habitation at Quebec with boats and naval stores. With the advent of the priests at Quebec, the character of the future colony was determined. Though the majority of the company's financial supporters may have been Huguenots, the colony was to be exclusively under Roman Catholic control in matters ecclesiastical and theological. Coligny's hopes of forming colonies in Brazil and Florida, where men might worship God as their consciences, not the church and the State, might dictate, had been frustrated. When Henry IV., with his Protestant education and liberal proclivities, had fallen a victim to the assassin, it was a foregone conclusion that the concessions to Reform, made by the Edict of Nantes, would at least not be enlarged, and that consequently Huguenot immigration and commercial enterprise would not be encouraged in the French colonies. Furthermore, at a later period, when the outcome of religious reform in England had been the destruction of the monarchy, the execution of the King, and the establishment of a commonwealth, it is not to be wondered at if no Huguenot was permitted to enter and sow discord and his pernicious doc- trines in a community where the Jesuits and Marie of Medici held sway. But it was well for Canada that her first missionaries were followers of the gentle Francis d'Assisi, and that she never had to cower under the tyranny of the Dominicans, nor submit to their methods of evangelization; for the records of the Order of St. Dominic in the New World illustrate strikingly the warping efi^ects which bigotry will produce on human character. In the early days of Spanish domination, the Dominicans were the most strenuous defenders of the oppressed Indians. If good and SAINTS AND INQUISITORS. merciful men are canonized in heaven, Las Casas is there a saint, even though the honor has not been conferred upon him on earth ; and yet the members of the same order presided over the inconceivable barbarities of the Lima Inquisition. The Church of France, under the frenzy of political and religious excitement, may have sung paeans over the massacre of St. Bartholomew, but it tolerated only for a short time the cold, calculating and insatiable cruelty of the Holy Office. The exclusion from Canada of the Huguenots was not the only reason why the orthodox heresy hunters did not follow their game thither, for they found full scope for their fiendish instincts in Spanish America, where no senses less keen than theirs could have detected the faintest odor of heresy. The truth is that the Inquisition was always abhorrent to the more tolerant French character. To this happy circumstance it was doubtless due that, even in the most modified form, this unholy office was never exercised in Canada. There were a few heretics burned in France, but they were not all men holding anti-papal views. Of the twenty-five "spirituals," for in- stance, one of the many subordinate orders of St. Francis, who were cited to appear at Avignon in 13 17 before Pope John XXII., and who, despite the papal command, continued to follow the strict rules of Sieur Jean Olive, four were burned in ^larseilles in 13 18. There continued to be inquisitions, though two only, one at Tou- louse, the other at Carcassone, originally intended to aid in stamp- ing out the Waldensian heresy, existed at the end of the seven- teenth century. The Dominicans were judges and executioners, though their power was less ar1)itrary than in Spain. Sieur Jean Olive's doctrine was pronounced heretical in the following par- ticulars, "that he considered the divine essence engendered ; that the soul of man is not of the same form as his body ; and that Christ received the lance wound before his death." The Hermit Celestin, another Franciscan, was turned over to the Inquisition and tortured in Trivcnto, Naples. St. Dominic died in 1221, St. Francis d'Assisi in 1226. Hoth, therefore, saw the orders which they founded flourishing and spreading over Europe. The creation of these two preaching or- ders in the thirteenth century, under strict rules of celibacy, 114 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. poverty and obedience, may be regarded from one point of view as the enlistment of an army to oppose heresy and schism, which were then being organized under the banners of the Vaudois, the Albigenses, the Petrobrusians, the Henricians and a host of other sects whose common bond was an aversion to the tyranny of Rome. But from another point of view, the simultaneous birth and rapid growth of two such bodies bespeak the generation in the Church itself of a higher and a purer life, the fruit, probably, of the protest of many within its bosom against the abounding vice, the greed for wealth, and the reliance on brute force which were too visible in the high places of spiritual authority. The new monks were the upholders of the strictest orthodoxy, and of im- plicit obedience to the See of Rome. They preached in the ver- nacular, clad in coarsest garb, and their austerity and poverty stood out in glaring contrast to the luxury and indolence of many of the secular clergy, and to the laxity in discipline into which the earlier monastic orders had fallen. The second and more successful revolt against the claims of Rome, that under Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, was followed by another accession of feverish zeal in the Church itself, and the enrollment of other levies to fight the battle of the Church. The Jesuits, who sprang up to meet this fresh danger, were better equipped to combat the new ideas than were the mendicant friars, however potent the latter may have been for quelling those ill-led and disorganized bodies, which in the thirteenth century were struggling to realize half-understood aspirations toward political and religious liberty. There occurred, however, also in the sixteenth century, a re- vival of the older orders, especially that of St. Francis d'Assisi, in the sub-orders of the Capuchins and Recollets ; and the need felt at the same time for some provision for the elementary education of men and women was met by the institution of the Christian Brothers and of the Order of the Ursulines, both of whom ac- quired a firm footing in Canada. These supporters of traditional theology and opponents of political progress would almost seem to have been called into existence in obedience to some natural law, to correct the excesses into which unbridled thought and feeling FRANCISCANS AND JESUITS. might have carried mankind under the first exuberant impulse of freedom. While they may have exerted a salutary restraint on the headlong pace of liberated Europe, in Canada, during the French regime, their influence was such as effectually to check all movement towards freedom in thought or independence in action. The two orders which first stamped their impress on the his- tory of Quebec were the Franciscans, in the person of the Re- collets, and the Jesuits. Of all the religious orders, the fol- lowers of the gentle St. Francis might have been expected to be the most active and sympathetic apostles of the gospel to the wild tribes of the earth ; but the constitution under which that wonder- ful organizer, Ignatius Loyola, controlled the numerous highly in- telligent and zealous persons who flocked to his standard, made less impracticable demands on one's conscience and mode of life than that of St. Francis. The rule of obedience was more stringent, but that of abject poverty, collectively and indi- vidually, was omitted. Loyola had seen what perpetual strife it had produced in the Order of St. Francis, and he knew what tremendous power resides in the possession of wealth. He there- fore imposed no restriction on the tenure of property by the body as a corporation. We shall see to what extent the vows of poverty hampered the Recollets, and how ownership of vast estates aided the Jesuits in Canada. The Recollets, according to Le Clercq — but this statement must be accepted with qualifications — belonged to one of the strictest branches of the Order of Friars. The saintly founder of the or- der, moved by pity for the poor and indignation against the rich, imposed on his followers a vow of absolute poverty which forbade them owning property, collecting rents, or accepting alms in the form of coins. But even during his lifetime there were murmurs against the strict observance of this rule, and the first general, Father Helie, did not hesitate to break it. Appeals were made to the Popes to permit a laxer interpretation of tlie ATastcr's in- junction ; and not in vain, for the rules of St. Francis were modified by declarations of Popes Nicholas TTL. Clement V. and Martin V. The latter, at the Chapter General of the order in Il6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 1430, permitted even "conventuals" to hold property, accept le- gacies and collect rents. At that date there were two groups of sub orders. There were the Conventuals, or those who lived in communities like other friars, owned their convent and valuable property, and allowed themselves such liberties and luxuries as the monks of the period indulged in, and les Freres Mineiirs de Vetroite observance^ who claimed to follow the stricter observance of the founder's rules. The latter were disciples of Paulet de Foligno, who had inaugurated a reform movement against , the laxity of morals prevailing in the large monasteries. To this group belonged the Recollets. They had been introduced from Italy into France in 1592, under the patronage of Louis de Gonzague, and established in the Convent of Nevers. They formed only one of some twenty-five bodies of schismatics in the order itself, who during the previous three centuries had been led by monks who favored a return to primitive austerity. Some of these had em- braced heretical tenets, and were dealt with accordingly. Others were zealous for trifling changes in dress, such as none but ec- clesiastical fanatics, with thoughts and aspirations bounded by the walls of their monastery, could possibly account as of any im- portance. But others of these sub-orders were composed of men earnest in their desire to live up to the standards of the founder and to follow his holy example. The Recollets were one of these. Some of their brethren had already carried the gospel into South America and the kingdom of Toscus, and were now willing to face the dangers of the Canadian forests. In Canada their influ- ence at first was altogether good : free from all taint of sordid motive, under vows of poverty, and forbidden to hold productive real estate, they lived together only when the fulfilment of duty required. They never congregated in wealthy or sumptuous mon- asteries, either in Canada or elsewhere. Their Quebec house was never noted for such expensive or costly grounds as adorned the College of the Jesuits, nor, as the records show, is there a single instance in Canada of their owning real estate yielding any revenue. They were the first missionaries to convert the North American Indian, and in those early days, when the regular clergy were few, and the cures were missionary priests, the Recollets CHAPEL ERECTED AT QUEBEC. 117 held each his separate "cure of souls" in the small isolated villages along the St. Lawrence, exposed to all the dangers of Iroquois attack. Our story will show how they were forced into the back- ground by the more astute and energetic members of the Jesuit order, but it would be difficult to estimate the debt Canada owes to them. But to return from this long digression. The priests, as we have seen, preceded the Governor from Tadousac to Quebec. Was it a forecast of the struggle which was to be waged in the future city between the Church and the State ? Within the week two of the Recollets followed in Champlain's company, but such was the haste of Father Le Caron to commence his missionary work among the Indians, that he did not await the Governor's depar- ture from Quebec for the appointed rendezvous at the Grand Sault, but started in advance. Champlain himself did not tarry long at the habitation, where there was not much to attend to. The trade centers were at the mouths of the g^reat rivers — the Saguenay, the St. Maurice and the Ottawa. But he had to regu- late the affairs of the post ; to set men clearing more land, to assist the good fathers in selecting a site for their residence and chapel, and afford them what aid his slender resources permitted towards the work of construction. These earliest religious edi- fices were probably built near the habitation, and not far from the present Church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, if not upon its site ; for the cul-de-sac now covered by the Market Hall was, previous to the erection of that building in 1865, a deep indenta- tion in the beach facing Champlain street ; in Champlain's day it was probably the landing place and harbor for small craft. The habitation, the Recollet House and the chapel, therefore, stood not far apart. The Father and all hands worked with such zeal, that the chapel was sufficiently completed to allow of mass being celebrated by Father d'Olbcau on June 25th. Le Clcrcq talks grandiloquently of salvos of artillery accompanying the singing of the Te Deum. No doul)t rejoicing was expressed by such signs as the few weary and homesick dwellers in the habitation could invent. Father Denis Jamay, the first commissionnaire, wonld have been the celebrant, but he had left about the loth with Il8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Champlain for the upper St. Lawrence. Father d'Olbeau had met them at the River des Prairies, on his way back to Quebec, to provide himself with church ornaments and suppHes for the win- ter sojourn among the Hurons, which he had determined upon undertaking despite Champlain's warning. Bent on his purpose he hurried on to Quebec, and left it again in equal haste, lest he should miss the Hurons returning to their bourgade on the Geor- gian Bay. Champlain returned more leisurely to Quebec to make final preparations for his trip to the Huron country, and to give further instructions to the little colony. It was the 4th of July, 161 5, before, for the second time, he left the habitation in his canoe with two men for his eventful trip to the Lakes. Pontgrave and Father Denis, whom he met on their way down the river, gave him the unwelcome news that the savages, impatient of his delay, had gone forward. He and his friends when they bade one another adieu, parted, as it proved, for nearly a twelvemonth, for it was the end of the fol- lowing June, when his people had given him up for lost, before Champlain re-emerged from the forest, after an experience in Indian warfare which should have taught him how unreliable are Indian allies ; how valiant Indian foes may be ; and what ad- mirable tacticians the savage warriors are when fighting in their native forests. Had he been willing, even then, to take counsel from experience, the history of New France would have been very different. Unfortunately, his military impulses again dom- inated both his mercantile interests and his political sagacity. Meanwhile the infant colony was preserved from sinking into barbarism by the presence of the Fathers. We get stray glimpses of what was happening from the records of the Recollets, whose historian. Father Sagard, occasionally condescends to tell us something of what other people beside the brothers of his order were doing. If he has not told us more, we must remember that, in the view of ecclesiastics, especially of the monastic orders, their own self-importance is very prominent, and that matters ec- clesiastical assume such magnitude, that they obscure all other in- terests, with the result that their narratives are liable to be imperfect and their opinions partial. Nevertheless we should fare A DISAPPEARANCE IN THE WILX)ERNESS. HQ ill without such contemporary record of the early days of the colony as is given by the RecoUet, Sagard, or such mention of the more stirring episodes of its later history, as is to be found in the works of Hennepin and Le Clercq. How many ships anchored opposite Quebec, we are not in- formed, nor when it was that Pontgrave, whom we last saw with Father Denis sending Champlain off with a godspeed on his ad- venturous foray to the upper Lakes with only two Frenchmen, dropped down to the Saguenay, took in his additional cargo of peltries, and sailed for France. Of this we may be sure, that all this time the hearts of the dwellers within the habitation were dying within them, as hopes of the return of their leader were being abandoned. Winter had set in, yet he and his ad- venturous companion, Etienne Brule, had not returned. Where were they in that limitless expanse of snow and forest, peopled by red savages and imaginary demons? As inactivity only ag- gravated anxiety, Father d'Olbeau, who had not been able to carry out his purpose of penetrating the Huron country, left with a party of Montagnais on December 2nd, intending to accompany them on their winter's hunt and learn their language and customs. The Indians he could tolerate, but not the excruciating smoke of their campfires. It so irritated his weak eyes that he was obliged to return on peril of permanently injuring his sight. Then on March 24 occurred the death of Michel Colin, whose last hours were cheered by the ministrations of the clergy. Of the many unfortunates who under Carticr, Roberval and Champlain had succumbed to scurvy and other diseases, he was the first to be buried with the rites of the Church. As passengers on the Spring fleet this year (1616) there came some real colonists — men with their wives, intent on making a home in the wilderness. This interesting fact we glean incidentally from Father Sagard, who only mentions it in connection with the fact that on the 15th of July Father d'Olbeau administered extreme unction to Margaret Vienne, and buried her witii all the ceremony of Holy Church. This is the first indication that the Prince of Conde's new company was really attempting to fulfil its function I20 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. as a colonizer. Another instance of the absorption of these good fathers in themselves and in their ecclesiastical interests is ex- hibited in the entire ignoring of Champlain and his important proceedings. We are told, for example, that Father Le Caron left the Huron village on the Georgian Bay, on the 20th of May, 161 6, with the fleet of canoes, bound for the trading mart of Three Rivers, where he arrived on July i and met Father d'Olbeau, who had come up in one of the three ships to witness the great gather- ing of the Indians assembled there for the annual fair. It was of small moment in the estimate of the scribe that Champlain, Lieutenant Governor of all New France, bore the missionaries company, and that Father d'Olbeau had come with Pontgrave himself, and that their friend and master was welcomed as one risen from the dead ; for false reports of disaster circulated by the Indians had greatly intensified the apprehensions of the little colony when Champlain failed to return in the autumn of the previous year. A week at Three Rivers sufficed for barter and trade. On the 8th of July, Champlain, Pontgrave and the two priests started together, and reached Quebec on the nth, where a service of thanksgiving was sung for their safe return. Champlain's next occupation was to entertain with due display and ceremony a Huron chief who had descended the river with him, and to send him back to his countrymen, who were waiting for him at the Sault St. Louis, laden with presents and properly impressed, as he supposed, with awe of the French. The impression, as sub- sequent events proved, was not as deep as might have been wished. These official acts performed, he planned an addition to the habitation, to be built of stone and mortar, for the old wooden house was hardly a fit abode for a Lieutenant-Governor, or for the accommodation of his own company, still less for the enter- tainment of the strangers who from time to time were his guests. Then he collected samples of wheat, Indian corn and such agri- cultural products as he could take with him to France as proof of the fertility of the soil. It must nevertheless have been with a sigh that he looked forward to leaving, for his garden was at its best ; the peas and beans were ripe ; the cabbage swelling, and all CHAMPLAIN RETURNS TO FRANCE. 121 nature was revelling in that exuberant life and fertility charac- teristic of the short Canadian summer. Yet what was there to detain him in Quebec? The season's work had been done. All the peltries offered at the Sault and at Three Rivers he had mon- opolized under the exclusive terms of the charter, and his agents had secured a share of the business transacted at the mouth of the Saguenay. Yet, if there was little work to be done, there were many knotty problems to solve, and during these few days long and earnest discussions affecting the future of New France were held in a council convened by the monks, to which they called the Governor and six of the most influential residents of the little ham- let. The conversion of the natives was of course what the ec- clesiastics had chiefly at heart. In devising plans for the attain- ment of this end, the conclusion reached was that the savages must be civilized before they could be Christianized, and that this could be effected only by intimate intercourse with civil- ized men. But there was only a handful of corporation officials as yet in this illimitable wilderness, and they were servants of a com- pany of fur traders whose real interests were opposed to colo- nization, and most of whom were heretics. Persuasion must therefore be used with the company's offlcers in France, to induce them to reverse their policy and inaugurate active colonization. If that could not be done, efforts must be made to break down the company's privilege, and have the St. Lawrence really thrown open to the fur trade. Population, they believed, would incvital3ly follow. It was a bold programme for four poor monks, belonging to an order sworn to poverty, to propound, men who could neither individually nor collectively participate in the prosperity which the success of the scheme implied. As they were prepared to make the attempt, however, it was decided that the commissioner. Father Denis Jamay, and Father Le Caron, should accompany the Governor to France. Both had been eye witnesses of the needs of the Indians, and Le Caron could relate his experience of a win- ter's residence among them in the very heart of the continent. After nine days' work and rest at the habitation, Champlain and his religious companions took boat and dropped down the 122 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. river to Tadousac, which was virtually the head of sea navigation. When he looked back at Quebec, he beheld the trading post grown into a village, though it was still in truth little else than the depot of a fur company. Still it gave promise of what his hopes and imagination had for so many years been picturing to his mind. Beside the habitation, now to be extended so as to accommodate a larger staff of the company's servants, there was the temporary monastery of the Recollets and their little chapel, and probably some wooden shanties built of logs by the newly arrived colonists. The bare-foot monks stood on the shore, and beside them those still more beneficent harbingers of civilization, the wives and children of the colonists. They must have been very sad and full of foreboding, for only the evening before they had laid to rest poor Margaret Vienne, who probably was not the only woman who had that summer accompanied her husband in the com- pany's ship with sanguine expectations of prosperity in the New World. The veil is now drawn for another long winter over the little group of men and women composing the inhabitants of Quebec. The hamlet was small, it is true, yet there was more interest in life than heretofore. Father d'Olbeau and that charm- ing lay brother, Du Plessis, a scholar and a man of strong sense and sound mother wit, as his subsequent actions proved, were there. Their religious services broke delightfully into the mono- tony of the daily routine of snow shovelling and firewood cuttings, and their sermons gave many a subject for hot discussion among the servants of the company, not a few of whom were at that period still Huguenots. Father Le Clercq, indeed, tells us that the ridicule these cast on the mysteries of the Church retarded not a little the progress of missionary work among the Indians. Material considerations, however, began to be uppermost in men's thoughts, for, before the close of the winter, provisions for the in- creased number of mouths were running short. While the colonists were starving in Quebec, the good fathers in France were pleading, with scant encouragement, for their flock. The officials of the company were glad enough to listen to Father Joseph's account of the great interior, and of its re- sources in furs and of its hordes of savage hunters; but they OFFICIAL INDIFFERENCE. were probably as averse to ruining tlieir commercial prospects by the encouragement of farming and competition in trade as was the Hudson Bay Company, long afterwards, to Lord Selkirk's magnificent plans for peopling the Red River valley. Besides which, if we accept as true the accounts of the RecoUet historians, that Huguenot influence and Huguenot money still supported the company, there was cause for hesitation, as the for- tunes of the Reformers, as a party in the State, had just then reached a very critical point. In this very year of 1616, the Roman Catholic clergy had recovered power sufficient to secure the resti- tution of the Church property in Bearn. This inevitably presaged the breaking out of another religious war; and every far-seeing Huguenot (and commercial men are generally good prophets) must have dreaded the result, for the forces marshalling against Reform and its inseparable ally, Republicanism, were becoming every day stronger and more compact. If the company declined to act, the Government was cer- tainly not in a condition to aid the Recollets in carrying out their broadly conceived scheme of evangelization and colonization. A weak King, Louis XIII., had but recently gained his majority after a regency, under Marie de Medici and her venal Italian servants, which had done little for the glory of France. At this moment the boy King, only sixteen years old, was under the in- fluence of the clever young sycophant, de Luynes, who was plot- ting the banishment of the Queen Mother and the death of her favorite. All his sinister plans were accomplished before the year closed. With the King's connivance the Marechal d'Ancre, ne Concini, was assassinated on the Pont du Louvre. His wife, the Marechale Leonora Galigai, the Queen's former maid of honor, was beheaded on the fictitious charge of witchcraft. The Queen was obliged to retire to the Chateau of Blois, and her counsellor, the Bishop of Luzon, had perforce to follow her. He who sub- sequently figured in history, and in Canadian story, as Cardinal Richelieu had as definite, though not as correct, conceptions of a colonial policy as the Rccollct Friars, and not so many years afterward he was able to carry them out with decision. The only motive which prompted tliosc in power was ignoble, sordid selfish- 124 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ness; while, amongst the leaders of the Reformed church, the pristine simplicity and fervor of sincere religion had been con- taminated by the intermixture of political aspirations. The reli- gious historians of Canada attribute the reluctance to give active aid to the work of colonization and of the evangelization of the Indians to the selfishness of the company and the religious an- tagonism of its Huguenot members. Champlain, with fuller knowledge and greater candor, assigns it to the state of dis- organization which prevailed in the Government. The Lieutenant Governor of New France, Charles de Bourbon, Prince of Conde, v/ho had opposed the Queen Regent and her favorite, had been imprisoned, but Champlain believed that the Company was the real object of their hostihty. "The head being sick," as he expressed it, "the members could not enjoy good health." Mons. le Prince, the head of the company, though natural brother of Henry IV., had not been above selling the revenues of the Abbey of Marmontier to the deformed brother-in-law of Concini, Eti- enne Galigai, who was now in prison. Ambiguous negotiations seem to have been carried on through an intermediary as to the terms on which Monsieur le Marechal de Theminis should tem- porarily fill his place till released. Meanwhile remonstrances were made to the authorities against the laxity of the company in ful- filling its obligations in the matter of colonization. Champlain ad- mits that some of the members were ready to amend their short- comings, and that to that end his old friend de Monts, who was evidently still active and interested in the management, and more broadminded than his partners, drew up a series of articles obliging the company to increase the number of settlers, to supply means of defense, and to provide settlers with provisions for two years while they were learning to be self-supporting. "These ar- ticles," adds Champlain, "were handed to Mons. de Merillac to be laid before the Council. Though the project was well conceived, it came to naught. All went up in smoke — why and wherefore we know not." And when he was just about to sail a scoundrel called Boyer produced an act of the Parliament of Rouen, denying his right to act as Lieutenant of the Prince. The most antago- nistic influence to the company's financial prosperity, and hence A REAL SETTLER. to the colony's progress, would seem to have been, not the religious prejudices of the shareholders, but discord within the company and jealousy by competitive traders of the company's exclusive privileges. But to return to 161 6. So inopportune was the moment to in- augurate a great colonial movement and a generous missionary effort, that but little heed was paid to the appeal of Father Le Caron in the interest of the benighted red men. His own zeal was not dampened by disappointment, though his superior. Father Jamay, did not at once return to Canada. A substitute was, never- theless, forthcoming in the person of Father Paul Huet. Cham- plain seconded vigorously, as we have seen, the efforts of the Friars in this winter of 1616-1617 in favor of an active immigra- tion movement, perhaps not altogether without effect, for Capt. Morrel's good ship, which carried him and the RecoUet mission- aries, through storm and ice, after a long passage of thirteen weeks and one day, to Tadousac, took out as passengers the family of the Sieur Hebert, consisting of his wife, two daughters and a little boy. The Sieur Hebert became the most notable private citizen of Quebec, and, as the association feared, a troublesome business competitor. Father Sagard tells us that the Hebert household came out with the intention of living in Canada, and persisted in living there despite the opposition of the old mercantile company, which sub- jected the family to every hardship possible, hoping either to force them to leave the country in disgust, or to reduce them to the condition of mere servants and even slaves. *'By such cru- elties," the good Father adds, "are the poor prevented from en- joying the fruits of their labor! Oh God! how the big fish devour the little ones." The Sieur Hebert's daughter, Ann, made her name memorable by marrying Etienne Jonquet Normand. Though she had lost no time in selecting a husband, she con- siderately postponed the wedding till the ships sailed away. They carried Father d'Olbeau, and thus the celebration of the first marriage by the rites of the Church in Canada fell to the lot of Father Joseph. Occasions and excuses for merry- making were rare enougli, and doubtless it was a subject for 126 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. public congratulation that the festivities were delayed till the bustle of the departing ship had subsided, and the community was thrown upon itself for amusement. The summer, indeed, had been a very wretched one. The crops, over which Champlain went into ecstasies the previous autumn, may have been very luxuriant, but certainly they were not abundant, for when Capt. Morrel arrived at Quebec late in June, he found its fifty or sixty people starving. He parted with all he could spare — a single small barrel of pork. His own stores had been unduly depleted through his extraordinarily long voyage. The increase of twenty in the number of inhabitants over the last enumeration must have been due to the families who had arrived that season, and the previous one. The old inhabitants had been unmarried servants of the trading company, and adventurers. They were driven to culti- vate Champlain's garden in order to raise small crops as proofs of the land's productiveness, but evidently they considered steady agricultural labor as a hardship. Henceforth there was to be some real farming in the valley of the St. Lawrence. Champlain passes over the summer almost in silence, merely remarking in his edition of 1632 that nothing worth mentioning had happened. The Indians who had promised to meet him and accompany him into the interior had failed to keep their promise. The reason of their reluctance was probably dread of punishment for the murder of two Frenchmen in the preceding autumn, a crime, however, which had not then been discovered. The two un- fortunates were shooting on the Beauport Flats when attacked and killed by two Montagnais in revenge for some real or sup- posed injury. The murderers sank the bodies in the river, and the deed remained a secret for nearly eighteen months. But the In- dians, naturally suspicious and superstitious, doubted the ignor- ance of the French, and dreaded the infliction of some mysterious form of revenge. The season had not been memorable for any adventure or exploration of Champlain's own, and he would prob- ably fain forget, and was loath to record, the misery which the little colony suffered from famine and the short rations of the previous spring, and the sickness, called by him mal de la terre, which followed the famine. FACTION AND RIVALRY. 127 Father d'Olbeau, who accompanied him to France in the au- tumn of 1617, to try his powers of persuasion, succeeded no better than Father Joseph had done in the previous winter. The shareholders were no more disposed to run needless risks than they had been the previous year. Faction and selfishness were rampant throughout the kingdom, and the agitation among the Huguenots, already active in the previous year, was now gather- ing force and was about to break forth into revolt. Father d'Olbeau, who had been nominated commissionnaire, persuaded Father ^Modeste Guines to return with him, in the spring of 1618. There were therefore in the spring of 1618 four Recollet friars and one lay brother in Canada. Champlain was as unsuccessful during the winter of 1617-1618 as his religious collaborators in awakening ardor in the company or in the general public. The pettiest possible quarrels distracted the associates. The Prince de Conde was still in prison. His substitute, the Sieur de Theminis, obtained an Order in Council requiring the com- pany to pay over to him the salary attached to the ofifice. The Prince protested. The company, not unreasonably ob- jecting to pay the salary twice, suggested as a compromise that the amount be given to the Recollets as a contribution towards building their seminary in Canada. Neither of the claimants, however, was charitably inclined. Meanwhile public opposition to the company had become strenuous. The estates of Brittany declared the trade of the St. Lawrence open to all Bretons, an act which the Parliament of Paris inadvertently confirmed. It re- quired a vigorous efifort on the part of Champlain and the Rouen shareholders to secure its repeal. He warned his employers that if they confined their operations to the fur trade alone, and made no effort to render the colony self-sustaining through agri- culture, their tenure of life, in a business sense, would inevitably be short. He was met by the not unreasonable argimient that their commercial privileges were liable to cancellation without notice, and that the very settlers, whom it would cost much to install, and still more to support till self-support became pos- sible, would themselves immcdiatelv become traders and meddle between the company and the Indians. Champlain's entreaties 128 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. wrung promises, but promises only, from the association. Yet he was encouraged, when returning to Quebec in the spring of 1618 in his old friend Pontgrave's ship, by the presence of the Sieur de la Mothe as fellow passenger. De la Mothe was a man of character. He had gone with the Jesuits to L'Acadie; had been carried ofif to Virginia by Argall; was sent thence a prisoner to England; Hberated and restored to his native land; and was willing again to risk shipwreck and capture in the New World. If a good impression could be made on such a man, surely his report would excite some interest in France on his return. Champlain could not yet bring out his young wife, but her brother, Eustache BouUe, a youth of eighteen years of age, bore him company. On arrival disquieting news met him at Tadousac: the colony had just escaped annihilation by an Indian massacre. The dread of discovery felt by the murderers of the two sportsmen on the Beauport Flats in the autumn of 1616 hung over the Indians like a nightmare ; and, with the savage disregard of ultimate conse- quences, it was decided to fall on the little colony and exterminate it, thus executing the executioner. There is no proof that the remains of the murdered men had yet been found. They were supposed to have been drowned by the upsetting of their canoe. With a view to relieving the tension eight hundred Montaignais Indians assembled at Three Rivers; but, while they were de- liberating how best to wreak vengeance on their former allies, one of the chiefs known as La Foriere, moved by motives which are not very intelligible, descended to Quebec and revealed the whole plot to Beauchasse, the company's factor and clerk. La Foriere then became mediator between the Indians and the colo- nists. A safe conduct was promised to the Indian chiefs, if they would visit the habitation. They came. The first proposal made by them was to commute the punishment by a present of .furs, according to Indian custom. This seemed to Beauchasse, from a business point of view, in every way a profitable mode of settlement. The two missionaries, on the contrary, Le Caron and Huet, with a better knowledge of Indian character, pointed out that, once the principle was admitted that the value of a French- AN INDIAN CONSPIRACY. 129 man's life was to be computed by so many beaver skins, no Frenchman's life would be safe. The missionaries were right, and their advice prevailed : a peremptory demand was made for the surrender of the two murderers. Indians to our own day can always secure the apprehension or the death of any guilty member of their tribe, if the common- weal demands it. In this case one of the murderers, after adorn- ing himself with all his finery, voluntarily entered the fort with his father and some of the chiefs. The drawbridge was raised and every precaution taken against an attack by the hordes of savages surrounding the habitation. Beauchasse, who was able by this time to speak in Algonquin, addressed the Indians, pointing out tlie benefit the friendship of the French had been to them, and would continue to be, and the enormity of the crime which had been committed. The faltering speech dragged till the patience of the accused was thoroughly exhausted, and he told them that he was an Indian and not afraid to die, and begged that the factor, Beauchasse, would despatch him with as little formality as possible. It had to be explained that, whatever might be his fate, such summary condemnation and execution were opposed to French procedure. In fact neither side was prepared to carry matters to extremes. The Indians might have succeeded had they surprised the French, but they knew full well they could not withstand firearms behind the entrenched and stockaded fort. They were starving, and were forced to solicit food from the very white men whose death they had 1)een plotting. On the other hand, the policy of the Frencli trading company had been to propitiate the Algonquin tri])es and the Huron branch of the Iro- quois. The execution of the murderers would excite the utmost rage and originate a war of revenge, whicli the company was ut- terly unable to sustain. It would simply ruin trade by closing its sources and clianncls. It was wisely decided, therefore, to ask for hostages in tlie persons of two children, and to postpone the trial and sentence until Champlain should arrive in the spring. The hostages were given. The Recollet fathers soon found they had their hands full in taking care of the little urchins. Both were quick at learning, and one was reasonably tractable, but 130 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. as soon as opportunity offered they escaped back to their wild life. Thus happily ended the first Indian rising against the whites in the forests of North America. The peril had been great, and the anxiety of the fifty or sixty ''habitants," crowded for safety into the habitation, the only defensible building, must have been op- pressive. Had it not been for the wise yet firm counsel given by the fathers, the immediate and remote consequences would have been disastrous. Brother du Plessis, who was in charge of the mission at Three Rivers when the conspiracy was hatched, had de- scended to Quebec to aid in the pacification of his savage flock. When therefore Champlain arrived at the habitation on the 1st of June with De La Mothe, Captain Pontgrave, a clerk called Loquin who had come out to assist Beauchasse, and Fathers d'Olbeau and Guines, all the Recollet missionaries in Canada met him at Quebec. The welcome was doubly hearty, for, to add to the anxiety of the colony, the spring ships were late. The smaller ship had made a good passage, but she un- fortunately was so scantily provisioned that the crew had been on short rations, and she could therefore spare nothing to the famished inhabitants, who had given more than they could spare to propitiate the Indians during and subsequent to the critical negotiations. They had emptied the store-house, gathered the last of the season's mushrooms, and rooted up from the garden what vegetables had survived the winter. Day by day had they looked down the river with growing despair for the approach- ing ship with Pontgrave and Champlain and his stores of good things. At last it hove in sight and the situation was materially relieved. After a short stay at the habitation, where Champlain was greatly delighted with the fertility of the soil and the luxuriance of the vegetation, but deplored the indolence and indifference of the settlers, who, amid potential plenty, would starve rather than work, he hurried to Three Rivers to decide the fate of the mur- derers. There was the usual ceremonious council. His assistance was asked by the Indians against their enemies. He charged them with breach of promise in not meeting him the year before; COUREURS DE BOIS. declined to accompany them at once owing to the heinous crime committed by members of their tribe; but promised, on condi- tion of their good behavior and of their trade, to join them the following year. Finally, seizing a sword, he flung it into the St. Lawrence, and as its waters closed over the weapon and concealed it for ever and for aye, assured them that so would all ill-will be- tween the French and their allies be obliterated and forgotten — even to the crime which might so justly have been punished by death. With this fine dramatic flourish he liberated the prisoners. The Indians were too polite to laugh. With the Indians there came to the fair at Three Rivers the progenitors of a class of men who did more than French soldiers or statesmen to extend French influence over the vast West and Northwest — the coureurs de hois. Etienne Brule had, more than three years before, been sent by Champlain with twelve Indians from Lake Simcoe, when he was on his unsuccess- ful campaign against the Iroquois, to urge his allies to hasten their arrival at the trysting place. After waiting beyond the appointed time, Champlain left, and, from that day forward, nothing had been heard of Brule. He could have told a thrilling tale of adven- ture among the Iroquois and the Hurons ; yet he was in no haste to return to civilization. He had learned the Huron language, he had acquired the Indian habits, and, though Champlain does not expressly say so, had married an Indian wife. He would not stay among his countrymen, but returned with the Hurons as an adopt- ed member of the tribe to further explore the Western country. From Champlain's account, he seems to have forestalled La Salle in the discovery of the Mississippi. Parkman supposes it to have been the Susquehanna, as Brule spent one winter in visiting the nations adjacent to the Huron territory, and in traveling along a river which flows into the sea near Florida. He de- scended the river as far as the sea and speaks of the mild climate of the country and the wild animals ranging over it in great numbers. He ultimately met an Indian's fate in a violent death in 1632 at the hands of a Huron. Tlic readiness with which the French adapted tlicmselves to Indian ways of life is a trait not exhibited by any other of the European nations which 132 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. have colonized the Western hemisphere. There seemed to be elements peculiarly congenial to the French taste in the wild, untrammelled habits of the forest hunters of North America. The Frenchman's love of adventure was gratified, his native activity of mind and body found full scope for exercise, and in the woods he was far away from the Priest and the Intendant. Though excommunications were fulminated against the coureurs de hois by the Church, and edicts and ordinances and sentences of punishment by death itself, in case of disobedience, passed by the Council, these progenitors of the half-breed of the' West increased and multiplied. In trying to repress them the French Government acted inconsistently with its avowed prin- ciples; for the conviction that the higher civilization can as- similate the lower was then, and still is, a fundamental principle of French colonial policy. It has never been propounded, or be- lieved to be practicable, by any experienced English colonists. The danger of an Indian outbreak having been averted, and a profitable trade in furs secured as the result of his clemency, Champlain returned to Quebec, but tarried only while Pontgrave made a trip to Tadousac for provisions for the winter sup- port of the little community. Then he. Father Paul and Brother Pacifique set sail for France. They left Tadousac on the 30th of July, and landed at Honfleur on the 28th of August, 1618. Monsieur de la Mothe remained in Canada, but no men- tion is made of other accessions to the population, except the clerk, Loquin. One death only is recorded, despite the failure of stores in the early summer. The victim was a Scotch Presby- terian, who wanted to be allowed to die in peace, but the good fathers, on his refusing their ministrations, consigned the poor soul to the hands of Satan, "who hurried him of¥ to the very low- est depths of hell." Ere long there were to be no more heretics in this holy land, and therefore no further need for such painful ex- tremities of spiritual jurisdiction. In this incident we meet for the first time the gentle influence of woman's charity in New France. It was Madame Ilebert who tended the unfortunate Scotchman, so far from home and from congenial surroundings, A MONASTIC ANXALTST. and it was she whose soHcitude about his soul was so urgent that she called in the clergy to effect his conversion. These glimpses of life under the cliff are given by the Recollet Father Sagard. He was not himself sent to Canada — to his great regret — until 1623; but such matters were still fresh in men's memory, as well as accessible in the records of the order. While he is garrulous about trifles, he is silent, and significantly silent — one cannot but suppose — about more mo- mentous events, especially when Champlain himself is concerned. While Champlain makes constant reference to the Friars, to their comings and goings and doings, he is treated by them with contemptuous silence. The inference is that he disapproved of their conduct as being injurious to the interests of the com- pany and of New France, or else that his religious opinions were not rigid enough to please them. They were not combative like their successors and future rivals, the Jesuits. If they disapprov- ed, they simply expressed dissent by silence. But in this antagon- ism and jealousy, overt or latent, we detect already, what was destined to be the bane of French colonial rule in America, ec- clesiastical influence at war with the civil power, CHAPTER VII. Champlain as Governor Under the Due de Montmorency and the Creation of the De Caen Trading Company ♦ \ 619-1 624. We now enter on another phase of the colony's existence and the company's history. Champlain, as representative of both, is distracted in trying to adjust his conduct as manager of a mer- cantile association with his sense of duty as Governor of the colony. And unfortunately at this juncture the course of events cannot be as distinctly traced as heretofore, inasmuch as there is internal evidence that the 1632 edition of Champlain's work was revised and altered by some other hand than his own. The ''Voy- age jusque a la fin de I'Annee, 1618," published in 1619, is as it came from Champlain's pen, and therefore doubtful points in the edition of 1632 up to that date can be verified by reference to the narrative published in 1619. For events subsequent to 1619 we are dependent on the edition of 1632. As I'Abbe Laverdiere points out in his preface to the edition of 1632, the discrepancies in the two narratives so often and so pointedly indicate a hand hostile to the Recollet Fathers, that the inference is that the editor was a Jesuit. Father Sagard's "Histoire de Canada" appeared in 1634 — two years after Champlain's edition of 1632, and one year before Champlain's death. Irritation at the slight thrown on his Order in Champlain's last narrative may account for his obscuration of Champlain in his own history. As Champlain was in France, or a captive in England, from 1629 to 1632, when he re- turned to Quebec, it is difficult to understand why the edition of 1632 should not have been put through the press by him- self ; and yet there are in it palpable errors which it is in- credible that he should have committed. For instance, the edition of 1619 tells us that in the autumn of 1616, just before sailing, he planned an extension of the habitation, and "had it DIVERGENT VIEWS. all built of lime and sand, having found material of excellent quality near the habitation, which is a great convenience in build- ing to those who are willing to take the trouble of carrying and using it." The passage is omitted entirely in the edition of 1632 ; but this edition interpolates in the narrative of what occurred in 16 18 a document, sworn to before a notary, which enumerates the articles the association binds itself to send to the colony. Among these are "ten hogsheads of lime, necessary, inasmuch as none had up to that time been found in the country, though it has since been discovered." It is simply incredible that Cham- plain could have so contradicted himself in a matter of com- mon everyday knowledge. We are thus driven to conclude that the edition of 1632, while composed in the main from materials he supplied, was not entirely written by him, was not corrected by himself, and that it cannot therefore be wholly depended on as expressing his opinions. While this is probably true, it may also have happened that his sentiments, under Jesuit influences, may have actually changed towards the Recollets, and that the omis- sions in the edition of 1632, regarding the work of the RecoUet Fathers, were really due to himself. Champlain was growing old : he was born in 1567. If such a change of sentiment on Cham- plain's part actually occurred, Sagard has taken revenge by sup- pressing as far as possible all mention of him in his "Histoire." No sooner had Champlain set foot in France in August, 1618, than he recommenced his advocacy of a more vigorous colonial policy. He claims to have wrung from the association a promise sworn to before a notary in December, 1619 (evidently a mis- take for 161S, as the document was collated on January 11, 1619) to send out eighty colonists, a consignment of tools and implements, arms and ammunition, kitchen utensils and table service for the Governor, as well as live stock and feed. The promise was never carried out. There was faction in the company; faction in the commercial centers; and faction in the State. In the company's councils two alternatives seem to have been the subject of discussion and discord. Some thought it best that the old method should be pursued of forbidding any but the company's agents trafficking with tlie Indians for furs. Others 136 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. proposed that settlement should be encouraged, and a free trade in Canada permitted between the settlers and the Indians — the furs obtained by the settlers to be, however, stored in the company's magazine, shipped by the company to France, and paid for in bills of exchange. The first plan would have been most advantageous to the company. The long experience of the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Fur Company has since demonstrated the fact, and their own short and checkered career must have afforded arguments to the supporters of this view. Such a policy, however, is only practicable in a desolate re- gioUj from which immigration can be excluded. This Champlain knew not to be the case in Canada. Beside which, the English had for more than a decade been firmly established in Virginia; the Dutch had obtained a footing on the Hudson ; and more than one company of Englishmen had attempted to found a colony on the New England coast. The English claimed Newfoundland and challenged the French right to Acadie. Competition would there- fore be acute along their whole border. An absolute monopoly of the fur trade was possible only by dint of complete territorial iso- lation. Champlain saw this to be impossible, and he consequently favored a modification of the company's policy, which would give it a control merely of the commercial operations of the com- munity, and would encourage the inhabitants themselves to push the trade with the Indians into remote sections of the continent. Were that policy adopted, commerce would grow with the in- crease of population, to the great benefit of the company. So argued Champlain ; but the company hesitated to adopt so radical a measure, dreading that, if the freedom of trade with the Indians were conceded, 'equal freedom of trade between the Colony and France would be demanded, and could hardly be denied. The liberality of Champlain's opinions and plans evidently created suspicion in the minds of the associates regarding his entire and undivided devotion to their interests. Accordingly, when he was on the point of sailing for Quebec with his wife and household in the spring of 1619, he was informed that the company had handed over the management of their commercial affairs and of their property in Quebec to Pontgrave, so that he, Champlain, might be CHAMPLAIX AXD THE COMPANY. free to prosecute his explorations in the interior without let or hindrance from the demands of business. Pontgrave sailed, but without Champlain, who declined to accept a divided authority. He claimed that, under the King's commission, he was lieutenant of Monsieur le Prince, and that his authority as Governor extended over the whole population and over all property in New France, except the actual merchandise of the company in the company's store in Quebec, whose factor he was in the habit of appointing as his lieutenant during his ab- sence. Pontgrave had been, and still was, his closest friend ; he was old enough to be his father ; and it was through no feeling of jealousy towards him that he refused to recognize this joint authority, but simply because his duty to the State was paramount. While he had been willing to work for the company and to receive compensation for it, he was Governor as Lieutenant for Charles de Bourbon, and Lieutenant General of the King in New France, and he could not, therefore, permit within his do- minion the establishment and exercise of any independent power. Already the course of events in Virginia was affording an illus- tration of the direction likely to be taken by colonial enterprise when freed from imperial control ; it may have been this that suggested Champlain's reflection that the motive of the com- pany's officers was ''to create an independent government, and to found a republic after their own fashion, using the King's commission merely as a cloak under which to carry out their sinister designs." The suppression of the Huguenot cause, soon after this date, as a controlling influence in French politics, was rendered easier by the example which England afforded of the tendency of freedom of thought and unlicensed debate. Of the two the French preferred the a1)solutism of Richelieu and later of Louis XIV., to the excesses of Republicanism. The presumption of the English North American colonists was so utterly obnoxious to Richelieu, Mazarin and Colbert, and the rights asserted by the colonial assemblies and their encroachment on imperial control so opposed to the theory of government pro- pounded by these great statesmen and practised by their masters, that, in framing a colonial policy for France, they cautiously elim- 138 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. inatecl every concession which could be used as a pretext for even the most elementary exercise of popular government by the col- onists. Richelieu was not yet handling the reins of State, but the sentiment which he subsequently formulated into a principle, as mentioned by Champlain in his edition of 1632, already con- trolled the Court ; and not without good reason, for republicanism and absolute monarchy were rapidly becoming belligerent issues across the channel. He expressed, as representative of the Crown, what had become the determinate policy of French sovereigns, for the States General had been dismissed in 1614, not to reassemble till the fatal meeting in 1789. The theory and practice of French colonial rule on the North American continent were thus in pronounced antithesis to those adopted by England ; the rigidity of the French policy being doubtless accentuated by the encour- agement which the English policy was seen to give to Democracy. Champlain, instead of sailing, went with his family to Rouen to lodge his protest in person before the associates, and to frus- trate the machinations of his old enemy, Boyer, whom he charged with fomenting all the trouble, though it is hardly necessary to in- voke private spite to account for the attitude of the opponents of the company. The letter from Louis XIII. to the association, by which Champlain supported his claim, sufficiently explains the embarrassing position in which the company found itself, and the plan by which it sought to solve the dilemma. The letter com- plains of the laxity of the company in establishing families of work people and artisans at Quebec, and at other points in New France. It insists on the company's aiding Champlain in carrying out the King's orders to plant colonists, whose multiplication would inure to the royal advantage and the public good. At the same time the letter expresses the wish that all this be done with- out inconvenience to the company's servants or injury to the com- pany's trade in furs. It implies that this costly and unproductive colonization is to be carried out by the company at its own ex- pense ; for it was the policy of France, from the time of Francis I., to relieve the treasury of outlay for colonial expansion by in- ducing individuals or companies to undertake the burden in return for trade concessions and privileges. While the French Govern- A CHANGE OF VICEROY. ment assumed little, if any, pecuniary risk, it nevertheless ham- pered its colonies by a rigorous paternal regime, allowing no initiative or real freedom of action to those who took part in the colonial enterprise, whether as incorporators in France, or as ser- vants and colonists abroad. As the bureaucratic system of Old France was to be transferred with all its blighting effects to New France, Champlain deter- mined, at least, to protect his own position, appealed from the company to the Council, followed the Court to Tours, and secured an edict confirming him in the command of Quebec, and of the other places in New France, and prohibiting the association, under pains and penalties, from hindering him in the performance of his functions. The Prince of Conde's Viceroyalty had been rather a sinecure, for he had been in prison during most of his term of office. He celebrated his release by giving one-half of a year's salary to the Recollets as a contribution to their seminary at Quebec. As his substitute, the Marechal de Themines, seems to have interested himself in nothing but the salary attached to the office, Champlain must have desired a more active, if not more influential, viceroy. One was found in the person of Monsieur de Montmorency, Ad- miral of France. The Prince de Conde was willing to resign for a consideration, and the Admiral was willing to pay that considera- tion of 11,000 ecus. The bargain was made through Sieur Vignier as intermediary, and the appointment was confirmed by the King. At the same time Monsieur Dolu, Grand Audiencier (Chief Usher) of France, was appointed Intcndant, his functions being to conduct the civil government of the colony and to watch the Governor, there were in the colony fifty or sixty people. They had to rule them a King as supreme, his Vicerov in France, a Governor as Lieutenant of the \^iceroy in Canada, and an In- tendant to assist or thwart the Governor as the case might be. To control their fate, minister to their religious wants, and do missionary work among the Indians, the company supported five friars, though their charter required them to maintain six. Fif- teen to twenty, therefore, of the population, under pay of the com- pany, occupied high civil or ecclesiastical positions. I40 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Champlain had now been a year and a half in France, perhaps not altogether unwillingly, as his young wife, to whom he had been betrothed while she was yet a girl, had now attained full womanhood, and this was the first time in his roving life he had enjoyed a taste of domestic tranquility. Pontgrave, who had sailed against his protest, as his colleague, had spent the winter in Canada, and Champlain was doubtless anxious to join him for more reasons than one. To show his sincerity as a promoter of colonization, he determined to take his wife with him. When he was on the point of sailing from Honfleur in the spring of 1620, the company made a final efifort to cripple his authority, but an appeal to the Viceroy and Intendant brought a categorical answer, confirming him in full authority over all property, ex- cept the merchandise belonging to the company, and over all the persons and the actions of the company's factors and clerks, in their capacity as the company's servants. The King promised the armament for a fort which Champlain was instructed to erect at Quebec, presumably at the company's expense, and he was authorized, if the company proved recalcitrant, to seize their fleet, though with what force of men he was to make the seizure is not clear. To encourage him in his task of establishing the royal authority and spreading the Catholic religion, the King wrote him a letter on the 7th of May, 1620, over his own sign manual. Sailing with his family a few days later, he arrived, after a tedious voyage of two months, at Tadousac, which was still the principal port of New France, where both passengers and freight were generally transferred for the upper St. Lawrence. His brother-in-law, Boulle, had preceded him in a vessel com- manded by Sieur Deschesnes, and as he was not aware of his sister's intention to accompany her husband, the meeting was doubly joyful. The news he told Champlain was that they had surprised and nearly captured two ships of La Rochelle, which were trading illicitly with the Indians near Bic, and committing the indiscretion of exchanging firearms for furs. The provoking intruders had, however, proved themselves the better sailors and made their escape. As the trade of the St. Lawrence below Que- bec had been decreed free, the irregularity of these Huguenot A NEGLECTED COLONY. 141 skippers from La Rochelle probably consisted in their sailing without a license or some form of register, a latitude in trade which there is reason to believe may have been curtailed, as by the Due de Ventadour's commission in 1625 to Champlain, he was au- thorized to seize all vessels trading to the west of Gaspe. Again and again the iniquity of these enterprising but heretical intruders moves both Champlain and the Recollet Fathers to wrath. After his two years absence from Quebec, Champlain found the habitation in a woefully ruinous state. The rain poured through the roof, the wind whistled between cracks in the walls, the store-room was about to fall in, and one of the wings had collapsed bodily ; and yet this was to be the abode of the delicately nurtured wife, whom he had brought to the country as an induce- ment to others to follow. Madame Champlain's brother, BouUe, had with Pontgrave spent the previous winter there ; but the ex- cuse for the neglected condition of the place was that the few m.e- chanics had been withdrawn for the purpose of erecting the mon- astery, which the Recollet Fathers were building on the banks of the St. Charles, half a league away, and in putting up a house for Guillaume Hebert on the top of the cliff. However, though the roof of the chateau was leaky, he was the Lieutenant of the Viceroy of all New France, and therefore on the day after his arrival he caused his commission, as Lieutenant of the new Vice- roy, to be publicly read by Commissionaire Guers, with the accom- paniment of cannon, after the Recollet Fathers had said mass in the little chapel. The whole population of fifty shouted "Vii'c le roi!" whereupon Champlain took possession of the habitation and the country in the name of the Viceroy, the Due de Montmorency. Thus Canada passed from the status of a mere trading domain of a commercial company, like the Hudson P>ay Company, into a royal colony. During the two years of his absence it would seem that no increase of population had taken place. On the contrary, death had been busy with the little colony. Good Father du PIcssis, to whom the little settlement owed its deliv- erance from the Indian massacre in the spring of 16 18, died in August of the following year. He had recently returned from France, whither he had gone with Father Huet on the boot- 142 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. less mission of urging the company to send out settlers. And poor Anne Hebert, who had been married to Etienne Jon- quest with much festivity, so recently as the autumn of 161 7, had died in childbed. It was a cheerless home-coming to Champlain to be greeted by death, decay, indolence and indiffer- ence. The only energetic denizens of the little hamlet were the Recollets ; yet he can hardly disguise his irritation at the work- men having been withdrawn from the public habitation to help in building the monastery for the friars. They had planted it far away, so that in solitude and silence they might be undisturbed in their devotions. The Fathers had acquired a site about half a league from the habitation the summer previously, near the Little River, as it was then and is still called, and not far distant from the creek where Cartier had moored his fleet in the autumn of 1535- The land on which the friars built was a tract of pasture which that enterprising colonist Hebert had cleared on the right bank of the St. Charles about two miles from its mouth. This the Fathers had acquired from him in exchange for a clearance they had made near the habitation in the summer of 1619. Here they commenced collecting building material for their convent, a work in which they were heartily aided by the large-minded Pontgrave, notwithstanding that he was a Huguenot ; but the foundation stone was not laid until the 3rd of the following June, when the cere- mony was performed by Father d'Olbeau, as substitute for Father Jamay, the Commissaire, who had not yet returned from France. Thus, when Champlain came out with his family in July, building operations were active, and more public interest was taken in the progress of the convent than in the prospects of the colony. The work on the mission house must have been pressed, inasmuch as on August 15 Father Jamay gives a detailed account of the build- ing to his patron, the Grand Vicaire de Pontoise. It was a two- storied wooden building, 34 feet by 22 feet, with a capacious cellar. The lower story was divided by a stone partition wall into two rooms, one of which served temporarily as a chapel, the other as a kitchen and refectory. The upper story was di- vided into one large and four small rooms with provisions for THE RECOLLET MONASTERY. isolation in a sixth. There were stone towers for defense at three corners, and a demilune of heavy timbers before the entrance. The Little River flowed in front of the convent, and two streams whose sources were close together to the north, and which flowed to the east and west of the building, were by deepening made to serve as a fosse ; and thus this primitive abode of the ministers of Jesus repeated, to the great delight of the Grand Vicaire, all the features of a medieval monastery — a retreat for devotion, a semi- nary, a hospital, and a stronghold. It was, however, unlike most of the old world monasteries in their decadence, for the Fathers were determined to set their converts an example as industrious agriculturists. The building was then, as the General Hospital was till recently, in a swamp. This they endeavored to drain by ditches so laid out that they would also serve as a means of defense. By the autumn of this first season they had of live stock a mule, a female ass, a number of pigs, one pair of geese, fourteen fowls, and eight ducks. They hoped within two years to be able to raise enough grain and pigs to support twelve per- sons on a diet of bread, beer, and salt pork. These would be sup- plemented by fish from the river and moose meat, which the In- dians during the winter would exchange for a trifle of bread. The Recollets transferred this property to Bishop Saint Vallier, in 1690, for the General Hospital. That institution, therefore, marks definitely for us to-day the site of this monastery, which absorbed so much of the energies of the good Fathers in 1620 and 1 62 1. The building was intended and planned for the double pur- pose of enabling the friars to live in conformity with the rules of their order, and of serving as a seminary for the education of Indian boys. Its distance from the settlement had certain ad- vantages ; but as the journey to and fro in winter was somewhat trying, some of the friars continued to live in the Parish House attached to the little church near the habitation : for the Fathers then and subsequently were empowered by the brief of Gnido Bcn- tivolio. Nuncio of Paul V., to perform most of the functions of the secular clergy- in New France — to preach, baptize, hear confessions and to administer the sacraments of the Fucharist. ninrriauc^ and extreme unction. They changed the name of the Little River from 144 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. that of St. Croix, given it by Cartier, to St. Charles, in honor of their hberal patron, Charles de Bones, Grand Vicaire de Pontoise. He and the Sieur Houel were their most influential financial sup- porters, and contributions from other sources were not lacking; but the Fathers never ceased to complain of the refusal of ade- quate support from the associates of the company, who evidently considered that the provision they were compelled to make for the support of six friars was a sufficient contribution. The Grand Vicaire, writing in 1621, promises from the Sieur Houel 200 ecus annually towards the support of six Indian children in the seminary of St. Charles, and agrees to supplement that with a like sum from his own purse, and hopes to send them in the following year 1,000 ecus from other contributors. The Sieur Houel also offers to ship them 1,200 pounds of provisions. By that time the Church, the A/[onastery and the Seminary of Notre Dame des Anges had been built, and high hopes were enter- tained of the future utility of the establishment — hopes which un- fortunately were very slow of realization. It was a time when there was much enthusiasm among thinking men, as well as among the pious, bred of the hope that European civilization Vv^ould transform the wild tribes of the earth into refined speci- mens of humanity. Montaigne, in his essay entitled ''Des Coches," reflects on what Spanish greed had done in comparison with what might have been effected by a different treatment of the aborigines ; if, that is to say, Europeans had set them an example of every virtue instead of initiating them into every vice. The at- tempt was honestly made by the ecclesiastics of New France, and, had Montaigne lived to see the results, he would have ad- mitted that there was some error in the premises from which he drew his hopeful conclusion. The monks were doubtless doing a good work, and doing it from motives that put to shame the sordid aims of the mercantile company. But Champlain may be ex- cused if he fretted over the abstraction of so much labor and energy from the realization of his owns plans, which, as Lieute- nant of the Viceroy and no longer a mere agent of the company, his heart was now bent on carrying out. Heretofore he had been the most zealous of traders, combining CHATEAU ST. LOUTS. in some mysterious way the function of Governor of the colony and agent of the fur company ; but his recent experience in France had satisfied him of the incompatabihty of such dual responsi- bilities, and henceforth he stands forth in the simple character of Governor. In this capacity we have seen him on his arrival pro- claimed Lieutenant of the Viceroy, with such formality and pageantry as his slender command of accessories would permit. This done he immediately despatched Guers, who had acted as clerk and herald in the ceremony of his inauguration, to Three Rivers, to watch and report the proceedings of Pontgrave and the company's clerk, while he busied himself in repairing the habita- tion and in planning a fort, which he had from the first foreseen to be essential to the security of the settlement, but the building of which the company from short-sightedness or stingi- ness had persistently opposed. The situation he selected was on the very brow of the cliff overlooking the habitation, and yet commanding the river where its channel was the narrowest.* It was so well chosen that it was retained as the site of the palace of the Governors of New France and of Great Britain until destroyed by fire in 1834. It was therefore the scene of many of the most dramatic incidents in the history of America. Durham Terrace replaced the old Chateau, and the eastern end of DuflPerin Terrace now occupies part of the same space. Cham- plain's first fort, built on the site of the future Chateau, was of wood, and being designed on a plan commensurate with his very modest means, was adequate only as a defence against savage foes; though even then he had apprehensions of an attack from the ra- pacious English. And so the summer passed, the friars building their convent, the Governor his castle. The two buildings rep- resented powers which should have worked harmoniously for the public good, but which were preparing instead for a conflict which was to last as long as French rule itself. Pontgrave went to France with his cargo of peltries, accom- panied by Roumier, his under clerk, leaving Jean Caumont dit Ic * Some authorities are inclined to place the first fort where the Grand Battery now commences, hut there is no evidence that Montmagny's reconstructed fort was on a different site from that chosen by Champlain. 146 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Mons in charge of the store. He did not, however, sail from Tadousac until he had forwarded Champlain all the available stores for the support of the little colony of sixty souls, of whom ten were still employed at the monastery at the expense of the Friars. The Church, the State and a trading company were thus the only active, independent elements. Of individual enter- prise or personal initiative we hear nothing. The following year, 162 1, was not marked by any event of great permanent interest, but it was a year of intense excitement at Quebec, owing to the fact that Champlain, as Governor, came into collision with the old company, which found it difficult to ac- cept its reduced position as a mere trader, destitute of political authority. To complicate the position, the Due de Montmorency gave a charter to another company, composed of members of purer faith, and it was hoped of greater colonizing zeal. As might have been expected, the old company and the new did not har- monize at first. The season's operations opened by the departure of le Mons, the company's clerk, from Quebec for Tadousac with a cargo of merchandise intended for barter with the Indians. On his way, however, he met Captains Dumay and Guers, armed with commissions from the Viceroy, and supported by five sailors, three soldiers and a boy. Having been warned by them of the creation of the new company and the cancellation of the rights of the old, he could do nothing but turn back. Dumay and Guers were the bearers of quite a batch of letters to the Governor. The King himself complimented his servant, and promised arms and munitions. Another was from Monsieur de Puisieux, Secretaire des commandements du Roi, informing him that it was at the solicitation of Monsieur Dolu, the Intendant, that the arms were being furnished. Then Monsieur the Due himself wrote that, for various reasons, the old company, com- posed of merchants of Rouen and St. Malo, had been dissolved, and he had solicited the Sieur de Caen and his nephew and cer- tain associates to aid Champlain in sustaining the authority of the King, and that Monsieur Dolu would give him particulars as to the arrangement made with the new company. He assured him, however, that his personal position would not be damaged. RIVAL COMPANIES. Monsieur Dolu's letter was much more emphatic. It instructed him to seize the merchandise and property of the old company, as a penalty for their failure to carry out the colonization condi- tions of their contract, and to aid the de Caens, who, though not of the true faith, would, it was hoped, be induced to repent of the error of their ways and become Catholics. He received still other letters from Villemenon, Intendant to the x\dmiralty, assuring him that the de Caens would sail with two good ships fully armed and provisioned. Had the de Caens themselves been the bearers of the letters, and had they come prepared to back their privileges and pretensions by ample force of arms, Champlain's course would have been clear and easy. Or had Dumay and Guers prudently delivered their letters and message to him alone, and kept silence as to the success of the agitation against the old company in France, Champlain would have allowed its agents to continue their operations until he was strong enough to carry out his categorical instructions. But Dumay and Guers had boasted of the commission even before reaching Quebec ; and after they arrived there, the employees of the new company twitted those of the old, not only with loss of service, but with probable forfeiture of arrears of pay, till there arose a little revolution in the hamlet. Champlain was powerless. He therefore not only as- sured the officials of the old company of protection from personal loss, but granted them permission to continue trading operations until the express commands of the King were communicated by de Caen himself. On the other hand, Dumay and Guers had brought out a cargo of merchandise for exchange, and this they insisted on their right to barter for furs. To have granted their request would have brought matters to a crisis. In refusing it Champlain pointed out to them that, if the decision of the question of ex- clusive trade should be decided in Council in their favor, then the skins forfeited by the old company would be ample compensation for any loss the new company might sustain by mere postpone- ment of operations. Having thus compromised with the opposing factions, he sent Dumay down the river to meet de Caen and ad- vise him of what had happened. But, just as le Mons had a fortnight before deemed it prudent to retire when on his 148 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. way to Tadousac, he met Dumay and Guers with their boatload of armed men, so now Dumay hastened back to warn Champlain that his old comrade and friend, Pontgrave, was close at hand in the "Salemande," a vessel of 150 tons, with a crew of sixty-five men, probably bent on sustaining the rights of the old company. To oppose Pontgrave Champlain could muster only a crew of eighteen, most of whom were at Tadousac and not at Quebec, and a possible contingent of some twelve addi- tional men. These were all he could rely upon, as the rest of the colony was dependent on the old company. It was clearly there- fore more politic to negotiate than to fight. But in order to. be in a position — as Champlain expressed it — to parler a cheval, he manned the unfinished fort on the crest of the hill, with Dumay, his brother-in-law, eight of his own men, and a force borrowed from the Recollet Fathers, while he induced four of the company's men to carry provisions and ammunition up the steep hill to provision his fortress. He himself with his wife awaited develop- ments in the old habitation on the beach, guarded by three of Dumay's crew, four servants of the Recollets, Guers, his clerk, and some of the inhabitants. On the 7th, a schooner hove in sight. Father George, with M, Guers, met the new arrivals on the beach. They proved to be three clerks of the old company, so peacefully disposed that Champlain need not have called his men to arms and raised the drawbridge. They gave the latest news from France, namely, that the old company had protested against the cancellation of its rights before the term of its concession had expired ; that their plea was still under deliberation by the Council, but that the Admiralty had refused to give their ships clearance. They were not a little surprised at the hostile attitude of Champlain, as they themselves were not only peacefully disposed, but prepared to supply the colony with provisions, of which it stood in direst need. Under such circumstances, the natural course was to wel- come them. They demanded that the habitation and the old com- pany's stock of beaver skins be turned over to them, but these Champlain emphatically declined to surrender. He allowed them, however, to proceed to Three Rivers, to the yearly fair, with THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE GOVERNOR. 149 their merchandise. When they were fairly gone, Champlain again sent Dumay down the river to apprise de Caen, who by his tarrying had left him in such an embarrassing position, of what had occurred. In a few days — on the 13th of June — instead of de Caen, Champlain's old comrade, Pontgrave, ap- peared, not with his war ship and numerous crew, but in a small vessel loaded with merchandise for Indian traffic. Champlain having expressed his surprise that, knowing the hostility against the company, and being aware of de Caen's mission, he had left his ship at Tadousac, Pontgrave assured him that, if the decision of Council were against his company, and de Caen came out with indisputable authority to confiscate their property, he would not resist. He assented to Champlain's course in retaining the furs and the warehouse as a pledge of the company's fulfilment of the conditions of the charter, or as a forfeit in case of their failure. Equitable terms having thus been arranged between the friends, Pontgrave followed the other employees of the company to the rendezvous at Three Rivers with his boatload of goods. A month of quietness ensued before the forerunner of de Caen appeared with a message begging Champlain to join him, which, however, Champlain declined to do, and pray- ing him to advise the Indians that he was coming with a choice selection of merchandise. Two days afterward Roumier, a clerk of the old company, but now in the employ of the new, followed. He brought letters from the Intendant, Dolu, Villemenon and de Caen. They informed him that the King had decreed that both the companies should be permitted to trade during the year 1621, each sending to the St. Lawrence the one vessel that had already sailed (or wliicli was ready to sail), hut that no ship was to sail from any French port without proper clearance papers, under severe pains and penalties. The two companies were to con- tribute equally towards the support of the captain, soldiers, priests and residents in the habitation. Pontgrave had sailed in ignorance or in defiance of the clause which imposed confiscation of his ship and goods in case of irregularity in his clearance papers, and there was therefore technical ground for proceeding against him. But it rested with Champlain, and not with de Caen, to take action. To 150 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. avert trouble, Champlain induced Father George le Baillif, a man evidently of tact and moderation, to descend the river on the 17th of July and try to dissuade de Caen from taking any rash steps, and also to assuage the anger of Fathers Paul and Guillaume who had a grievance against Pontgrave. Father George set about his delicate mission with laudable despatch, but with- out much success, for on the 24th he was back from Tadousac with the disquieting message that de Caen was bent on seizing Pontgrave's ship, but would delay doing so until Champlain should arrive, provided he did not tarry. Champlain was un- willing to leave the habitation at the mercy of the two factions into which the population was divided ; so ill provided was he, moreover, that he had not a boat of his own fit for a journey. As it was evident, however, that only he could persuade de Caen to pursue a moderate course, he sent to Pontgrave to borrow a boat. Pontgrave not only accommodated him, but came down from Three Rivers, ignorant of the danger which threatened him personally and his property. There was something charming in the candor and mutual trustfulness of these two noble men. They had endured hardship and peril together, and neither could think evil of the other or suspect the other of sinister motives. Champlain was met by de Caen at the Pointe Aux Alouettes. The first interview was friendly. The director of the new com- pany expressed unwavering allegiance to the Viceroy, and recog- nized Champlain and his lieutenancy. When they reached Ta- dousac he offered Champlain the hospitality of his ship, but Champlain, wishing to be neutral, preferred putting up with the accommodation his own schooner afforded. Then the quarrel broke out with great acrimony. De Caen claimed to have au- thoritative but private instructions, which he refused, however, to exhibit. In virtue of these he demanded the seizure of Pont- grave's ship, to be used in operations against the illicit traders, the Rochellois. Champlain pointed out that the new company and its agents had three boats manned by crews of 150 men, two being of ample size to patrol the river and gulf, and destroy all marauders, while they were quite unable to protect themselves. Then Father George took up the argument, POACHING IX THE ST. LAWRENCE. I5I but all to no avail. If de Caen's only reason for seizing Pontgrave's ship was to use it against the Rochelle traders, Champlain offered to take command of it himself, provided de Caen would supply the crew. This proposal was rejected. De Caen simply wanted the ship, and as he had ample force — about three times as many men as the whole male population of the colony — he determined to seize it. Thereupon Champlain took it under his protection, but this empty assertion of sover- eignty availed nothing. De Caen warned Champlain he would appropriate the vessel, and Champlain, not wishing to come into open collision with a man so able to coerce him and the colony, conveniently went on a canoeing expedition up the Sa- guenay while the high handed act was being carried into eft'ect. Having attained his object, de Caen was willing to treat with Champlain as to contributing his share of men and provisions for the habitation. He returned Pontgrave's ship, pretending that it was worthless for war purposes, but demanded and received 1,700 beaver skins in return for provisions which he claimed he had sold to the old company. The claim thus made at the point of the sword could not be refused, so Father George paid it. Instead, however, of fulfilling his promise to send twenty-five men, as his contingent, to the habitation, with provisions for their support during the coming winter, he sent only eighteen. The old company supplied the deficiency. While de Caen had been wasting time in argument and war- like boasting, the rival traders had been busy. A ship was lying at Isle Verte, not fifteen miles distant, bartering away its cargo for furs with the Indians. It slipped away the day before he discovered its presence, and all he found was an abandoned pali- sade, which the traders had erected for defense if attacked. But Champlain's annoyances were not yet over. Besides sending him some provisions for winter support, de Caen forwarded a quantity of arms and ammunition. Believing it impossible, after he had inspected these, that the King and the Viceroy could have so inadequately fulfilled their promise to supply him with weap- ons, he had a sworn inventory taken of the arms. The document is curious, as being the first bill of warlike material furnished to a 152 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. fortress destined to become so famous in the world's history. It enumerates twelve halberds with handles of whitewood painted black; two arquebuses, fitted with wheel locks, five to six feet long ; two arquebuses to be fired with matches, of the same length ; fifty-two pounds of good matches ; one hundred and eighty-seven pounds of worthless matches ; fifty common picks ; two petards of cast iron, weighing forty-four pounds each; one butterfly-tent; two helmets and one axe ; sixty-four sets of pikemen's weapons, without armlets; two barrels of musket balls, weighing 439 pounds. In addition there were handed over to Champlain two barrels of gunpowder for cannon, and six barrels of musket balls, weighing 2,479 pounds. But Isaac Halard, the new company's clerk, who delivered them, could not say whether they were con- signed to Champlain by the French Government or contributed by de Caen himself. Muskets had been introduced into France about 1575, but there were none in the consignment, and what powder there was was coarse grained, for cannon — none for firearms. Champlain and the whole colony must have experienced a feeling of blank despair over the heartlessness and falsity of the Government and the avarice of the trading company. Well might he say that he "could not imagine it possible his Majesty should have sent us such a sorry lot of weapons for our defense, especially after doing him the honor of himself promising by letter an ample supply, which promise was confirmed by Mon- seigneur Puisieux." On August 29, de Caen left Tadousac with his cargo of furs and the execrations of the whole community. He was followed on September 7 by Pontgrave and Father George, who carried with him a bill of grievances from the colony. The document is given in full by Sagard, who says : "The Sieur de Champlain and all the principal French inhabitants of Canada" (whence we may infer that there were at that period other foreigners in the colony beside the unfortunate Scotchman who had been summarily carried off by Satan's imps), "desirous of finding some relief from the confusion which distracted the colony, had called a public meeting. It deputed the Reverend Father George to make to his Majesty their humble remonstrances, trusting to his well-known prudence PETITION OF THE INHABITANTS. to do in their behalf whatever he might consider to be most conducive to the welfare and advancement of the colony." The meeting then adopted the following resolution: "Know All Men, That on the i8th of August in the Year of Grace 1621, in the Reign of, etc., etc., with the consent of the said Lieu- tenant, a general meeting of all the French inhabitants of New France was called for the purpose of devising some reHef from the ruin and desolation which threatened this whole country, and for finding some means of preserving the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion in its purity, the authority of the King in its inviolability, etc. ; it has therefore been Resolved, unanimously, to choose a representative from this meeting as a deputy from the whole company who will lay before the feet of his 2^Iajesty in all himiility a statement of the condition of the countrv% and will describe the disorders which have distracted it, notably during this year of 1621. And that this deputy also visit his Lord the Viceroy in order to explain to him the state of disorder and so- licit his support in their complaint." The meeting selected Father George to lay their cause before the King, and authorized him to employ, if necessar}% one or two advocates to plead their cause before the Council and the courts, and take measures to secure the safety of their delegate while engaged in prosecut- ing his mission. The resolution drawn up by the Sieur Baptiste Guers, Commissaire, is a masterpiece of legal verbiage, and concludes with the following: "Given at Quebec, la Nouvelle France, over the signature of the principal inhabitants, acting for the whole, who, for the purpose of further authentication, have prayed the \^ery Reverend Father in God, Denis Jamay, Com- missaire des Religieux in this land, to affix his ecclesiastical seal on the date and year hereinbefore named." Signed — Cliam- plain ; Fr^res, Denis Jamay. Commissaire; Joseph Le Caron ; Hebert, Procureur du Roi ; Gilbert Courseron. Lieutenant du Pre- vost; Boulle, Pierre Reye, Le Tardif. J. Le Groux, P. Desportes, Nicolas, Greffier of the jurisdiction of Quebec, and clerk of the assembly ; Guers, Commissionne de Monseigneur le Viceroy. The callinq- of a town meeting and the titles affixed to the signatures express eloquently the eflPort Champlain had made to 154 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. create out of the scanty and incongruous elements with which he had to deal an organized civil community. There must have been a court of justice of which Nicolas was clerk, Champlain himself probably being judge. Nicolas was therefore by right, and probably by virtue of his education, selected as secretary of the meeting. The name which follows those of the Governor and the priests was that of Hebert, the first well-to-do immigrant, who had been now three years in the country, and whom Champlain had appointed Procureur du Roi, Crown Coun- sel. Then came that of Courseron, Lieutenant du Prevost — in or- dinary parlance, the constable. Small as the population yet was, the machinery of civilization had been introduced, and the people were being educated in its use. This miniature civil government Champlain must have organized after his proclamation of the sovereignty of the French Crown, under himself as Lieutenant, the previous spring. The stagnation of the colony, and now an acute business rivalry worse than stagnation, were, of course, primarily due to the colonial policy of the mother land. The French Crown, in refusing to incur expense in fostering colonization, followed the lines laid down for Henry IV. by his famous minister, the Due de Sully, who in these colonization schemes could not see any immediate profit to the treasury. Worried by his master's extra- vagances and shameless expenditure on his pleasures, he classed his colonization enterprises in the same category, for in 1603 he said : ''The colony that was sent to Canada this year was among the number of those things of which I disapprove. No riches can come from the new world north of the 40th latitude. His Majesty gave the command of this expedition to the Sieur de Monts." England, Holland and France all adopted and followed the same policy. All three created trading companies to develop the resources of those sections of the North American continent which they severally undertook to colonize, and to secure possession to the parent State by actual occupation of the appropriated slice. But the conditions of the original charters varied as widely as the fortunes of the companies. The political tendencies of the parent State were expressed in the original instruments, and the result- OTHER COLONIAL EXPERIMENTS. ing companies, with their colonial progenies, continued to reflect more or less accurately the development of ideas in Europe. Ex- ception may be claimed in the case of the Dutch colonies on the Hudson and the Delaware, which hardly survived long enough to outlive the defects of their origin in a close, highly privileged trading company, and to grow into a political community deriving life and inspiration from the parent State. Despite the liberal representative government which the Dutch enjoyed at home, their colony of New Netherlands, created under the charter of the West India Company in 1623, was as com- pletely an appanage of this trading company as was New France of the selfish commercial associations which for half a century carried on the farce of pretending to colonize it. The directors used their knowledge and influence to secure, by purchase from the Indians, large tracts of the best and most available lands with- in the sphere of the company's operations. Then these padrones imported laborers to cultivate their estates, but the immigrants were ser\-ants — not independent adventurers, bent on self-better- ment by acquiring and improving their own lands. It was no more to the interest of the Dutch Trading Company, whose ar- ticle of export was furs, to fell the forests and settle the lands, with consequent destruction of the fur-bearing animals, than it was to the advantage of the Canadian trading companies, or subsequently of the Hudson Bay Company, to destroy the sources of their wealth. It was nearly twenty years after the first settle- ment of the Hudson before any pretense of popular government was allowed to the colonists of the North or South rivers, or before the monopoly of the company was abrogated. Then colo- nists of ever\' hue poured in. for the population was augmented, not only from Europe, but by the discontented from the English colonies lying to the north and to the south. The original \'irginia Company was an Enorlish trading com- pany, but organized on very different lines from the French and the Dutch. An Act was passed in 1606, incorporating two companies under one charter : the one. the London Company, for founding a colony in south Virginia : the other, the Plvmouth Company, for founding a like colony in north Virginia. The 156 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. first in the field was the Plymouth Company, which, under the leadership of Sir John Popham, Sir Fernando Gorges, and others, equipped the ''Richard of Plymouth," and made a landing on the coast of Maine. The death of Topham led to the speedy abandonment of the enterprise, and the north Virginia scheme was never again undertaken under the company's auspices. The second detachment sailed to plant a colony in south Virginia in December of the same year. The endeavors of the London Company to establish a plantation in south Virginia, if not successful in the man- ner contemplated by the founders, was fruitful of consequences which the most far-seeing could hardly have contemplated. The charter was the first colonial constitution conceived by English statesmen. If it emanated from the fanciful brain of James L, its provisions must certainly have been suggested by a more liberal mind than that of a Stuart. The colonists were not to be endowed with representative government as we un- derstand it; but, while a court in London, nominated by the Crown, was to exercise control of the several plantations, which might compose so many distinct colonies within the sphere of the company's vast domain, extending from the 34th to the 45th parallel of north latitude, each colony might elect its own council. The company was a trading company, organized with hope of gain, but in the hearts of some of its members a desire to curb the power of Spain was uppermost, while others were moved by a missionary spirit. In this first attempt to raise a child of the State at a distance from the parent, far more liberty and rights of self-control were given than we have seen bestowed on the few colonists of New France, either in Acadia or on the St. Law- rence. The settlers of the Virginia Company and their children forever were to enjoy all the liberties, franchises and immunities enjoyed by Englishmen in England, but subject to a fatal flaw: 'The land was to be held by the Crown, as in our manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent, in free and common socage only, and in capite." As constituted, the first Virginia colony was therefore a communistic community. There THE VIRGINIA COLONY. were to be no individual interests, but all produce was to go into a common stock in which the colonists and the promoters were to share. All personal motive and personal exertion were to be sub- ordinate to the common good. In this case, as in such com- munities generally, the labor of the many simply went to augment the profits of those who, by fair means or foul, obtained control. This was one, but only one, cause of the failure of the original company. The personnel of the colony was composed of ma- terial ill fitted for pioneer life. Among the 105 left by Cap- tain Newport on James Island, 29 are designated as gentlemen, and 12 as laborers. It had been better if these numbers had been reversed. The site for the settlement was ill chosen. A low, swampy island was selected on the James River, and on it Jamestown was founded. All that remains of it is a crumbling wall in a farm, with whose mould is mingled the dust of thousands of early fever-stricken settlers. It is a sad story of mis- rule and bad judgment. Through the energy and tact of John Smith the colony was barely saved from annihilation till the arri- val, in 1608, of Archer and Radclifife with 500 fresh visionaries. This meant, however, 500 more mouths to feed, and famine de- vastated the colony from 1608 to 1610. Nevertheless, despite the evil fate which befell the unfortunate laborers as well as the finan- cial backers of the company of 1606, so enthusiastic were people of all classes in England in favor of the Virginia scheme, that, when the company was reorganized in 1609, not less than 659 persons of all ranks and professions and 66 trade guilds became purchasers of stock. Herein we see once more a marked contrast to the indifference of the French people over their colo- nization ventures. The new company enjoyed a wider measure of self-government, but prosperity did not actually dawn till, mainly through the exertion of Sir Edwin Sandys, a grant was obtained in November, 161 8, of "The Great Charter or Commis- sion of Privileges, Orders and Laws." Under it the land of the colony, heretofore held in common, could be held in severalty, whereby individual incentive, or — let us admit with the socialists — individual selfishness, was called into play. At the same time a representative government, for the first time in the New World, 158 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. was conferred on the settlers. In 1620 the colony passed from the control of the company to that of the Crown, so far as ap- pointing the officials of the government was concerned. Thus in the same year, 1618, in which Champlain was wearily and vainly arguing with the associates to carry out their promises of coloniza- tion on the St. Lawrence, and trying with no better success to induce the government to compel the company to fulfill its pledges, Virginia, after twelve years of more terrible viscissitudes than had befallen the little band of traders and traffickers on the St. Law- rence, was about to inaugurate the most momentous experiment in free government ever made. Mark the result: by the date — 1622 — which we have reached in our history of the Quebec colony, the population of Virginia had grown to about four thou- sand, while that of Canada was only sixty. Already for two years another group of Englishmen had been struggling for life on the barren shores of Massachusetts. They had been impelled to seek the New World by the im- perative craving for freedom. The motives, therefore, which had emboldened them to land and undertake the almost hopeless task of winning an existence from the Plymouth rocks, were of a higher order than those which inspired the adventurers of the James River. Trade and its attendant gain had not been the purpose of this migration. But, like the Huguenots of France, they brought to bear on business the courage which had sustained them in venturing to differ from accepted opinions ; and the same independence of thought which impelled them to frame for themselves a new ecclesiastical polity made them the most shrewd and intelligent merchants of the Western Continent. In politics they brought over from England, and from the Dutch Republic, views and sympathies the very reverse of those of the settlers on the St. Lawrence, and far in advance of those of the majority of their countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic. These intensely Puritanic and strenuous groups, orig- inally gathered around their churches and pastors, developed into the most democratic people of the whole world. We see, therefore, the three communities, or four — if we include the Dutch — working out simultaneously and side by side the prob- THE BTRTH OF NEW ENGLAND. lems of colonization. The differences they exhibited in char- acter, methods, and results afford most instructive contrasts. The French in Canada, under a paternal government and a despotic church, fettered by the privileges bestowed upon one com- mercial company after another, never seemed to fret seriously under the yoke, and certainly never struggled for independ- ence, but developed on the other hand certain distinctive na- tional traits which became so ingrained in their character that they still not only exist, but constitute a force which it is unwise to overlook or underestimate. The English in opening Virginia, while moved by a fierce determination to check the expansion of Spain and the spread of the Spanish ecclesiastical system, were at the same time trying an experi- ment in sociology which failed so emphatically that it never was repeated. This stirring seventeenth century was, indeed, less an age of renaissance than of revolution, when men were more ready than they have ever been since to carry theories into actual practice. And so the Virginia colonists, having freedom of ac- tion and being endowed with common sense and a rugged though teachable spirit, made haste to abandon their communistic theories and practices as soon as these were found unprofitable. They still remained more ardent political theorists than even their Puritani- cal fellow colonists in the North. They sustained during colonial times a bold opposition to all infringement of what they considered their rights as British citizens; and, when the rupture came, im- pressed indelibly their theories of government on the constitution of the new nation. They were the furthest away from Canada, and therefore their example was less obnoxious than that of New England to the Canadian governors and the Canadian clergy ; 1)ut, from the time of Argall's piratical descent on the Jesuit colonics of Acadia till the conquest of Canada, there was in Virginia as un- compromising a hatred of the French system of arbitrary govern- ment and of the French ecclesiastical policy as in Massachusetts itself. In New England, bordrrinc^ on Canada, \vc see a group of colonies created under the influence of political views at diame- trical variance from those prevailing on the St. Lawrence, espcci- l60 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ally after the expulsion of the Huguenots; and with theological be- liefs still more opposed to the creed of the French inhabitants, though inculcated by a clergy which would have exacted as im- plicit obedience as Rome itself, if their followers would but have yielded it. The colonies carried on a ceaseless struggle for un- trammelled trade, untrammelled creed, untrammelled self-gov- ernment; for everything, in fact, which was denied the French colonist, and which he was taught it was rebellion, if not sacri- lege, to demand. The repeated raids on each other's territory, and the inhuman Indian reprisals m.ade on both sides of the frontier, so envenomed the feeling of Canada and New England toward one another, that a dispassionate estimate of each other's char- acter and aims was impossible. There was thus a ready made prejudice on the part of the French-Canadian against New Eng- land's method of government which effectually prevented his im- bibing any New England notions of constitutional liberty. The wonderful prosperity of all these seaboard colonies, though con- trasting strangely with his own poverty, does not seem, strange to say, to have excited the fear, still less the envy, of the French- Canadian, so completely were his will and intelligence in the keep- ing of his civil and ecclesiastical superiors. Nevertheless, little more than a century was to pass before descendants of the group of fever-stricken settlers in the swamps of James Island, and those of the shivering pilgrims of Plymouth rock, were to give the im- pulse to England's effort which substantially obliterated French power in the New World. ' The same opposing tendencies prevailed in these neighboring colonies, French and English, from first to last: on one side of the Hne bureaucratic absolutism and meek submission to the rule of the mother country and her agents; on the other side of the line, opposition to all control, an almost unreason- able resentment against the remotest suggestion of domination by England, and a lurking determination, distinctly felt long before it was expressed, to throw ofif all allegiance to her. The English colonial and commercial policy was so narrow and unjust, from our present point of view, as to furnish plausible reasons for the ill-disguised desire for separation ; but it was liberal in comparison NEW EXGLAXD AND NEW FRANCE. l6l with that which France imposed on her colonies, and not more oppressive than much of England's sectional legislation at home. In fact the broader views which the opposition of the colonies to imperial selfishness impressed on the British system have in Britain itself borne riper and more wholesome fruit than in the lands where they had their birth. New England and New France — how different would have been the course of American history if these two communi- ties, born almost simultaneously, could have declined to share the quarrels of the rest of the family, and determined to emulate each other in creating in this western world a new, if not a higher, civilization, adapted to the altered and more favorable circum- stances under which they were placed. Unfortunately, their courses diverged from the very first. At every step of their history we come upon traces of the deplorable results of unchristian antagonism and bitter hatred, where there should have been only vigorous rivalry ; of war, where the interests of both would have been best subserved by peace. The English colonists steered whither their immediate interests pointed, guided by no strong national affiliation to the mother country. To New France, Old France was from the first, and always remained, an inflexible though kindly disposed parent, imposing rules on her children and repressing all self-assertion as inexorably as a French father. The French-Canadian remained a Frenchman in a much closer sense than the American colonist remained an Englishman. But to return. We left Champlain in the autumn of 1621. with his young wife in the tumble-down habitation, which must have been uncomfortably crowded, if most of the fifty inhabit- ants of the post lived within its walls. He had not progressed sufficiently with the Chateau of St. Louis to render it habitable, and the only separate house to which any reference is made is that of Hebert. With a proud reserve, Champlain seldom dwells on the hardships he was personally exposed to, and still less on those his family suffered. It was not until he was returning with his wife and household effects in the autumn of 1624. "after having hibernated," as he says, "almost five years in want and discomfort," that he vents his indignation at the neglect the 1 62 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. company had shown, not only of the comfort and safety of its employees, but of its own interests. During these years nothing of importance occurred, and the colony — still unworthy of the name — gained neither in numbers nor in public spirit. From the incidental references made to the company's affairs, we may judge that, from a mercantile point of view, they did not prosper; for the Basque and the Rochelle traders, as well as the Spaniards and Flemings, impudently and with impunity poached on their reserves, and with armed ships, which neither Cham- plain, as Governor, nor the officers of the company, had men or weapons to resist, defiantly sailed the gulf and river up to Grosse Island, fishing, and trading with the Indians. The feud between the two companies, which had worried Champlain in the summer of 1621, and been so disastrous to both concerns, was adjusted in France during the following winter by a con- solidation ; the old company accepting a five-twelfth interest in the new corporation. The servants of the company and the King's Lieutenants were meanwhile staving off famine through the skill of the Indian moose hunters, and Champlain was conciliating the savages ; trying to tempt some of them to settle down as farm- ers ; bribing their head men with titles and baubles ; forming schemes of exploration in the interior which he was doomed never to conduct ; and using his influence in the laudable task of healing the feud between the Iroquois and the Huron and Algonquin allies of the French. The summer of 1622 was well advanced before his old comrade, Pontgrave, and Santein, a representative of de Caens and the new company, arrived with news of the consoli- dation of the old and the new companies. It was the middle of July before de Caen himself appeared, eager to reach Three Rivers lest the Indians should scatter, disappointed of their annual barter and their annual debauch. He left a certain Hebert in charge of his ship at Tadousac, where an unseemly dispute occurred about religious precedence, eminently characteristic of the time. The primitive apostolic rule of self-abasement and preference for the lower place did not characterize the practices of either party. It seems that de Caen, when on board, held prayers for his co- RSBUILDIXG OF THE ''hABITxVTION." 163 religionists in the cabin, and the Cathohcs perforce performed their devotions in the forecastle. Hebert when left in charge, though himself a Catholic, adhered to de Caen's orders, but when de la Ralde came on board and assumed command, he reversed the order and turned the Huguenots into the forecastle to pray, and promoted the Catholics to the cabin. The dispute waxed hot, and the good offices of the Recollet Fathers were taxed to as- suage the quarrel. As the opinion was decidedly expressed that Hebert's action was most unreasonable, the Huguenots had to cultivate their piety as best they could in the forecastle. The gentle Recollets doubtless loved peace, but, if we may judge from Champlain's implications, they were a trifle too fond of their ease. We must, however, recollect that as this part of Champlain's narrative was probably edited by the Jesuits, the motives, if not the acts, of the monks may have been slightly dis- torted in the telling. What wonder if gossip abounded in the habitation during the long winter months! And what subject of gossip could be so racy as the lives and doings of the priests in their secluded monastery on the St. Charles ! H they would isolate themselves, they must take the consequences, and be misunder- stood and misrepresented. The Governor does, it is true, give them credit for being zealous gardeners ; ''but well they might be," he said, "for they had naught else to do but plant the seed and watch it grow." The company's servants were, however, even more incorrigible than the Fathers. They could not be induced either to sow or to pray, and it required much vehement urging to get them to do even such agricultural work as was necessary for the very preservation of the colony. In fact, no one was stirred by the impulse of self-interest, and few by religious enthusiasm. It was the company, the company, and only the company ; and then, as now, to do as little as possible for, and extort as much as possible from, the soulless corporation was every one's end and aim. Champlain himself, on the contrary, despite neglect and broken promises, was still enthusiastic. Pontgravc, who was spending the winter in Canada, was growing old and gouty, and during the whole spring of 7623 was a burden on Champlain's care, and the 164 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. recipient, we may well believe, of the tender ministrations of the Chatelaine of the habitation. The colony was not strengthened by the accession of any sturdy settlers, but two more priests. Father Nicholas Viel and Father Gabriel Sagard, arrived in 1623, and henceforth, for seven years we have in Sagard's history the testi- mony of an eye witness of what occurred on the St. Lawrence. It was the middle of July before de Caen reached Quebec, and as the Indians were already due on the upper river, he hurried west, accompanied by Champlain. After their return to Quebec, de Caen and Champlain made a trip to Cap Tourmente, to inspect the beaver meadows, where they found natural hay enough for all the animals. A survey was next made of the old habitation. All their masons and car- penters were called in as experts, and the decision was unani- mously reached that the woodwork of the old barn was irretriev- ably rotten, but that it was worth while making a door from with- out into the stone cellar, and abolishing the trap door from the magazine above, so as to protect the liquor in the wine cellar from illicit raids. With such trifles is the opening scene of the great drama of the French regime in the New World occupied. Pontgrave returned with the Sieur de Caen to France in or- der to seek medical relief for his ailments. It was still only September, and therefore there was time to prepare plans of the new habitation, which was on a much more pretentious scale than the crazy structure it was to supplant, and to commence its erec- tion. It was to have a frontage of 280 feet. It was to be defended by a tower at each corner, and a ravelin was to be constructed with its apex to the river. A ditch and drawbridge were to aflford additional protection. It was never completed on Champlain's plan. Only two towers were erected. They stood on the present Rue de Notre Dame, one at the corner of the Rue sous le Fort, a few feet from the door of the present Church of Notre Dame des Victoires (see note to Laverdiere's Champlain, page 1053). Meanwhile the castle of St. Louis was bein^ erected on the cliff above the habitation. To facilitate passage between it and the habitation a better trail — for no cart had yet reached New France — was cut and graded, following probably the present Rue NEW TROUBLES. 165 de la Montagne. The winter was a long one. Material was col- lected for both the new habitation and the fort, which was ap- proaching completion, when on the 20th of April a furious gust of wind carried away its roof bodily. The building was deemed too high, and Champlain therefore cut off the second story and made all haste to cover in the mutilated structure; for with the Chateau unroofed and a dilapidated habitation, he and the colony were in danger of being left without either fort or homestead ; more especially as the same gale had torn down the gable of He- bert's house, the only other dwelling at the post then or up to the date of Sagard's leaving Canada. On the 6th of May, 1624, Cham- plain had dug the foundation of his new house, and the founda- tion stone was laid carefully with the date and the arms of France and those of Monsieur de Montmorency, and Champlain's name as Lieutenant. This stone, according to Ferland, was found while excavating on the site of the magazine, and was built in above the door of a house adjoining the Lower Town chapel. The house was burned in 1854, and the inscription dis- appeared. On the 2nd of June a shallop came in with the news of the arrival of a sixty ton sloop at Tadousac, bringing much needed provisions. The captain said that de Caen was to follow, but to Champlain's annoyance he brought no mail from those in authority or from de Caen himself — only an unofficial letter from le Gendre, one of the unofficial partners of the company. It was the nth of July before de Caen entered the harbor with two schooners laden with the usual goods for the Indian fairs. De Caen's lieutenant, de la Ralde, had been all the spring in the Gulf at his headquarters on the Island of Miscou, near the mouth of the Bay dcs Chalcurs, fishing and trafficking with the In(h'ans there, while tlie more important brancli of tlie company's 1)usi- ness — the fur trade with the Indians of the Lakes — was l)eing neglected, and in danger of slipping into hostile channels, to the serious detriment of the colony's prosperity. Another cause of worry to the Governor was tlic conduct of the French who had accompanied the Hurons to their village the summer previous. One hafl died, ciglit liad remained on i66 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the Georgian Bay with Father Nicolas, and four only had re- turned with Father Joseph and Brother Gabriel, when they de- scended with their savage flock to seek some needful supplies. Du Vernay, who brought the first news, said that the French had been ill-used by the Indians, but Champlain attributed their treatment to their own misdeeds. Brother Gabriel Sagard himself ar- rived a fortnight later with a very serious indictment against his countrymen. The truth was that the French had taken Indian wives without the benediction of the Church, and were clearly lapsing, without any effort at self-restraint, into a life of semi- barbarism. Already about one-fifth of the whole French popula- tion had adopted Indian manners and Indian wives. De Caen was late this year in coming out with his merchandise, but be- fore he returned to Old France he made a tour of inspection of the country around Cap Tourmente, the Island of Orleans and the adjacent islands, which he claimed had been given him by Monseigneur, though Monseigneur's lieutenant had not been no- tified of the grant. De Caen was not of the true faith, and in regenerated Canada his territorial claim, if ever put forth, was certainly not confirmed. Upon a careful consideration of the whole situation Champlain decided to return to France with his family, and make one more effort to have the colony es- tablished on a more satisfactory footing. He left the hab- itation so nearly completed that fifteen days' more work should have sufficed. The nephew of Sieur Guillaume de Caen, the Sieur Emery de Caen, was left in charge of the company's af- fairs, and Champlain named him his representative — Vice-Gov- ernor, therefore, over a grand total of fifty-one persons, including men, women, boys and children. Whether the Recollet Fathers were counted in this number is not stated — probably not. It was the 15th of August, 1624, when they sailed from Quebec. According to Le Clercq, the Iroquois in this summer of 1624, during Champlain's absence, after taking a Recollet Brother — Father Oullain — prisoner at the trading rendezvous of the Sault St. Louis, followed their enemies, the Hurons, as far as Quebec. They were afraid to attack the fort, but ascended the St. Charles and assailed the Recollet monastery. They were beaten back with MADAME CHAMPLAIN RETURNS TO FRANCE. 167 a loss of seven or eight of their number, but two on the French side died of arrow wounds. Le Clercq tells us the story on the authority of Madame Couillard, who was in the fort at the time, but it is strange so notable an event should have been passed over by the contemporaneous commentators — Champlain and Sagard. It is therefore not impossible that ]\Iadame Couillard drew somewhat on her imagination ; it was an imaginative age. ]\Iadame Champlain sailed with her husband never to return. One would like to get an actual glimpse at the real life of this good woman during her so j urn in the colony. For twelve years previously husband and wife had met only after long inter- vals of separation, and, except while he was detained in i6t2- 161 3 in France for twenty-one months, greetings and partings followed all too closely, until the brave woman decided to share her husband's hardships, and bury herself in the forests and snows of Canada, with no female society but IMadame Hebert and her daughter and her own three waiting women. The Recollet Fathers must have been welcome guests in her salon at the habitation, yet she is not so much as mentioned by the contem- porary historian, Sagard. He goes into minute details as to the manner of life of the Huron girls and Indian women, yet refuses us a glimpse into the character and the occupation of the first of that brilliant procession of French ladies, whose beauty, charm of manner and conversation have made Quebec as famous as its scenery or its commerce. After her husband's death Madame Champlain founded an UrsuHne convent at Meaux, into which she retired, and the ''Chroniqucs dc TOnlre dcs Ur- sulines" (vie de Marie Helene Boulle) gives a story of her life, drawing a portrait as unlike that of a real woman as those of saints — depicted from memory and imagination — usually are. She had abandoned the faith of her father and adopted that of her hus- band early in her married life, soon after his return to France in 1612-1613. She was doubtless an ardent convert. She succeeded in persuading her brother to return to the ancient faith, and. when in Canada, was probably an example of piety and zeal. But her days must have been spent, in part at least, in some other occu- pation than catechising Indian children in their own tongue, which 1 68 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. she is said to have learned, and nursing sick squaws. What she did towards beautifying her rooms in the habitation, towards infus- ing a ray of refinement into the coarse habits of the trappers, soldiers, masons and carpenters of the fort; to what extent she shared her husband's labors, whether she accompanied him in his shorter journeys and helped him in his clerical work — all these are domestic details which, if narrated, would have shed some rays of the sunshine of human interest over those dreary years of the colony's history. Champlain's own nobility of char- acter is displayed in nothing more conspicuously than in his own self-effacement and in his reticence regarding his own doings ; we readily understand, therefore^ that his native refinement would revolt against any parade of his wife's virtues and good deeds. In any case, between the spleen or the modesty of the priestly historian and the chivalry of the soldier chronicler, all that we know is that Madame Champlain landed in Canada in 1620, and that she re-embarked in August, 1624. CHAPTER VIIL Dc Caen's Company and the Capture of Quebec by Kirke. J 624- J 629. On disembarking in France in 1624 Champlain at once re- ported to the King and the King's Viceroy, the Due de Mont- morency. It was a discouraging tale he had to tell of stagnation everywhere except in the company's commercial department. Louis Hebert was the only colonist who was really attempting agriculture. A few — as Couillard, Martin, Pivert, Desportes, Du- chesne — may have turned their hands in a desultory way to gar- dening, but the other notable inhabitants of the post, Marsolet Brule, Hertel, Nicollet le Tardif, the three Godefroys, were en- gaged exclusively as the company's employees in the fur trade and in dealings with the Indians. The scanty population re- mained stationary. At most two acres had been cultivated near the fort. But trade was fairly active — 15,000 to 20,000 beaver skins were exported annually. Champlain had made a laudable effort to induce the Indians to cultivate a farm at the Beauport Flats; though if he could not persuade his own countrymen to en- gage in a pursuit to which they had been accustomed, there was little prospect of his succeeding with the savages. The only fodder for the few cattle was wild hay. Industrial pursuits seemed to have no attraction for the immigrants, who found the Indian life strangely congenial and Indian wives quite to their taste. Thus a large proportion of the colony had drifted into the woods, but instead of l)eing, as they were intended to be, mere servants of the trader, they had become as arrant rovers as the Indians themselves, and had relapsed into semi-savage hunters. In another ship of the fall fleet Brother Gabriel Sagard and Father Irenee had crossed the sea to relate their talc of woe and ventilate their grievances. Brother Gabriel had been only one year in Canada, but in that period had sufficiently proved his com- I/O QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. niand of fluent narrative and ardent bigotry; there could be no doubt therefore as to his fitness to expound the pious argument that all the ills which beset the colony were due to the influence in the company's affairs of the hated Huguenots. While Champlain was complaining of the company's slack- ness in carrying out its scheme of colonization, and the Recollet Fathers were dilating on the indignity they were exposed to when the Huguenots said their prayers in the cabin, while they had to sing the praises of their God in the prow of the ship, which was certainly, as he expressed it, "giving the false God, Baal, a pre- cedence over the True God," the Viceroy's patience was still further taxed by the complaints of the contending factions in the company itself. No wonder that he was entirely willing, for a valuable consideration, to relinquish the viceroyalty over half a continent and fifty colonists, and a small fleet of trading ships, whose crews could not even drive poaching rivals from the terri- tory over which they had exclusive privileges. With the consent of the King, Montmorency transferred his dignities and troubles to his nephew, the Due de Ventadour, a much more pious but much less able man than himself. Henri de Levis, due de Ven- tadour, is said even to have taken holy orders. He retained Champlain as his representative in Canada, and the latter informs us that, anxious to enlist more energetic missionaries than the Re- collets in the service of the Church, the new viceroy arranged that six Jesuit priests should go, at his own expense, to con- vert the Indians to the True Faith. Brother Sagard, on the con- trary, claims the initiative for his Franciscan brotherhood. He at- tributes the ill success of his Order to its poverty, and to the indif- ference and hardly disguised hostility of the company. To reach the Indian's conscience you must, he had discovered, appeal to his stomach, and the Recollets had no funds wherewith to effect con- versions in that manner. They had succeeded as well as the Jesuits in Brazil and in India, for in torrid climates the na- tives could subsist on the spontaneous products of the soil ; but to reach the heart of the suffering North American In- dian, you had to relieve his temporal wants : this they could not do — far less could they erect and maintain schools and col- THE JESUITS REINFORCE THE RECOLLETS. 171 legiate institutions for the Indians and the French. The Recol- lets, as members of one of the strictest sub-orders of the Fran- ciscans, could own no real estate. The Jesuits, though pledged by most solemn vows to individual poverty, chastity and obedi- ence, could, as an order, hold real estate and collect rents for the maintenance of their schools and colleges — a provision which their experience in Canada proved to be wise, and of which they took liberal advantage. The Jesuit had made his advent into New France under the patronage of Madame de Guercheville fifteen years previously, and had earned the credit in Acadia of apostolic zeal and devotion. But if the Recollet solicited the aid of this powerful ally, it was not without some misgiving. Sagard's account of the transaction has delicious touches of sincerity to set off his po- litic explanation. "^lany of our friends," he says, "dis- suaded us from choosing the Jesuit Fathers as our allies, assur- ing us that in the long run they would manage to expel us from our home, and drive us from the country." But there was really nothing in the demeanor of the good Fathers, as far as the charit- able annalist could observe, to warrant such an insinuation. Even if one or two among them harbored such a thought, it would be unfair, he says, to attribute it to all. ''For the sinister scheme of one or two priests no more stamps the whole Order with the taint of unworthy motives than a single swallow makes a spring." Evidently there were one or two among the members of the Society of Jesus who did justify the foreboding of the Recollet friars; for one day Sagard himself heard from an official source that, at a meeting of the Council, it had been decided to cut off the "allowance" for the support of two of the Recollets, thus reducing their number, as without the allowance which the company had always made, the mission could not be sustained on its existing footing. Sagard admits that this action, which, how- ever, he succeeded in getting reversed, did not augur well for the future. To add to their uneasiness, the innocent Recollets were not advised of the time of the final meeting of the Jesuit Fathers with the Council and with the board of management of the com- pany, nor of the day of their departure for Dieppe. At length six 172 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Jesuits sailed, five only of whom, three priests and two brothers, are mentioned by name in Champlain's narrative. With them embarked Father Joseph de la Roche Daillon, the only Recollet who had reached the port. Well might Sagard look with distrust to the future, despite his reflection that ''little faults will creep into the conduct of the best regulated company and solecisms be committed in the most poHte society." In their haste to take the first ship the Jesuits arrived in Que- bec in the spring of 1625, unannounced, and without letters from the King. De Caen's nephew, the Sieur Emery, who had been left in charge of the company's affairs, and whom Champlain had made his deputy, did not offer them hospitality at the habitation, though Champlain says they crossed with De Caen himself, and were courteously treated by him. Neither the authorities of the fort nor the habitants themselves seem to have bidden them a hearty welcome. As the old company building had been pulled down, and the new one was incomplete, accommodation was scanty, and the cordiality of the Huguenot traders was scantier still. The Jesuit Fathers were therefore thrown on the tender mercies of their Recollet brethren. That fellow priests, animated by the same spirit and actuated by the same aims, should dwell together would seem a most congenial arrangement, and one wonders, therefore, at the indignation expressed over the action of the company's agent, the immense credit taken to themselves by the monks for a simple act of hospitality and the effusive manner in which it is acknowledged by the Jesuit writers. Let it suffice here to record the fact that, at the monastery of the Recollets on the Little River, the Jesuit missionaries received shelter, and that there they re- mained for two years or more, till their own quarters on their seignory of Notre Dame des Anges were ready for occupation. For a century and a half the Jesuits were one of the most powerful ecclesiastical organizations in New France, exhibiting there most conspicuously that combination of religious ardor and political astuteness which has been the source both of their strength and of their weakness the world over, one, however, which is quite consistent with the principles of the Church of which they have been the most perfectly organized militia. CHAM plain's new COMMISSION. The Church, when its claim to be the voice of God and the arbiter of all things, human and divine, is admitted, neces- sarily takes cognizance of the concerns of a man's private life, and of the still more important concentration of human interests and duties in State afifairs. The interference of the Jesuit Order in politics can, therefore, be fully justified on theological grounds, however reprehensible it may have been accounted by statesmen of ever}' creed and country. We shall find that the members of this ubiquitous and at times omnipotent order, though personally unassuming, were almost as influential in the counsels of the colony as the Governor or the Intendant. Whatever traits they elsewhere exhibited, in Canada they displayed religious fanaticism mellowed by true devotion, and kept in check by world- ly wisdom ; self-abnegation rising to the height of martyrdom, associated with corporate selfishness in the business management of their vast estate ; devoted loyalty to the Church, associated, if their opponents are to be credited, with actual treason to the State ; profound learning and strict orthodoxy. Champlain's commission as lieutenant of the Duke de Venta- dour was ample enough. Its terms implied a real determination to colonize and introduce the machinery of civilization, for it em- powered the Governor to appoint officers of justice and make pro- vision for maintaining and enforcing law and order. It com- missioned him to extend exploration westward with a view of opening up communication with China and the East Indies, and in the meantime to do his best to discover mines of gold, silver and copper and, to extract and refine the said metals from their ores ; above all to oppose all traffic with the Indians by either Frenchmen or other Europeans north and south of Gaspe, from the 48th to the 52d degree of latitude. Evidently Champlain's free trade argument had had no effect. De Caen made a trip to Canada in 1625. Complaint was made to his Majesty's Council that he had used his influence to induce Catholics to engage in religious rites according to Huguenot prac- tice, an impeachment which he denied. There were other dissen- sions in the Council. Negotiations were opened looking to the transfer of the whole business to de Caen on his guaranteeing thir- 174 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ty-six per cent on the capital of 60,000 livres. Evidently the fur trade was profitable. The Government intervened, insisting on his providing within three days bondsmen to guarantee the fulfillment of his contract, also that he appoint a good Catholic, whose alle- giance would be beyond suspicion, and satisfactory to the pious Duke, as Admiral of his fleet. A certain capitain de la Ralde was found, sound in the faith and a trusty sailor, and with him Cham- plain set sail in the good ship "Catherine" on April 24, 1626, for the habitation, accompanied by Father Joseph le Caron, his own brother-in-law, BouUe, and Mons. Destouches, the former with a commission as Champlain's lieutenant, the latter as his ensign. Another ship, the "Alouette," of eighty tons burden, was chartered for 3>500 livres by the Society of Jesus to carry out three more Jesuit priests, the Fathers Noiret, Anne de Noue and Brother Jean Gaufestre, together with twenty workmen, to be employed in the erection of the Jesuit mission, which Father Lalemant, with the aid of carpenters borrowed from the habita- tion, had already commenced to build on the north bank of the St. Charles, near the spot where Cartier wintered. They had a tempestuous passage, and it was the 5th of July before they anchored under the cliff. For a time hereafter we shall have in addition to Cham- plain, two ecclesiastical chroniclers to draw from. The re- ligious news and gossip of Father Sagard is supplemented by the first of the more humanly interesting records of the Jesuit Fathers, who looked at life in its manifold phases from a much more practical point of view than the Franciscan Friars. Isolated in their monastery, the latter referred ever to their fellow coun- trymen at the fort as ''Les Fran^ais." Their vows seem to sever the very ties of nationality, as well as to destroy their interest in the common doings of common men. Not so, or at least not to the same extent, was it with the Jesuits, for Father Lalemant says, in a letter to his brother, that trade, to wit, the fur trade, in Canada at that time was the pivot on which even mission work must revolve; he therefore gives his brother some account of the business transactions of the fur company in that year of grace, 1625. He tells how formerly, before IDLENESS IN THE COLONY. the second association obtained exclusive trade privileges, there used to assemble in Tadousac from fifteen to twenty ships to trade with the Indians. Now there arrived in June at most two, and sometimes only one. He enumerates all the articles brought for traffic with the Indians. They consist of the usual motley assortment of merchandise, including even Indian night- caps. In exchange the traders took back all the various furs which are still the products of the roving Indian's labors. He puts the annual shipment of beaver skins at from 15,000 to 20,- 000, and the price in France at one pistole per skin. But the company's expenses, he tells us, were heavy. Beside the outlay in ships and provisions, there were some 40 men employed the year round in Quebec and Tadousac, and crews of at least 150 on the two ships owned by the company which were engaged in the fur trade. The wages varied from 100 ecus to 106 livres, with board.* The two years of Champlain's absence had been uneventful. He tells us nothing of ^vhat happened at the post ; in truth there was nothing to tell. Before departing two years previously, he had gathered well-nigh enough stone, lime and lumber to rebuild the habitation and complete the fort ; and they were almost as he had left them. He might well complain of the indolence of all hands. The excuse given — for of course there was an excuse — was that half the time of the 55 inhabitants had been spent in bringing the fodder for the animals from the natural meadow at Cap Tourmente on their tiny craft to Quebec. To remedy this he determined to erect farm buildings at the Cape itself, and there feed the cattle for the sustenance of the fort. He little dreamed how futile his labor would be. Father Joseph de la Roche Dallion, one of the Recollets, and Father Brebeuf, a Jesuit, started in the summer of 1625. ac- cording to Sagard, for the Huron country, but their licarts failed them, and they returned, after hearing of the drowning of good ♦ The grand ,'cu was worth six francs, but the fciit ,'cu, for which the word /cu stands, was worth three francs. The livre varied from 20 sous, at Tours, to 25 sous in value, at Paris. The wages therefore varied from $60 to 52 r of our Currency. 176 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Father Nicolas in the Ottawa, on his way back from the Georg- ian Bay. That can hardly have been the motive, for Father Brebeuf's subsequent glorious career and martyrdom make it im- possible to suspect him of timidity. Probably the Hurons had filled their canoes with merchandise, and declined to overload them with the two missionaries. However that may have been, the next summer the Jesuit Father accompanied them to their homes, and became the first of the gallant band who exposed them- selves to every hardship, even to martyrdom, in the propagation of the True Faith among the Hurons. But the most important event of the whole season, if we may judge by the detail with which it is narrated, was the struggle at Quebec for the possession of a little Indian boy, who was a favorite of Father Nicolas, and had accompanied him on his last fatal journey. Though the little urchin was at the Recollet monastery, the Jesuits were bidding for him, and Emery de Caen himself wished to take him to France under his patronage, as a proof that the company was doing something towards fulfilling its engagements in the way of civilizing the Indian. So between the three claimants for the guardianship of the boy, the father, with true Indian shrewdness, was making a threefold profit out of his offspring. Although Father Paul, who was ready to sail for France, took charge of him on the voyage, the Jesuits ulti- mately managed to win the prize through the intercession of their patron the Duke de Ventadour. They made the most of the ac- quisition, for the little fellow, after such instruction in the faith as could be given by a lay teacher, the only person connected with the Jesuits in France who had any acquaintance with the boy's language — Sagard speaks of it as rather superficial — was bap- tized with much ceremony in the Cathedral of Rouen, under the name of Louis de Sainte Foy. The Duke de Longueville and Madame de Villars stood as godparents, and the crowd filled the pile to see the son of a king, and the heir apparent to a vast do- main, as the sailors reported him to be, received into Holy Church. It was a fitting counterblast to the Protestant baptism of Poca- hontas and her marriage to John Rolfe. While such petty intrigues were occupying the minds of the RIVAL RELIGIONISTS. more intelligent inhabitants of the post, the summer passed. No land was cleared ; no fields plowed ; no provision made for self- support by any but the priests. What work the artisans did on the fort was so ill done that it tumbled down even before Kirke came to blow it to pieces four years later. Nevertheless men were found to help the Jesuits to build their house on the St. Charles. As to the company, it cared not a whit for aught but its profits in the trade in peltries. Champlain before the season of 1626 had passed, carried out his plan of establishing a farm, under the Sieur Foucher, at Cap Tourmente, where cattle were to be housed and fattened on the native grass for the support of the fort. He enlarged the fort of St. Louis in the hope that ere long the King would send some soldiers to garrison it. He built two demi-bastions towards the river, on which he mounted two guns, and, being unable to blast the solid rock, he protected the exposed flank of the fort with wooden palisades and fascines. Life in the mean- time was stimulated by religious dissension. Father Noue came up from Tadousac with an awful story of how the crew of Emery's ship, after their commander had left, sang, despite his orders, the hymns of the heretic Clement Marot so loudly that even the, savages heard the impious sound upon the shore. Next month the good father accompanied Father Brebeuf to the land of the Hurons, where he would not be annoyed by any such profanity. But the very day the missionaries started on their long canoe jour- ney, further complaint reached Champlain from Tadousac of the disobedience of de Caen's Huguenot crew, who were charged now with assembling on their ships for public prayers. Aggravated as were their offences, Champlain did not dare to be too severe, for shortly afterwards he received a message from de la Ralde, the Admiral of the company's fleet, that pirates were trespassing on the company's trade in the lower St. Lawrence, and ordering him to despatch Emery in the Jesuit ship, the "Alouette," to his assistance. More serious news still, had he only been able to appreciate its significance, reached him, of the murder of five Dutch traders by a bancl of Mohawks, tliou.G^h the Dutch were the allies and friends of the Iroquois. So Emery de Caen de- 178 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. parted on August 25th, leaving the colony rather short of sup- plies, to commence its hibernation. With de Caen went Pont- grave ; and it must have been with no little apprehension and re- gret that Champlain, parted already from his wife, and now los- ing his old comrade, saw the vessels of de Caen set sail. His only relief was in work. He had to establish in their new building the little farming colony of six men, one woman and a little girl, who were to take charge of the cattle at Cap Tourmente, and to get out lumber enough to keep the savages and carpenters occupied during the winter. Death meantime was busy. It carried off one of the Jesuit staff of workmen, and a little Indian girl, whom, however, Lalemant had the satisfaction of baptizing. If we are to credit Le Clercq, the Jesuits were disheartened this year by the fruitlessness of their labor among the Indians and the hopeless aspect of colonial affairs — so much so that, but for the inspiration infused into them by the Recollet monks, they would have aban- doned the mission. Their own chronicles do not express any such pusillanimous intention ; still priests, however saintly their char- acter, are but men, and, in the confidences of the refectory at the monasteries on the St. Charles, Jesuit and Recollet, despite their suspicion of one another, must have chatted many a time over the hopelessness of the task they had entered upon, which, to the high- ly educated priests would naturally be more repulsive than to the sandaled monks. Besides the nameless workman and the Indian girl, death carried off Hebert, a man worthy of being held in re- membrance as the first habitant in Canada who turned his hand industriously to agriculture, and raised enough from the soil to support his family. He was buried in the cemetery of the Recollet monastery, but his body was transferred more than half a century afterwards, in the presence of his daughter, Madame Couillard, to the new church of the Recollet Friars, where the English Cathedral now stands. Were his final rest- ing place known, a monument might very suitably be erected to commemorate the virtues of the first farmer in the St. Lawrence valley. The year 1627 was notable in the annals of the province for RUMORS OF WAR. 179 the breaking out of war with the Iroquois. The St. Law- rence Indians, relying on assistance from the Dutch, but in direct opposition to Champlain's advice and the protests of his brother- in-law, Boulle, whom he sent to the council at Three Rivers, broke the peace, and had a temporary success. At Champlain's personal solicitation, and that of Emery de Caen, who reached Quebec on the 9th of June, and proceeded up the river at once with Cham- plain to the rendezvous at Three Rivers, the victors consented not to torture and kill their three prisoners. The French had, never- theless, to bear the odium of the acts of their savage allies, and to pay the penalty of their reckless bravado by many a year of anxiety and the sacrifice of many an innocent life. It was with great pleasure that Champlain on his return to Quebec found Pontgrave at the habitation. The weather-beaten old sailor had come to Gaspe on a vessel of Honfleur, and thence, with his little grandson, had ascended the river in an open boat, suffering on the way agonies from the gout, but determined to obey de Caen's instructions, which were to hasten to the post as manager of the company's business affairs. He must have brought some forewarning of the quarrel brewing between England and France, which broke out in July of that year through the wanton and unprovoked attack on Rochelle by the English under Bucking- ham ; for we find that, when the Jesuit ship failed to arrive, with provisions for the mission and a crew of workmen, apprehension of its capture by the English was so strong, and dread of the future so rife, that Father Lalemant determined to ship all hands back to France, except Fathers Masse and de Noue, a brother and five workmen. As the Jesuits were not popular, they found it diffi- cult to secure passages. Neither de Caen nor even the Catholic cap- tain, de la Raldc, showed any desire to accommodate them. P^ather Noirot had quarrelled witii both at Tadousac, and they had re- venged themselves by interfering with the shipment of provisions from the lower port to the Jesuit establishment at Quebec. The tact and good humor of Father Lalemant seems, however, to have overcome all opposition, for in the end they were .q-ivcn passac^e on one of the Company's ships. With the Fathers who remained the company's store keeper at the habitation was not averse to sharing l80 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. his scanty stock, for he knew he would get in return more than he gave. This he undoubtedly succeeded in doing, for he exchanged ten kegs of biscuit for beaver skins, at the rate of seven skins per keg. The Jesuits had bought the skins at different times at one ecu apiece. In the long run, however, the beaver skins did not profit the company, as they ultimately fell into the hands of David Kirke. With gloomy forebodings, the settlement was thus compelled to face another dreary winter, short of provisions, and in peril of being attacked the following spring by an English fleet, instead of being cheered by the arrival of their countrymen, and by stores of good things from the mother country. More- over, the fear entertained by the Governor and his subjects of savage foes near home must have been even keener than his dread of foes from abroad who could at least be depended on to regard the usages of civilized warfare. The last ship had hardly left Que- bec before disquieting rumors reached the habitation of the Iro- quois being on the warpath in dangerous numbers. At this season the Algonquin Indians of the St. Lawrence gathered from far and near to catch and smoke eels near Quebec ; and Champlain had only too much reason to dread the spirit of unrest which their recent campaign had excited, not to speak of the resentment they doubtless felt at his unwillingness to join them in their aggression on the Iroquois confederacy. It may have been this feeling of dis- content, coupled with a previous grudge, which instigated the mur- der of two Frenchmen whom Champlain had sent up with cattle from Cap Tourmente. One of them was Henri, a servant of the widow Hebert; the other a man called Dumoulin. The two un- fortunates reached the Beauport Flats late in the afternoon, to find the tide too high to permit of their crossing. They tried to enter the hunting cabin of Mons. Giffard, afterward the first Seigneur of Beauport. Finding it locked, they lay down on their blankets and slept the sleep of death, for an Indian, mistaking one of them for Hebert's baker, against whom he had a grudge, tomahawked them both during the night. The murder was discovered the next day, and a sum- mons was sent to the monastery of the Recollets and to the Jes- DANGEROUS TEMPER OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. l8l uit house to attend a special meeting of council for devising meas- ures of defence and protection against an Indian rising. The situation was certainly critical. Champlain was short of arms, shorter still of ammunition, and already on reduced rations. He suspected that war had broken out with England. The English colonies on the seaboard, which might be expected to co-operate with their parent State, were showing signs of growth and ener- gy, and were already vastly more populous than his. He knew how rapidly news spread, and how shrewdly the calculating savage takes advantage either of enemy or friend in moments of diffi- culty. The miserable ^^lontagnais might therefore know more, through New England emissaries, than he did himself of what was passing in the world. His quondam Indian allies might, in fact, be leagued with the enemies of France. What course should he take? Should he temporize, or take the risk of a stern stand against the treacherous savages? He wisely adopted the latter course. He called on the chiefs of the Montagnais to de- liver up the murderer or murderers. At first they laid the crime to the charge of Iroquois marauders, and disclaimed all re- sponsibility. Refusing indignantly to accept such an explanation, Champlain arrested an Indian who had once threatened the life of a Frenchman. Subsequently he seems to have arrested an- other suspect. The third day a deputation left three children with him as hostages, but he warned them that henceforth his men would go armed, and when in the woods shoot down every Indian who did not satisfactorily answer the challenge. Fortunately the snow lay light that winter, and as moose hunt- ing was poor, the pinch of hunger began to be felt more acutely by the red man than even by the white. To propitiate Cham- plain a band of Indians crossed the river and begged for food, offering in return three young girls, to be sent, if he wished, to France. When the ships left there were altogether fifty- five souls in Champlain's government — men, women and chil- dren — of whom eighteen were carpenters and builders. Of this little band two had been murdered, but Champlain had accepted as hostages three boys ; and now three girls of hearty appetite were added. Champlain took Pontgrave, who was in charge of l82 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the company's affairs and of its stores, into his counsel. They decided that it would be prudent to give the Indians what they could spare of their only abundant article of diet, peas, and to accept in return — their promises. Shortly after- wards the father of one of the girls fell ill, and was baptized, but baptism not restoring him to health, he insisted on being removed from the monastery to his old cabin and to his own people, where, with dancing and noisy incantations, the medicine men hastened his death. It was not an edifying or an encouraging result of the holy fathers' missionary labors, but they had al- ready learned, and regretfully acknowledged, when they called in the aid of the wealthy Jesuit, that conviction was best created in the Indian's mind by ministering to his stomach. The year 1628 was one of unbroken gloom. During the winter, by night and by day, apprehension of Indian rising haunted the feeble colony. Spring brought no relief. Expe- dition after expedition of the Montagnais left to fight the Iro- quois, but Champlain would not join them. May came and went; June followed; but no ships were even reported as coming to their relief. Their provisions were reduced to some spoiled bis- cuits and a small stock of peas and beans. Not only were they verging on famine, but they had not even a schooner in which to visit the Gulf and seek provisions and relief from the sailors of the season's fleet, at this time fishing below Gaspe. De la Ralde had neglected to send back their schooner with supplies in the pre- vious fall. Pontgrave could have taken command of it, but among the fifty-five who were actually at the fort of Quebec there were priests and carpenters and clerks, but no sailors. Nevertheless, the most indolent lent a hand in building a boat in which to send a crew for the larger craft at Tadousac. With the crew were to have been shipped as passengers as many of the inhabitants as were merely bread eaters. To aggravate their anxiety and suffering, superstition added imaginary terrors. The towers of the fort, badly built during Champlain's absence, fell on Sunday, July 9, but the fears of the people, stimulated by the friars, saw a supernatural portent in the accident. *'For," as Brother Sagard says, ''what THE ENEMY AT HAND. 183 reason could we assign for their falling when the weather was so perfectly calm, had not God, by their collapse, intended to foretell a disaster ? Only three years had elapsed since they were built. They did not therefore crumble through age, but the in- iquity of people whom God wills to chastise by the descent of the English was the cause of the catastrophe." While the boat was building Champlain and Pontgrave were using every argument to induce Couillard, Hebert's son-in-law, the only active man in the community, first to caulk and then to sail it. He refused, but, as things turned out, it made little dif- ference, for on the very day the towers fell a messenger came up by land from Cap Tourmente, to say that an Indian lad had reached the farm with the news of the arrival at Tadousac of a fleet of ships under the command of a certain Captain IMichel of Dieppe, a renegade Frenchman. Champlain tried to persuade himself that, though the fleet was too large to be the company's, de Caen's fleet might have been joined by fishermen, and that per- haps the strange captain was of the number. The native who brought the tidings to the farm arrived in his canoe shortly after- wards, and on closer interrogation, created grave suspicion in Champlain's mind that the fleet was an English one. As soon as this disquieting news reached the habitation, Father Joseph left the monastery at once with two Indians to look after his little flock at Cap Tourmente, where they had already built a little chapel; but they had not compassed half the journey before they were met by two canoes carrying the Sieur Fouchcr from that place, more frightened than hurt. He was fleeing from the English, with a woman and child. Champlain meanwhile had taken measures to secure information. There was a Greek at the habitation willing to assume the disguise of an Indian and to descend the river as a spy. Before reaching the end of the island he also met the fugi- tives. There was therefore no longer any doubt of the enemy's being at hand. In fact, a schooner with twenty men, piloted by a Frenchman, had been dispatched from Kirke's fleet at Tadousac to destroy the farm building and kill the stock at Cap Tourmente. They had done it most effectually, burning the buildings, and killing the whole herd of forty cattle. Kirkc wisely judged that, 184 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. by cutting off Champlain's total supply of meat, he was com- pelling him to capitulate sooner or later. At the same time he replenished his own commissary. Kirke's lieutenant expected to surprise the farm, for his men landed at daylight, and, when dis- covered, pretended they were friends. Foucher was already on the alert. No opposition, however, was made by the farm hands, and no casualties occurred, Sieur Foucher himself managing to escape with no more serious injury than a few bruises. Champlain at once set himself to strengthen the defenses of the habitation and the fort, and the RecoUet friars began to deliberate how best they could escape capture and continue their mission. The surest means seemed to be to accompany the Huron hunters to their distant lodges on the shores of the Georg- ian Bay, whither Kirke and his men could certainly not follow. So Father Germain and a Brother started on the journey, but meet- ing a Jesuit Father, Joseph de la Noue, who was returning to Que- bec just as they received news of the departure of Kirke and his English pirates, as they branded them, from Tadousac, they decided to let the Hurons proceed alone, and to return to their monastery, a course which was fruitful of casuistical explanation by the faithful, and of irreverent gossip among the ungodly of Quebec. On the afternoon of the day following the attack on Cap Tourmente, a canoe was paddled up the St. Charles with such hesitation that the lookout on the fort supposed it to be manned by enemies ignorant of the locality, and Champlain accordingly sent some arquebusiers through the woods to intercept them. The supposition was wrong, for it contained three of the prisoners taken by Kirke's men at the farm, with some Basque sailors, whom Kirke's fleet had captured in the river. They were the bearers of a demand for the surrender of the place. The demand and Cham- plain's reply are models of courteous phraseology. Utterly incap- able of resistance as he was, it was courageous on Champlain's part to send so peremptory a refusal. He did so because he expect- ed day by day assistance from France, feeling sure that the powerful and determined minister who ruled the King of France, the Queen mother and the nation, would not leave him helpless in A BATTLE IN THE GULF. i8s such an hour of peril. It was assurance, not mere conjecture, on Kirke's part that a reheving force was at hand which determined him to sail back in order to meet the approaching enemy, rather than forward to attack a weak post, defended by a handful of helpless and disheartened traders. That such was the con- dition of the post he had doubtless learned, both from the Indians, who at the time were irritated against Champlain, and from the company's competitors in the lower river, who were always ready to deal a blow at the monopoly. He also knew that de Roquemont was at Gaspe and would follow him up the river, and that, if he proceeded, he would be hemmed in between the fort of Quebec, which might offer some resistance, and the French ships. Like a brave sailor, therefore, he elected to attack the approaching fleet, which consisted of the same number of ships as he himself commanded. If he defeated de Roque- mont, Champlain would be at his mercy. If defeated, he would stand a better chance of retreat in the open Gulf than in a narrow, dangerous river, with the navigation of which he was imperfectly acquainted. The event justified his decision. De Roquemont, learning from the Indians at Gaspe that an English fleet was at Tadousac, despatched a shallop with ten men under Desdames, the clerk of the new company. They were instructed to elude the English, if possible, ascertain their strength and position, land a signal party at the Island of St. Bernard, so as to communi- cate with his fleet when it hove in sight, and push forward to warn Champlain of his approach. De Roquemont had hardly commenced to cVeep up the river before the English were seen to be bearing down upon him. His first duty was to save his cargo and relieve the fam- ishing post at Quebec. He therefore attempted to escape, but Kirke's ships were superior to his in speed. A battle ensued which lasted fifteen hours, in which 1,200 shots were fired and two Frenchmen were killed. The battle only ceased witli exhaustion of the Frenchman's ammunition. His ships all fell a prey to the Englisli commander, who, however, accorded honorable terms of capitulation. There were on De Roquemont's sliips two Jesuit priests and two Recollct Friars to recruit the con- i86 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. siderable body of clergy already in the colony, and a number of workmen with their wives and children, who were being sent oi;t by the company of the One Hundred Associates, which had in this inauspicious spring replaced de Caen's commercial part- nership. When the fight was impending, their fellow passengers-, knowing the dislike which Kirke's crew bore to the members of the ecclesiastical profession, obliged the four priests to adopt a lay costume. But their apprehensions were groundless. Kirke, whatever else he was, was a gentleman. The crews and pas- sengers of low estate were sent in two of the ships to France. The captain, the Jesuits, and men of means were carried to England, where they were retained until the stipulated ransoms were paid. The RecoUet Friars, and certain poor gentle folk of no prospective pecuniary value, were permitted to return to France in one of the fishing sloops, which were subsequently found at St. Pierre, ready to sail with their cargoes of dry cod. With so much ransom to be collected, with the cargoes of De Requemont's four ships to be disposed of, and with the additional prizes taken at St. Pierre to be safely ferried across the ocean, Kirke prudently de- cided to leave Champlain and his miserable compatriots free to eat up the rest of their peas, and be starved into submission on his return in the following spring. In course of time the shallop with Desdames and the eleven men reached Quebec. He told of the abolition of the old com- pany and the creation of a new. But he was the bearer of no official communications, from either de Roquemont or the home authorities. Father Lalemant, however, wrote Champlain, prom- ising to see him soon, if the English, who were barring the way, would permit. But Desdames' arrival simply served to increase the misery of the little settlement — not only by the evil news he brought — ^but because he and his people added so many more mouths to consume the scanty rations, now reduced to seven ounces of peas per day per man. The munitions of war were also not on a scale which permitted Champlain to challenge Kirke, con- sisting, as they did, of only fifty pounds of powder and a few matchlocks. As soon as the canoes had descended the river with Kirke's THE COLONY IN EXTREMITIES. 187 envoy, a deputation was sent to survey the damage done at Cap Tourmente. The marauders had killed all the cattle but one cow, which had made its escape, but the carcases of several others, which had not been burnt or carried away by Kirke's men, were found. All the buildings were demolished, and the sacred ves- sels of the little chapel had either been stolen or destroyed. Cham- plain would have been wiser had he, during the previous two years, compelled his idle crew of trappers and traders to clear a tract of land on the height near Quebec for the pasturage of his cattle, instead of leaving so valuable a depot immediately in the track of an enemy ascending the river. His experience of the far reaching arm of the English marauders under Argall of Vir- ginia should have warned him of the fate which might at any moment overtake his defenseless settlement at Cap Tourmente. The summer and autumn wore away without news. No ships came from France with the much needed relief, and neither did the dreaded English fleet heave in sight. Champlain pathetically says, "While we were impatiently awaiting tidings of the battle we were doling out our small resources of peas. Most of our men were showing signs of increased debility. Even our stock of salt was running short. To reduce the peas to meal and thus make them more palatable and nutritious, I first thought of extemporizing a wooden mortar, but finally decided to try and make a hand-mill. Our blacksmith found a spindle and mill stones, and the carpenter undertook to mount them. Thus ne- cessity compelled us to do what for twenty years had seemed impossible. Ever>'one brought his allowance of peas, and it was returned to him as flour. When the eel season arrived, the fish relieved our wants. The Indians are expert fishermen, but were only willing to give us a few, and for these they made us pay right dearly. The men bartered even their clothes for eels, and the store secured 1,200 of the slimy creatures in exchange for fresh beaver skins, the price demanded being one skin for ten eels. Great hopes had been entertained of the grain products of Hebert's farm, but when the harvest was garnered, all that could be spared was nine and a half ounces a week of barley, peas and Indian meal— a scanty allowance for so many people." 1 88 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Chomina, a friendly Indian, brought them in some venison when the winter was far advanced and the snow lay deep. Cham- plain sent some of his own men hunting. They were successful, but the greedy fellows ate so much of the deer they killed that not more than twenty pounds reached the habitation. To keep up the spirits of the men, Champlain set about build- ing a flour mill to be run by waterpower, though there was nothing to grind. Then an old boat was repaired, to be used in the last extremity in seeking relief from their misery, and the never- ending task of cutting firewood then, as now, occupied a large share of the time of the people. While thus distracting the thoughts of his men from the perilous situation, he himself was cogitating endless schemes for saving them from the starvation which seemed imminent, unless either their countrymen or the enemy came to their rescue. If they could sustain life until autumn, he believed they could garner enough food to keep them during another winter. One plan which he seems to have seriously contemplated for replenishing their empty storehouse was, under the guidance of the Montagnais Indians, to attack a Mohawk village and carry off the stock of maize which he knew to be stored in plenty in their lodges. An- other scheme was to seek the friendship and the assistance of the Abenakis, who were represented as being rich in stores of grain and anxious for his alHance and aid against the Iroquois. To reconnoitre the Iroquois country he sent off a trustworthy man on May i6th. But, as in the wider world, so in this group of unfortunate exiles, with famine staring them in the face, and cut off from all knowledge of what was befalling their countrymen and their kinsmen, misery acted as an excuse for marrying and giving in marriage, rather than as a deterrent, for on the very day Cham- plain's emissary and spy left for the Iroquois country, the widow Hebert consoled herself for the loss of her distinguished and enterprising first husband by marrying Guillaume Hubou with more than customary ceremonial. Only under the Hebert roof was there still enough to eat, and the marriage feast, however simple, must to the hungry crowd have been a sumptuous ban- DESPERATE MEASURES. 189 quet, for the public stock of peas was running so short that it would be exhausted by the end of the month. Another event marked the i6th of May. While one canoe went up the river towards the Iroquois country, another was despatched down the river to watch for friends and warn the Governor of the approach of foes. The emissaries were supplied with a roundrobin to all illicit traders, promising them, not only exemption from punishment, but better pay in peltries for their provisions than the Indians would give, if they would but treat with the company. Not content with one scouting party, he sent the company's chief clerk, Desmoulins, in the shallop with six sailors on the following day to scour the river for assistance, and with orders not to give up the search until July 10, which was the latest date when a trader might be expected to enter the Gulf. Desmoulins warned him that if the sailors under his command reached a homeward bound ship, his authority would be pow- erless to restrain them. Nevertheless they were despatched, for, happen what might, their departure left so many less to feed, and perhaps they might find some salt at Gaspe or on the Isle de Bonaventure, with which to cure the cod they might by good fortune catch. Not until three days after he had despatched Desmoulins did he learn from twenty Indians, coming from be- low on their way to fight the Iroquois, of the defeat of de Roque- mont ten months before, and of the fate of his crew and pas- sengers. The knowledge of the disaster, he saw at once, must lower the prestige of the French in the eyes of the Indians, and make their situation still more critical. To add to his embarrassment, he still held as prisoners the Indians suspected of killing the two Frenchmen on the Beau- port Flats, eighteen months previously. He had no positive evi- dence of their guilt, and he had postponed the trial, not caring to risk the consequences of a decision until the fleet with the com- pany's agent should arrive. r)nc season had passed, and no ship had sailed into the harbor. Now another was well advanced, and still the company's ship did not arrive. Old Chomina pleaded for the suspected prisoners, and promised to give bail for their ap- pearance when the trial came. Champlain wisely agreed to 190 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. liberate the unfortunate suspects, who were dying of want and confinement, and who were so feeble that the friends of one of 'them had to carry him out of his prison house. In doing so, how- ever, he made it a condition that they should be retained by the Recollet Friars as hostages. The Abenaki Indians were persuaded to barter their Indian com for goods, and to provide eight canoes to convey a party to be sent to negotiate with them. Taught by experience, Champlain stipulated that, when the fishing season should come round, the Indians would not demand an unreasonable price for their eels. Matters were becoming desperate. The schooner that had been re- paired during the winter was ready for sea. Pine trees had been tapped for tar, and seals killed on Cap Tourmente had yielded oil. The vessel was therefore calked, and poor old, gouty Pontgrave was half forced and half persuaded to take com- mand and carry thirty of the hungry colonists to France. Two years before he had suffered agony in ascending the river from Gaspe in an open boat, and the two years of privation and anxiety which followed had not encouraged him to volunteer to command a crazy craft and a helpless crew on a still more trying expedition. He consented, nevertheless, and decided to leave his grandson, Du Marais, in his place, and to carry home a cargo of 1,000 beaver skins. He insisted, however, that before sailing his commission from de Caen should be read publicly after mass, believing that such publicity would give him a stronger claim on his employers for arrears of salary. To this Champlain consented, but he at the same time read his own commission from the King and the Viceroy, which clearly established his supreme authority in the colony. Pontgrave was deeply ofifended. On further discussion, it transpired that Pontgrave was unwilling to risk a trans-Atlan- tic voyage in the extemporized vessel, and had determined, if he sailed, to return to Quebec unless he could find in the Gulf a safer craft to which to transfer crew and cargo. To this Champlain was vehemently opposed, his supreme motive being to reduce the num- ber of mouths. Pontgrave having in the end positively declined to sail, Champlain commissioned his brother-in-law, Boulle, to com- mand the schooner. A STARVING SETTLEMENT. 191 All who could be spared went into the woods to dig roots, wherewith to provision the ship. Then Champlain assembled those who were to sail with Boulle. He desired to know how many would stop at Gaspe and repair the Jesuits' build- ing which had been burned by Kirke, remaining there with the Indians to fish for sustenance ; and how many would risk the danger of the trans-Atlantic voyage. Most of them elected to be landed at Gaspe. On the 26th of June they started, Boulle, Desdames, the company's head clerk, and the fugitives, on their dangerous voyage, in a smaller and worse equipped ship than any of Columbus' caravels. Sagard gives the tonnage of "Le Coquin" at twelve to fourteen — Champlain, in his deposition before Sir H. Martin, at six or seven tons. Fortunately they were captured by Kirke before a worse fate befell them. More than one-third of the population had left with Boulle's crew. Those that remained applied themselves to fighting the famine. Some planted turnips and other roots, and hoped that they might live to dig them up. Others, to relieve their immedi- ate necessity, gathered wild fruits and roots. Others went fish- ing, but with scant success, as they lacked both hooks and lines. Hunt they dare not, as the stock of powder was reduced to thirty or forty pounds, and, damaged as it was by damp, had to be re- served for defence. Sagard says that the root from which they derived most nourishment was that of the Solomon seal, and that it had the additional virtue of being a not unpalatable food when dried, ground and baked into bread. We are asked to believe, moreover, that it served as a charm against piles when carried as a scapular on the breast. To vary the diet they made a soup of the roots, to which was added barley, bran, and acorns, the latter being previouslv boiled with ashes to extract the bitterness. Dried fish was a luxurv, when added to the nauseous pottage, but there was no salt to flavor it. As a warning of the approach of the Englisli. another tower of the fort fell, as on the previous year. To dispel the super- stitious fears of the garrison, Champlain proceeded at once to rebuild it. The annual coming of the Hurons was awaited with mixed 192 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. feelings of pleasure and anxiety. Some twenty of the French were likely to return with them, but there was nothing for them to eat. On the other hand, the Hurons might have a supply of grain for barter. To ascertain this Champlain entrusted Cho- mina, his faithful Montagnais, with cutlery and other merchan- dise, and sent him to intercept the approaching canoes, and barter his goods for what food he could induce them to part with. In vain was the request made, for when on July 17 the Hurons and Frenchmen arrived, the savages declared that they had hardly food enough for their own wants. Father Brebeuf was of the party, and though he offered tempting prices, only three small sacks of Indian meal could be obtained. Ouagabimat Chomina's brother, who afterwards became a convert, was sent in the other direction to the Etchemins and even to the English settlement to beg for food; but the rivers were low, and he and his French comrades speedily re- turned. A gleam of pleasurable anticipation was shed over the dreary prospect by the return of the emissary sent to the Abenakis. He told of a friendly people, of villages teeming with plenty, where the hungry Frenchmen would be hospitably received, and he con- veyed a promise that a great chief would follow with canoes laden with Indian corn. But it was hope only, no tangible relief, that he brought back, and the whole population had long been living on hope, or little else than hope. Relief came at last with the news brought by a Montagnais of the near approach of the English fleet, at a moment when, from the lateness of the season, hope of escape, even by such unwelcome means, had died away. Champlain at the time was alone in the Fort. Every able-bodied man and woman was absent, some fish- ing, some gathering roots. Even his body servant and the two little Indian girls, Hope and Charity — for Faith had returned to her own people — were in the woods. About ten in the morning they commenced to hurry back. His servant had seen the fleet. It was only a league below the city, hidden by Point Levis. He and the little Indian girls had gathered four bags of roots, but what was that wherewith to provision ARRIVAL OF KIRKE'S FLEET. the garrison and maintain a siege? The ominous news had reached the Franciscan ^Monastery and the Jesuit House, and the Fathers and Monks hastened to the habitation to place their services and their counsel at the disposal of the Gov- ernor. It was decided to make at least a show of resistance, but to surrender without a shot if fair terms were offered. Soon the English fleet of three sails, the ''Flibot," of one hundred tons and ten guns, and two bateaux or transports, each of one hundred tons and six guns, the whole manned by about 150 men, rounded the point. Then a boat flying a white flag was seen steering for the habitation. In response, a white flag was run up on the Fort. "An English gentleman," as Champlain is careful to explain, carried the summons to surrender from Louis and Thomas Kirke, as agents for their brother David, who was in command of the English fleet. Champlain admits that every form of courtesy was observed by his English captors. He reflects on the opposite treatment his men received from the renegade Frenchman, who had assisted and piloted the English fleet. He is a little puzzled to account for the conduct of the English visitors, which was so different from the popular esti- mate of their character. He explains it by the strain of French blood in the veins of the "Quers," as he always called the Kirkes ; Louis Quer was always courteous, because a Frenchman by na- ture, and a lover of France, his mother having been a French woman of Dieppe. As if this explanation of the anomaly of a Scotchman being a gentleman were not sufficient, Champlain fur- ther indulges in the supposition that the courtesy was assumed in order to induce the French to remain, and thus avoid the neces- sity of replacing them with Englishmen, against whom Cham- plain supposes Kirke had a positive repugnance. The Kirkes must certainly, from whatever sources they inherited their fine feeling, have possessed it to an eminent degree, for they seem to have forgotten, or forgiven, the obloquy cast upon them in Paris the previous winter, when tlicy were Inirnt in effigy on the receipt in France of the news of the defeat of dc Roquemont's fleet. The negotiations between Champlain and tlie brotlicrs were sufficiently protracted to save the honor of tlie noble man thus 194 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. thrown helpless on their mercy, and avoid the appearance of a precipitate capitulation. The letter which the English sailor carried to the unfortunate governor was formulated in as generous terms as a challenge to surrender could well be. The messenger could not speak French, and no one at the habitation could speak Eng- lish, but as Father Joseph and the envoy could converse in Latin, the explanations on both sides were made in that scholarly language. Poor Champlain acknowledged in writing the receipt of the summons to surrender, and asked for time to answer, but warned the Kirkes not to approach within gunshot of the Fort, nor to set foot on land pending negotiations, which he promised should not be protracted beyond the following day. Father Joseph also went on board as Champlain's emissary to confer verbally, and to inquire why, in a time of peace, which Kirke's emissary admitted to exist, they were attacked. The answer was vague, as such answers usually are, when it is a case of force majeure. Kirke doubtless considered that all due allowance for the susceptibility of his foe had been made, when he warned Father Joseph that an answer must be given the same evening. He therefore sent the messenger back before dark for the Governor's decision. It was already prepared. Cham- plain demanded that the Kirkes should produce their commission from the British King, that his men should retain their arms, and that all who wished to leave, whether laymen or Church- men, Friars or Jesuits, should be transported to France. He especially required that these conditions apply to his little Indian girls — Hope and Charity. No violence was to be shown any one, layman or priest, to those who might surrender at the fort or to his brother-in-law, Boulle and the crew and passengers under his command, who had been captured in the Gulf. Pro- visions were to be supplied to those who elected to return to France, and such should be allowed to transport their private holdings of skins and other property. They were to be provided with a ship of sufficient size to carry them to France within three days of their arrival in Tadousac. Louis and Thomas Kirke promptly replied that their brother's commission was in due form, and would be exhibited when they CAPITULATION OF QUEBEC. had reached Tadousac ; that they could not supply a separate ship for the transportation of Champlain and his colonists to France, but would guarantee their safe passage to England, and thence to France, a safer passage than if they had to defend themselves against another hostile English fleet which might intercept them. They agreed to allow the Frenchmen of quality to retain their arms, personal property and private stock of furs, but limited the wardrobe of the soldiers to one beaver skin coat apiece. They declined to take the two little Indian girls. The terms being accepted, the fleet approached on the 20th, and the English force of 150 men landed. Then Champlain pleaded in person, and not in vain, to Louis Kirke for his two Indian girls, to whom he had become attached through two years of fatherly care and tutelage. Any misapprehension as to the re- lation of the pure-hearted, single-minded commander to his charge was quickly dispelled. But on the representation of the renegade interpreter, Marsolet, at Tadousac, that the Indians would resent the removal of the girls to France, now that the French no longer held the Fort, David Kirke decided to send them back to Quebec, where they were placed under the charge of the wife of Couillard. Champlain requested that an armed force be detailed to protect the property of the Recollet Fathers and the Jesuit Priests, and the houses of Madame Hubou and her son-in-law Couillard. Then the keys of the habitation and the company's stores were delivered up, and the stock of goods was handed over by the clerks Cor- neille and Olivier, the company's chief factor, old Pontgrave, being saved the humiliation of making the surrender in person by an attack of gout. Kirke put the stores in charge of one Le Baillif, a former clerk of d6 Caen, whom Champlain accuses of appropriating from 3.000 to 4,000 beaver skins, and wliom he places in the class of un- utterable scoundrels, with Eticnne Brule. Champigny, an old Huron interpreter. Nicholas Marsolet, who had served as inter- preter with the Montacrnnis. and Pierre Pay. all Frenchmen, who had been captured with Bonlle in the ship near Gaspe. and had been compelled to pilot Kirke's fleet up the river, which they had 196 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. done so skilfully as to outsail Emery de Caen, who had the start of them. Louis Kirke absolutely refused, until they sailed, to allow Champlain to vacate the Fort or abandon his own quarters, though as in duty bound, he nominally took possession. It must have been a pretty scene to watch these two gentlemen, vying with one another to mitigate the embarrassment of the one and the grief of the other, and to smooth over the asperity which their hostile relations might naturally create. "Louis Kirke plodded up the hill," Champlain tells us, ''to take possession of the fort. I wished to surrender to him my quarters, but he persistently refused to allow me to leave them until I should leave Quebec. In this and in every way he showed me every courtesy imagination could conceive of. I begged permission that mass be celebrated, and this request he also granted to our party. I also begged that he give me an inventory and a certificate of all the effects seized with the habitation, and this he gladly accorded me." This in- ventory appeared again and again in subsequent law proceed- ings. It tells a woeful tale of the deplorable neglect to which the old company exposed its servants, and the disgraceful risk the government was selfishly willing to allow its subjects to run, isolated as they were in the wilderness, surrounded by sav- ages, and open to attack by an energetic, ever watchful enemy, like England. The list exhibits the total armament with which Champlain, with all his high-sounding titles, was ex- pected to defend himself and New France : Four brass pieces, weighing about 150 pounds each; i brass piece, weigh- ing about 80 pounds; 15 iron boxes; 2 small iron pieces of ord- nance, about 800 weight each ; 6 murderers ; i small iron piece of ordnance of 80 pounds weight; 45 small iron bullets for the brass pieces ; 6 iron bullets ; 26 brass pieces, weighing 3 pounds each ; 40 pounds of powder belonging to Mons. de Caen of Diep- pe; 30 pounds of metal belonging to the French King; 13 whole and I broken musket; i arquebus; i trap; 2 large arquebuses, 6 feet to 7 feet in length, belonging to the King; 2 other arque- buses; 10 halberts; 12 pikes belonging to the King; 5,000 to 6,000 lead bullets ; some pigs of lead ; 60 cuirasses, two of them THE ENGLISH FLAG RAISED. 197 complete and pistol proof ; 2 brass petards, weighing 800 pounds ; carpenters' tools, etc, ; a wind-mill, a hand-mill and some utensils. In his deposition before Sir Henry Alartin in the November following, Champlain besides enumerating substantially the above articles, believes that there were in the company's store 2,500 to 3,000 beaver skins, some boxes of knives and some iron shafts (arrow heads). Kirke, in his deposition, gives the num- ber of beaver skins as only 1,713. But of provisions, Cham- plain admits that there were none. He says "at the time of taking of the said fort or habitation, the men in the same had been living by the space of about two months on nothing but roots." Two of the Recollet Friars offered to try and escape with the Indian Chomina and thus, far from the reach of the English, retain their hold on the mission. Father Le Caron was favorable to the scheme, but Champlain opposed it. He may have feared political complications, or doubted the constan- cy of the good friars, having a vivid recollection of their holy intention and faulty fulfillment in a similar crisis the year before. Had the friars carried out their proposal, it would have been more difficult for the Jesuits to supplant them on the restoration of the colony to the French rule. These preliminaries accomplished, the English ensign waSv hoisted on the fort on Sunday, the 22nd of July, and saluted by \ a salvo from the fleet and by the firing of the little guns on the \ fort itself and the habitation. On the following day Thomas and Louis Kirke visited the Recollet Monastery and the House of the Jesuit Fathers. They accepted the offer of some religious paint- ings, and the Protestant minister did not refuse the gift of some of the good fathers' Ijooks. Amid such amenities the sor- rowful day passed. By the 24th all arrangements had been completed for the transportation of those who chose to leave. The articles of capitulation having been signed, Champlain pa- thetically admits that every day's delay seemed a month ; and therefore he and his little Indian girls were allowed to embark on board the three boats, and proceed with Captain Thomas Kirke to Tadousac. While Champlain finds difficulty in accounting for the cour- 198 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. tesy of his captors, he roundly abuses Marsolet and other rene- gade countrymen, whom he accuses of robbing the company's store of its cash and the chapel of some holy ornaments, though they professed to be Catholics. Sagard, on the other hand, de- scribes how the clergy hid their vestments and principal church or- naments. But there is often in these defamatory passages of the edition of 1632 a false ring, unlike the calm candor of his earlier narrative, that excites suspicion that, either his own mind was under extraneous influence when writing, or that the manuscript, as already suggested, was revised by others. It is not stated how many, or who they were, that elected to remain in Canada. It would seem that Kirke was willing that as many as could should stay, but he especially urged Madame Hebert and her son-in-law, Couillard, as well as the mem- bers of religious orders, to remain and reap their harvests. He even removed the restrictions to trade with the Indians, which had been so great a grievance under the company's rule. Nicholas Blundell, in his deposition made in the following November, states that all the people of the said fort and habitation, except sixteen, were sent away — some to go to France, and the rest to be distributed among the savages in the country. The Abbe Laverdiere, in his notes, computes, from references made by Champlain and from entries in the Registre de Notre Dame de Quebec, that not less than twenty-one, or about one-quarter of the population — and that the best element of the whole — remained in Canada. The famiHes of Hebert, Couillard, Abraham Martin, whose name has been perpetuated in that of the famous battle field, together with Pierre de Tosles and Nicolas Perrot, probably remained, as the seed from which sprang the sturdy French-Can- adian race. Champlain was not fated to reach even Tadousac without fur- ther adventure. Kirke's ships sighted a French sail in the river. It proved to be Emery de Caen's ship carrying stores to the needy garrison in Quebec and news of the peace. They neverthe- less joined battle, and de Caen, overmatched, struck his flag, after a close hand to hand engagement. Sagard claims the vic- tory was obtained by the refusal of the Huguenots in de Caen's THE RETURN TO FRANCE. 199 ship to fight against their fellow-reHgionists ; but while Sagard's statement of what he actually witnessed carries conviction of veracity, the stories he relates at second-hand convey a different impression. The two ships were not ill-matched, but when Kirke's two schooners came to his assistance, de Caen had to surrender. It was the 9th of September before Pontgrave, the priests, and the principal detachment of those who were to leave, embarked for Tadousac. It would seem that the priests were ultimately given no option in the matter. Had the result of the engagement between Thomas Kirke and de Caen been different, de Caen, with the as- sistance of those still in Quebec, deprived of arms as they were, might have recovered the post. But during the interval no resist- ance was made to the English occupation. The time was occupied by Louis Kirke in making preparations for his own safety, and for transporting to Tadousac those who were to leave ; while the latter were busy making the best disposal they could of their own property. The RecoUet Friars, confident of their return, hid in the woods or buried such of their valuables as would not suffer from exposure, and packing their vestments in a leather trunk deposited them with some trustworthy guardian. Cham- plain was the only compulsory emigrant allowed to take all his personal effects with him. But, until they sailed, the priests were permitted to say mass daily, Louis Kirke even supplying them with wine from his stores, with which to celebrate the sacrament. His liberahty indeed excited doubt in the priestly mind as to the sincerity of his reformed convictions. They probably did not ap- preciate the wide difference in temper and creed bert:ween a French Huguenot and an English Puritan, or even churchman, of the reign of Charles the First. Before leaving the St. Law- rence David Kirke himself made a flying trip from Tadousac to Quebec, and assured those who remained of fair, liberal treat- ment, and promised them that business would be conducted with more activity, and on more liberal terms, than heretofore. Thus ended the first serious attempt at French colonization. For twenty-one years the experiment had lasted of trying to build up a colony on tlic basis of a narrow and exclusive national policy, through the a^^ency of a commercial company. The State 200 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. desired to see the valley of the St. Lawrence inhabited, but shrank from entrusting power to any company which would encourage indi- vidual initiative. The Church strove to convert the savages, and would gladly have peopled the great waste with industrious French- men; but its principles compelled it to exclude the most enter- prising of the French population, the Huguenots. The trad- ing companies, even if their interests had induced them to pro- mote immigration, which was not the case, could offer but scanty encouragement to an enterprising merchant or to a laborer. Neither could engage in trade without infringing on the com- pany's exclusive privileges. A man could not take up land — al- though a whole continent lay before him unoccupied — without a special grant from the Crown. He could not follow his primitive instincts and join a roving Indian band without falling under the stricture of the government. He dare not indulge in any freedom of religious action or speech, without bringing down upon himself the severest censure of the clergy, who composed a vigilant police force, consisting of about one-tenth of the total white population. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, after twenty-one years of such adverse conditions, the colony, including the priests, num- bered somewhat less than one hundred souls ; that only an acre and a half of land was under cultivation, and that draft oxen and a plow had been imported by one inhabitant only, Louis Guillaume Couillard, the son-in-law and one of the heirs of Louis He- bert. Let it be noted that this does not include the land cultivated by the Recollets and the Jesuits. Champlain says, 'The Jesuits had land enough under cultivation to support themselves and the twelve servants, and no more ; whereas the Recollets had four or five acres under cultivation." But Champlain, or per- haps his editor, implies that during the previous year the friars were partial in the distribution of their surplus. Champlain says that there were fifty-five to sixty people employed by the company, but this estimate did not include the women and chil- dren, and priests. Adding to the sixty employees five women, eight children, four Recollet friars and four Jesuit priests, we have eighty-one ; and allowing that there were twenty in the Huron country, the total is about one hundred, as stated by Champlain. CHAPTER IX. The Company of One Hundred Associates, and Quebec from 1629 to J 632, Under the Kirkes. During the two whole years Champlain was shut up in Quebec prior to its capture, he received no official communi- cation from the King or the Viceroy, or even from the company'^ head ofHce. Desdames, the new company's head clerk, whom de Roquemont in 1628 had sent with eleven men to reconnoitre, and who had eluded Kirke's fleet, brought him a letter from his friend, Father Lalemant. This told him of the breaking out of war ; of the dissolution of the old company ; of the formation of that of the One Hundred Associates, and of the masterful man- agement of public afifairs by the haughty Cardinal. Much of even this news was more than a year old. In very truth, while he had been doing his best merely to keep alive the little band of Frenchmen struggling with adversity on the St. Lawrence, events were occurring which were to de- termine definitely and permanently the character of the future colony and the complexion of its government. France, dur- ing the reign of the last king of the Valois race, had passed from feudalism to national unity and absolute monarchy. The reign of Henry IV., the first of the Bourbons, was occupied in securing his own ascendancy and in reconciling his new position, as a convert to Romanism and King of a Roman Catholic state, with his old position as champion of the Protestant Refor- mation, which he had nominally abandoned, while still sympathiz- ing with his former allies. The period of distraction which followed, under the regency of his Queen widow, Marie dc Me- dici, and his weak, favorite-ridden son, Louis XIII.. aflforded opportunity for the forces which opposed monarchical cen- tralization to organize into two violent factions. One was headed by the great nobles, whose paramount object was to re- 202 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. cover their lost privileges. The other was a resuscitation of the Protestant revolt against absolutism in Church and State ; for while Republican ideas were being openly promulgated in other reformed countries as a corollary to hberty of conscience, in France the Huguenot church organization assumed, under a sim- ilar disguise, political functions which were little short of revolu- tionary. Thus it happened that nobles, whose real principles were in favor of feudal reaction, sat side by side with ardent clerical politicians in the Huguenot council room, and fought shoulder to shoulder with genuine Huguenot zealots on the battle field. In France, as elsewhere, leaders of reform were to be found who under the guise of religious enthusiasm concealed selfish personal aims or political ambitions. So matters stood when there arose to power one of the greatest statesmen of any age. As Bishop of Luzon, Armand Jean du Plessis appeared as the friend in turn of Marie de Medici, of her tiring woman, Eleanor Galigai, of the Queen Regent herself, and even of the King's favorite, the Queen's bitterest enemy, Luines. As Cardinal Richelieu, risen to power, he was as will- ing as in the days of his unsatisfied ambition to attain his ends by conciliation, if conciliation happened to serve his purpose bet- ter than force. And, being a statesman and not a bigot, he was prepared to use indifferently the forces of Protestantism or the armies of the Church to subdue his master's and his country's enemies. In Richelieu's estimation the King's foes were neces- sarily his country's, for he believed in the Divine Right of Kings ; but in practice France's friends were his friends, and France's foes his own foes, for he wielded the royal power more complete- ly than he could have done as premier of a constitutional mon- archy. With him religious predilections were subordinate to the claims of statecraft. He was a Prince of the Church, but he was also the Minister of France. When the interests of France could be subserved by the Church and its agents, he was ready to use both ; but if he considered that the interests of France de- manded toleration of the Church's enemies, he would tolerate them. Pliable if political exigencies demanded it, he was inex- orable and inflexible in carrying out his set purposes, yet without THE CARDINAL AND THE HUGUENOTS. 203 vindictiveness. In person he planned and executed the siege of La Rochelle, and neither the risk of losing political power nor peril of life would induce him to leave the trenches until the re- bellious city had submitted, and the political aspirations of the Huguenots had been crushed forever. Having once taught the reformers the hopelessness of their republican aspirations, he appreciated too justly the value of their enterprising spirit to follow up his victory by punitive measures which might have driven them out of France. The motive of his policy was to strengthen the power of the monarchy and make it independent of popular control. As the king needed trained men to navigate the ships of his mercantile marine, to manage the mercantile affairs of the country, and to operate the looms of his factories, this great statesman was too wise to commit the folly perpetrated by Louis the Great, the next occupant of the throne, who, blinded by his own glory, rashly revoked without any justification the Edict of Nantes, and so drove the most enterprising merchants and most skillful mechanics and operatives from the realm. Nevertheless, could Richelieu have foreseen the full effect of his own acts, he would have hesitated in going as far as he did. In razing La Rochelle ; in crushing Protestantism ; in cancelling de Caen's contract ; in putting restrictions on the Huguenot mer- cantile spirit and maritime operations, he was eff'ectually check- ing the ardor and enterprise of the only element in France's pop- ulation which showed any special aptitude or ambition in the di- rection of building up a naval power for France. The greatest Minister of Marine who has ever presided over that department in France dealt, unconsciously, with his own hand, the most fatal blow to French progress and reform. To decide wisely, under the embarrassing conditions created by the rebellious Huguenots, was indeed almost impossible. The dif- ficulty with which the Cardinal was met in determining his colo- nial policy was that of maintaining the absolute authority of the Crown if free scope were allowed to individual enterprise. In an old land, where prejudices and precedents, family memories and instincts, retain men in the paths trodden by their fore- fathers, the bulk of mankind needs to be stimulated to effort in 204 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. new directions, whether of action or of thought. It is very differ- ent with communities consisting of men who have gone forth to seek their fortunes, and make new homes for themselves, in lands beyond the sea. No stimulus is usually needed to induce them to leave the beaten track. To Richelieu's mind it was clear that, to succeed in creating a submissive community, he must select as colonists those of his countrymen who, as good Catholics, could be depended on to fear God and honor the King. In order to check all exuberance of enterprise, he excluded the Huguenots from New France, and instituted a system of government which minimized to the utmost the influence of the people. To prevent the achieving of commercial independence, by the colonists, with all that might flow therefrom, he vested the rights of trade In the Company; and he used the Jesuit order as educators and mis- sionaries for promoting the doctrine of absolute submission to State and Church, and as detectives for reporting the first symp- toms of political disquiet. Though de Monts and the de Caens had the usual selfishness of men enjoying exclusive privileges, in- dividually they and their co-religionists would probably have made pushing, industrious settlers, had they been permitted and encouraged, not only to hold land in Canada, but also to engage freely in mercantile pursuits. The Puritans of New England contained excellent elements for building up a vigorous and self-reliant nation. The same can hardly be said of the rank and file of the settlers who were sent out to New France. Were the religious dif¥erences between the two groups the real cause of success or failure? If not the sole cause, they were certainly important factors. The Puri- tan policy of religious exclusiveness in New England, aimed against Roman Catholics, was as indefensible on theoretical grounds as Richelieu's colonial policy of religious exclusiveness aimed against the Huguenots ; but practically the results were widely different. The ultra-Protestants of New England were bigots, wedded to certain notions of government in Church and State ; but their notions were their own notions, had been formed independently, without suggestion from the parent State, and were held tenaciously. These men recognized no authority COMMERCIAL RIVALRY. 205 but their own interpretation of the Bible, and were thus free to commence at once and frame a State for themselves on original lines. They engaged in trade with the same disregard to rules and regulations, whether imposed by King or Parliament, if what they deemed their inherent rights were disregarded, as they showed to the decrees of Church and Ecumenical Councils, when they clashed with their private judgment. In Canada, on the other hand, the immigrants selected to build up New France were obedient vassals of the State, and, if possible, still more obedient children of the Church. They accepted the doctrine of their civil and ecclesiastical rulers that to act for themselves was illegal and to think for themselves nothing less than impious. In 1626 or 1627 Richelieu assumed the portfoho of Commerce and Navigation. A Frenchman to-day can easily realize the im- pulse which drove the great minister to foster colonization as a check to the progress of his successful rivals, England and Hol- land, in the same field. He had hardly assumed office when the Company of Morbihan was organized under his auspices to trade with New France, the West Indies, and the Baltic. It consisted of one hundred shareholders, had a capital of 1,600,000 livres, and was endowed, not only with commercial privileges, but with judicial and executive functions of so arbitrary a kind that they excited the determined hostility of the Estates of Brittany, whose Parliament of Rcnnes could not be cajoled or coerced into en- registering its articles of incorporation. It therefore lapsed in 1627, without ever having used its capital in any one of the many directions contemplated. It was, however, the precursor of the organization which ruled Canada for more than thirty years, the company of the One Hundred Associates of New France or Canada — "La Compagnic (hi Canada, establie sous le titre de Nouvellc France ou la Socicte de Cent Personnes du Canada." It was evident to everyone that Canada would never be colonized by such private associations as those controlled by de Monts or de Caen. The failure, which was attributed by the priests to the Huguenot proclivities of the partners, was really due to the spirit of monopoly which the very terms of the concession called into being. It is strange that a long-sighted statesman like Richelieu 206 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. should have beHeved he could cure the abuses that had sprung up in connection with a small company by creating a larger one, en- dowed with the same exclusive powers which had been the ob- vious cause of those abuses. There were only eight or nine associates in de Caen's company. Champlain, in his deposition before Sir Henry Martin, named as the partners whom he recollected, Mons. Guillaume de Caen, of Dieppe; his nephew, Emery de Caen, of Rouen; Dolu, of Paris; Mons. de Nouveau, of Paris ; Mons. Deschenes, of St. Malo ; with them were three or four others, whose names he could not remem- ber. His brother-in-law, Eustace BouUe, supplied the names of two of the forgotten partners, Mons. Harvey and Mons. Devostre. Richelieu vainly imagined that his own assumption of the po- sition of Viceroy of Canada (he had bought out the Duke de Ven- tadour), and his patronage of the company, would ensure its ful- filling the mission assigned to it, no matter what its constitu- tion might be. The bitter feeling in ecclesiastical circles, and the jealousy of the mercantile community, coupled with the admitted failure of de Caen to fulfill his promises, made the cancellation of his privileges a foregone conclusion. The constitution of the Mor- bihan Company supplied certain of the features which we find in that of the company of the One Hundred Asso- ciates, the charter of which bears date April 29, 1627. At this very moment the Huguenots were marshalling their forces, under the ill-advised encouragement of England and Holland, to defy Louis XHI. and Richelieu, and extort from them by force of arms a modified political independence. What wonder, therefore, that the document was distinctly hostile to those sectaries ? There were times when English sovereigns thought that encouraging schismatics to emigrate was the easiest way of disposing of them. But Richelieu was made of different stuff from the Stuarts. Despite the clause of the company's charter providing that none but natural born Frenchmen holding the Catholic faith might enroll themselves as members, we find that Emery de Caen and his Huguenot crew had to be entrusted with the dangerous venture of carrying relief to Champlain in the sum- mer of 1629. Richelieu was too wise a man to be rigidly bound COMPANY OF THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. 207 by his own rules. Throughout his whole career he was regard- ed with distrust by the ultra-Catholics, on account of his leniency towards the Huguenots after they had been conquered, and on ac- count of his willingness to ally himself with Protestant powers in order to crush his Catholic enemies. His illiberal colonial policy was therefore not dictated by religious fanaticism, but by motives of statecraft. It harmonized with the absolutism of his political creed. As he was unable to exterminate the Huguenots and eliminate their doctrine from Old France, he resolved to make use of them and their foreign allies to strengthen his position at home and abroad. None the less he objected to them and their republican aspirations ; and, in the new society he was founding, he determined to prevent the growth of any such political hetero- doxy by forbidding the seed of schism to be sown in its virgin soil. To that end he preferred to use as his instruments the astute and learned Jesuits, rather than the narrow-minded Recollet Friars. They would be as watchful against the introduction of heresy and its political counterpart as the Dominicans themselves, while they would cultivate in the community a higher and stronger type of Catholicism than any of the mendicant orders. The incorporators of the new company were the Cardinal him- self, the Sieur de Roquemont, Houel, Comptroller General of the salt works in Brouage, de la Lataignant, a bourgeois of Calais, Dablon, syndic of Dieppe, Du Chesne, magistrate of the town of Havre de Grace, and Jacques Castillon, of Paris. The act, after reciting the usual mixed motives which had induced the Kings of France to encourage colonization, namely, to extend the Faith, and with it commerce, goes on to deplore the failure of the previous company to fulfill the conditions of the grant, and then declares that, in virtue of the powers vested in him, the said Lord Cardinal, consents and ac^rces, subject to the good pleasure of his Majesty, to grant a charter to the new Com- pany of One Hundred members, on the followinc^ conditions: Before the close of 1628, three hundred mechanics were to be transported to the colony, and within fifteen years subsequently the number of immigrants was to be increased to 4,000 souls of both sexes ; for three years the company was to support the im- 208 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. migrants, after which period they would be expected to sup- port themselves by agriculture from the lands assigned to them. No foreigner was to enter New France, and no French- man who did not profess the Catholic Faith, For every post (habitation) erected in the colony during the sixteen years ter- minating in 1643, the company must support three priests to labor among the Indians, though they may commute this charge by a grant of cleared land. As a return for the assumption of these burdens and the fulfillment of these obligations, an absolute trans- fer is made to the company of all the lands which France claims between Florida and the Arctic Circle and between Newfoundland and the Great Lakes, with all lands watered by the tributaries of the St. Lawrence which they may acquire by exploration, the King, as feudal lord, reserving only "le ressort de la foi et hommage" and claiming as mark of fealty a gold crown of the weight of eight marks, on his accession. The support of the officers of justice, who were to be nominated by the company, but confirmed by the Crown, is to fall on the company. The company is to have the right of sov- ereign power in matters of offence and defence. Lands within the territory ceded to the company and by the company to the seigneurs are to be held as under previous grants. Exclusive right to traffic in furs is granted in perpetuity to the company, and exclusive fishing rights for fifteen years. The inhabitants may traffic with the Indians, but must sell what they purchase to the company or its factors, and the company must buy beaver skins at forty sols Tournois apiece. The King loans the company two ships, which, if lost otherwise than by capture in war, are to be replaced by them. He also makes over to them four little brass culverins. As an inducement to skilled workmen to immigrate, ar- tisans who have worked for six years in Canada on returning to France may assume the title of maitres de chefs d'oeuvres, and open shops in Paris and other towns. And to encourage manu- facturing in Canada, it is provided that all manufactured goods may enter France free of duty for fifteen years. No one is to lose rank by engaging in trade, or investing in the stock of the company. On the contrary, his Majesty will ennoble twelve of the plebeian members of the company. All descendants of COMPANY OF THE HUNDRED ASSOCIATES. 209 French immigrants and all converted Indians are to be free citi- zens, and entitled to all the privileges of citizens of France. The first signature of the document is that of Armand, Cardinal Richelieu, the second that of de Roquemont, the unfortunate Ad- miral who, when in charge of the first fleet sent by the company, had to fight Kirke in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The articles of partnership adopted by the associates, and approved by the Cardi- nal, fixed the capital at 300,000 livres, to be subscribed in equal proportions of 3,000 livres by each of the One Hundred Associ- ates, and payable 1,000 livres January i, 1628, and the balance as called for by the directors ; but any subscriber may withdraw by forfeiting his first payment, provided no profits have been di- vided. Of the directors one-third at least shall be merchants. Then follow the rights and duties of the board, which are very ample. The board is not compelled to call to its council any of the share- holders, unless when recommending appointments to the King, or deeding land in excess of two hundred acres, in which case twenty shareholders, including the members of the board, in per- son or by proxy, must deliberate in the presence of the Intendant, and no act of tlie board shall be valid unless signed by the Se- cretary and four directors. The principal oftice of the company is to be in Paris ; but offices may be opened in the most notable maritime and inland towns of the realm, if the business of the company should in time warrant it. The directors living out of Paris may be represented at the board meeting by proxy. All the fiduciary officers must keep proper cash books, journals and ledgers, and full statements of account must he sent to the Paris office within three months of the sailing and arrival of vessels, and to the local boards at Rouen, Bordeaux, and other local of- fices, within one month after the sailing or arrival of the com- pany's packet. The directors or agents are forbidden to involve the company in debt in excess of its capital. All the profits accru- ing from the company's operations during the first year are to be funded ; afterwards, one-third of the profits may be distributed, and two-thirds funded. All wages are to be paid by the directors, but directors themselves arc to receive no other compensation than a pound of white candles and the privilege of taking part 210 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. in any meeting of the company's representatives anywhere; but in case of travel on company's affairs, they are to be compensated. The directors are authorized to devote 500 louis a year to char- ity — but only out of the profits. The treasurer shall be appointed by the board. He shall keep a set of books, and annually make a balance sheet. He shall make an annual statement which shall be audited by the Intendant and the directors, and the audit shall be final, as though all directors were present. Any shareholder of the company may subdivide or sell part of his share, but he and his associate have only one vote. But any shareholder may sell his share, and the purchaser of a competent associate shall be recognized as an original associate. The creditors of an associate must accept the published statement of the company's affairs, and must submit to the regulations of the company without enjoying any vote. In case of the death of an associate, the heirs must ap- point one of the members to represent the interests of the asso- ciate. The Cardinal is requested to nominate as Intendant of the com- pany's affairs the Sieur de Lauzon, who shall be chairman of the board, and preside at its weekly and at all extraordinary meet- ings. The board is to consist of twelve directors, of whom six are to be residents of Paris and the others of towns within the realm. The twelve directors are to hold office for two years, and at the biennial election six of the old directors are to be re-elected. The annual meeting is to be held at the Intendant's house in Paris, or some other convenient place, on the 15th day of January. Associates who cannot attend are requested to express in writing their views as to the manage- ment of the company. At the annual meeting measures shall be carried by a majority of votes. The directors are empowered to modify these by-laws as circumstances may suggest. The above articles were confirmed by the King on May 6, 1628. Such were the ample powers of the company of the One Hundred As- sociates, but five years had yet to elapse before they were put into execution. England in 1627 took up the cause of the Huguenots. Buck- ingham, Charles the First's favorite, in revenge for his slighted THE SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE. 211 addresses to Queen Anne of Austria, Louis XIII. 's queen, is said to have instigated the Huguenots to make their fatal and foolish, and what proved to be their last real struggle, for political power. At any rate, whether England fomented the trouble or not, she sent a fleet under Buckingham to help her ally. Without any declaration of war, the English commander appeared before Rochelle in July, 1627, for the purpose of raising the siege of that place. But, even as a military engineer, Richelieu was more than a match for his rebellious countrymen, aided by their power- ful sympathizers ; for the memorable siege terminated by the fall of Rochelle on October 29, 1628. It was in the beginning of the year 1628 that the company of the One Hundred Associates was to begin its active operations. As a first step towards carrying out their pledges, they fitted out a fleet under the Sieur de Roquemont to convey colonists and priests to the colony. De Roquemont was the bearer of a commission to Champlain to act as commandant in New France, and in that ca- pacity to begin his administration by taking an inventory of de Caen's property, after which he was to make a report as to the state of the colony, and forward it, with the inventory, to Riche- lieu. It was many a day before Champlain received his com- mission, and, as we have seen, he made the inventory not for the French Minister of Marine, but for Admiral Kirke. De Roque- mont's fleet escaped two Rochelle ships in the Channel, but, as already narrated, fell in with Kirke's fleet in the Gulf.* While Kirke and other brave, restless fellows of the west coast of England were taking advantage of the war to gratify their love of adventure and fill their pockets, the nation was fretting over Buckingham's disgraceful campaign and retreat from before Ro- chelle. Not only had this deeply wounded the national pride and * Kirke, in his deposition before Sir Henry Martin, Knight, says that, in the expedition against the f>ench in 1628, he was sent forth at the charge of his late father, Gervan Kirke, and other merchants in London. The expedition of 1629 was fitted out by Sir William Alexander the younger — the individual to whom Charles I. had given such a sweeping grant of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia — by Kirke's father, and others. Sir William had a commission as a privateer under the broad seal of England, and his instructions were to transplant the French from Canada, and utterly to expel them — a task which he executed with remarkable thoroughness. 212 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. hurt the Protestant cause, but it had emptied the already impover- ished treasury. It was in his attempt to replenish it in his own pecuHar, arbitrary way that Charles involved himself in the disas- trous war with his people, which was destined to be much more momentous in its bearing on popular liberty than any temporary advantages which the Rochellois might have won through Eng- land's assistance. It was in November, 1627, that Buckingham, with his dis- comfited fleet and army, returned. The Commons met in the fol- lowing March, and Charles was compelled to sign the famous Petition of Rights on May 28, in order to obtain relief from his pecuniary embarrassment. Neither his temper nor that of the people was improved by the military events of 1627. A new ex- pedition to relieve Rochelle was demanded by public opinion, but not under the leadership of the gallant courtier. Neverthe- less, despite the national protest, another fleet was about to sail under the same amateur general when Felton's dagger relieved him of the command. Charles may have been glad in the spring of 1628 that Kirke and his friends should wage war on their own account, to his and their possible profit ; but before Kirke set sail again in 1629 for the St. Lawrence, Charles had learned that his bitterest enemies were those of his own household, and that he had more to fear from his own people than from his wife's kinsfolk across the channel. He was not reluctant, therefore, to sign the treaty of Suze on April 24, 1629.* Kirke had sailed from Greenwich on the 15th of the same month with a fleet of six ships and two pinnaces, to pick the fruit he had left hanging on the tree the autumn previously, for he knew full well that Champlain could oppose no resistance, * Article VII. of Treaty of Suze. Inasmuch as many vessels with letters of Marque and armaments cannot be advised of this peace nor receive orders to ab- stain from all hostile acts, it is a8:reed by this article that nothing which may happen within two months after this agreement shall derogate from or prevent this peace or interfere with the good will between the two crowns; it being, how- ever, agreed that anything seized within two months after the signature of this treaty shall be restored by the one party to the other. By the terms of Article III. of the Treaty of St. Germain en Laye eight days are allowed the British com- manders of fortified posts to vacate them with their arms and personal effects; but three weeks in addition, or if necessary a longer time, are allowed civilians to de- part with their property. KIRKE IX POSSESSION OF QUEBEC. 213 and must capitulate on demand. He may therefore have been ignorant when he captured Quebec, of the turn affairs had taken, though Bouhe told Champlain, when they met as prisoners at Ta- dousac, that Emery de Caen, whom he had sighted in the Gulf before his surrender to Kirke, had told him of the signing of the treaty. He had, of course, communicated the news to the general after his capture, but it was probably the first notice Kirke had received of it. The conversation recorded after the capture of de Caen would also imply that he warned Kirke that he was acting piratically. It may have mattered little at the time to an adventurer like Kirke, who was probably not over- scrupulous as to treaties, but it mattered much ultimately, for it gave Charles a reason for disallowing his acts, restoring the con- quered territory, and insisting on the surrender of the booty. The war had been entered on by England without provocation, and once Rochelle had fallen, there was no valid excuse for its con- tinuance — the more so as Richelieu had treated his conquered foes with great magnanimity and leniency. There was, there- fore, good reason for making peace and restoring territory that had been taken after peace had been signed. Nevertheless three years passed before the ileur-de-lis again floated over Fort St. Louis. LeClercqsays that the delay was due to indifference and doubt as to the value of New France, for Old France judged of its capabilities by Cartier's and Champlain's experience. There is justification for this supposition in the fact that the diplomatic correspondence betrayed, on the part of France, greater urgency to secure payment for, or return of, the beaver skins taken from de Caen's stores than the restitution of the conquered territory. This anxiety about de Caen's property is sufficient to dispel the suspicion hinted at by Richelieu himself — tliougli it is difficult to see how it could have l)ecn seriously entertained — that the Kirkcs were instigated to attack the French possession by de Caen in re- venge for the cancellation of his trading privileges. Tt needed no such incentive to induce an enterj)rising family of merchant adven- turers like the Kirkes, father and sons, to attack an enemy at once so defenseless and so wealthy as the de Caen trading company, whose profits, great as they were, were probal)ly grossly exag- 214 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. gerated by public rumor, and whose stock of furs in the Quebec storehouse may have been supposed to be many times greater than it actually was. A still stronger argument against such an in- jurious supposition is that de Caen was in 1632 commissioned to receive back the post of Quebec from David Kirke, and permitted to enjoy the fur trade for a year longer.* During Kirke's occupation France made no serious demonstra- tion against Canada ; neither did the company of the One Hun- dred Associates make any pretense of entering on the enjoyment of their rights. On the other hand, England took no active measures to put its newly acquired territory into a state of defence, and Englishmen showed no inclination to or- ganize colonization schemes for peopling the St. Lawrence, under the instigation either of religious enthusiasm or of mercantile gain. Charles seems to have granted somewhat the same exclusive trading advantages to a mercantile company or- ganized by Kirke, and known as the Company of Canada, as had been enjoyed by the de Caen company; but the records of the period (Colonial Papers, Vol. 6, Art. 33), show that Kirke had no more power than de Monts or de Caen to repress poaching. Eng- land at this moment was drifting rapidly into civil war, and the thoughts of that energetic section of the people which might have supplied colonists were directed to more urgent issues than the driving of a few Papists from the forests of New France. The belief in England regarding the interior of the con- tinent was that it was a land of snow and ice, more desolate than even the barren coast of New England, and not, therefore, a tempt- ing field for agriculture. There was, consequently, no outcry, ex- cept on the part of Kirke and his fellow adventurers, when Charles agreed to restore the fields of snow and ice to Louis XIIL There might have been some opposition, though it would have availed naught, had it been known that he sold Kirke's conquests in the New World for 800,000 crowns — a sum really due by France as the unpaid balance of his wife's dowry, but which the French * Le Clercq puts the company's trade in beaver skins alone at 100,000 crowns annually. AN UNPROFITABLE CONQUEST. King, or rather the French Cardinal, refused to pay unless Port Royal, Quebec, and all that the Kirkes had wrenched from France in 1628- 1629 were restored. Charles needed the money urgently, wherewith to fight his subjects, but the surrender cost England and her colonists many a million. Nevertheless, whatever the mo- tives for the restoration, Quebec, captured three months after the treaty of peace had been signed, belonged rightfully to France, and was rightfully restored to her. None the less must we sympathize with Captain David Kirke and his brothers. An empty title was but poor compensa- tion for what they did, could the full value of the achieve- ment have been foreseen ; and the title was all they actually received, for the skins they brought back in 1629 were seized and ultimately surrendered to de Caen, and it is not very clear whether Kirke's legitimate claim against de Caen for provisions supplied to the starving colony and for transportation to France of the famished colonists was ever settled. He not unreasonably con- tended that what he gave was worth more than what he had seized, and that, had the case been tried in England, de Caen would have been required to pay him, and not he de Caen. De Caen brought in a bill for 266,000 livres, although Champlain estimated the total number of beaver skins handed over at only 3,000, from which had to be deducted those which each returning Frenchman was allowed to appropriate and carry to France, leaving a remainder of 1.713. While the miser- able beaver skins were deposited, by way of sequestration, under lock and key by order of the Court of Admiralty, a certain Thomas Felty, merchant, was accused and imprisoned in the Fleet for stealing some of them. Sir W. Alexander and Captain David Kirke and their associates were meanwhile complaining to the Admiralty that they could not lock up the St. Lawrence securely against illicit skippers, who were robl)ing them of their privileged trade. There was thus trouble and complaint and embarrassment on all sides, and apparently little profit, de- spite the great value of the fnr trade and the prizes taken by Kirke in 1628-1620. Poaching and suits for damages, and the short term of the trading monopoly enjoyed by Kirke and his 2l6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. business copartners, must have made the first conquest of Quebec a losing venture. In the testimony taken in the case of the adventurers against the owners of the ''EHza of London," one of the poachers, some curious figures are given which bear on the value of the St. Lawrence trade. Thomas Roycroft says that he was willing to trade three for one, which meant three elk skins for one blanket. John Baker, Mariner, of the *'Eliza," says he brought to Eng- land 53^2 casks of beaver skins and some elk skins. His share was 40 pounds of beaver skins. Captain Eustace Mann says that his ship brought from Canada 531 bear skins, which were sold for about £500, and 100 odd elk skins, which were sold for about iioo. A certain Samuel Pierce Bever makes admission that he bought 880 pounds weight of beaver skins in six hogsheads, for which he paid £880, and that he and others bought about 300 pounds more from members of the crew, whence we would gather that beaver skins were worth the high price of £1 per pound weight, and bear and moose skins about ii apiece, and that the Indians were willing to exchange three moose skins for one blanket. The trade in peltries must therefore have been temptingly profitable, and we can appreciate Kirke's and his as- sociates' indignation at having to surrender it, together with the post of Quebec. Although during the three years of occupation no pretence was made to colonize the St. Lawrence, trade must have been more actively conducted than it had been by either de Monts or de Caen, for in a note of such things as this company had in Canada and the number of its men, made before its surrender, the following particulars are given : "A note of all such things as the company hath in Canada and the number of men. 'Imprimis they have above 200 persons in the fort and habyta- tion of Kebec and gone up from 400 leages in the country for further discoverys. *Tn the fort there is 16 peeces of ordnance and 8 murderers, 75 musketts and 25 fowling peeces and 10 arkebusses a Croake and 30 pistolls 8 dozen of pikes and 24 holbeards and 40 Corse- letts and 10 armors of proofi'e and 6 Targetts. A MEMORABLE INVENTORY. 217 "In the sayd fort there is 2000 powder for the ordnance, 300 of musketts powder, and one hundred and half of fowHnge pow- der, Rownd shott, burd shott, Langer shott, and chrossbar shott, enough for the use of there powder, and 10 barrells more which the Maye have of the store of 3 pinaces which are there furnished with 6 peeces of ordnance a peece and 6 murderers a peece and 5 barills a pow^der a peece and all thinges convenyent for their Rigginge and Munition of war. "The sayd 200 persons vittled accordinge to his IMajesties al- lowance att sea for 18 monthes besides what they fownd upon the ground which is able to find them 6 months more soe that the are very well vittled for 2 years and within towe yeers if they worke as the have beegon the wilbee able to subsist of themselves. "There is goods for to trade with the natives of the Contrey more then wee are able to vent in 2 yeeres which goods are no wheare vendable butt in that contry and which goods stands use in 6000 1. starlinge besides charges which doth amount to 6000 1. more. "All sort of tooles for smithes millers masones plasterers Car- pendars Joyners bricklers whillons bakers bruers ship-carpenters shoomakers and taylors. "10 Shallops fitted with bases for the head and all other fur- niture. "All sort of tooles beelonginge to the fortyfication. "The abovesayde fort is soe well situated that the are able to withstand 10000 men and will not care for tliem, for whatsoever the can doe, for in winter they cannot stay in the countrey soe that whosesoever goes to beesidge them the cannot staye there above 3 monthes in all in which time the muskett will soe tor- ment them that noe man is able to bee abroad in centry or thrench- es day nor night without loosing there sightes for att least eyght dayes. "So that if please his Majestic to keepe it we doe not care what French or any other can doe thoe the have a 100 sayle of shipps and 10000 men as above sayde. "(Siir Ic dos est ecrit.) 2l8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. "Note of all such thinges as the Company hath in Canada and the number of men."* Although we may infer from the above memorandum that the Kirkes were not idle, the details of the occupation are meager. Champlain closes his doleful narrative with the gossip of two Frenchmen who returned with Thomas Kirke in October, 1630. It would seem that the Kirkes removed their headquarters from Tadousac to Quebec, with a view, as Champlain reasonably sup- posed, to concentrating their forces in anticipation of a retaliatory attack. In the summer of 1630, Captain Thomas Kirke made a trading voyage to Quebec with two ships, and returned with 300,- 000 livres worth of peltries, if we are to believe the report of these two Frenchmen — one a carpenter, the other a laborer — who elected to return to Old France with him. They reported a se- vere winter, which had carried off fourteen of the English, and a thunder storm which had killed three or four more, together with two dogs, and played havoc with the fort, and stated further that the English showed as little inclination to engage in honest husbandry, or to provide for their own support, as the French had done. In 163 1 Richelieu granted Emery de Caen a passport to trade in the St. Lawrence, but the Kirkes did not confirm it. They treated him, however, with their usual courtesy, and, had there been skins enough offering for both, they would have allowed him his share; but the supply was short that summer, and the best terms they would accord him was permission to land his merchandise and a clerk, and to barter his goods for pel- tries during the winter, if the Indians should bring in any. De Caen, on his return, regaled Champlain with a whole batch of bad news, which, despite the ex-governor's generous nature, was probably more or less grateful to him. One of the stories was that the Protestant minister had, with the renegade French- men, fomented a mutiny among the English soldiers against Louis Kirke. The plot was discovered and Kirke's life was saved. He dealt leniently with the dupes of the mini? ,er, * Colonial Papers, Vol. VI., N. 38, and Laverdi^re, Champlain, page 1434. CARDINAL RICHELIEU AND HIS ENEMIES. 2ig but him he imprisoned for six months in the Jesuit house, to the no slight inconvenience of the pious French, for, as the Abbe Fail- Ion tells us, while it was used as a prison no public service could be held in it. The whole story is probably composed of clerical glosses upon some minor incidents. It is repeated with appropri- ate reflections in Father Le Jeune's Relations of 1632. In so far as can be ascertained, the whole colony seems to have been on friendly terms with the conquerors, and the rebellious minister had other occupation than inciting to murder, for on the 19th of February, 1631, that is, during the English occupation, there being no priests, ihe daughter of Guillaume Couillard was christened by the Protestant minister. Louis Kirke stood as godfather, and the wife of the surgeon, Adrien Duchene, was godmother. (Tan- gnay, Diet. Genealogique. Note to page 142.) On July 13th, 1632, Quebec was restored to France, in ac- cordance with the treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye, signed March 29th, 1632. The event occurred when the power of King Louis XIII. and the influence of the great Cardinal-Minister were ap- proaching their zenith, though the summer of 1632 was a critical period in the life of both. Richelieu in May of that year, had brought Marechal Marillac to the scaffold for conspiring with the Queen Mother ; and when the apparently insignificant act of trans- ferring a paltry fort in the wild forests of the New World was be- ing accomplished, a serious revolt was in progress headed by Gas- ton d'Orleans, the King's brother, and aided by the Due de Mont- morency, against "the disturbers of the general peace, the enemies of the King and the Royal House, the dissipators of the State, and the tyrants both of men of quality and of the common people," as the conspirators styled the Cardinal. Rut the able minister, thus de- signated, triumphed ; the Duke, brilliant and popular as he was, failed. On October 30th, when the dreary winter was gathering over the resuscitated but still languid colony, the head of Mont- morency, the former Viceroy of New France, fell on the block. The most popular man in France sacrificed himself to a craven coward, the King's brother, who earned his own safety by swear- ing love and submission to all the King's advisers, and especially to Richelieu, his bitterest enemy. The audacity shown by the Car- 220 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. dinal in thus punishing by death one of the great nobles and the people's favorite for aiding a royal rebel, was not only the last act of that tragical drama of sectional strife which closed the feudal age, but it riveted on France the shackles of monarchical absolutism. In the death roll were included, with the popular hero, a number of his personal followers. Thus the feudal lord and his feudal retainers fell together, because they ventured to aid an aspiring royal rebel against the legitimate King. All this occurred when New France was receiving its con- stitution from the Cardinal's hands, and it was therefore of the deepest significance to Canada, for the colonial plans of the autocrat were sure to bear the stamp of his domestic policy. Ab- solutism had triumphed in France, and absolutism must there- fore be the rule on the St. Lawrence. Popular liberty must never be allowed even to raise its voice ; and thus it would never require to be silenced. New France must be quarantined against the highly contagious disease of religious freedom, and to that end religious discussion must be prohibited. Intendants and military governors must be sent out armed with full power to direct the energies of the people into innocent paths; in other words, to thwart any aspirations towards self-government. The Jesuits also must be sent out to control religious thought and confine it within prescribed channels. The latter object was accomplished so effectually that, not only was Protestantism excluded, but such mild deviation from strict orthodoxy as Jansenism, or even Quiet- ism, did not escape their vigilant scrutiny. In Europe Richelieu was led, as we have seen, by political ne- cessity to tolerate the Huguenots in France and ally himself with the great Protestant champion, Gustavus Adolphus, against Cath- olic Spain and Austria ; but in America, as nothing was to be feared from Spain, still less from Austria, while everything was to be feared from the influence of the neighboring English col- onies, all the machinery of Church and State was designed to pre- vent the introduction from that quarter of pernicious doctrines and examples. English statesmen had been glad to see dis- sent emigrate : Richelieu decided that, if there was to be a New France created over the sea, it must be moulded into exact con- RETROCESSION OF QUEBEC TO FEL\NCE. 221 formity with his theory of arbitrary government and the most conservative traditions of old France. Neither he nor the commercial company of his creation seems to have been very earnest in carrying out their colonization schemes. The new company of the One Hundred Associates made a futile effort to fulfill their contract in 1629. They sent Captain Daniel, of Dieppe, in command of four ships and a bark, to carry emigrants and supplies to Quebec, Champlain being com- missioned as their representative. On reaching the Great Banks, Daniel heard that a certain Sir James Stuart, who claimed kin- ship with the royal family of England, had established a fishing station on the Island of Cape Breton, and, instead of fulfilling his commission, he took Stuart and his comrades prisoners and re- turned with them to France. The Jesuits chartered a ship and sailed in the spring for Que- bec, but were driven ashore on the Nova Scotia coast. Some were drowned, some were rescued by a Basque fisherman, but of these only Father Lalemant survived a second disaster off St. Sebastian. The consort ship of the Jesuits, commanded by Joubert, hear- ing that Quebec had fallen, prudently returned to France. We have seen what befell de Caen in charge of a third expedi- tion. The Chevalier de Razilly was next commissioned to carry succor to the colony, and to resist the English occupation. But he never sailed, and his instructions and destination were changed. So David Kirke remained in unopposed occupation of his post until that July day in 1632, when de Caen, without waste of gimpowder or any undue parade, resumed possession of the place. The Cardinal had allowed the old company the privilege of trading one year longer on the St. Lawrence — a prudent meas- ure, as it gave them time to collect what property they had ; but above all to remove any Huguenots without the infliction of un- necessary harshness, and to collect data for their claim against the British Government under the treaty of St. Germain. Whether all the provisions of that treaty were ever carried out is more than doubtful, for treaty obligations to pay money have too often rested lightly on State officials. By the treaty, Quebec, as well as all British conquests in Acadia and Cape Bre- 222 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ton, were to be restored within eight days after the commandants of the posts were notified of the treaty; but three weeks longer were allowed for the English garrison and inhabitants to evacu- ate the country with their arms and personal possessions. For the transportation of the garrison and traders, de Caen was bound to charter and equip a ship of from two hundred to two hundred and fifty tons ; and, for goods belonging to British subjects, if left in Quebec, their cost in England, with thirty per cent to cover risks, is to be paid. Quebec is to be restored, and its buildings, munitions of war and stores, are to be returned in kind or in value, as they were When captured, except those stores taken away by the English in 1629, negotiations about which had already lasted two whole years, and for which Great Britain now promised to pay de Caen 82,700 livres Tournois. Great Britain also undertook to return to de Caen the bark "St. He- lene" and its cargo ; and certain other prizes were to be restored to their owners; but there are to be deducted certain expenses for care and maintenance and port dues, and 1,200 livres which de Caen is adjudged to owe the Kirkes for the transportation of the French to France in 1629. With such a complicated open account to be settled, it is easy to understand why Richelieu ac- corded the old Huguenot company another year of trade mon- opoly, for that was a period all too short within which to take inventory of stock and losses, and file claims against a foreign government, to say nothing of withdrawing the heretic traders from the country. Father Le Jeune, in his Relation of 1632, describes as extreme the desolation of the post when Emery de Caen and de Plessis Bouchard entered into possession on the 13th of July, 1632. The habitation was a heap of ashes— reduced, intentionally he implies, to that condition by Thomas Kirke — though, if the story of the damage done by lightning be true, natural causes suffice to ac- count for it. It is not clear why Kirke should have intentionally destroyed what he expected would remain his property. In the Jesuit House all the furniture that remained was two tables. The doors were ofif their hinges. The windows were broken, and the garden overgrown with peas. The Recollet mon- AN INTERESTING RELIGIOUS SERVICE. 223 astery was still more deplorably desolate. Both were far removed from the fort, and, if unoccupied, they may well have advanced towards utter ruin under the ravages of the weather and the In- dians, without any aid from Kirke and his Protestant minister. The Recollets, not being permitted to return, had authorized the Jesuits to unearth the church plate, and to use it. The widow of Louis Hebert and her son-in-law, Guillaume Couillard, continued to cultivate the portion of land deeded to Hebert in 1626, which occupied probably the site of the present Semi- nar}^ Garden. At her house the priests gathered together the little company of the faithful. It was not as Father Le Jeune called it "la plus ancienne de ce pays-ci," if the chapel were still standing near the habitation which Father Dolbeau built in the Lower Town in 161 5. The family of Abraham Martin, the Scotch pilot, was probably of the number of those who attended this first mass. He was an industrious man, and, when not on the water, cultivat- ed a farm forming probably part of the battlefield which was to be drenched with blood in the middle of the next century. Abraham Martin held twelve acres as a concession made by the company in 1635, and in 1648 Adrian Duchesne transferred to him thirty- two adjacent acres, all of which his heirs sold in 1667 to the Ur- suline nuns, in whose possession it remained till recently, when a portion, generally admitted to be the scene of the Battle of the Plains, was bought by the Dominion Government. The family of Nicolas Pivert and Pierre Dcsportes, who was in charge of the Cap Tourmente establishment when it was destroyed by Kirke's men in 1628, remained in Canada, though they probably did not overtly transfer their allegiance to England, and fight on her side, as did Marsolet and Brule.* Whether all these were Catholics may well be doubted ; but religion has everywhere and at all times sat light- ly on the consciences of backwoodsmen and hunters. Catholicism was to be the password, under the new regime, for admission into New France, and few of the rank and file of dc Caen's Huguenot followers, if they had l)cconic enamoured of the wild life oi the * Poor Erulr did not long survive the surrender. He was killed by a Montagnais Indian in the following spring. The priests looked on liis murder as an instance of divine retril)Ution against a traitor; Chaniplain looked on it as a crime. 224 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. wilderness, would hesitate to use it. Even Emery de Caen, smart- ing under the forfeiture of his concession, permitted the Jesuit Fathers to say mass on Sunday in one of the rooms of the Cha- teau, pending the erection of a church. Within a month supplies, in men and provisions, sufficient for all immediate requirements, arrived under the Sieur de la Ralde and Captain Morieult. Among the immigrants were two notable men, Noel Juchereau and Guil- laume Guillemot — sent out probably to safeguard the interests of the new company, for the de Caens may have been suspected of taking unfair advantage of their temporary concession, espe- cially as the internal affairs of France were so disturbed. Specu- lation was evidently rife on that subject in Quebec. According to Father Le Jeune, it divided the little settlement during the long winter months into two factions, one party arguing in favor of the old company and the other in favor of the new. Had they known that the great Cardinal had carried his point, and that the head of Montmorency had fallen, none would have been surprised when Champlain appeared in the spring of 1633 as the Governor of New France, to assert and to enforce the claims of the new company. The interregnum between the dissolution of the old company and the active rule of the new, including the three years of the English occupation, was therefore five years. With the arrival of Champlain in the spring of 1633 commenced the history of Quebec as a town, as distinct from a trading port, and the experi- ment of governing a colony by a chartered trading company under royal auspices, instead of by a partnership of merchants. The ill- success of the previous attempt to shift the responsibility and bur- dens of State from the shoulders of French ministers to those of private adventurers, with interests diametrically opposed to those of the colonists they pledged themselves to introduce, was explained away by saying that de Caen and his predecessors, de Monts and others, were heretics, who, through renouncing the faith of their fathers, had lost all sense of truth and honor. The new company, composed of one hundred good men and true, actuated by zeal for the glory of France and the con- version of the heathen, would, it was assumed, be willing FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES OF THE NEW COMPANY. 225 to put aside their selfish interests in favor of the pubHc good, and thus build up an empire in the New World which, costing France nothing, would yet redound enormous- ly to her profit and renown. As we shall see, it required only a few years to dispel the illusion, and prove that human greed and selfishness are not extinguished by the acceptance of any the- ological shibboleth ; and that even sincere and earnest endeavor to propagate the faith may co-exist with vicious rules incapable of being reconciled with the dictates of patriotism. Moreover, the company's career made it evident that commercial projects op- posed to the public interest, and therefore provoking opposition, cannot possibly prosper. The Company was already in difficulties before it com- menced its commercial operations in 1633, for the statement of its accounts made to the French Government in 167 1 shows that it was virtually bankrupt from the first. It claimed that, immediately on its establishment, it equipped seven ves- sels at a cost of 164,720 livres, 9 sols, 7 deniers, which were cap- tured in the St. Lawrence. A second fleet, equipped in 1629 at a cost of 103,966 livres, shared the same fate. The two expedi- tions absorbed almost all the capital of the company, which was 300,000 livres. Nevertheless, in 1630, a third expedition was despatched at a cost of 40,000 livres, which ended as disastrously as the preceding ones. These failures exhausted not only the company's capital, but its courage. Nevertheless, a subsidiary company was organized in November, 1632, which undertook to furnish the parent company with a loan of 110,000 livres for five years, in consideration of receiving one-third of the profits. The operations of the auxiliary company were successful, and enabled the parent company to make 60,000 livres of profit, although Marie and Solomon Langlois obtained a judgment against the company for 45,000 livres. to cover damages to their ship; and William de Caen made a claim against the company for 70,900 livres, which, to avoid a seizure, they compromised by a pay- ment, extending over six years, of 30,000 livres and in- terest. The term of tlie auxiliary company's partnership expiring in 1637, a renewal was arranged for a further 226 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. period of four years. But the losses of the second partner- ship exceeded the gain of the first, for in 1642 the parent com- pany owed the auxihary company 70,464 hvres, 8 sols. As the auxiliary company refused to renew their partnership, the orig- inal company was obliged to make an assessment of 1,500 livres on each of the 69 shareholders, to which number the original 100 had shrunk. The company's affairs still continuing unprofitable, it went into voluntary liquidation by act of the Council on July 24, 1643, owing 410,796 livres. But a partial Hquidation of their debts was effected by charging the auxiliary company with the 60,000 livres, the share accruing to the original company of the profits of the first partnership. The assessment, though insuffi- cient to liquidate the dettes passives, enabled the company to con- tinue its operations and to make a profit of 85,000 livres during the four following years. In 1645, by royal consent, the company resigned its exclu- sive privileges, and permitted the people of Canada to engage in the fur trade, reserving 1,000 pounds weight of beaver skins as annual rental, besides the right to create seignories and the own- ership of the land. But the company received the royalty for five years only. If it was paid for any longer period by the in- habitants, the money was retained in the colony — not remitted to the company. Under these circumstances, the company in 1671 consented to transfer to the King (Louis XIV.) all rights and privileges, on his engagement to reimburse it for all its losses. They rendered an account as follows : L. s. d. Cost of first expedition in 1628 164,720 9 o Cost of second expedition in 1629 103,976 19 Cost of third expedition in 1630 77,092 1632 — Assessment to pay the Langlois 45,ooo Liquidation of dettes passives in 1643 410,796 16 10 Assessment in 1642 103,500 905,084 44 10 Interest to January, 1671 2,661,102 Losses, assessments and interest 3,566,186 44 10 AN UNFAVORABLE BALANCE SHEET. 22/ On the credit side of the account there stood : Profits in 1630 7^301 Hvres Profits of the auxiHary company 60,000 Profits after 1643 85,000 Royalty in beaver skins after 1645 50,000 Total 202,301 livres The company came out the loser by over 3,000,000 livres Tournois. CHAPTER X. The Passing of Champlain and the Arrival of the First Seigneurs in Quebec. Although the affairs of the company were, as we have seen already, in such disorder that the funds for carrying on its opera- tions had to be borrowed from an auxiliary organization, com- posed of Normandy merchants, of whom Sieurs Rosie and Chef- fault were the guiding spirits, all gloomy forebodings in the colony itself were dispelled on that bright morning in May, 1633, when Champlain with a fleet of three vessels hove in sight. He came in a modest state, yet as beseemed a lieutenant of the great Cardinal, to govern half a continent. The ''St. Pierre," of 150 tons and 12 guns; the ''St. Jean," of 160 tons and 10 guns, and the "Don de Dieu," of 80 tons and 6 guns, saluted the fort, and the fort replied with its feeble battery. Then the Governor landed and was escorted by arquebusiers and pikemen up the steep, narrow road which has always been called Mountain Hill, to the "Fort." It was almost five years since he had sadly descended it, a prisoner of war. Now he returned, inspired by the magnificent views of his great master, and cheered by his own enthusiastic belief in the future of the illimitable domain of which he was the ruler. Neither the great Cardinal's prophetic spirit nor the lieutenant's wildest dreams could possibly have grasped the magnitude of the ter- ritory which France was to explore and to claim as her own. The chief event of importance during the summer was the ar- rival of a fleet of 140 Huron canoes carrying a force of 600 Indians. They made their camp on the ist of August. The follow- ing day was devoted to a council and the interchange of presents. On the 3rd and 4th of the month the important business of selling and buying was transacted. The 5th was given over to feasting and dancing, and on the 6th they paddled away. Before their ap- THE HURONS AT QUEBEC. 229 pearance a large party of Algonquins had been induced to forego their intention of proceeding to Tadousac to trade with two Eng- hsh ships which lay there. The Hurons also were persuaded to dis- pose of their peltries at Quebec, rather than to an English vessel which seems to have pushed up the river to that point. With both Algonquins and Hurons there was endless palaver with inter- change of presents, promises and prophecies. The latter went so far as to anticipate the day when the French, having built posts in the West, would intermarry with the Indians and the two peoples become one. Champlain, who shared in that hope, could hardly be expected to foresee that, whenever that should take place, the white man would sink to the level of the red man instead of raising the red man to his own. The Indians excused the existing trade with the English as being a mere measure of prudence, explain- ing that if they shut off their furs entirely from the English mer- chants, the latter would simply encourage the Iroquois to enter their domain, and would thus bring, not merely competition, but war upon themselves and the French. The Indian was in fact more astute and long-headed than his French ally. There was scope enough on the continent for the expenditure of the energies and resources of both English and French acting in friendly rivalry, had they been able to see it. Unfortunately they could not. Father Le Jeune, the superior of the Mission, had commission- ed Fathers Brebeuf , Daniel and Davost to return with the Hurons ; but the Indians declined to be responsible for their safety, alleging that the Montagnais would attack them, in revenge for the deten- tion of their tribesman. The result would be war, and serious consequences to future trade would follow, as with hostile Mon- tagnais to the north, and savage Iroquois to the south, of the great waterway, all access to the trading posts would be shut off. The intrepid Jesuits would willingly have risked their lives, but the Governor, mindful of the interests of the colony and sensible of his weakness from a military point of view, forbade them, and on the 6th of August they regretfully saw the fleet of canoes dis- appear like a flock of birds. Another year had to elapse before they entered on that heroic campaign which won for the Company of Jesus such undying glory. That year they spent in studying 230 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the habits of the Indian tribes ; in converting to Christianity a few — a very few — Montagnais ; in fulfilHng with faithful punctuality their clerical functions ; and in baptizing the first negro who came to Quebec. He was a lad brought by some traders from Mada- gascar and given to Kirke, who left him to the care of the Jesuits. The events of the summer made it clear to Champlain that there was danger to the company's interests in bringing the In- dians of the Great Lakes so far east with their furs, and he there- fore took steps towards establishing new posts and re-establish- ing old ones further up the river. The first he founded proved to be of little importance; it was situated on the Island of St. Croix, near the Richelieu Rapids, fifty miles above Quebec, where the river contracts and the current at times becomes dangerous. It was soon found necessary to place the mart of traffic still fur- ther west, and the company therefore ceded to the Society of Jesus six hundred acres at Three Rivers on condition of their erecting thereon a suitable building. Three Rivers was thus re- stored to its former importance, but only for a short period : Mon- treal was founded in 1641, and within twenty years had monopo- lized the trade of the West. Champlain, having seen his guests paddle away lighter than they came, and the company's warehouse filled with the cargoes of one hundred and forty canoes, a plentiful freight for his return- ing fleet, which this year sailed for France on August 16, earlier than usual, turned his energies to the fulfillment of a vow made during his banishment, that if he were allowed by Providence to revisit Quebec, restored to French rule, he would build a chapel to Notre Dame de la Recouvrance (Our Lady of the Restoration). The chapel in question is supposed by Abbe Ferland to have been erected where the English cathedral now stands ; but Laver- diere is probably correct in assigning to it some remains found by him to the east of the present French cathedral. It was the second church built in Quebec, the first having been the little wooden chapel erected by theRecollets in the Lower Town, which was prob- ably burned during the English occupation, together with the store and the habitation, which adjoined it. The chapel of Notre Dame NOTRE DAME DE LA RECOUVRANCE. de la Recouvrance was therefore the one place of worship in Que- bec till it was burned in 1640; for the chapel attached to the Jesuit college was not commenced until 1650; nor used for divine service till the first Sunday of Advent, 1653. The community was in a temper of mind to be impressed keenly by religious in- fluences. Father le Jeune (Relation of 1634, page 2) de- scribes the effect which the services of the church, per- formed in this humble chapel, had upon the community. Greater austerity cannot have pervaded a Puritan town in Massa- chusetts. Champlain set the example at the castle. He forbade all idle talk at meals, and prevented it by having a book of secular history read at breakfast, and at supper the lives of the Saints. In the morning, at midday, and at evening the bell sum- moned the household to prayers. If Champlain had coquetted with heresy and heretics in his younger days, he was now making ample amends. A veritable revival, indeed, seems to have taken place among the least impressionable class of the community. One sinner, who had committed some offence in Carnival week, walked barefoot in the snow half a league to the Jesuit chapel to confess and obtain absolution, and during Lent the soldiers and artisans, usually so lax, who composed the major part of the population, not only submitted willingly to the prescribed fasts, but subjected themselves to discipline thirtyfold more severe than was imposed. So delighted was the good father that, breaking into poetry, he declared that "the winter, cold as it was in New France, was never so severe as to blight the blossoms of Paradise, which there bloomed the year around." If we may trust the Relation, the good work prospered also among the Indians. Yet one is rather taken aback by the bellicose advice which the superior gives, when he recommends, as the most effective method of spreading the Gospel among the Hurons, making \\'ar on their enemies, the Iroquois. The experiment was followed. It certainly resulted in the conversion of the Hurons, but only after nearly the whole nation had been exter- minated in the process. Anotlicr piece of advice was more in harmony with his religious profession, namely to try and wean the Indians from their roving habits. The experience of nearly 232 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. three centuries proves that, as long as wild game exists, the hunt- ing instinct in the savage cannot be repressed. Even half-breeds like the Hurons of Lorette take grudgingly to agriculture, but en- gage with all the ardor of their ancestors in the hunt. In the West the Indian of the plains resisted the blandishments of civilization till the buffalo had been killed off, and the stimulus and excitement of the chase were denied him. It is discouraging after reading the enthusiastic description of the work of the Jes- uit Fathers among the Montagnais, to visit the camp of their de- scendants to-day. Two centuries and a half have wrought num- berless changes all around them, but left them stationary and savage still. The spring fleet brought out two more Jesuit priests. Fathers Lalemant and Buteux, and Brother Jean Liegeois. There were thus in the colony eight priests and two brothers, forming perhaps even a larger proportion of the total population than before the EngHsh occupation. They soon began to scatter: Fathers Bre- beuf and Daniel ascended to Three Rivers to await there the arri- val of the Indians, and found a house built on the territory which the company had ceded to them, at the m'outh of the St. Maurice River. The Hurons came down, but only in small bands. War had broken out with the Iroquois, and the Hurons had met with serious reverses, losing 200 dead and 100 prisoners, according to their reckoning; numbers which may safely be divided by ten. Not even the strong motives of trade could induce them to ap- proach the country of their terrible enemies. When it was pro- posed that they should carry back two priests and some French laymen, they hesitated long, wavering between their desire to propitiate the French and their fear of offending their Algonquin allies, whose country they must traverse, and who were bitterly opposed to the passage of the white men. At length, under the persuasion of Duplessis and de I'Espinez, and after stipulating that the company should buy their stock of tobacco, and that the priests should do their full share of paddling, they con- sented to take two ecclesiastics and one French layman. Fath- ers Brebeuf and Daniel were the missionaries chosen. Subse- quently Father Davost and five more laymen were given passage THE FIRST CANADIAN SEIGNEUFL by other bands of Hurons. Thus began that memorable mission of the Jesuits to the Hurons which won for four of its members-— Jogues, Daniel, Lalemant and Brebeuf — crowns of martyrdom, and which exhibited in heroic action the self-denial and courage which the system of Ignatius Loyola can inspire in its adherents, and which compel our admiration when the service performed is untainted by political or worldly considerations. But alas ! the close alliance thus established with the French, not being backed by adequate physical force, proved the ruin of the Hurons and the forerunner of numberless ills to the un- fortunate colony. Henceforth the Hurons were to know no peace or rest till the small remnant of the nation, after being chased from Lake Huron to the Island of Orleans, and then from refuge to refuge, found shelter in 1693 picturesque village of Lorette, near Quebec. Little could the Huron hunters, when they wavered between the entreaties of the French on the one hand and the warnings of their Indian allies on the other, have foreseen through the long vista of anxious years the disasters to their tribe which were to follow in rapid succession their self-sacri- ficing act. Father le Jeune, as in duty bound, devotes the long memoirs of 1634 to the doings of himself and his order in their role as Indian missionaries. A minute and interesting account of his wondrous journey with a band of Montagnais ; a description of the manners and customs of these Indians ; and the story of the departure of the missionaries and their arduous journey to the Great Lakes compose his principal topics. We could have wished that he had given us a little more secular history. One paragraph which he does devote to mundane matters imparts a piece of news of prime importance. It tells us of the arrival of Mons. Giffard, who was to be the first landowner to do homage as a seigneur in New France. The priests and seigneurs were henceforth to be tlie two social forces of the colony, which means that the people were to be dis- couraged from thinking for themselves or from taking that in- terest in public affairs which individual ownership of land engenders. The feudal principle expressed by the aphorism "Nulla 234 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. terre sans Seigneur," was to be carried out to the full in Canada. In the old land, absolute monarchy had in its struggle with the great feudal lords come off conqueror, though the land tenure remained feudal in France up to the time of the Revolution. Still to Cardinal Richelieu, as to the French people at large, feudalism was more congenial than democracy ; and its appearance in a mod- ified form in New France cannot, therefore, be a matter of sur- prise. As a system it asserted the right of the King to the fealty of his subjects, and his control over the land was thereby explicitly recognized. Thus class distinctions and a modest semblance of aristocracy were preserved ; the seig- neurs, forming a semi-aristocratic class, would support and not oppose the Church, and through their influence the Cardinal's desire to impose unity of doctrine and strict submission to ec- clesiastical domination would be furthered. By these measures an impressive antiquity was stamped on New France, and Quebec, as the seat of government, became an epitome of the middle ages, where the Governor, as representative of the King, the Seigneur Dominant, held his court, and received the homage of his seign- eurs in person or by deputy, and where the priests ruled over the conduct and consciences of men, as arbitrarily as though Luther and Calvin had never resisted the authority of the Church in Europe. For more than another century the Governor of Canada remained an anomaly on the American continent, and Quebec an anachronism ; as picturesque in its religious, social and official life as in its natural situation. Even now so tenaciously and tenderly does Quebec cling to its associations with the past that its civil law is founded on the Coutume de Paris, a feudal system replaced by the Code Napoleon in old France, and abolished everywhere except in the old French province of Lower Canada. The grant of all the land in New France to the company of One Hundred Associates was conditional, and the conditions neces- sarily differed from those attached to feudal grants in France. The real and avowed purpose in Canada was to encourage emi- gration ; consequently the alienation of land under conditions most likely to favor that object was obligatory on the company. It was deemed that this object would be best attained, and in a manner A FEUDAL LAND TENURE. that would harmonize with the national habits and instincts, by giving the land to the company of New France "forever in full property, justice and lordship," but on condition that the com- pany "distribute the same to those who should inhabit the said country, and to others." Grants were, therefore, given of small tracts to actual settlers, like Hebert, cii fief noble, and of large ones to seigneurs, who were under obligation to cede the land to actual settlers in sub fief, or on a rent charge ; and, to induce the settlers to take up land, the seigneurs had to provide them with carding and flour mills, where their produce could be rendered available for use. The company was the vassal of the King, and the censitaires, or tenants, were vassals of the com- pany or of their grantees, the seigneurs. The King reserves from the company the right of fealty and homage, and the appoint- ment of officers of Royal Courts, who should be named and pre- sented to him by the said associates when it should be deemed proper to establish such courts. Under such legal conditions the Sieur Gififard became the first seigneur of Canada. He had been repeatedly to Canada as medi- cal officer on one of de Caen's ships, and had enjoyed himself while at Quebec in shooting snipe and duck in la Canardiere, and had built himself a cabin on the beach where, as narrated, the Indian murdered Dumoulin and Madame Hebert's serv- ant in 1627. He had been taken prisoner, when returning to France in 1628, in the ship of the Sieur de Roquemont ; but he harl such pleasant recollections of his experience in the New World that he induced Madame Marie Renouard to marry him in 1635 share the liardships of his rough Canadian home. Father Le Jeune records that on the 4th of June, the feast of Pentecost, Captain de Xesle brought his ship into port and had as passengers Mons. Giffard, his whole family, and several immi- grants whom he was l)ringing out as settlers. His wife was brave in tluis following her luishanfl. for she was sliortlv to be confined of a daughter, the event taking place on Trinity Sunday, a week after landing. This sturdy couple were of just tlie stnfF to trv tlic first ex- periment of the seigneur's life in New France. M. Giffard had 236 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. selected as the land to be ceded to him his old shooting ground, namely a league of the river front below Quebec on the north shore, from the discharge of the stream then known as Notre Dame de Beauport (Brown's Brook) towards the Falls of Montmorenci, by- one and one-half leagues in depth. This area was extended in 1653 to four leagues in depth. As in the case of all seignorial grants, this was no absolute gift of land. The King, as freeholder, had conditionally substituted the company in his rights, and the com- pany in its turn substituted the seigneur in some of its rights, but neither the company nor the seigneur was absolute owner of the soil, in the sense in which private persons can own it in Great Britain and the United States. Such absolute ownership by individuals was abhorrent to the ideas of feudalism. Even the feudal lord was supposed to own and use the land only for the benefit of his feudatories. The conditions under which grants were made to the Cana- dian seigneurs differed. In some few cases the seigneur possessed "Le droit de Haute, Moyenne et Basse Justice" (All powers of life and death), but, even when these extreme feudal rights were granted, they were never exercised. In several cases the grant from the king or the company was made on condition that the land granted should be alienated to actual settlers. Therein these grants differed from feudal grants in Old France, where aUena- tion of the land was absolutely forbidden. Otherwise the forms and conditions of feudalism in the old world were more or less exactly transferred to Canada. Generally speaking, the vassal of the King or the company, the seigneur, was required to do hom- age at the castle of St. Louis on each mutation of possession, as well as to pay the Seigneur Dominant a piece of gold and the whole or part of one year's rental. The seigneur's vassal, the tenant or censitaire, was bound to do homage to the seigneur and to pay cens et rentes as rental, consisting of one or two sous per acre and half a bushel of oats. He was also obliged to grind his corn at the seigneur's mills, giving in payment generally one- fourteenth of the yield. The rental was so insignificant that it would not have repaid the seigneur the trouble and cost of re- cruiting the settlers, and of organizing and superintending the SEIGNEUR AND CENSITAIRE. government of the seignory, had he not possessed the further right of levying what were called lods et ventes, or one-twelfth the amount of every sale of property and real estate made by a censitaire, or tenant. When property passed at death to a direct heir no such tax was due. The lods et ventes, payable by the farmer or censitaire to the seigneur as a tax on every transfer of his holding, corresponded to the qiiinze or tax, which the seigneur was bound to pay to the Seigneur Dominant whenever there was a change of sovereign. The lods et ventes in time became an in- tolerable burden, and interfered so seriously with the transfer of property, that, by the edict of 171 1, the seigneurs were obliged to commute for an equitable sum, when a censitaire desired to ac- quire a title to his land in free and common socage. This com- pulsory condition, under which the seigneur owned his land, made the actual abolition of the seignorial tenure under the law of 1854 legal and equitable. Conservative as was France under the old regime, and ignorant as its rulers often were of the real require- ments of Canada, whether as a proprietary colony at the outset, or a crown colony afterwards, the seignorial customs were repeatedly altered by edict in order to meet the changing conditions of the country. They were never so modified, however, as to give the sub- ject the right to own the land unconditionally or to alienate it ab- solutely from the crown, though the gradual tendency was towards greater liberty of tenure. In the old concession made to the Sieur de la Roche he was authorized to grant lands in the form of Fiefs, Seignories, Chat- tcllenies. Earldoms, Viscounties and Baronies. Thirty years elapsed between the date of this document and the chartering of the company of Canada. The feudal ideas of land tenure still formed an inseparable part of the social structure of France, but the growth of monarchical power had meanwhile so far modified the views of statesmen with regard to government, that no such powers were conferred on the Company of the One Hundred Associates as de la Roche had been invested with. On the con- trary, the feudal system was stretched almost beyond recognition, when the vassal of the crown was not merely allowed, but com- pelled, to cut up the fiefs into small holdings for the purpose of 238 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. encouraging the creation of a semi-independent agricultural class. The Canadian feudal system of land tenure was, of course, repug- nant to the English system of individual ownership, which under the influence of Protestantism, was becoming the dominant principle in the land policy of the Teutonic nations. It had, how- ever, the effect of creating what the great Cardinal intended, namely, a distinctly French community with a nice gradation of dignities and interests, tending to bind together instead of dissociating the various elements of the social body. It did in fact perform this service so effectually that all the forces of disintegra- tion which have since been at work have not availed to disturb the homogeneity of French Canada, or obliterate the institutions of Old France in America. The Cardinal's plans failed, however, of their immediate and principal purpose — the encouragement of immigration; even to-day the Frenchman is no more desirous of leaving his beautiful home in Normandy or Provence, to take up land in the wilderness, though offered gratuitously under the Teu- tonic allodial system, than he was two centuries and a half ago to accept it, under the feudal tenure, from a Canadian seigneur. The failure of the seigneurs or the company to settle New France as rapidly as the less attractive shores of New England or Virginia were being peopled, depended upon more deeply seated causes than the respective systems of land tenure in New England and New Erance. Giffard did homage for his seignory on the last day of Decem- ber, 1635, before Marc Antoine de Bras de Fer, Sieur de Chas- teaufort (Lieutenant Governor). He promised to follow the laws and ordinances concerning which he should be enjoined and notified, and to render fealty and homage for the land of Beauport, holding it expressly of the fort and castle of Quebec. Champlain had died a week before, or else he would have rep- resented the King and the company in this act of fealty, which would have seemed to him a realization of his dreams of the ex- tension to New France of the power and institutions of the parent state. The seigneur of Beauport secured a building site in town and erected his city residence near the castle. Thus was inaugurated GOOD OLD DAYS IN CANADA. the social life of Quebec, which during the French regime was a faint reflection of the bright side of French society, for in the town residence of many a seigneur who brought his family to the capital for the winter months, the gayety of a French salon was repeated. Until the approach of political decay, more than a century later, the influence of the clergy was sufficiently strong to repress any approach to the license which was an unfortunate feature of court and aristocratic life in Old France. The effect of the seignorial system in fusing the people into a harmonious whole was very notable. Though originating in class distinctions, it completely obliterated class hostility. The Abbe Casgrain graphically describes the actual result of a seig- norial concession under the old regime. ''The whole colonization system of New France rested on two men," he says, "the priest and the seigneur, who walked side by side and extended mutual help to one another. The censitaire, who was at the same time the parishioner, had two rallying points, the church and the manor house. The interests of these were generally identical, inasmuch as the limits of the seignory were with few exceptions coterminous with those of the parish. Every fall, as Michaelmas approached, (nth November) the seigneur warned his censitaires at the church door after mass, that their cens et rentes were payable. As soon as the winter roads were good the manor house became the centre of as lively activity as the preshyt^re or parish house to-day when the inhabitants assemble to pay their tithes. Some arrived in carioles, some on sleighs, bringing with them a capon or two, oats by the bushel, or other products of their land. The old re- devance amounted to only two livres per acre of frontage by forty- two acres in depth, and to one sou rental per year. The censi- taire who owned four acres by forty-two in depth had paid for his farm only eight francs, and was liable for only an annual rental of four sous per front arpent." In the old days land was seldom transferred, and the revenue, therefore, was much less than afterwards accrued, to certain seig- neurs, from lods et ventes, when the population had become more migratory, and the shifting of values of real estate tempted the occupant to sell. 240 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. It was a frightfully cold winter, that of 1634-5. The river was frozen from shore to shore. The Indians died from famine in great numbers, and in the new Jesuit settlement of Three Rivers several deaths occurred from scurvy. The fleet of the following spring arrived late, owing to the heavy ice off the coast and in the Gulf. Captain Duplessis Bochard with a fleet of six ships did not reach Tadousac till early in July, and one belated ship, commanded by Captain Butemps, did not reach port till August. They brought out six priests, but how many immigrants the Jesuit chroniclers do not tell us. There were now in the colony fourteen priests and four brothers. The sum- mer was uneventful. The Huron hunters came down with their furs in July, bringing letters from the Jesuit missionaries con- tradicting the reports of death and misfortune, which had reached their brethren in the East. All were well and reported a hearty welcome by the Indians of Lake Huron. This encouraged Champlain to repeat his exhortation to the dusky warriors to ac- cept civilization and adopt Christianity, and fit their daughters to become the wives of his French followers. Could he have been so enthusiastic as to believe in the possible realization of such a scheme? At any rate it is pleasant to think that his hopes ran high at the very time when he was stricken down by paralysis. He lingered for two and half months and died on Christmas day, 1635. He was buried with all the honors the garrison, the church, and the people could confer on a man whom all loved and respected; for, into whatever errors of judgment he may have fallen, he never committed an intentional injustice or acted from low, selfish, or mercenary motives. His friend, Father Lalemant, performed the funeral service, and Father le Jeune delivered the funeral oration in the church he had himself built in honor of the Virgin; and they buried him in a scpidcre particulier, but where? Not a hint is given as to the place of his interment. Mr. O'Donnell, a city official of Que- bec, disinterred from a stone vault under the Little Champlain street steps, in i860, a coffin containing human bones which he argued were the remains of the illustrious founder of Quebec. But the church he founded, and which he wished to endow with THE DEATH OF CHAMPLAIN. 241 most of his worldly goods, was in the Upper Town, and under it or beneath its choir, and nowhere else, he must have wished to be laid to rest. The Church of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, with its register, containing, it must be assumed, the record of his death and interment, was burned in 1640. Monsieur Laverdiere believed that he had discovered and traced the remains of the foundation of the old church in the yard of the Presbytere in Buade street. These foundations, if they belonged to the old church, would in- dicate that it did not point east and west, for what Laverdiere assumes to be the choir lay diagonally under part of the apse of the present basilica. That this was the orientation of Cham- plain's church is confirmed by the finding, as recorded by Abbe George Cote, when some repairs were being made in the vaults of the basilica in 1877, ^ skeleton, whose skull instead of lying in the direction of the nave pointed towards the choir. As no record of any such interment exists in the archives of the cathedral, the remains are supposed to be those of some one buried under the choir of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance. If this supposition be correct, then the body of the illustrious founder of Quebec may also repose where it, above all others, has the right of sepulchre, beneath the choir of the cathedral, raised to the dignity of a ba- silica on the 200th anniversary of the foundation of the episcopate of Quebec. Father Vimont, in the Relation of 1640, in describing the fire which swept away their home, says : "It reduced to ashes the chapel of Monsieur le Gouverneur and the parish church." This would imply that there were two ecclesiastical edifices, or that there was a chapel in the parish church which went by the name of the Governor's chapel, presumably because Champlain's remains reposed there. It is contrary to the known character of Governor Montmagny to imagine that he would ever so far depart from the simplicity and habits of his illustrious predecessor as to erect a chapel for his private devotions. The Jesuit fathers distinctly state that in his humility he always knelt with other parishioners to receive the sacrament. It may naturally have been supposed that it would act as a stimulus to devotion to consecrate, as the Governor's chapel, a spot almost sanctified by the remains of 242 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Champlain. The sepulcre particulier of Champlain must have been a vault; for his friend, Father Raymboult, who died in 1642, was buried beside him. Nor was he the first who was thus honored. In 1641 the register records that on the 2d of May of that year, Mons. Francois Grand-mont, a prominent member of the Com- pany and the original owner of Sillery, died in the room under the sacristy and chapel of Quebec. This chapel was in the second story of the company's house, which was temporarily occupied as a place of worship after the burning of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance. Here Monsieur Grand-mont had spent his winter and here he died. On the 21st, after the office of the dead and solemn mass had been sung, he was buried, so the register says, in the chapel of Monsieur de Champlain. It does not say in the actual vault. Thence we should infer that the vault in the Gov- ernor's chapel of the Church of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance had passed uninjured through the fire, and that over it had been built a chapel. This chapel is mentioned as a landmark in a deed by Governor D'Aillebout in February, 1649, when reserving an acre of land in the town of Quebec for public purposes, contre la chapelle Champlain. But in the maps of Quebec made in 1660 and 1664 see Faillon, Histoire de la Colonic Frangaise, vol. 3, page 373), this chapel does not appear. It had probably been ab- sorbed by the large parish church, the predecessor of the cathedral, and of the present basilica, which appears on the map as a notable feature of the town. Within its foundation walls, therefore, may yet be found that sepulcre particulier, with its precious contents. It is a grateful thought that the first governor of New France rests near Frontenac, Callieres, Vaudreuil and Longueil in this pantheon of French heroes.* Only a tablet records the fact that these remains rest there in peace. A monument should be erected worthy of his fame and achievements ; and there is little doubt that this could easily be done by means of contributions gratefully sub- scribed by men of both nationalities and every creed in Canada and the United States. Champlain left a will by which he bequeathed to the church he had founded in Quebec all his personal ei¥ects in Canada, 300 *See a full discussion of the subject by Dr. Dionne in his chapter on " The Tomb of Champlain," Etudes Historiques. A NOBLE HISTORICAL CHARACTER. livres in the stock of the original company of One Hundred As- sociates, 900 livres in the auxiliary company's stock, and 400 livres in cash. But when he married Helene Boulle there was a marriage contract by which husband and wife mutually bequeathed each to the other whatever they might die possessed of. His wife consented to the will, but his cousin opposed it, on the ground that it con- tradicted the marriage contract. The will was set aside, the judge allowing to the Chapelle de Notre Dame only the proceeds of the sale of Champlain's personal effects, some 900 livres, which were expended in vessels for the altar. His widow survived him nine- teen years, dying in a nunnery of her own founding. Like most converts — for it must be remembered that she was a Huguenot in her early life — she was so extreme in her devotion to her adopted faith that, even during her husband's life, she is said to have de- cided to enter a convent and take the veil. The laws of the church denied her that gratification unless her husband would also re- nounce his marriage vows and adopt a religious life. This the old sailor and busy man of the world declined to do, looking on his work as more valuable to his country and more pleasing to God than would have been the donning of a clerical or monastic habit. He lives in history as a brave, single-hearted sailor and ex- plorer, who had a clear conception of duty and followed his con- victions without swerving or wavering. Few men are honest enough to tell the story of their life as simply as he did, without exaggeration, or self-laudation, or insincere self-derogation, or cant. He was not a great soldier or a great statesman. Had he been the first, he would have pursued with more determination and method his policy of subduing the native tribes opposed to him ; and had he l)ccn tlic second, he would ])roba])ly have suc- ceeded by diplomacy in creating a strong confederacy out of those with which he was on friendly terms. Nevertheless, if not in the highest sense a great man, he was endowed with a courage and straightforwardness of purpose that were proof against a thousand disappointments and broken promises. These virtues buoyed him up till, after seventeen years of hope deferred yet of faith unshaken, he saw Quebec growing from a post into a town, and Canada assuming the character of a colony. CHAPTER XL The Arrival of Governor Montmagny, and the Establish- ment of the Ursuline and Hospital Nuns at Quebec. The company had provided for the contingency of Cham- plain's death by depositing with Father le Jeune a commission in favor of Mare Antoine Bras de Fer de Chasteaufort, of Three Rivers, as his temporary successor. The document was read after the funeral service. The colonists acquiesced. The Governor was prostrate from paralysis when the fall fleet sailed, but the news of his death having actually occurred must have been sent to France through some port on the Atlantic seaboard ; other- wise Charles Hault de Montmagny would not have been nomi- nated to the governorship, and his appointment confirmed by the Cardinal on the loth of March. With such expedi- tion was a fleet equipped to escort the new official to the seat of his government, that he arrived before Quebec on the evening of the nth of June, to the intense relief of the townsfolk. They knew that France had embarked in a great war (The Thirty Years' War), in alliance, with the Swedes, the Germans and the Dutch against Spain, and they dreaded that Spain, exasperat- ed by the aid given to the Protestant cause by Catholic France, might attempt to wreak on the still feeble colony the same awful vengeance which she had inflicted by the hand of Menendez upon Ribault's colony in Florida. But even if such a fate were spared them, they feared that the mother country, in the throes of a great war, would need all her resources to meet the at- tack of Spain, and might neglect them as she had done be- fore Kirke's invasion. Great therefore was the joy of the whole community when they recognized in the new Governor a soldier of some renown, and a knight of the order of St. John of Malta. To the priests the appointment of a celibate, with no wife to tempt him to change the austere routine of the castle life into a round of courtly gayeties, must have given promise of another GOVERNOR MONTMAGNY AND THE IROQUOIS. regime of strict and edifying fulfilment of all religious duties and observances. The profound piety of the new Governor was demonstrated by his stopping a procession on its way to the inaugural service in the Church of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, and falling on his knees before a cross which met his view. In the same spirit, im- mediately after the Te Deum had been sung and the keys of the Chateau and Fort delivered to him by Monsieur de Chasteaufort, he stood sponsor at the baptismal font for an Indian child. In July of this year (1636) there was a large gathering at Quebec of Montagnais Indians from Tadousac, when the Gover- nor had his first lesson in diplomacy from these wily savages. Their chief desire was, as usual, to induce the French to become their allies against the Iroquois, and" their orators could always adduce cogent arguments that appealed to the self-interest and pride of the French. On the other hand, the French had other than motives of gain in urging the red men to forbear trading either with the Dutch on the Hudson or with the English poachers in the Gulf. Three arquebuses were found in the camp of a Mon- tagnais band at Three Rivers. The Governor, indeed, was soon to learn that the bravest race of Indians on the continent were already in possession of firearms, and that thus the superiority which the few white men enjoyed in virtue of their weapons was in danger of disappearing. After this council the new Governor ascended the river to Three Rivers, which had now supplanted Quebec as a trading post, just as Montreal in time replaced Three Rivers, the danger from the Iroquois making it increasingly desirable to shift the market as near as possible to the source of supply. Ere he left Three Rivers Montmagny was called upon to bring his military skill into exercise against this formidable foe, a very different one from any he had ever faced. The Iro- quois, to the number of five hundred, had descended the Riche- lieu, and, intercepting a fleet of Hurons, had captured two of the most noted Huron chiefs, several youths destined for the Huron seminary at Quebec, and other less important members of the tribe. Besides seizing the traders they se- cured rich booty in their stock of furs. The Governor with- 246 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. drew the French, the friendly Montagnais and Algonquins, and the Hurons who had escaped, into the fort of Three Rivers, which consisted of a mere breastwork, and there prepared for an attack. To each of the six priests he assigned a special duty. Messengers were sent to Quebec for help, and aid was at once sent him. The fleet was in Quebec, and their crews were glad to be enlisted in such an exciting enterprise. The ship's boats from Mons. de ITsle's ship, manned by a number of his crew, were the first to arrive at Three Rivers, and a schooner followed, com- manded by Captain Raymbaut. Nor were the prominent citizens of Quebec backward in responding to the call. Sieurs Couillard and Giffard and other notables hurried to the front. But before they arrived the Governor had armed the two ships' boats, one commanded by the Sieur Desdames and the other by Captain Fournier, and, under their protection, proceeded in his own row- boat to attack the fleet of canoes and drive the Iroquois out of Lake St. Peter, so as to reopen the river to the Huron traders. Aware of his design and preparations the foe had disappear- ed, leaving at the mouth of the Richelieu traces of their barbarous cruelty, but carrying off most of their prisoners, together with the furs, which they meant to barter with the Dutch at Fort Nassau. The volunteers must have returned to Quebec with gloomy forebodings, for the success of the Iroquois in an attack made under the very guns of the fort, and before the eyes of the Governor himself, was sure to embolden them to undertake still more venturesome enterprises. They were being supplied with guns and ammunition by the Dutch in exchange for their furs. The very booty they had just carried off across Lake Champlain into the valley of the Hudson meant many guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which, if directed against the 200 inhabitants of Quebec before the fleet arrived or after its de- parture, might involve the destruction of the colony. Montmagny, immediately on assuming the government, had strengthened the river fort at Quebec by a redoubt facing the river, and mounted additional cannons on it. The Indians, while powerless to en- ter the fort, could yet seriously harass the inhabitants and destroy all outlying settlements. There were, in fact, grounds for the keen- A PIOUS COMMUNITY. 247 est apprehension, as subsequent events fully proved. The bold attack on the Huron fleet was the beginning of an Indian war which lasted, with occasional lulls, for more than a century. The Governor waited at Three Rivers till the end of August, hoping that the Indians would regain courage and appear; but as the fleet for France was about to sail, he and Father le Jeune were obliged to descend to Quebec. They had hardly landed w^hen news of the arrival of 150 Hurons at Three Rivers was received. Montmagny sent his lieutenant, the ChevaHer de ITsle, to meet them, and Mons. le Jeune accompanied him. It was ne- cessan,' to show more than customary courtesy and considera- tion to the savages, for an epidemic, which they attributed to the machinations of the French, and especially to the in- cantations of the missionaries, had broken out on the Georgian Bay and was ravaging the tribe. The fleet there- fore sailed away with lighter cargoes than usual, and with a budget of bad news. This was certainly, for the Governor, a discouraging introduction to his duties ; but to cheer him there returned Fathers Daniel and Davost, with the Huron traders, who brought back glowing accounts of their mission- Sivy success, and a description of the beautiful Georgian Bay, and of the lakes and rivers and the illimitable country that lay be- tween the St. Lawrence and Lake Huron. They moreover told what they had heard of the still vaster waters and wider lands that lay beyond to the west. But these almost fabulous stories do not seem to have excited the Governor's imagination, which might well have glowed at the thought of the greatness awaiting the parent State through the expansion of her colonial empire — an empire that would be hers without challenge, as neither the col- onists in Virginia, nor the sedate Puritans of New England, nor the sluggish Dutch of New Netherland, had ventured far enough away from their homes on the sea coast to get a glimpse of the vast interior of the Continent. The winter was probably the season in which the religious enthusiasm and social purity mentioned in the letters trans- mitted to France, as characterizing society in Quebec, was seen to most advantage. The priests could, during that season, watch 248 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. each of their parishioners and restrain their foibles and their faults; but when summer arrived, and with it came the fleet full of reckless sailors, a contagion of vice spread ; the whole community then suffered a lowering of its religious temperature, and fell away very sensibly from its high moral standard. The ships occasionally also, despite the prohibition against the impor- tation of heresy, landed and left in the colony emigrants tainted with what Father le Jeune called "the alleged rehgion," but these stray sheep were unable to withstand the arguments of the priests and the pressure of public opinion. In short, no one re- mained long in the colony who questioned the authority of the Church. There was even greater and more perfect religious unanimity than in the Puritan colonies of New England, though in both com- munities religion was the foundation of the State. The directors of the company of New France laid it down as an absolute rule that "to build up the body of a healthy colony religion is essential, being to the State what the heart is to the human body — its most vital organ." But the religious spirit of the French colony was less gloomy than that of the Puritan commonwealth, and its form of worship less severe. Music and color and the dramatically ef- fective details of vestment and posture in the altar service, the result of the aesthetic expression of the religious feeling of the most artistic peoples of southern Europe, were well calculated to retain a firm hold on the French colonists to whom they were tra- ditionally sacred, and to appeal to the senses of the Indians, edu- cated in sign language and picture writing. Both communities were pledged to a religious life and missionary propagand- ism among the aborigines ; but, looking back over nearly three cen- turies, we cannot fail to recognize that primitive Roman Catho- licism has retained its influence over the French of Lower Canada more effectually than Puritanism, in its primitive form, has main- tained its hold on the people of New England. It must be added that Roman Catholicism, with its florid, picturesque ritual and less abstract creed, has also been more comprehensible to the Indians than the metaphysical dogmas of Calvinism. The Jesuit Fathers clearly understood this, and the festival of St. Joseph, who is re- Cetts figuic cc met cu la page i p. dc laRelation dc Ganadas. THE NATIVES DISCUSS THEOLOGY. 249 cognized as the patron saint of Canada, was celebrated by a great display of fireworks, the Governor himself lighting the set piece and explaining to the Indians, through an interpreter, that the French were more powerful than even the demons, for they could call forth fire at will, and use it when they listed to burn the bodies of their enemies. Thus too the feast of Mary, patroness of the church of Quebec, was inaugurated by hoisting the royal ensign on the bastion of the fort amidst a salvo of artillery and the rattle of musketry, and raising a maypole before the church, surmounted by three crowns, emblems of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. By such means religion and the civil power came to be indissolubly asso- ciated in the minds of the Indians.* The Governor actively aided the Fathers in their endeavors to teach the natives. In the middle of December, after the Mon- tagnais had started on their winter's hunt, there remained a band of Algonquins camped near the fort. The Governor gave them a feast, and while their mouths and their hearts were full, he ex- tracted a promise from them to visit betimes the mission house of Notre Dame des Anges. Thus commenced a series of con- ferences, wherein discussions were by no means one-sided, for the Fathers, trained though they were in dialectics, found it difficult sometimes to deal with the arguments of their savage opponents. The Indians insisted on reasons being given for the fact that since the advent of the white men, who pretended to ofifer nothing but blessings to them, the mortality of the tribe had so dangerously increased as to threaten it with extinction. The priest attributed • Rev. John Miller, in his New York Considered and Improved, 1695, charges the French with debauching "so many of our Indians as they have made Christians & obliged by so doing some of our Mohawks so much yt one of them, as I have heard, having run away from us to them & thereupon being upbraided with his infidelity in forsaking his old friends, in his own defence made answer that he had lived long among the English, but they had never all that while had so much love for him as to instruct him in the concerns of his soul & show him the way to salvation, which the French had done upon their first Acquaintance with him, & therefore he was obliged to love & be faithfull to them, & mgage as many of his nation as he could to go along with him dv: to partake of the same knowledge & instructions that were afforded & imparted to him, so that it appears to be a worke not only of great charity but of almost absolute necessity to endeavor the conversion of the five Nations and other Indians, lest they be wholly de- bauched by ye French y the kind permission ofCoI. Norman Neilson. A NEW CONSTITUTION. 299 governed, was the agent who put that pohcy first into motion, and who transmitted the Indian equivalent of his name — Onontio — (Anglice, Great ^Mountain) — to his successors. During d'Aillebout's term of office, which extended to 165 1, events were not conducive to the growth of the town or of the colony. Three incidents, however, rendered his administration memorable. These were : First, the inauguration of the more liberal constitution which he brought out in his portfolio. Secondly, the tragedy on the Georgian Bay, which resulted in the extermination of the Hurons as a powerful nation, and the transplanting of the small remnant to Quebec. Thirdly, the continuation of the nego- tiation with New England for a commercial treaty, and an of- fensive and a defensive alliance against the Iroquois, which had been inaugurated by Montmagny. The new constitution did not enlarge to any notable extent the prerogatives already enjoyed by the people. The Council of 1647 was composed of the Governor, the Superior of the Jesuits or the Bishop, and the Governor of [Montreal, with, as act- ive members, the Governor of the Fleet and the syndics of Que- bec, Three Rivers and Montreal. The new Council of 1648 was composed of the Governor, the Superior of the Jesuits or the Bishop, the ex-Governor of the Colony, and in his absence an in- habitant to be chosen by the colonists ; two inhabitants, to hold of- fice for three years, to be chosen by the Council and the syndics of Quebec, Three Rivers and ]Montreal. The two popular representa- tives and the substitute for the ex-Governor, In the first Council, were the Sieurs Chavigny, Godefroy and Giffard, all three men of note and of property. If d'Aillebout really solicited the appoint- ment of Governor when he went to France, as one of the delegates sent by the colonists to plead for reform, he was disinterested in procuring a reduction of the Governor's salary to 10.000 Hvres, and of his free freight from 70 to 12 tons, and of his body- guard to twelve soldiers. Corresponding reductions, as we have seen, were made in the salaries and perquisites of the governors of Montreal and Three Rivers. The diversion created by the arrival of the Governor and tlic promulgation of the new constitution, followed by the appearance 300 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. at Three Rivers, after two years' intermission, of two hundred and fifty Huron canoes, loaded with furs, encouraged people to believe that Montmagny's dread of the Iroquois War was an exaggerated apprehension. Ignorant of the designs of their foes, the In- dian traders started back from Three Rivers, accompanied by some thirty French laymen and the Jesuit Fathers Bressani, Bonin, Greslon, Daron and Gabriel Lalemant. The last-mentioned was journeying straight to his death. Elated by a victory they had gained over a band of Iroquois which had at- tacked them at Three Rivers, the Hurons considered them- selves invincible, and neglected the most ordinary pre- cautions. The Iroquois, on the other hand, confident of their power, doomed the whole nation to extermination, and struck the first fatal blow on the i6th of the following March (1649), when the bourgade of St. Ignace was completely obliterated, all its in- habitants, together with Father Gabriel, being slaughtered. The next blow fell speedily on the neighboring mission of St. Louis. There two more martyrs, Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant, won the martyr's crown after suffering the most cruel tortures. But of all these terrible events; of the death of their dearest personal friends, and the destruction of their most cherished hopes of spreading the tenets of Christianity and the power of France, through the agency of the Huron nation, the Jesuit Fathers, at their headquarters in Quebec, were utterly ignorant until June 20, when the following brief entry occurs in Father Guillaume Lalemant's Journal : "During the night we received the sad news of the destruction of the Hurons and the martyrdom of the three fathers." Full details were brought by Father Bressani in Sep- tember. The havoc wrought among the Hurons did not, how- ever, entirely put a stop to trading, for with him were Huron and French traders, bringing 5,000 beaver skins, worth 26,000 francs. A French soldier and his brother, who had spent only one year in Huronia, returned loaded down with 747 pounds of beaver, worth four or five francs the pound. The incongruous mingling of tragedy and commerce has, however, not been con- fined to early American history. Giving little thought to the peril impending over the Lake HUROX VICTIMS AND JESUIT MARTYRS. 301 country, society at Quebec in the winter of 1648-9 was gayer than usual, for the vice-regal court was at last presided over by a lady — Madame d'Aillebout. Her sister, Madame Philippine du Boulanque, had accompanied her from Montreal, but at once entered the Ursuline convent as a novice. The Governor's wife, though as devoutly disposed towards a religious life as her sister, could not take the vows unless her husband also entered a monas- tery. She therefore waited until his death in 1660 before trying the experiment. After a short novitiate she abandoned it ; never- theless she was proof, so rumor says, against the matrimonial at- tacks of two subsequent governors. We can picture her to our- selves as one of those charming, lively, sympathetic women who can be sincerely and actively religious without being austere, and gay without being frivolous. Quebec certainly needed all the consolation and courage wliich religion, the sanguine, happy temperament of the Governor's wife, and the natural lighthcartedness of its people, could impart to support it through the trials of the next two years; for the policy of revenge and extermina- tion was pursued by the Iroquois with relentless fury and untiring vigilance. In the autumn of 1649 Father Charles Gamier preferred to die with his converts, rather than escape from the bourgade of St. Jean, which was attacked and destroyed when its warriors were absent. Another martyr had still to be added to the list. Father Chabanel was Father Garnier's colleague in the St. Jean mission, and was on his way with a band of Hurons to the Sault Ste. Marie. Fearing at night the approach of an enemy, his Huron companions fled more rapidly than he could follow. He was supposed at first to have perished from cold and hunger in the forest, but subsequently a Huron took credit for having killed him in revenge for the untold misery his order had brought upon his nation. On the other hand, it is a most pathetic proof of the depth of conviction with which the Christian teach- ings of the Jesuit Fathers had imbued their converts, that they did not one and all adopt this superstitious explanation of their calamities, and, by ridding themselves, in the same summary manner, of the supposed evil influence, make a bid for the favor of 302 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. their persecutors. There is, in fact, no positive proof that Father Chabanel did thus meet his death, and it is certain that none other of the missionary band received aught else than protection and reverence at the hands of the unhappy fugitives. Some of the Hurons sought refuge with friendly tribes ; some surrendered, and were incorporated into the families of their con- querors; others escaped in small parties to the St. Lawrence and joined the one band which retained any semblance of national identity, being thus brought into close relation with the city of Quebec. The Jesuits of St. Mary, when the defence of that mis- sion became clearly impossible, induced their converts and the forty s^culaires — servants who had pledged themselves, without taking vows, to serve for life in menial occupations without pay — to seek safety on the Island of St. Joseph, now called Christian Island. There famine and disease threatened to complete the work of the Iroquois tomahawks. In despair they prayed Father Ra- guenau to lead them to Quebec. He consented, and with as little delay and as profound secrecy and silence as possible, the members of the mission and three hundred Huron Christians started on their dreary pilgrimage of nearly a thousand miles by forest trail, lake and river. Only three hundred ! — and yet Father Ragueneau states that during the previous year he and his fellow- priests baptized more than three thousand Indians. Ten years previously the country contained from eight to ten thousand Hurons — one estimate mentions 20,000 — and this was the rem- nant ! Once, on their perilous march, the advance guard fell back and reported that they had heard sounds and seen traces of human beings. These proved to be Father Bressani with twenty Indians and forty plucky colonists, hastening to the relief of their fellow countrymen and Indian allies. There re- mained none to whom human hand could render help on the once populous and happy shores of the Georgian Bay; the relief party, therefore, joined the fugitives, thus com- posing a force too strong to be safely attacked — for no warriors calculate chances more accurately than Indian braves, and none are so averse to attacking against odds. After fifty days of toil- some journeying they reached what they might with confidence The first Ursuline Convent, burnt in 1650. Madame de la Peltrie's house is in the foreground From an old painting in the Ursuline Convent. Reproduced from Gli?npses of a Monastery. PROPOSED TREATY WITH NEW ENGLAND. have supposed would be their haven of refuge — Quebec. They numbered more than their hosts. Some were received at the Hotel Dieu. The Ursulines threw their convent open to the girls and women. The wealthier families undertook to support each an Indian family ; but, after all the fountains of local charity had been exhausted, two hundred starving creatures were left to the kindly care of the Jesuits, whose hands, though nearly empty, were still held forth to help them. Heavy as was the drain which the hungry, helpless, famine-stricken fugitives made on their scanty resources, they had to prepare, ere winter set in, for the probable advent of some three hundred more — the remnant of the race — who, it was hoped, would succeed in eluding the snares laid for them by their relentless enemies. The third event of note in Governor d'Aillebout's administra- tion was Father Druillettes' mission to New England. It has already been mentioned that in 1645 M. de Mont- magny made a shrewd move, in enlisting in the interest of the French, the Algonquin tribes settled along the frontier of New England. They had received the rudiments of Chris- tianity from some Capuchin monks, who were dwelling among them ; but the Superior of the Jesuits selected for their spiritual guide Father Druillettes. He was a man of very varied abilities. As a missionary to the Algonquin tribes, occupying the country drained by the Chaudierc River, now in the province of Quebec, and the northern portions of the present State of Maine, he won them over so effectually to Christianity that whole tribes be- came forever obedient servants of the Church and vassals of the Crown of France. His talents were recognized by the au- thorities, and when an ambassador was required to negotiate with the colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth an offensive and defensive alliance against the Iroquois, with tlie tempting bait of a reciprocity treaty of trade thrown in, he was the man chosen. He acquitted himself so dexterously in this delicate situation, and managed the negotiations with such diplomatic temper, that he was twice received in his official capacity by Deputy Governor Dudley, though the laws of the colony exposed him to arrest as a Jesuit ; and so cultivated was he as a scholar and 304 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. theologian that, despite their antagonistic views, he became the welcome guest of Eliot, the Puritan missionary to the Indians. When we find men, not only of such ability, but of such intel- lectual attainments, forsaking the refinements of society and con- demning themselves to lives of physical hardship, and, worse still, of intellectual and social banishment among a starving, wandering and debased tribe like the Abenaki Indians, we obtain a gauge by which to measure the devotion that animated them. To a man of Father Druillettes' breadth of mind and education placed in such circumstances, the commission to act as political agent in an im- portant negotiation must have been peculiarly agreeable. The zest and ability with which he executed the commission explains the tendency of the Jesuit Order to make of its members both politicians and priests. Men of such marked ability, such profound learning and such knowledge of the world — qualities which, as a body, they alone among the regular clergy possessed — ^would possess peculiar adaptation for political functions. It must be re- membered that the line of demarcation between the provinces of statecraft and religion was not in those days so well defined as it has since become in Protestant lands. The ministers of New England, when Father Druillettes went thither on his diplomatic mission, looked upon the direction of politics as one of their most sacred duties. That the domination of priests, in Canada, and of ministers in New England, led to very different results, does not do away with the fact that the right of the Church to control the State was then a fundamental axiom of the ecclesiastical policy of English Prelatists, of Puritans and of the Church of Rome. The negotiations looking towards a reciprocity treaty between New France and New England seem to have been informally opened by New England, in either 1647 or 1648, during Mont- magny's administration, but to have come to naught. It is not easy to conceive of any trade agreement by which advantage would be conferred on English colonists, meeting with the ap- proval of the government of France. The only article exported by New France was furs, and for these New England would at any time have offered a better market than France, under the re- strictions which the laws of the colony imposed. This would have FATHER DRUILLETTES. been the strongest reason why RicheHeu would never have con- sented to the diversion of that lucrative traffic to England through EngHsh colonies. On the other hand, England, if consulted, would never have consented to her colonies importing French wines and French goods from Canada. The St. Lawrence always did carry on more or less of a contraband trade with New Eng- land, but no treaty was ever framed with a view of actually legit- imising smuggling. That can best be done without a formal con- vention. As New England would doubtless have been able to carry on a profitable trade with the St. Lawrence, it is not sur- prising that the first proposal came from her. It does not appear that any response was made by the Government of New France. When the negotiation was revived by Governor d'Aillebout, two years later, the Iroquois campaign of extermination, which was only a threat in 1648, had become a horrible reality. The French Governor and his Council were, therefore, warranted in thinking that the New England colonists might regard Iroquois success and the extension of Iroquois power with as much alarm as they themselves felt. To advocate a campaign against the common enemy was the prominent motive of Father Druil- lettes' first mission in 1649. As he was the apostle of the Montagnais, who were likely to be the next flock of Chris- tian sheep to be devoured by those ravenous heathen wolves, it was fitting that the mission of seeking protection for his feeble con- verts should be committed to him. The negotiation of a commer- cial treaty does not seem to have been included in his formal in- structions. He has left us a full account of the incidents of his mission, and one which throws a less sombre light on New Eng- land life than it is usually invested with by popular fancy. He started as ambassador from Quebec on September ist, with- out much pomp or circumstance, accompanied only by Noel Nega- hamet, an Indian chief from Sillery, though with properly au- thenticated credentials to the New England authorities. He ascended the Chaudiere, and descended the Kennebec, which he spells Quenebcc, until he reached Narantsouiat, a camp of the Abenakis. On the following day they paddled down to Coussinoc, where the town of Augusta now stands, the outpost of the English 3o6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. settlements in that direction. The clerk in charge there was John Winslow, a brother of Edward Winslow, the agent of Massachu- setts in England. Noel produced a packet of beaver skins as a pre- sent to the Governor, and introduced the mission with the usual oratory. John Winslow, who had heard of Father Druillettes' la- bors among the Abenakis of the St. Lawrence and Iroquois, greeted him with fervor as a fellow Christian, animated by the same desire as his own brother Edward to elevate the Indians. He made him his guest and accompanied him to Boston. The journey at that season was tedious. The party was obliged to go ten leagues by land in order to take ship at Marimitin (Merrymeeting). They did not reach Boston till the 8th of December. While coasting from the mouth of the Kennebec, the presence on board of the French priest was looked upon with the gravest suspicion by the New England fishermen. Acadia had not yet been taken for good and all by Cromwell, and the New England coast stood in constant dread of attack from that quarter. But no suspicion annoyed him in Boston. His coming had been announced, and Major Gebin (Major Gibbons) welcomed him to his house and gave him a key to a room where he could practice the rites of his religion with- out interruption. It seems that Major Gibbons was a great friend of LaTour, that eccentric adventurer, whose vicissitudes, includ- ing the defense of his fort (La Tour on the Novia Scotia coast) by his heroic wife, and her subsequent death, are amongst the romantic episodes of Canadian history. Driven away from Acadia by his relentless enemy, Charnisay, he had sought refuge at Quebec, of all places in the world, notwithstanding his taint of Calvinism, and had there been hospitably received. He had gone thence to Boston to enlist the aid of the colony in righting his wrong, a proceeding savoring somewhat of treason. But it would seem that his generous treatment in Quebec had so mitigated his animosity that, like Balaam, he blessed where he had gone to curse.* * There must have been in La Tour's character a strange mixture of heroism, religious susceptibility, conviviality and calculating shrewdness, for after losing wife and all he had in the stubborn fight, he had the audacity to go to Quebec, where he won over the austere Catholic. Montmagny; then left in Boston such pleasant memories of good fellowship behind him, that the jolly Major was will- A JESUIT NEGOTIATOR AT BOSTON.. On the 9th of December Major Gibbons introduced the priestly ambassador to Governor Dudley at Rogsbury (Roxbury). Dudley having examined his credentials, called a meeting of the City Fath- ers (magistrates) on the 13th. On that date Druillettes was enter- tained at a public dinner, and stated his case, as he describes it, "to the magistrate, a man deputed by the people, whom they called a representative.'' They discussed his proposal for an offensive and defensive alliance against the Iroquois in secret session. Then all adjourned to supper before they informed him that the matter was beyond their jurisdiction, and that, as ambassador of the Catechu- mens of the Kennebec, he must appeal to the Council of the colony of Plymouth (the Kennebec was in the Plymouth grant.) To Plymouth, therefore, he went, where he was received by one of the five farmers of Koussenac called Padis.* William Brentford (Bradford) appointed the following day for an audience, and as it was Friday, in deference to his guest's reli- gious scruples, entertained him at a fish dinner. He remained there until the 24th, in constant conference ; but his account of the pro- ceedings was embodied in a special report, which was not pub- lished, for the Jesuit authorities always maintained a discreet silence in regard to such matters. On his journey back his hosts insisted on paying all expenses by the way. Reaching Rogsbury (Roxbury) at nightfall, he was the guest of a minister whom he calls Maitre Heliot, who he says was teaching some Indians. Their converse was so pleasant that Eliot entreated him to tarry and spend the winter with him.f Evi- ing to reciprocate even on the person of a Jesuit Father. lie ended by cancelling all past differences with Charnisay by marrying his widow. riil)bons' connection with him, however, did not turn to his advantage, for he suffered heavy pecuniary loss through lenduig La Tour money on his St. John property, which was finally confiscated. ♦ William Paddy, one of the five merchants to whom the Kennebec trade was leased in 1649 for three years. Thwaite's Jesuits, Vol, 36, p. 241. f The methods of evangelization adopted by the Jesuits and by Eliot were so widely different that the discussion by the two men of the subject, so dear to the hearts of both, was probably not only interesting but somewhat keenly controversial. How the Jesuits sought to win the Indians to Christianity and civil ization is told in this history. On the other hand, the mere recital of the works translated by Eliot for the instruction of his converts expresses significantly the Puritan scheme for saving the souls of the red men, Baxter's " Call to the Un- converted " and Bayly's " Practice of Piety," translated into an Tiulian dialect, must have been as bewildeiing to the Wampanogas as bis Logick Primer " to the students at the Indian school at Natick. 3o8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. dently these much-maligned New Englanders were not such bigots after all I In Boston he was again made free of Major Gibbons' house. He seems to have impressed very deeply a Mr. Ebeny (Wm. Hibbins?), one of the magistrates, with the justice of his plea. The Governor and Council of Plymouth must have held out some hope of favoring the alliance, or Governor Dudley, on part- ing, would not have shaken his hand heartily and begged him to carry his greetings to the French Governor at Quebec, and assure him that ''let the two crowns wage what wars they will, we wish to be good friends and your humble servants." If Druillettes re- ports Dudley's farewell correctly, the Governor was not such a hater of popery as history depicts him. A vague promise would seem to have been understood as given for the passage of French troops, if necessary, through Boston in case of war; and both colonies are said by Druillettes at that time to have expressed themselves as favorable to an alliance. Of course, no decisive action could be taken except by the Council of the four Confederated States of New England, which confederacy was at that period a living organization; and such action was not then sought. Before leaving, Father Druillettes wrote to his Superior in France by a Boston packet, detailing minutely all proceedings, and asking for instructions for his guid- ance, and for that of the French Governor, to be sent by the earliest fishing fleet to Gaspe. He also wrote to Edward Winslow, the Massachusetts agent in London, at the suggestion of his brother John, urging him to use his influence with the colony for the pro- tection of the Montagnais Indians against the Iroquois. And knowing that the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven would have a voice in the final decision, he addressed a strong plea to John Winthrop at Pequott River, the Latin original of which has been found among the Winthrop papers.* His friend, Major Gibbons, however, had been gauging public opinion in Boston, and rather damped his hopes of acceptance of his proposal. The good Father had been long enough in the land to learn that the people held control. He calls the colony a Republic. On his re- * John Winthrop was the son of the famous John Winthrop, by whom the negotiations with Montmagny were opened in 1646 and 1647. PRIEST AND PURITAN. turn in Capt. Yan's bark the good Father meets others whose names have become household words. Driven by stress of weather into Morblety (Marblehead) he is there entertained by the Rev. Wilham Walter, who takes him over to Salem, and intro- duces him to Mr. Endicott. He found in Endicott a good French scholar, a sympathetic listener and a wise adviser. At Endicott's suggestion he wrote a memorial to be laid before the General Court of Boston. Endicott promised to present and advocate it. Like the apostles of old, the Jesuit missionary was travelling without purse or scrip, but Endicott supplied his needs, and he was not allowed to want for anything. In return he repaid his host by courtesy and good fellowship, and the benefit of his prayers ; and he was able to settle with Capt. Yan for his pas- sage by securing him permission to land a cargo of Indian corn in Gaspe Basin in the following Spring. Once on the Kennebec and among his own Indians he was again at home. On the 13th of April his friend, John Winslow, returned with the encouraging news that the disposition of the magistrates of both Boston and Plymouth was favorable ; that private letters had been sent to the Governors of Connecticut and New Haven, with a view of in- fluencing them to support the alliance, and that every effort was being made to prevent the sale of firearms to the Iroquois by the colonists of the Connecticut Valley. Appended to the Journal are "Reflections touching what can be expected on the part of New England against the Iroquois." Judging from the businesslike way and the calm indiffer- ence to humanitarian dictates with which two Indian tribes had already been wiped out by the New England colonists, the Father concludes that they would have little compunction as to the extermination of the Iroquois. He calculates that Boston alone can put into the field four thousand fight- men, and tliat, as tlic male population of the New Eng- land Confederation is 40,000, there will be no difficulty in raising a force sufficient for the purpose. He thinks they can count on the support of three of the four colonies, when the vote for the alliance comes up in the House. He feels very con- 310 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. fident of the adherence of Plymouth, inasmuch as its revenue is drawn in great measure from a duty of one-sixth on all the peltries brought down the Kennebec by the Abenakis ; and as the Governor himself and four of the principal inhabitants are traders on the River, both public and private interests are enlisted in the protection of the Indians. The case is different with Connecti- cut and New Haven. Yet inasmuch as the Northern colonies helped Connecticut in the Pequod War, he thinks Connecticut will be willing to help them when their interests are concerned. As to Massachusetts, the bait to catch her will be the hope of trade with the St. Lawrence. Just then the wars in which Cromwell and the Commonwealth were engaged were likely to make the coasting trade with the Virginias and the West Indies very precarious. But Spain would not carry a naval war of reprisals into Northern latitudes ; therefore, if the Boston traders were assured of access to the Kennebec, their sympathies would be enlisted in the good cause. Father Druillettes did not go to Quebec to report in person till well on in June, but his written reports must have decided the Governor and the Superior of the Order to send him back with a lay delegate. The person selected was M. Godefroy, whom we have met as joint councillor with M. Giffard in the first council under the new constitution. We have no published journal of their faring; but Charlevoix publishes the letter of the Coun- cil of Quebec to the Commissioners of New England; and the minutes of Council of date June 20, 165 1, as well as the Governor's commission, have been preserved. Father Druillettes' title of priest in the commission is omitted — he is judiciously called a preacher of the Gospel. These documents recite the fact that the New England colonies in 1647 opened a correspondence with the authorities of New France looking to mutual trade relations under certain restrictions. The two agents are authorized to discuss and frame a treaty for reciprocal trade, subject to confirmation by a duly appointed ambassador from France. Both sides, however, must have perfectly understood that no treaty which would bene- fit New England would ever be made by the Court of Versailles. The proffer of a commercial treaty was simply a lure NEGOTIATIONS END IN FAILURE. to the New England Council to join in the war of extermination against the Iroquois. All we know is from the Jesuit's Journal, namely, that the delegates left with Noel and a party of Abenakis in seven or eight canoes on June 22nd, that letters were received on August 15th from Father Druillettes, dated from his camping ground on the Kennebec (Kousenck) where they had ar- rived on July 3rd, and whence they were to depart for Boston on the 13th. Their journey, made in summer weather, was less tedi- ous than had been the previous one of Father Druillettes ; for on the 31st of July Noel arrived in Quebec with letters from the dele- gates written in Boston. Godefroy followed on October 30th, but Father Druillettes remained with his flock until the spring fol- lowing, making the journey on snowshoes to Quebec, where he arrived on one of the last days of ^vlarch. The record of failure is told by Mr. Hutchinson in his "History of the Colony of IMassachusetts Bay," edition 1764, page 166, sub- stantially as set forth in the French documents. It is to the effect that the treaty of commerce, which would have been acceptable, was coupled with a condition precedent that Massachusetts and Plymouth should either join the French in an offensive alliance against the Iroquois, or aid them financially, or at least grant their troops free passage through colonial territory. But, as the Iro- quois had during the Pequod War been strictly neutral, and had never evinced an unfriendly spirit; and as the direct route from the St. Lawrence to the Mohawk country did not lead through either colony, the politic Puritans were not inclined to involve themselves in endless trouble, and accept in compensation only the uncertain advantages which might be derived from such a treaty of commerce as would be acceptable to the Court of Ver- sailles. Consequently the courts of the two colonics politely de- clined the overture. The Indian version of the failure given by Noel in a letter to Father Rutcux is laconic and to the point. "I was sent to the country of the Abnaquiois and of the English, who are their neigh- bors, to ask them for assistance against the Iroquois. I obeyed those who sent me, but my journey was in vain. The Englisliman replies not. He has no good thoughts for us. This grieves me 312 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. much. We see ourselves dying and being exterminated every day." (Thwaite, Vol. 37, Page 77.) Thus ended the only serious attempt on the part of the Eng- lish and French colonies to harmonize their Indian policies and their trade interests. Had the French colonists been as free to regulate their commercial relations as New England claimed to be, the negotiations might have resulted more favorably ; for New York was still the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, and the Iroquois were really a threatening cloud hanging over the Connecticut Valley. But when the New Netherlands became New York, so that the Iroquois nations formed a buffer State between the English and French; and when the French began urging their Abenaki converts to take revenge on the English settlements for the depredations of the Iroquois on the St. Law- rence, all pretence of friendly feeling between French and English vanished. A century of hatred between these two groups of Chris- tian colonists followed. They lived on the fringe of a great con- tinent, which they should have joined in redeeming from barbar- ism ; but, instead of uniting to civilize its savage inhabitants and teach them the arts of peace, they wasted their own energies and lives in sanguinary conflict. CHAPTER XV. Gleanings from Father Jerome Lalemant's Contributions to the Journal des Jesuites, 1645 to 1650. From 1645 to 1670, with two short gaps, we have a delightful record of contemporary events in a Journal kept by the Superior of the Jesuit Missions, who was also rector of the College. The Journal, of course, deals chiefly with ecclesiastical details, but as such things were of much more general interest in those days than they are now, the narrative does not distort, to any serious extent, the routine of the every day thoughts and actions of either laymen or clerics. It gives us glimpses of a native courtesy which smoothed the ruggedness of existence, and softened the asperities which it could not wholly banish from the little town. To laymen it is of interest to be admitted to some of the secrets and special interests of clerical life. Of these the Jour- nal reveals not a few — some trivial, some of greater importance. It is not a matter of great moment to know how many candles were lighted during the saint; nor what attitude the Governor assumed in and out of church ; but it is curious to note the very minute particularity with which the details of religious functions were ar- ranged, and how, nevertheless, occasional errors occurred in the conduct of the services through ignorance, or neglect of careful rehearsal, and how blunders were made which introduced confu- sion into the most accurately planned processions. Such trifles are told side by side with events of importance, and all with such charming frankness and naturalness, that it is difficult to conceive that the same men wrote the Journal who indited from year to year the Relations with their everlasting stories about the angelic sweetness of the Indian converts ; the holy raptures of some of the civil magnates of the colony ; and the seraphic perfection of life and soul of certain members of the religious communities with whom the Fathers of the Society of Jesus were not in conflict. 314 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. These yearly reports aim too evidently at effect on the minds of the readers in France to whom they were addressed, and like all self-conscious literary efforts, are stiff and stilted, and lack the clear and vibrant ring of sincerity. The entries in the Journal, on the contrary, prove that the rigid discipline which the novice of the Society of Jesus underwent did not eradicate his in- dividuality.* In regard to the Jesuits generally, it may be said that the in- timate contact with the world and its secular affairs, which the duties of many of them involved, counteracted the narrowing effect of their religious education, and created that extraordinarily * Rochemonteix, the historian of the Jesuits in New France (Vol. I-15), frankly admits that " the Relations, as published, do not give an altogether true portrait of the features of New France. They show only the fairest and most con- solatory side of society. The other is intentionally thrown into the shade, or, to speak more correctly, passed over in silence." It is history — but history only half told. The same high authority ascribes the origin of the Relations to the instructions given by St. Francis Xavier to the missionaries, Pere Juan de Beira and Pere Berzee, to report to headquarters for publication such news as should bear witness to the Society's zeal and to the success which divine grace deigns to grant to its humble officers. He quotes also the significant caution given : " Nothing must appear which could give just offence to anyone; nothing but what shall at once inspire the reader with thoughts of God, His glory and the advance- ment of his service." The advice was good, and the Relations written by the mis- sionaries in both hemispheres in accordance with this advice constitute memorable and interesting documents. Nevertheless, as the limitations laid down were strictly observed, the scope of the letters as historical records is correspondingly, restricted, and their value proportionately reduced. They were intended to be, and were, arguments in glorification of the Society rather than faithful chronicles of contemporary events. Father Le Jeune, in 1635, warns his readers that he does not pretend to describe all that happens in Canada, but only such events as redound to the advance of the faith and the glory of God. In addition to the Relations, and the Lettres Edifiantes, there were sent to their superiors by the members of the Society private, confidential letters, with descriptions and criticisms of events and public personages, which gave the heads of the Order more perfect knowledge of what was transpiring than even the Ministers of State could obtain from their own officials. It would have been as unwise and improper to publish these as it would be for any Government to print the confidential reports of their diplomatic agents. Rochemonteix attributes the cessation, in 1673, of the publication of the Rela- tions to the brief of Pope Clement X. forbidding the publication of missionary records, owing to the scandal among the religious orders growing out of the dis- cussion of the Chinese Rites (that is, the recognition by the Jesuit missionaries of certain Chinese customs and beliefs as innocent, because not contrary to the essential doctrines of Christ). And thus it came about, among other misfortunes, that the narrative of the explorations, for example, of Father Marquette, which passed through the hands of Father d'Ablon, Superior of the Order in Canada, to the General of the Order in Rome, and the Provincial in France, was buried in oblivion. MILITARY LAXITY. composite character which has made the Jesuit priest the idol of some and the abomination of others — tlie astutest of pohticians and the most devout of missionaries, with a tenacity of purpose and a bhndness of submission to the orders of his superiors which have caused him to be profoundly dreaded and suspected as a political agent. Father Lalemant made the first entry in the first volume of the Journal in August, 1645 • ^^st entry in the third volume •was made in 1775. Unfortunately the first volume alone is known to have survived. The three existed when the order was dissolved, and were still in the Jesuit Library when Father Cazot died in 1800. Their value was at once appreciated, for William Smith, in his History of Canada, published in the year 181 5, referring to cer- tain events that occurred in 1710, quotes from the third volume of the Journal. (See Smith, Vol. I, page 170.) The now surviving portion was found in ■Mr. Cochran's office at Quebec in 181 5, and the missing volumes may peradventure yet be unearthed from some obscure hiding place. (See Introduction to Laverdiere & Casgrain's edition.) The Journal opens with some severe comments by Father Lal- emant on the laxity of the military authorities. He had come down from the Huron country to assume the duties of Superior and take charge of the college, which was nearing completion. The welcome news greeted him that the company had abandoned its exclusive privileges, and that all the beaver skins which hisHurons had brought down would go to the inhabitants. As he passed the mouth of the Richelieu he found only ten soldiers in a neglected fort; de Sennetaire, the commandant, as well as Mons. Champ- flour, the commandant of Three Rivers, being on leave of absence in France. The reverend Father reflects that the St. Law- rence — not the Seine — was the proper place for the military gTKirdians of the Canadian frontier. However lax the military precautions and discipline may have been, the Father Superior found his own forces at their posts: four priests, with three servants, at Three Rivers; three priests, a brother and four men at Sillery; three priests, three brothers, and four serving men at Que- 3l6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. bee. There were in addition at Quebec Father Quentin, the Procureur, who traveled annually to and fro between France and Quebec, and his assistant, Brother Liegeois. The serving men, who had assumed religious obligations to labor "for life" for the Order, received lOO livres a year. It was a mag- nificent organization, economically conducted. Other servants, however, were employed, who came under no perpetual obliga- tions; for one of Father Lalemant's first acts was to employ a sailor — one Chretiennaut — as cook and man of all work, for the Three Rivers mission, at 30 ecus per year. He had come out in Repentigny's fleet, and turned out to be a very doubtful character. He had no "discharge," as he had left his ship because discontent- ed. But he was not a deserter, for he entered the Jesuits' service six days before Repentigny's five ships sailed with the first cargoes, under the new arrangement, of 20,000 beaver skins consigned by the inhabitants, and 2,000 consigned by the company, worth one pistole, or 10 to 11 francs the pound. Poor Chretiennaut evidently found the rule of the Fathers too straightlaced, for he left their service for that of the commandant of the Fort at Three Rivers. His habits, however, were too lax to be overlooked even by the military, for we last hear of him as "sur le chevalet ou il se rompit" — astride the wooden horse, on which he ruptured himself. The fathers were still temporary occupants of part of the Com- pany's quarters, where they had been offered accommodations on the destruction of their own home and Champlain's chapel by fire in 1640. But the conveniences, even if given gratuitously, were not lavish, for Father Lalemant had to obtain permission to build an oven. Heretofore, he says, bread made of imported flour had been supplied at 15 sols by the company's store; but now that they had an oven of their own, better and cheaper bread could be made from native wheat. But clothes were scarcer than bread, for the seven loaves which the Fathers distributed on the occasion of the jubilee were exchanged by their recipients at the company store for boots and linen. There seem to have been many indigent French, for, of the Governor's gift of two pistoles, one was for the poor among his own countrymen, the other for the Sillery Indians. In addition the Lieutenant Governor was authorized to INTEREST IN RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES. distribute 200 francs' worth of food and clothing at the discretion of the Jesuit Fathers. Mention is made this year of the initiation of a local industry which has survived to this day — the sale of fire- wood. The price paid would seem not to have been excessive. If £ut from land not owned by the wood chopper, it was delivered for 30 sols the cord ; but at 2 livres, or 10 sols more, if from the seller's land. The difference, 10 sols the cord, was therefore the value of the wood. To heat their houses at Notre Dame des Anges, and their rooms in the Company's quarters, the Jesuits burnt two sleigh loads a day. There was not only official but social intercourse among the religious communities. On December 5th the Father received an invitation to dine at the Ursuline convent, but was obliged to re- fuse, as it was the first Sunday in Advent, and he had to preach at the Hospital. Cold and hunger did not quench religious enthusiasm, which the frequent recurrence of church festivals maintained at a high temperature. Midnight mass at Christmas was celebrated with a musical service. Mons. de la Ferte sang bass, Martin played the violin, and a nameless musician made discord with a German flute, though in the rehearsal he had succeeded in keeping time and tune. Another contre-temps was the failure of the sac- ristan to give the necessary signal for the salvo of artillery at the moment of the elevation. To add to their worry, the celebration nearly ended in a catastrophe. To heat the chapel, which was probably in the second story of the Company's house, two large boilers had been filled with charcoal, and should have been re- moved immediately after the ceremony. But in the excitement this precaution was neglected and tlic floor beneath them became ignited. The kitchen was beneath the chapel, and the cook, up betimes, busy with his Christmas functions, discovered the fire and succeeded in extinguishing^ it. The Jubilee fetes lasted till December 31st — the most impres- sive incident being the procession of more than 100 Indians from Sillery to perform their devotions at the Parish Church. But it was too much to expect that the festivities should end without some friction. Midnight mass, then as now, offered temptations to 3l8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the sinner as well as consolation to the saints. Two Frenchmen, up too late, were arrested for drunkenness. As the Indians drew invidious comparisons between the severity with which they were punished and the light chastisement inflicted on the French for like offences, the Governor condemned the culprits to be exposed sur le chevalet — on the wooden horse, in a bitter northeast wind. How they must have enjoyed a hot drink afterward! and doubt- less the drink was forthcoming, for some at least of their fellow townsmen must have been boiling over with sympathetic indig- nation and ready to treat them. Then there was a controversy as to procedure in the distribu- tion of the pain be'nit, which had always been a bone of contention. The Governor had received the chanteau, or last and smallest cake, which entitled him to supply it the following Sunday. The amount provided was in excess of the distribution, and it was decided that the two Marguillers — church wardens — who were the Seigneur Giifard and the new company's chief clerk, des Chastelets — should be the next recipients, and that what remained should be given to the people in the order of their houses from the head of the Cote St. Genevieve, which led down to the valley of the St. Charles. A still more delicate question had to be settled by Father Lale- mant before the year closed. Father Vimont, his predecessor, had given the sisters of the Ursulines and of the Hotel Dieu a lease for six years, without rent, of the rich bottom lands on the Beauport Flats, between the Cabanne aux Topiers River and Giffard's seignory. Though the religious ladies were deserving of all con- sideration, this was a purely business transaction, and as a busi- ness man he was not inclined to confirm, though he did not dis- allow, so one-sided a bargain without due deliberation. In the first place, when Father Vimont gave the lease, though still filling the office of Superior, he had been notified that his successor had been appointed ; secondly, the term of the lease was too long, and third- ly, some consideration should in fairness be paid. The negotiations ended in an exchange : only on consideration of receiving an equi- valent, would the good ladies consent to abandon their leases. 1646. Old France was revived in New France by that cordial inter- NEW YEAR VISITS AND GIFTS. change of visits and presents at New Year's which unfortunately is dying out, with many another good old custom. Father Lalemant forgot no one on the Jour de I'An. On January ist the soldiers greeted the Governor by presenting arms, while the inhabitants in a body saluted him. His Excellency then at 7 a. m., though it was still dark, crossed the Place d'Armes, to salute, collectively and in- dividually, the good Fathers. After grand mass the Superior re- turned the visit unannounced, as it was a day of general salutation. And the ladies of both communities sent their greetings to the priests by letters, that of the Ursulines accompanied by a present of candles, chaplets, a crucifix, and two big pigeon pies. In re- turn Father Lalemant sent them enamelled images of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier. To the church wardens the father gave books of devotion, relics and medals. Humbler friends were not forgotten. The washerwoman of the church received a crucifix. Alme. Martin was rejoiced by receiving four handkerchiefs, and her husband perhaps better pleased by a reminder in the shape of a bottle of brandy, for the Church, however opposed to excess, did not forbid good cheer. Robert Hache, one of the domestics ad vitam, was so pleased with the gift of two handkerchiefs that he asked for and received two more. The Superior then started on a round of visits, ending up with the ladies of the Ursulines and Madame flc la Pcltrie, whose presents he had forgotten to mention. To each of his fellow priests and the brothers he distributed some- thing from his own little stock of treasures, nor did he forget those at Sillery. These kindly remembrances did not cease on the first day of the month, for the Governor on the 3r(l sent the good Fatlicrs three capons and ten pigeons, and subsequently their larder was replenished by a cake and a well-cooked dinner from the I Intel Dieu, and Mons. Giffard provided a bottle of hypocras, with which to wash down the good things. And when Ics jours gras came round, the ladies of the Ursuline and the Hotel Dieu vied with one another in fortifying the Fathers for the fast which was impend- ing, the severity of which, however, was somewhnt mitigated bv the thoughtfulness of the Governor, who never forgot to send 320 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. them fresh fish twice a week during Lent. They returned the compHment with two jars of oHves. The pain benit became again a matter of controversy. Madame Marsolet, who was to make it for the Sunday before Septuagesima, presented it on napkins, and surmounted it with a cross of gauze. She wished in addition to decorate it with candles, but the Fathers thought this departure from simplicity smacked of vanity and ostentation, and might not only excite jealousy, but possibly give offence to His Excellency, who, when he provided the pain btnit^ had not indulged in such extravagances. For these excellent rea- sons all the accessories were removed. Questions of precedence were also rife, for on Candlemas Day the Fathers, wishing to show no preference, after sending a wax candle to the Governor, cut up their stock into 115 bits, and distrib- uted them, without discrimination, together with the pain benit. Though there was not enough to go round, no occasion was given for jealousy. On March i6th the Chapel of the Hotel Dieu was dedicated. On April 17th the river was free from ice, and shortly afterward the Father Superior ascended it to attend to his ecclesiastical duties at Three Rivers. On his return he notes the following catalogue of incidents, which all help to illustrate the lights and shadows of the picturesque life of the mixed population of zealous churchmen, reckless adventurers, and Indian savages. Item. — The death of good Father Masse, and his burial at the scene of his labors at Sillery, where his bones repose to this day.* Item. — A quarrel between an Iroquois and an Abenaki, which resulted in the Iroquois transfixing with a sword a squaw instead of his intended victim. The quarrel was accommodated in Indian fashion by the parents of the unfortunate woman. Item. — A duel with swords between two servants of the Ur- sulines ; results not stated. Item. — Another duel between two soldiers at Three Rivers, which resulted in the wounding of La Groie and the imprisonment * The foundations of the old Chapel of Sillery can be traced near a substan- tial stone house, on the beach, which was probably attached to the mission. A NOTABLE PROCESSION. 321 of his antagonist, La Fontaine, who was adjudged to be in the wrong on the testimony of an Indian. DueUing seems to have been a common practice, even with the rank and file of society ; and it is noteworthy that an Indian's testimony was received as good, even against a Frenchman. Item. — A fire destroyed Guillaume Bance's house, and all he had, but his neighbors came so liberally to his assistance that he was set firmly on his feet again. The Fathers gave permission to work on St. Barnabe's day to all who would help Bance to rebuild, and fifteen responded to the call. Ite7n. — The theft from a poor man's chest of all he had in the world, to the value of twenty-five ecus. It was the first instance of petty thieving in the colony, and the Father deplored and re- buked it from the pulpit. Item. — A certain Thomas, of Huguenot proclivities, abjured his errors and made profession of faith; and a Huron convert was baptized in the Ursuline chapel. Item. — Brother Ambrose was told off from May 1st to 20th to make malt and brew beer for the House of Notre Dame de,s Anges ; and to Brother Feaute and Robert Hache was assigned the pleasant duty of fishing on May 15th, but it was June nth be- fore the first salmon was caught. The Fete Dieu was this year celebrated with more than usual devotion, and the account of the procession is given with much detail. The canopy was carried by M. Tronquet, nominated by the Governor, the two church wardens, M. Giffard and Chas- telets, and an Indian convert, Noel Ncgabamat. Conspicuous figures were six French angels and two little Indians in native costume, carrying corporal cases. The torch bearers were drawn from the ranks of the six principal trades of the town — carpenters, masons, sailors, toolmakers, brewers and bakers. Tlic farmers seem not to have been represented. The procession started, to the ringing of bells, from tlie temporary Parish Church in the Com- pany's offices, situated somcwlicre to the east or west of Garden street, probably within the enclosure of the present English Ca- thedral. It crossed the open space and rested near ''The Tree," 322 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. where the host was saluted by a salvo of artillery.* Thence the procession moved to the Hotel Dieu^ the Hospitalieres claiming a certain precedence over the Ursiilines, as their Hospital building was by two whole years of greater age than the convent. It was saluted by a volley of mus- ketry, as it passed behind the house of M. Couillard, which was probably near the present seminary gate. It may then have wended its way across Hope Hill, and through the Hospital's own grounds, which at that time covered nearly all the portion of the present town comprised within Hope, Fabrique and Palace streets, to its recently consecrated chapel. In returning, it rested at Mons. Couillard's altar, where it was saluted by musketry. In re- tracing its course to the Parish Church, it was again saluted by the cannon of the Fort ; then it passed to the Ursuline Convent under an arch of a bridge, which is more than once mentioned as a feature of the Company's house. It was probably a covered way between two buildings, as we learn that the Jesuits, before trying to warm their chapel for Christmas midnight mass, experimented with braziers or stoves on this bridge. In 1640 the Governor sent a company of soldiers to salute the Fathers by a discharge of their arquebuses at the end of the bridge, which may then have only been in process of construction. The Jesuit estates meanwhile grew and were judiciously cared for and cultivated, although the price of labor was high, that is to say, from thirty to thirty-five sols a day and board, as we gather from an entry in June. Father Lalemant was employing Etienne Bongoust as a millwright to assist in building a new mill, after clearing ofif what wood remained on their cow pasture on the Pointe aux Lievres, the spit of land on which the Marine Hos- pital now stands. Where to erect the new mill was a mooted question, which had to be decided soon, as the old mill at the mission was falling to pieces. The society decided on exchang- * " The Tree" was probably that magnificent elm which stood in the north- east corner of the Cathedral close, till about 1849, when it was blown down dur- ing a violent storm. Tradition said that under it Jacques Cartier held council with the Indians. A section of it was deposited in the museum of the Literary and Historical Society, but it was burned, with most of the Society's collection, in the Parliament Building in 1854. JESUIT TITLES TO LAND. ing six acres which they owned in the city for eighteen lying be- tween the Vaclierie (cow pasture) and the foot of Cote St. Genevieve, and somewhere on the latter property the new mill was built. Lut Moiuir.agriy would cede the land only en roture. This led the Superior to examine the titles under which the several concessions made to the society were held, and, to use his own words : "i found that those of our six hundred arpents of land at Three Rivers, granted in 1634, conferred a perfect title up- on us without any charge, in full property and lordship, ut rex concesserat concedentihiis. As regards the letters patent for the lands of Notre Dame des Anges, Beauport, and la Vacherie, dated 1637, I found no charge upon such concessions beyond the saying of a mass every year — with no other dues — and the ac- knowledgment of concession every twenty years ; but there is no mention of any seignorial right. As for the titles to those of Isle aux Ruaux, they are also very good, and similar to that of Three Rivers. As for the Isle de Jesus, there is no deed on parchment ; there is merely an extract from the proceedings of the General Assembly and a certificate of taking possession by Monsieur the Governor, which mentions a mandate he had received, in virtue whereof he so put us in possession, without mention of any condition. "Those which were conceded to Monsieur Gififard, des Chaste- lets, etc., confer more seignorial rights, but are also subject to many more charges. "The most disadvantageous are those of Sillery, which, being ours only by a transfer made by Monsieur Gant. are also subject to all the charges borne by him, and among others a rent of a denier an arpent. "About this time, the Hospital nuns having — in consequence of what had been procured for them at the Long Point and at the Isle of Orleans — given up the document signed by Father Vimont, by which they had been granted some meadows on our lands for six years, Father Vimont notified the Ursulines that they would have to do the same. They found it hard to comply, and requested that, in case that were done — to wit. taking our meadows from them, in order to lease them — they should be preferred to others. The 324 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. conclusion was that, until they had been assured of what had been assigned to them at Long Point and on the Island of Orleans, we should reserve for them fifteen or sixteen arpents of land — which we should dispose of, when they should have received the above assurance — and should dispose of the others, there being still fif- teen or sixteen arpents more to be granted. In all, from the (river) Cabanne-aux-Topiers to Monsieur Giffard's river, there are forty-seven arpents ; seventeen are to be reserved for the farm at Beauport, and the remainder granted as above." The social event of the summer was the marriage of Mont- pellier, who was both a soldier and a cobbler, to the daughter of Sevestre. At the dance a kind of ballet was performed by five of his comrades, but the Fathers expressed their disapproval. The salmon fishing was good that summer. A present of fish came from Tadousac, and the Governor's and their own catch numbered 200 up to the end of July. On the fete day of St. Ignatius, the Governor wished to fire a salute on the celebration of the ordinaire, but as it was only a fete de devotion^ and not a fete d' obligation, and as the spring fleet had not arrived, though July was well nigh ended, the Fathers, with thoughtful consideration, declined His Excellency's offer, lest the salute should be supposed to announce the sighting of the fleet. The citizens had that summer to wait long for the ships, as the first one did not cast anchor till the 20th September, and the last on the 14th of October. The Superior made his annual journey to Three Rivers in Au- gust, taking with him, among others, a mason, at 100 livres of wages a year. There he met Gilles Bacon, hurrying down to lay before the Governor the news of the discovery of gold and copper, and to confirm his story with specimens — the second representa- tive of the great army of prospectors and promoters ; Jacques Car- tier, with his flakes of mica and his quartz crystals, having been the first. This was the second year of the habitants' compromise with the Company of the One Hundred Associates. The people's company did a larger business than in the previous year, shipping 160 poin- 90ns of beaver skins of 200 livres each, or 32,000 pounds, as RENEWAL OF DISCONTENT. against 19,600 in 1645 — the value being the same each year, 10 francs the Hvre. The returning fleet had its full complement of passengers. The management of the popular company, notwithstanding that the shipment of furs so greatly exceeded that of the previous year, had led to very general discontent. And M. des Chastelets, the manag- er, came in for his full share of abuse. The Fathers had thought that the Governor's summary punishment of those who started the agitation in the previous January had completely allayed it, though he had done nothing towards removing the alleged grievances. They and he soon discovered their mistake, for now nearly every man of influence was bound for France to press a claim or lodge a complaint. Possibly the term fripons — rogues — which the Father applies to several of the most respectable of the grumblers, may have been deserved ; but whether it was or not, it shows that feeling was running high in the colony. The eel fishery had been prosperous — the catch amounting to 40,000, which sold at one-half an ecu the hundred. Cord wood •was selling at 100 sols, more than twice the price of 1645, so that few could afford to buy a whole cord at a time; and the Father complains that the half-cord really did not measure more than three feet (instead of four), and that the wood was bad at that. It is evident that every one was hard up and discontented, and inclined to put the worst construction on his neighbor's conduct, and that the Fathers themselves had not escaped the epidemic of captiousness. The last day of the year was celebrated by a comedy played at the company's store in the presence of the Governor, and attended by several of the Fathers and some of the Indians ; but the priests were not willing to sanction by their presence the Mardi Gras dance. Marrying and giving in marriage went on as usual, and there were some embarrassing cases of conscience and breaches of promise. One was that of an Indian girl, who had been educated by the Ursulines. She had been wooed by a French lad, and had promised to marry him, l)ut wlien the enga.c^cnicnt had to be fulfilled, she refused him in favor of a man of her own race. 326 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 1647. It was a mild winter and spring set in early. Fires were sel- dom needed in the chapel during mass, and the wine froze only once in the chalice. But it was an anxious winter. Small bands of Iroquois hovered around, picking off Algonquin hunters who separated from their party ; but the Fathers knew nothing of the fate of their colleague. Father Jogues, of whose cruel martyrdom they only heard on June the 5th. They were busy getting out, and hauling to its site, the lumber for their new college, for the foundation of which they began blasting before the frost was out of the ground. An entry in the Journal of June, 1647, informs us that the ships brought out the first horse imported into the country, as a present from the people to their Governor.* They also brought news of the constitution under which the three towns of Montreal, Quebec and Three Rivers might appoint syndics, who should represent them in Council. The people were in greater haste to avail themselves of their freshly-acquired privileges than the Governor was to give his consent — notwithstanding the present of the horse. He had not been officially notified. Considering the progress of the colony and the vocal resources at the command of the Cliurch, the Jesuits decided to say high mass with proper accompaniments, instead of performing the holy office in the irregular way heretofore of necessity followed, which shocked new comers from Old France. An entry in the same month of June tells of the seizure of 260 lbs. of beaver skins in the rooms of the Chaplain of the Ursulines. This evidently raised the question of their own right to trade, and of that of their parishioners at Sillery, which had become a trading post of some importance. They decided that it was not becoming that they should themselves engage in trade, but that the inhabi- tants of Sillery, in virtue of their natural rights, and the King's permission, might, if the store refused to pay a reasonable price for their peltries, trade on their own account. * In June of the year previous the Governor, when negotiating with the Jesuit Fathers about the exchange of the eighteen acres in the St. Charles Valley for the six acres in the town, went to confer with the Brothers Liegeois — sur sa monture. What did he ride ? JOTTINGS FROM THE JOURNAL. On the 28th July the old barn was set on fire by a careless smoker, and one of their servants was burned to death. As he was a confirmed drunkard and died without any signs of re- pentance, they buried him in unconsecrated ground. In August came the official authority to form a colonial council, on which the Jesuits were to be represented by their Superior. Four of the Fathers held a deliberation as to whether it would be wise to accept the post and its responsibilities. The decision was in the affirmative. It was a dull season, and trade was bad, as the Hurons did not venture to descend the Ottawa. 1648. In February Father de Quen made a missionary journey along the Beauport and Beaupre beach to Cap Tourmente, returning by the Island of Orleans. He puts the population at 200, and the number of communicants at 140. There were evidently fewer families in proportion to bachelors than at a later period. And how rural was still the state of the city is indicated by the entry relat- ing to the death and burial of Mme. Drouin in the same month of February. The road was so narrow that they could not convey the body to the cemetery on a sleigh — it had to be carried by two men. There was the usual interchange of good things at Mardi Gras. Among the delicacies sent to the Fathers by the Governor was a quarter of moose meat. It is incidentally mentioned that four moose were killed, whence we may infer that they were not then very much more numerous than at present. It was a busy winter, and there nuist have been work for all. Ten or twelve men were in the woods getting out lumber for the Jesuit College. A wing was being added to the Fort, and a parish church was under erection. Perhaps it was the abundance of work and money which accounted for four unfortunates being condemned to ride the wooden horse for drunkenness. If the roads were narrow in winter, they were so muddy when the snow was melting that it was feared that the procession on the feast of St. Mark, April 25th. would have to be omitted. Finally it was deemed better to plod through the mud than not to honor the saint. 328 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. On the feast of St. Michael, May 7th, the Fathers celebrated vespers at their house of Notre Dame des Anges, and afterwards served a supper, observing most punctiliously the gradations of rank of their guests. The Governor and les plus honnetes gens were regaled in the refectory. The musicians, who had assisted in the chapel, were served in the petite salle. For the sailors tables were set in the carpenter's shop, and the rest, including the soldiers, were accommodated in the large room. The Governor went to the service and the entertainment by boat, but, the tide having run down, he returned on foot. What had become of the horse ? On Rogation Sunday the procession was formed after vespers. It encircled the fields on Cape Diamond, and returned by the Grande Allee. As this was the festival when prayers are offered for a good harvest, and the bounds of the parish are beaten, or defined by the procession, we may assume that most of the houses were built on the slope above the present St. Louis Street, and that the ground now occupied by the Glacis — not then, of course, graded as at present — was cleared and under cultivation. On St. John the Baptist's day the old custom of lighting the bonfire was practiced by Governor Montmagny, who always sent for the Fathers to assist in the ceremony. It was a curious custom, one the traces of which are very widespread, and still perpetuated in Rome — the ancient Festival of Ceres. Dancing and merrymak- ing are indulged in, and fires are lighted to drive away evil spirits bent on destroying the harvest, then ripe and ready for reaping in Italy, though not in Canada. A couple of years later the Father Superior seems to have had some misgivings as to the wisdom of countenancing and perpetuating the custom. The reason given for not thinking it proper to encourage the custom is that Mont- magny did not practice it — a strange lapse of memory, probably, on Father Ragueneau's part, who was joint author of the Journal that year with Father Lalemant. Though the upper lake trade was cut of¥, Tadousac did a thriv- ing business of over 224,000 pounds of beaver skins. That enterprising citizen, M. Abraham Martin, inaugurated this summer seal fishing, and his first venture was successful, for AN EXECUTION FOR THEFT. he and his two nephews killed on Isle Rouge forty-two seals, from which they extracted six barrels of oil. Ptarmigan this year flocked from the north in such numbers — a phenomenon seen occasionally in our own times — that more than 1,200 were killed. Gov. Montmagny disappears and d'Aillebout takes his place. As the full fa-ctum of the inaugural ceremonies was embodied in a separate document by Father Lalemant, and not entered in the Journal, we are unfortunately deprived of it. 1649. In January and February the first executions at the hands of the public hangman took place. The first victim was a girl (une creature) of sixteen, convicted of theft. The crime of the other is not named. It was only in the previous September that the sentence of a drummer, convicted of a heinous crime and con- demned to death, was commuted on condition of his becoming the public executioner. The hangman having been secured, work was soon found for him ! During Holy Week ''the Ursuline nuns committed the aston- ishing mistake of not keeping three triangular candlesticks on the altar during the tenebrae of the third day, nor any candles except two white ones lighted during the first and second days." As soon as the ice broke up, boats were sent to Three Rivers and Montreal for tidings. They returned with reports of famine everywhere, to relieve which forty barrels of wheat, peas and malt- grist were with all haste sent to the sufferers. While the colonists were straining every nerve to succor their countrymen and savage allies, a band of Abenakis, with letters from New England, came up the river also soliciting relief ; but they received the cold shoulder. Troubles were accumulating fast, for during the same months came the terrible news of the Huron massacres and the martyrdom of their confreres on the Georgian Bay. Then in August the Fathers licard of the wreck of a new ship on her voyage from France, with 4,000 livres worth of their property — so badly needed. In September some Frenchmen eluded the Iroquois, and ar- rived from the Huron country with 5,000 pounds of-l)caver skins, which, as they sold for 5 fr. 5 sols the pound, were worth 26,000 330 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. livres; with them were two soldiers who brought down 747 pounds additional, which sold for 4 francs the pound. These independent traders evidently did better than the Company, whose total shipments of peltries amounted to only 100 poingons — worth 100,000 francs. The following notes conclude the Journal for that year. A fee of 20 sols was exacted in addition to the cost of passage to France, to be paid to the Governor's secretary ; he and other officials also got a share of the fines imposed. Work was commenced on the defenses of Sillery at the pubHc expense." As events proved, it was labor and money thrown away. The walls of the Jesuit College were raised, and the roof thrown over it, but the interior was not completed. There were now so many Jesuit priests that one could be spared to say mass at Beauport every Sunday and feast day. 1650. In April there was a council of the Jesuit Fathers to decide two important questions : I. — Whether a colony of Hurons should be established on their Beauport lands. The first massacre of that unfortunate race on the Georgian Bay, whither they had fled from their old home on the St. Lawrence, had filled the colony with horror and their ardent friends, the missionaries, with fearful forebodings. The removal of the remnant of the race, which was only carried into efifect after the second massacre, was evidently even then sug- gested to the minds of their Jesuit protectors as an approaching necessity, for they decided to permit certain selected families to settle on their lands at Beauport, and appropriated 500 ecus an- nually towards their support. Before this merciful purpose could be carried out, all that had not been destroyed or dispersed of the once powerful nation of 20,000 Hurons, had to be provided for without discrimination on the Island of Orleans. It is interesting to compare the willingness with which the good Fathers proposed to receive on their lands so many impecunious Indian tenants, with their reluctance to permit the two communities of nuns to occupy a strip of the same tract. The former transaction was in their eyes a work of religious charity — the latter a matter of TORTURE OF AN INDIAN CAPTIVE. business with business women, whose salvation was happily not in question. They were careful, shrewd men of affairs themselves, and the heads of the convents and their advisers have seldom been lacking in worldly wisdom. 11. — The second subject of debate was settled in a manner equally creditable to their public spirit. In the previous year 2,000 livres had been appropriated, but the sum had not yet been paid out of the public purse, towards the erection of their house and college at Three Rivers. But, as they had received 6,000 livres from the public as a contribution towards their college in Quebec, they decided that it would be demanding too much to exact the payment of the other donation. Barbarous associations continued to produce their unhappy ef- fects, as we see by the willingness of the French authorities to turn over an Indian captive to his tormentors, as told in the Jour- nal of June 15th. On the evening of that day a Huron arrived, named Skandahietse, who pretended to have been sent as an am- bassador by the Iroquois, and to have hidden by the way two wampum belts, which he was bearing as a pledge of peace, fearing lest they should fall into the hands of the Algonquins. When cross-questioned he contradicted himself so glaringly that he was seized, tried as a spy, and condemned to death. But, before he was turned over to his Indian enemies, he was baptized by the name of Louis. The Christmas midnight mass was celebrated in the new parish church, on the site of the present Basilica. The edifice had been for three years under construction, and was not finished and consecrated till 1657. The summer had been a very sad one. Entry after entry in the Journal records the death of an Indian convert, or of a country- man, at the hands of the Iroquois fiends. It must therefore have been with relief, yet with terril)Ie foreboding, that Father Lale- mant sailed for France, and turned over his office as Superior, and the volume of the Journal, to his successor, Father Raguencau. CHAPTER XVI. The Administration of Governor de Lauzon and the Failure of Nepotism. De Lauzon's long connection with the Company as In- tendant pointed him out as a suitable successor to Governor d'Aillebout; though had the good Cardinal been alive, his keen discrimination would have detected traits in de Lauzon's charac- ter which wholly unfitted him for independent command. But long before Montmagny's term had expired, the Cardinal's life had ebbed, and his shadow, Louis XIIL, had followed the vanish- ing minister to the grave. A still more anomalous pair of rulers succeeded the masterful statesman, and his pliant master, in the persons of the vain and erratic Anne of Austria and her hand- some, crafty adviser. Cardinal Mazarin. Nevertheless, although Richelieu was no more, his policy was still the controlling influence in colonial affairs. Mazarin recognized the truth that colonies unprotected by a navy are an easy prey to the enemy, and simply invite war. He, therefore, fostered the construction of a navy, to whose guns the fishing fleet, the mercantile marine, and the struggling colony across the sea might look for protection. In so doing he was carrying out what had been one of the dearest projects of his great predecessor. The humiliating loss of Quebec had taught Richelieu so deep a lesson, that notwfthstanding the extreme exhaustion of the resources of France consequent on his wars — successful and glorious though they were — with Spain and Austria, he hastened to build up a fleet of fifty-six war vessels. His name remains associated with the rapids on the St. Lawrence sixty miles above Quebec, and with the river, previously known as the Riviere des Iroquois, which formed the most important strategical highway between the great river and the Hudson. His pious niece, the founder of the Hotel Dieu, gave her name to the Rue d'Aiguillon in Quebec, which was then the principal thor- AX ODIOUS ADMINISTRATION. 333 oughfare between the city proper and the settlement that had gathered around the mission house of Notre Dame des Anges in the valley of the St. Charles. On the other hand Mazarin, the Italian priest, and Anne, the Spanish princess, have left no mark, however faint, on the nomen- clature of Quebec topography, and as little on the political institu- tions of the colony, unless the nomination of Laval as Bishop, which was made at Mazarin's suggestion, through the influence of the Queen Mother, was the fruit of the Cardinal's policy. His whole thought and energy- were absorbed in directing France's foreign wars, and his marvellous diplomatic skill found ample scope in wrenching from France's enemy the full benefits deriv- able from the victor}' won in the field. Unlike his predecessor, he paid little attention to the internal wants of the kingdom, still less to the woeful plight of her colonies. Governor succeeded governor during Mazarin's administra- tion, and the minority of Louis XIV., each less notable than his predecessor, between the date of de Lauzon's appearance on the .scene and the cancellation of the charter of the One Hundred As- sociates in 1663, when Canada at length became a Crown Colony, and Louis XIV. and his minister, Colbert, assumed the responsi- bility of giving it a constitution and conducting its government. De Lauzon retained office beyond the allotted period of three years. Feeble as was his adminstration during its first years, it became subsequently so odious, and he himself so unpopular on account of his meanness and parsimony, that he literally fled from the public opprobrium of which he was the object, and from the calamities into which his mistakes were visibly plunging the colony. His administration marked a departure, which, fortunately for Canada, was as shortlived as his governorship. The Company had pursued the only policy which a financial company can pos- sibly follow. It was created to make money ; and it lived to make money, whether successful in doing so or not. Nevertheless its agents, though generally luipopular in Quebec society, had not reprehensibly aimed at self and family aggrandizement. But de Lauzon, who had been appointed by Richelieu as Intendant, or 334 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. financial agent of the Company in France, acquired by his in- fluence, or had conferred on himself, in 1632, the seignory of Lauzon and the Island of Montreal. The latter he afterwards transferred to the Maisonneuve company. On his assumption of the Governorship, he bestowed on his son Louis the seignory of La Citiere and Gaudarville, so called after Madame Gaudar, his first wife and Louis' mother. He secured the seignory of La Prairie for his son Frangois, who, in 1647, transferred it to the Jesuits, while his son Charles was invested with the seignory of Chine on the Island of Orleans, and in 1656 was also made the seig- neur of Levis. Thus, whether acting as a fiduciary agent of the Company in France, or as governor in Canada, he was in- defatigable in advancing the pecuniary and social interests of his family. His strangest freak was the use of his authority, as gov- ernor, to create the office of Grand Seneschal de la Nouvelle France, and to confer on his son John, then seventeen years of age, this high-sounding title. On Charles he further con- ferred the office and title of Grand Maitre des Eaux et Forets de la Nouvelle France, with certain fishing rights and perquisites which caused general resentment. To secure heirs, his sons married early, and took to wife colonial girls of property and good social standing. Jean, the Great Seneschal, who knew so little law that a substitute had to be at once appointed, had come to Canada when a mere boy in 1644. Between that date and his appointment as Supreme Judge he had served with distinction in the French army, but he had not forgotten his Canadian sweetheart, for he made haste to marry her on the 23rd of October, 1651, only nine days after he had disembarked. Charles, the Grand Master of Waters and Forests, came out in January, 1652. He was a youth of only fourteen, yet in less than two months he had taken to wife Marie Louise, the daughter and heiress of Robert GifiPard, the Seigneur of Beauport, a girl two years younger than himself. Frangois, the second son, notwithstanding his possession of the seignory of La Prairie, does not seem to have been able to ingratiate himself into the favor of the pretty girls of Canada. To his fourth son, Louis of La Citiere and Gaudarville, de Lauzon had NEPOTISM OF DE LAUZON. 335 given grant after grant on one plea or another; but Louis was hard to please, and it was not until 1665 that he married a girl of twenty-one, the daughter of Mons. Jacques Nau de Fossambault. The young lady in question had been sent out by the Duchess d'Aiguillon as a nurse and novice of the Hotel Dieu, but, before taking the veil, she decided that she was not intended for the religious life. Thus three sons of the ambitious Governor married and settled in Canada, yet they failed to realize his hopes in the matter of per- petuating his family and kindred. Jean was killed by the Iro- quois on the Island of Orleans in 1661, and his daughters entered nunneries. Charles lost his wife in October, 1656, and, horrified by the desperate state of the colony, which he was powerless to im- prove, threw up his authority as his father's gubernatorial repre- sentative, sailed to France and entered the Church. He had in- herited the family cupidity, for, notwithstanding his assumption of the religious life, he never relinquished the emoluments of his civil offices, even after returning as a priest with Bishop Laval in 1659. His only child, a daughter, entered the convent in La Ro- chelle, so no heirs succeeded to his empty office. De Lauzon was an old man of sixty-nine when he came to Can- ada ; his failures may, therefore, be charged to those who appoint- ed him rather than to himself. At the same time the incapacity he manifested in Canada is surprising, considering that he was the first Canadian intendant and owed his appointment to the creator of that order of functionaries, that he had been influential in bring- ing about the restoration of Quebec to France after its capture by Kirke, and had exerted considerable influence in favor of the Jesuits and against the return of the Recollets. From such a man much might have been expected, yet, as Governor of Canada, he showed himself utterly unable to realize the situation of the colony. The same obtuscness which made him confer ridiculous titles on his sons led him, in 1656, to engage in foolish schemes of remote colonization, when every man was wanted for defense at vital points on the St. Lawrence. During the five years of his tenure of office Quebec grew but little. Beyond its fort no one was safe from the Iroquois; in- ■33^ QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. dustry, in consequence, was paralyzed and immigration ceased. De Lauzon secured for the colonists a small body of troops, which arrived the same year as himself, but they were at once dis- patched to Three Rivers, where the Governor, de Plessis-Bochart, with a small body of militia, which he had recently organized and drilled, attacked a body of marauding Iroquois, but with ill-suc- cess, for he was defeated and killed. It was a crushing blow, in- volving the death or capture of fifteen armed men. Three Rivers itself was seen to be at the mercy of the Iroquois ; and Sillery, with only a wooden palisade for defense, was a vulnerable point. In all haste, fortifications were thrown up around the Church of Three Rivers, and the few houses and wigwams that clustered about it, and small cannon were mounted, but the expected attack was not made. Indian tactics, then as now, forbade their battling in the open, or assaulting fortified positions. The rules of the hunt- er are the rules of the Indian warrior. By stealth and subterfuge he tracks his game, waylays and kills his enemy, taking both, if possible, unawares. On the skill, secrecy, and noiseless movement with which he watches and strikes his victim, without needlessly exposing himself, depends the success of the Indian warrior ; and to these quaHties the Iroquois added tireless energy and industry together with a ceaseless watchfulness. They terrorized the tribes from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay, and swept down with the same relentless cruelty on some of the Atlantic tribes, which were akin to themselves. The stealthiness of their approach and the suddenness of their attack created universal unrest. At Mon- treal fear became panic, while in Quebec murder after murder in the vicinity, and the reports constantly arriving of crimes else- where, produced a condition of ceaseless anxiety. Father Jacques Buteux, moved by a desire to spread Chris- tianity among the docile Indians of the upper St. Maurice, though in feeble health, started from Three Rivers on April 4th, 1652, with a band of Algonquins and Hurons and a single Frenchman. Unable to keep up with the party, he and his trusted French companion, with the Huron, lagged behind, and when distant a month's travel from the settlement, the two Frenchmen were shot by the Iroquois from an ambush, and the Huron taken prisoner. RAVAGES OF THE MOHAWKS. 337, Next year Father Poncet and a French layman were surprised near Quebec by some Mohawks and adopted Hurons, and carried captive to the ^lohawk valley, where the layman was burnt. The priest, after being maimed, was given to an old woman who had lost her relations. The flying column, organized by Mons. de Ma- zures, left Quebec under the command of Eustace Lambert in the hope of recovering him. They found the road effectually blocked by an overwhelming force of the enemy at Three Rivers. They did good service, however, at this point, in protecting the almost defenceless hamlet, and in taking some Iroquois prisoners. Force having failed to rescue the captive, negotiations were opened for an exchange of prisoners and for peace, and to this step Mons. Poncet probably owed his life. So panic stricken was Montreal that in the Spring of the year a schooner sent up from Quebec to receive intelligence of its wel- fare, returned with the dismal tidings that all the inhabitants were either dead or captured, as on approaching the place no signs of life were visible, so that it was deemed unsafe to investigate further. One is reminded of the first relief expedition to Khar- toum. After this the Jesuit Fathers and their servants had a re- spite until 1655, when brother Liegeois, while working in the field near Sillery, was shot, scalped, and decapitated by some Mohawks. Brother Liegeois was the architect of the Order, and was at the time superintending some additional fortifications at Sillery. Brother Louis Le Boesme was wounded at the Platon river, but escaped. The list of the murders throughout the colony is a terribly long one. Quebec suffered least. As early as 165 1 Nicholas Pinel and his son Giles were shot at on their clearing, but escaped. The Iroquois then fired harmlessly through the door of an Indian shan- ty, but though no one was hurt, the whole town was so alarmed that when the dogs barked that night on the Cote Ste. Genevieve, imaginary Iroquois were seen prowling everywhere in the dark- ness. Other alarms were given, and actual crimes were com- mitted : but the same thing may have happened in those troublous days as happens to-day in the West, when white men seize the 338 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Opportunity of the Indians being on the warpath or restless to commit deviltry, assured that it will be attributed to the redskins. There were Algonquins and Hurons as ruthless as the Iroquois, and it would be strange if even all Frenchmen shrank from com- mitting crime under the cloak of Mohawk atrocities. The year 1654 opened with hopes of peace. Onondaga com- missioners came with the avowed purpose of negotiating with the Governor, but with the covert object of weaning the Hurons from their allegiance to the French. The scattered bands of that unfor- tunate tribe, which had followed one another to Quebec, had been settled on land bought from Mad'lle de Grande Maison, on the Island of Orleans, in March, 1651, and to the heads of families had been allotted farms of from twenty perches to one-half acre in size. But the steady toil of agriculture has always been irksome to the Indian. They vastly preferred hunting, and their French neighbors were ever ready to engage in a little illicit fur trade with them. Three of Mons. Giffard's servants were drowned one night when returning from a clandestine negotiation for beaver skins. Moreover, despite the surveillance which their civil and spiritual guides maintained, the mission kept up a secret intercourse with one branch or another of their implacable Iroquois kinsmen. The delegates from the Confederacy, who were met by Father le Mercier, himself returning from a secret conference with his Christian converts, were Onon- dagas, but they bore presents from the Mohawks. The Christian converts kept the Father informed of the progress of these secret councils, and the Father transmitted the news to the Governor, who in February took into his con- fidence a number of the leading citizens at the fort. It was decided to charge the Hurons with their treachery. They were con- founded, and promised to obey the instructions of the Governor. Here, unfortunately, Father Mercier's minute story comes to a summary stop. Whatever the ulterior designs of the Iroquois might have been, they were willing to conceal them under over- tures for peace. Promises of peace had been made when Father Poncet was exchanged in the previous year, and these were now reiterated. They were confirmed, when Father Le Moyne, taking JESUIT VERSUS INDIAN DIPLOMACY. 339 his life in his hands, accompanied the Onondagas back to their lodges. Though the Mohawks were ostensibly a party to the peace, the French Governor and his ecclesiastical advisers had probably a motive in sending Le Moyne to the Western canton rather than to the council lodge of the Mohawks. The Mohawks occupying the valley of the river to which they gave their name, and separated from Fort Orange in the Dutch settlement by only a low ridge, not only enjoyed the closest relations with their commercial neighbors, but were able to levy a direct or an indirect tax for passage through their territory on the more Western tribes. Hence there was a spark of jealousy smouldering in the heart of the Confederacy, which Father Le Moyne, as priest delegate, tried to fan into a flame. The confusion of motives, policy arid action exhibited in the treatment by the civil powers of the Indians, whether friends or foes, can be ex- plained only when one recollects that, while the Jesuits were the counselors of several of the Governors on matters in general, their special knowledge of the Indian character and speech gave their advice on Indian affairs almost the authority of a command ; and — a point of much importance — that their opinions upon Indian policy were unavoidably biased by their religious hopes and fears. When d'Aillebout needed an ambassador to negotiate with the English, he chose a Jesuit priest ; in like manner, when a clever, trustworthy agent was needed to argue with the Onon- dagas as to who were their friends and who were their enemies, de Lauzon accepted the services of another Jesuit. The members of the Order had studied the Indian language and the customs of the aborigines, and were by training skillful diplomats as well as earnest ecclesiastics. The aptness of their si)ccch has always been matched by the profound discretion of their silence. Neitlier in the Relations, which deal witli the religious work of the society, nor in the JoiirnaL whicli narrates the more trifling events of everyday life, is there even a liint of the instruc- tions given to their members when sent on important politi- cal missions, or of the outcome of the negotiations. It was a century later before Father Cliarlevoix, in his history, discussed 340 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the political bearing of these religio-political commissions. It would be interesting to know how the interference of the Jesuit Order in these delicate negotiations was regarded by the intelli- gent laymen of the colony, and especially of Quebec — the center of government. We know that Maisonneuve and the semi-reli- gious community of Montreal resented the influence of the Jesuits. Father Mercier mentions Maisonneuve's attempt to stop the Onondaga delegate in January, 1654; and we can hardly doubt that in Quebec also there must have been more or less apprehen- sion lest the religious enthusiasm of the missionaries should sway their political judgment, and so render the priest a preju- diced adviser and a dangerous negotiator. A symptom of such jealousy may be seen in d'Aillebout's appointment of Mons. Gode- froy as joint ambassador with Father Druillettes to the New Eng- land confederacy. Nevertheless, in Indian negotiations, the Jesuit Order could claim a just and valid right to be consulted. In the crisis into which the colony was then drifting their policy was to sow suspicion among the members of the several Iroquois tribes — possibly to create a Western Iroquois confederation which should look to France for assistance against the powerful Mohawk tribe. The Mohawks, thus isolated, would find it more to their ad- vantage to enter into a real alliance with France, than to be ground between the conflicting European forces which were sure to en- gage in a struggle for mastery over the whole territory. In the end the Indians proved to be more wily politicians than even the priests. Father Le Moyne was treated royally by the Onondagas, and returned to Quebec in the autumn of 1654, full of hopes of peace, and bearing good tidings of the fidelity of the Huron Christians, who, though absorbed into the heathen tribe, had still clung to their religious faith and practice. The enthusias- tic accounts given in the Relations of Indian piety — whether ex- hibited by Hurons, Algonquins, or even Iroquois — seem strange- ly unreal, if judged by the ultimate results and by the attitude of the Indians to-day towards the Church : still it would be unfair to the Jesuits to stamp them as inventions, or even always as gross exaggerations. The Indian is as susceptible of religious excite- ment as the white man. History has recorded many a paroxysm A SUDDEN CALM. of devotion or fanaticism which swept over almost the whole of Europe. On a smaller scale, we have all witnessed the powerful but transient excitement of local Christian revivals. Among the Indians of our own day the Messiah craze affected nearly all the tribes in the Northwest States and Territories with an intensity which so blinded them to prudence and reason as, not only to endanger the peace of a large section of the Rocky Mountain region, but to expose them to the risk of self-annihilation. The sense of desperation has in all times stimulated, if it has not pro- duced, religious enthusiasm ; and the sad plight not only of the Hurons but of other neighboring tribes, under the dread of exter- mination, at one moment by the Iroquois, at another by epidemic diseases, must have strongly inclined them to accept the consola- tions and hopes held out by Christianity. The confidence created by the peace of 1654 was dispelled by the murder of Brother Liegeois near Sillery ; but there was no evidence directly implicating the Iroquois. Subsequently a story was current in Quebec — a most improbable one — that Father Le Moyne, when returning with his Onondaga escort, had been attacked by a band of Mohawks, but that he had concealed the fact, lest it should excite his countrymen to war. The Mohawks at this time were so far from desiring war that they not only sued for peace, but prayed that a missionary should be sent to them also. Such a change of heart and policy was indeed extraor- dinary, and Mere jNIarie de ITncarnation could only attribute it to the miraculous protection of God, who had so blinded their enemies that they could not appreciate their own strength or the colony's feebleness. Incidentally, however, she attributes the impression made on the Iroquois to the musical services of the church. "The Iroquois ambassadors, like other Indians, love singing. They were enchanted at hearing our good peo])le sing in French, and as a mark of their aj)prcciation they attempted to imitate the chant by a song after their own manner; but their measures were not harmonious." The Onondaga peace delegates were in Quebec during the celebration of the jubilee, on the 8th of September, 1653, and the Jesuit Journal relates how terrified the Iroquois were by the dis- 34^ QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. play of military force. Four hundred musketeers were in the line of march, and discharged their firearms at proper intervals. Suite cannot account for more than 400 as the total population of Quebec; this overwhelming force must therefore have con- sisted of armed Indians, whom the Iroquois had driven for shelter to Quebec. They looked brave enough when masquerad- ing under the guns of France, but the Iroquois knew that, if they were Algonquins, they were cowards, and if Hurons, dispirited fugitives. Again the undaunted Father Le Moyne pleaded to be allowed to run the risk of martyrdom on the very spot where Father Jogues had offered up his life, and his request was granted, but with happier results; though once a fanatic or a lunatic, running amuck, did threaten his life. To the Onondagas in 1655 two missionaries were sent from Quebec — Fathers Chaumont and Dablon — accompanied by a large deputation of that nation. Their reception was enthusiastic. A church was built and converts were made, but the message of the gospel did not quell the warlike spirit of the tribe, which engaged that very year, with the other members of the Confederacy, in de- stroying the Fries (Les Chats). Nevertheless, Father Dablon felt so confident of the amicable temper of the Onondagas, and of their Christian receptivity, that he returned to Quebec early in the Spring of 1656 in order to persuade De Lauzon to found a colony in their midst. The Governor most unwisely acceded to his request, in spite of the warning of a Huron, who had lived long among the Onondagas, and could better interpret their motives, and permitted sixty men to accompany the missionaries, thus weakening his already slender force by that number. By a miscalculation, an attempt of the Mohawks to destroy the detachment while en route failed. Whether or nor the plot was prearranged between the Mohawks and the Onondagas must re- main uncertain, but all pretense of friendliness was now thrown ofT by the Mohawks. One morning before daylight a fleet of canoes, manned by Mohawk Iroquois, dropped down to the Island of Orleans. They fell upon the Hurons, who were at work in their fields, killed six and carried ofif eighty captives. Defiantly and unmolested they RENEWAL OF THE MOHAWK WAR. 343 paddled past the fort in full daylight, obliging their captives to sing a warsong, and, without pursuit or resistance, reached their village, where a few of the prisoners were tortured and burnt, and the rest adopted into the tribe. The celerity with which the attack and retreat were made, and the lack of preparedness, due to the false security of the Governor and his priestly advisers, do not sufficiently account for the impunity with which this stroke on the part of the Indians was dealt. The chief explanation is to be found in the feeble force at the disposal of the Governor. Nevertheless, only a fort- night later, when thirty Ottawas appeared, under the leader- ship of two erratic Frenchmen, de Lauzon allowed thirty of his best men and two Jesuit Fathers to return with them. In trying to analyze his folly in thus depleting his resources in men, one is forced to attribute his action, in part at least, to motives of com- merce. The conversion of the savages may have been dear to his heart, but the prosperity of the Company was dearer still. Trade had been stagnant during the whole of his term of office, and he may possibly have determined to signalize its close by two bril- liant strokes of policy. The Onondaga colony, it was hoped, would deflect the fur trade from the Hudson to the St. Lawrence, and the Frenchmen who occupied the Ottawa and Lake Superior might be the pioneers — as in fact they proved to be — of a succession of traders, who should win for France, first, the traffic in peltries, then the dominion of that mysterious interior which had gradu- ally expanded to such vast proportions. Both expeditions would have been politic at another time, but just at this crisis they were almost criminal. Every man withdrawn from Oue])cc increased the peril of the whole country, as no one should have known better than de Lauzon himself ; for ever since he had landed the Iroquois had menaced its very exist(?ncc, and recently had insulted him under the guns of his own ChdUau. They had destroyed or scattered, first the Hurons, then the Fries and Ottawas, and now they were tracking the Huron fugitives with the keen scent of bloodhounds. They recognized in them a branch of their own stock, and unless they could succeed in absorbing them, would pursue them with a relentless vengeance until they were utterly 344 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. destroyed. They preferred the former alternative, for to win back their recalcitrant kinsmen from under the very eyes and protection of Onontio himself, and his black-robed priests, would be a greater triumph than to destroy them. After taking two such frightful hazards, de Lauzon sailed for France in September, 1656, leaving his son Charles as his repre- sentative. He was thus spared before his departure the knowledge of the tragic fate which had befallen Father Garreau and others of the Ottawa expedition at the hands of a band of Mohawks, who had been lying in ambush for them at the entrance to the Ottawa River. CHAPTER XVIL A Dreary Chapter in the History of the Colony and City* Whatever semblance of friendship for the French there may have been on the part of the Onondagas and the western members of the Confederacy, the Mohawks made no attempt to disguise their hostility or their contempt, but continued to conduct negotia- tions with the miserable remnant of the Hurons. Thus it came about that, in the autumn of this same year, when eighty of the latter had been forcibly carried away captive, a deputa- tion of Mohawks appeared in Quebec to claim the fulfilment of the promise made by the rest, that they would peaceably accompany them and accept affiliation into their tribe. There was no conceal- ment on the part of the Mohawks, and no denial on the part of the Hurons. The delegates in fact demanded a public audience to state their case, and the Governor granted it. There had been many a pow-wow with the Indians in Quebec, but never a council in which the Indian was the aggressor and the government on the defensive. The orator of the Mohawk deputation first claimed of the Hurons the fulfilment of their promise to return with them. Then he appealed to the Governor not to interfere, hardly concealing a threat of what would happen should he do so. The council ad- journed that the Hurons might deliberate. On its reassembling, Father Le Moync, who had made more than one trip to and fro between the Mohawk ^^alley and Quebec, spoke. lie tried to re- lieve the Governor's embarrassment by declaring that the Hurons were of age and free to choose their own course; adding that he himself would follow them, should they decide to desert their homes, lest they might also desert their faith. The only branch of the Hurons which decided to return with the deputation was the family of the Bears. 34^ QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. The Mohawks had hardly left with their contingent of the Hurons, when, as if by concert, a deputation of the Onondagas appeared to claim fulfilment of a like pledge. They pretended indignation when they heard that the Bears had left to join the Mohawks. The Governor pacified them with smooth words, and, as the Hurons had repented of their promise, explained that the women and children were afraid to accompany an armed force; but that the following year all would join a deputation of Onon- dagas in Montreal, should one be sent to meet them there in a •friendly spirit. With such subterfuges they were fain to be con- tent, but in their unmoved and stolid countenances an experienced eye might have read the bitter disappointment that was rankling in their hearts. No outbreak occurred, however, until the following summer. According to Charlevoix, the Onondagas appeared in Montreal at the time appointed, to accompany their Huron guests ; but though they had professed unbounded admiration for the French, comparing them most advantageously, morally and socially, with the Dutch, whom they had met at Fort Orange, when the moment of departure arrived, they positively refused to allow any French- men or any priest to join the company. At last they relented so far as to permit a few French laymen to enter their canoes, but denied a place to the priests. These, rather than be parted from their converts, found an old canoe, and, with no other provisions than a sack of flour, followed the cortege. Dissension occurred on the way. Some of the Hurons were killed, and those that arrived had anything but a cheerful tale to tell to the sixty colonists whom de Lauzon had so foolishly allow- ed to accompany Father Le Moyne. These had already begun to doubt the sincerity of their hosts, and to entertain apprehensions for their own safety; for news had reached the Iroquois country that a band of One^idas had killed and scalped three French- men hunting near Montreal, and that, in reprisal, d'Aillebout, who had been appointed by Charles de Lauzon as interim Gov- ernor, in the same manner in which Charles had been nominated by his father, had ordered the arrest of every Iroquois, ir- respective of tribe, within the confines of Canada. Father Le IROQUOIS AND HURONS. 347 Moyne had been entreated by the Mohawks to return at once and use his influence for the hberation of those of their tribe who, they claimed, were being punished for no fault of their own. He delayed his departure till the Spring of 1658, when, in fulfilment of their promise of a safe conduct, the savages delivered him unharmed in Montreal, though war had actually commenced. As to the mem- bers of the Onondaga colony, it had become evident to them some time before that the peace was about to be broken, and that unless they could escape by some ruse, their slaughter was inevitable. How Dupuis managed to extricate his little band of Frenchmen from the perilous position is only one of the thousand and one thrilling episodes of this romantic period of Canadian history. Thus ended in flight the Onondaga colony, the only piece of original statecraft of de Lauzon's administration. He, the Jesuits, his successor, Charles de Lauzon, and d'Aillebout, had all been outwitted by the Iroquois. It may be doubted whether there was really any actual jealousy between the Mohawks and the Western Iroquois ; it is more probable that the French had been lulled into security by fictitious dissensions, while the peace had been used to draw away the Hurons from allegiance to their white allies, to whom, notwithstanding their feebleness, they were of inestim- able value as scouts. If they could be tempted to desert, not only would the French be deprived of their aid, but the fighting material of the Five Nations would be recruited by men of the same origin as themselves. Both Mohawks and Onondagas were, therefore, anxious to win, rather than destroy, the rem- nant of the Hurons. All disguise was thrown aside before Dupuis reached the St. Lawrence from Onondaga with his band of fugi- tive colonists. Even before the return of Father Lc Moyne the war had broken out with such violence that the inhabitants of Montreal dared not venture beyond their defences; while, as far east as Quebec, white men and red were falling victims to the mur- derous enemy. There was no one to stay their hand. The elder de Lauzon had carried back his lialhicinations to old France. His feeble son, and substitute as riovernor. anxious for the release from responsibility tlie priesthoml would give him, liad, after a year's experience, shifted the care of the colony on to the shoulders 348 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. of d'Aillebout, whose previous administration had been far too lacking in force and decision to strike terror into the hearts of the Iroquois. In his second administration he at least showed more resolution than his predecessor in venturing to seize all the Iro- quois he could lay his hands on, as soon as it was found that the Mohawks had renewed hostilities. Even had the younger de Lauzon and d'Aillebout been men of strong character, they held office, not by appointment from France, but merely as interim nominees of their respective pre- decessors. Moreover, the French government, as usual, left them defenceless, while they lacked the prestige which a Royal patent would have conferred. At last there came from France a real nobleman as Governor — the Vicomte d'Argenson, a man in whom the military instinct was so strong that he had abandoned for the profession of arms the advantages which the Church offered to a man of family, and had distinguished himself in the battles of Sens and Bordeaux during the Fronde troubles. He was greeted, on the very day of his ar- rival, July II, 1658, by the war-whoop of the Iroquois and the shrieks of helpless Algonquin women, who were being murdered under the shadow of Cape Diamond. He organized a pursuing party, but did not himself lead it. He had the ceremonies and courtesies of the court to attend to, and an engagement to keep with the Jesuit Fathers, who had invited him to dinner, after which there was to be a garden party, where he and the people of Quebec were to be entertained by a little play. The pursuing party which he had sent out failed to overtake the victors or their captives, but a check to the elation of the savages was administer- ed by La Potherie, the brave and prudent Governor of Three Rivers, when he seized eight warriors, who had approached the fort on the pretence of a peace parley, but whom he suspected, not without reason, of other designs. One he held as hostage, the others he shipped to Quebec to be dealt with as the new Governor might deem fit. This incident somewhat damped the ardor of the Iroquois, and a brief respite from war followed on the action taken by d'Argenson, who decided to allow two of his prisoners to return to the Mohawks and tell their fellow tribesmen that the NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE ENEMY. 349 five were held as a pledge for their good behavior. This capture by La Potherie was followed speedily by another signal success in the neighborhood of Three Rivers, the first news of which was the arrival of five more Iroquois prisoners at Quebec on the 25th of September; then two more Iroquois, who had taken refuge in Couture's house through the wrecking of their canoe, fell into the hands of the French. These disasters did not, however, entirely quench the courage of the doughty warriors. Two of them had the hardihood to land at Cap Rouge, and threaten a certain Nopce with death unless he gave them news of their imprisoned brethren. They then looted the store of Mons. Gauthier, and joined the rest of the band on the south shore. Mere de ITncarnation tells of a terrible thunder- storm in October, which the Iroquois took advantage of to frighten the serving man of the convent, burn their barn, and carry off the oxen. Their audacity, we are told, stirred the Governor to make a reconnoissance, accompanied by twenty-five Frenchmen and two priests ; but nothing was seen of the enemy, and possibly the story was largely the creation of nervous fright. The winter was approaching, and the Iroquois were paddling up stream and making their presence known at various places. At Three Rivers they captured, on the 6th of November, four Frenchmen who were cutting hay on the flats of the south shore. Immediately afterwards, on Lac St. Pierre, they secured four more prisoners. They allowed one to return with a message to the Governor that the seven others would be well cared for, and exchanged in the following spring for their own men if a treaty of peace were made. On further thought they decided not to leave their kinsmen in durance vile so long, if the matter could be otherwise arranged, and consequently a deputation of them ap- peared on the 20th under the guidance of Father Le Moync, and accompanied by a Dutchman from the Hudson, whose presence they seemed to regard as equivalent to a safe conduct. There was a great council held, resulting in an exchange of prisoners. All the Iroquois prisoners but four were liberated — these four being held as hostages for the safety of the Jesuit Fathers in the Iroquois country. The captive Frenchmen were restored to their friends. 350 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. The usual invitation was made to Iroquois girls to come and marry French lads, and thus cement the peace. Had the French authorities shown as much vigor as the Iro- quois, the positions might have been reversed, for the river was not free of ice when, on April 3rd, three Oneidas appeared to treat for the liberation of their countrymen. The first council was held on the 5th of April, but, as the Governor was firm in main- taining that the Algonquins and Hurons must be parties to any treaty made, and as the month had nearly ended be- fore Noel, the principal Algonquin chief, returned from his winter hunt, the final council was not held until the 28th. Thus it was the 30th before the ambassadors, the liberated prison- ers, and Father Le Moyne paddled away, accompanied as far as Three Rivers by the Superior of the Jesuits, by Father Druillettes and by a host of Algonquins, who went thus far to give their final instructions and a hearty godspeed to the Algonquin ambassadors, who were accompanying Father Le Moyne and the Oneidas to the Iroquois country. The town of Quebec, it will be seen, had not been allowed to stagnate for lack of excitement. The coming and going of the dusky envoys were known to all, and the hopes and fears to which every council gave rise were shared by all ; for the Indian war was waged at their very door, and the number of slain, though small, constituted a larger proportion of the scanty population than the casualties of a war usually reach, when calculated on the popula- tion of a ^reat nation. Distressing as the situation of the colony had heretofore been, it was growing steadily worse. Day after day came news of Iro- quois hovering about the settlement, and of overt acts of hostility, at the very time when the Mohawks, with Father Le Moyne, were actually en route to treat for the surrender of the four pris- oners still in the Frenchmen's hands. The mission arrived on the 3rd of July, and four tedious discussions were held before it was decided to deliver up two of the prisoners, and retain two as hos- tages for the safe release of two Frenchmen in the hands of the Onondagas. These negotiations were doubtless followed with keen interest by those whose relatives were in captivity; but, to THE HURONS TAKE SHELTER AT QUEBEC. the rest of the population, there was something very hollow in protestations and promises which experience had shown were liable to be broken without notice, at the first suggestion of caprice or the first imagination of a grievance. Events of greater interest to the Quebeckers were the arrival of Bishop Laval on the i6tli of June, 1659; the dispute which was raging between Father Oueylus, head of the Sulpicians of jMontreal, and the Jesuits, which the Bishop lost no time in taking up ; the organization of the Quebec Church following the Bishop's arrival : the descent of some sixty canoes with peltries from the upper Lakes, giving promise of a revival of trade, which of late years had been very dull ; and the starting of ]\Ions. Denis' flour mill, situated on the hill above the Ursuline Convent. The houses being of wood, fires at this period were not infrequent. Sometimes one would occur, as in the case of the Ursuline Convent, which assumed the dimensions of a public calamity; while smaller conflagrations would bring heavy loss to private individuals. Good Mathieu Chourel and his wife were at mass at Beauport when their house was burnt down. Martin Prevot's house suffered the same fate, and in February, 1661, the house of Boutentrein, in the Lower Town, was burnt to the ground with all its contents. The Bishop tried to stop the fire with the Host, as has been done in our day, and some thought that the fury of the flames was momentarily checked ; nevertheless the building with all that it contained w^as totally consumed. The new Ursuline Convent, enlarged though it was, could hardly accommodate the influx of pupils when the Indians were forced by the Iroquois into the town. Even before the raid made by the Iroquois on the Huron settlement on the Island of Orleans, preparations were under way to transfer the remnant of that na- tion to Quebec. When the removal took |)!ace tliey pitched tlieir wigwams on the open space before the fort, and there subse- quently a stockade was erected for their protection. Those who had not followed tlic cliicf of the Bear family to tlic Iroquois country took refuge in the city, and, to quote Mere (le ITncarnation's own words — "Their girls, to the number of seventy or eighty, went every day as pupils to the convent. After worship 352 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. and instruction a portion of sagamite was served to each girl on her own plate of birch bark. Then, after returning thanks, each went to her cabin, there to share her meal with her family." No fervor of charity, however, could render an Indian encamp- ment in the heart of the town long endurable. Huron Chris- tians, notwithstanding their acknowledged virtues, were still In- dians, and their old habits were not wholly eradicated by .their conversion. Nevertheless, as it would have been barbar- ous to drive them beyond the pale of protection, their pres- ence was tolerated until the peace of De Tracy in 1667, when they were removed a mile and a half from the city to the mission of Notre Dame de la Foye. Even there the mutual injury to morals, which results from too close proximity between white men and Indians, must have been severely felt, for the remnant of the once great nation was transplanted in 1693 to Ancienne Lorette. Long subsequently they built the pretty village which they still occupy beside the falls of the St. Charles, and which they lovingly named Jeune Lorette. Here, on the very outskirts of the great forest which stretches northward without break to the Arctic regions, they can cultivate their farms and yet obey their racial hunting instincts. Happily there has never been between the Indian and the Frenchman that repugnance which prevents lawful wedlock, and therefore the blending of the two in the Lorette Indian of to- day has produced a type which combines some of the admirable qualities of both nations. The work of the Jesuit Fathers still bears its fruit, and whoever knows the Lorette Indian and has hunted with him, can excuse the vein of exaggeration in which the Jesuit Fathers record the many virtues of their converts. The first ship of the season of 1659 had brought out the Bishop, and from the last, the "Saint Andre," which arrived on September 6th, there landed three nuns and two priests for Montreal. Their ministrations had been needed on the voyage, for there were on board one hundred and thirty immigrants intended for Montreal, not Quebec, and typhoid fever of so virulent a type had broken out among them that ten had died. The Jesuit annalist is not sure whether the number is nine or ten. The matter was a purely mun- dane one, and he was more anxious to record an incident of really PEST-STRICKEN IMMIGEIANTS. 353 serious, that is to say of ecclesiastical, moment. The Bishop and the Viceroy were already quarreling as to the selection of their seat or throne in the Church. Fortunately there was a mediator at hand in the person of ex-Governor d'Aille- bout, who decided that the Bishop should sit within the altar rail, the Governor in the very middle of the aisle, but outside the balus- trade. After narrating how the momentous issue had been settled. Father Lalemant goes on to tell of the landing of four patients from the ship and the spread of the disease among the people. But perhaps, after all, the victory of the Bishop over the Gover- nor in this trifling incident was of more importance in its bearing on the future of the colony than the death of a few poor folk from fever. The lives of these were in any case to be of short dura- tion, but the political power of the Church, for which Laval, from first to last, fought valiantly and consistently, was a force that was never to die, but which was destined to shape the character both of the people and of the Government for all time to come. It was a very sad autumn for the little town. The Iroquois were everywhere, and had carried off a man named Routier from Cap Rouge, while the contagious fever was picking off its victims, among whom was good Father de Quen, who had, like many a devoted priest, fallen a voluntary martyr to duty when ministering to the dying. Not many were added to the popula- tion by the one hundred and thirty immigrants who had sailed from France in the "Saint Andre," for of these some, as we have seen, died on shipboard, others landed only to occupy a narrow bed in the little cemetery at the top of Mountain Hill, or the Hotel Dieu graveyard, while not a few of the old inhabitants succumbed to the deadly disease. The spring of 1660 l^rought no relief, but, on the con- trary, intensified the prevailing anxiety. An Iroquois pris- oner was brought in by a band of Tadousac Indians. He was too seriously wounded to survive a journey to Tadousac, whither his captors would have taken him, in order that the whole tribe micfht revel in the sight of his death agony; so they burnt liini in One])ec ; but he had first the satisfaction of terrifying tlie whole town with a story of the marshal- 354 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. ling of a great array of 800 of his tribesmen. Mere Marie de I'ln- carnation tells the story graphically in one of her letters. "After disposing of the prisoner, that is, burning him, it was determined to inspect the nunnery and to decide whether it was fit to with- stand a siege. The Governor, accompanied by experts, visited the building several times, and posted sentries at each end of our house. At regular intervals they changed guards. Redoubts were thrown out, the strongest being near our stable. It defended the barn on one side and the church on the other. All our windows were walled up and perforated with loopholes. Openings were made from room to room, and a bridge thrown between our dwell- ing and that of our servants. The sole means of exit left from our court was by a little door, through which we could pass only one by one. In a word, our convent was turned into a fortress, gar- risoned by twenty-four brave men. When we were ordered out, the guard had already been placed. I begged leave to remain, fear- ing to leave our convent to the mercy of a lot of soldiers. Besides, I had to furnish them with food for both their mouths and their muskets. Three of the sisters stayed with me, but I confess I was deeply troubled when I found that they had removed the Holy Sacrament, and that we were left without it. Sister Ursule, one of the Sisters, wept bitterly, and refused all consolation. I had to submit, however, to the deprivation — the greatest which could be imposed. Our community and that of the Hospitalieres were ac- commodated in the building of the Jesuit Fathers, whose Superior assigned us apartments quite separate from the main lodging house. We had quarters in the Logis de la Congregation. To the Hospitalieres was assigned another building near by, name- ly, the carpenter shop. The Jesuit property is surrounded by a strong wall, and therefore we are secure. The Christian Indians v/ere allowed to build their cabins in the yard. As soon as the peo- ple saw us quit our convent, which was a building comparatively safe and strong— much more so than the Hospital, which from its situation is more exposed to the Iroquois attack — they were ter- rified, looking upon our removal as an admission that all was lost. In a panic they left their houses and fled — some to the fort, others to the Jesuit college, the Bishop's palace, and some even to our QUEBEC ON GUARD. 355 convent, where were harbored six or seven families, some in our servants' rooms, others in one of our parlors, and in the public offices. The rest barricaded themselves as best they could in the lower town, where guards were posted for their further protec- tion. On the morrow, which was the Thursday of Pentecost, the Reverend Superior conducted our sisters and their charge back to the convent. We should have chosen a Alother Superior on that very day had these troubles not compelled us to postpone the election ; and this same routine continued for eight days, the nuns leaving the convent every evening and returning on the following morning at six o'clock. But we were bereft of our Holy Sacra- ment until the day of the Fete Dieu. On the 8th day of the month the army of the Iroquois was reported as being near. In fact it had been seen. In less than half an hour everyone was at his post, and all our doors again barricaded, and I served out to each of the soldiers all he needed. Just then one of our people, who had been fishing, assured us that he had actually seen a canoe with eight men erect in it, coming from the Iroquois haunt at the Chaudiere Falls. This news confirmed the private rumors, but happily both proved false." There was, in point of fact, an expedition consisting of some one hundred Iroquois on its way to ravage the St. Lawrence coun- try, but it was checked and diverted from its purpose by the heroic act and self-sacrifice of Dollard and his little band of immortals, who devoted themselves to death in order to save the colony. The advantage was not always on one side, and Quebeckers could witness, if they would, many an act of cruel vengeance on their foes. On May the 3rd eight Iroquois in a canoe, who were carrying off Madame Picart, whom they had captured with her four children at St. Anne, and wounded to death, were sur- prised in the attempt to land at Point Levis. Three were drown- ed ; the remaining five were taken prisoners ; of these, three were burnt in Quebec, one was saved for the amusement of Three Rivers, and the hfe of one was spared. The Jesuit Fathers ex- erted themselves to stay these barbarities, but to have actually for- bidden them would have danoferously weakened tlirir infliuMice over their Indian converts. Wlicn possil)lc thcv ransomed the 356 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. prisoners. This they succeeded in doing in the case of an Iroquois girl of twelve, whom they bought with strings of beads, and thus saved from death ; for in the warfare of the tribes neither sex nor age afforded protection. In June the news of ex-Governor d'Aillebout's death reached Quebec. He died in Montreal, where his remains still lie. As Maisonneuve's lieutenant he was always more closely related to the struggling religious community of Montreal than to the trading post of Quebec; and in Montreal, therefore, his ashes rightly re- pose. All the French governors of Canada who died in office — and there were many — were buried in Quebec. Champlain's remains occupy an unknown grave. Chevalier de Mezy died in office, and was buried in the cemetery of the Hotel Dieu in Quebec, where not even a headstone marks the spot. Frontenac (1698), his successor De Callieres, (1703), and de Callieres' successor, Philip de Ri- gault (1725), the Marquis de Vaudreuil, all died when Viceroys, and were buried in the Church of the Recollets in Quebec. Jacques Pierre de Taffanel, Marquis de la Jonquiere, laid down the cares of office in February, 1752, to die in May of the same year. He too was buried in the Church of the Recollets. The bodies of these five viceroys were transferred, on the destruction of the Recollet Church, to the Cathedral, where a tablet only has been erected to their memory, though several of them certainly merit more distinguished commemoration. The Spring ships arrived with news of the new treaty of com- merce made by M. de Becancour; but of what avail were more favorable conditions, when trade was almost at a standstill ; when the Lake Indian could only approach the St. Lawrence with his beaver skins at the risk of his life ; and when every house was an improvised fortress ? The colony had been saved for that sum- mer from further raids by the heroism of Dollard, though small bands of Iroquois still prowled about, capturing French and Indians. The comparative security prevailing permitted the West- ern Indians to descend. Le Groseillier, of Lake Superior, brought down sixty canoes full of skins, worth 200,000 livres, of which Montreal traders bought one-fourth; the balance was sold in Three Rivers. The party took back two Jesuits and seven lay- DESPERATE STATE OF THE COLONY. 357 men, but at Montreal they insisted on landing Father Albanel. As a comment on the false colonial policy which had been pursued, the same ship which brought out the new commercial treaty was hurried back to France for a load of flour. The colony had now been over half a century in existence, and was not even yet self-supporting in the matter of food supplies. This scarcity, according to d'Argenson, was due to the disturbed condition of the country, and to a dread that the Iroquois would prevent the garnering of the harvest, if sowed. According to the census then taken, the population of the country around Quebec numbered nearly thrice that of the town itself ; in normal times, therefore, this farming population should have produced a large surplus of cereals over what was needed for the consumption of a town of 547 souls. What crops there were the poor farmers were permitted to gather in peace this autumn, for d'Argenson had arrested four Iroquois, who had come to him under pretence of being ambassadors, and the Montrealers had arrested eleven more of the same band, who were awaiting there the news of their dele- gates' mission. Fearing that extreme measures might be taken against the prisoners, the Iroquois refrained from further atroci- ties. But the lull was short, for in 1661 the Iroquois first appeared at Tadousac, where they dealt so decisive a blow that that outpost was abandoned. The same band then ascended the river, and on the i8th of June struck terror into the whole district of Quebec by eight murders on the north shore and seven on the Island of Orleans. On the 22nd, de Lauzon's son, the seneschal, with his men, were waylaid when hastening to warn his brother-in-law, TEspine, who was shooting, of his danger, and all were killed. L'Espine found the bodies and brought news of the disaster to Quebec on the 24th. The Iroquois were too prudent to attack the town itself, but, as they ascended the river, victim after victim sank under their stroke, or, worse still, fell into their hands alive. At last from twenty-five to thirty Christian captives were thus at their mercy. ♦This census gives to Beauprc 513 Riviere St. Charles, . . 112 Reauport 185 Quebec 547 Cote St. Jean. 153 ••Cillery 145 1,675 358 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. When the state of the colony seemed hopeless, there appeared a deputation of Onondagas and Cayugas, pleading for peace, with an exchange of prisoners and for the return of the black robe. The Governor called an assembly of the citizens of Quebec. The sincerity of the redskins might well be doubted, but they were willing to release four Frenchmen, whom they had brought with them, and to restore ten more, if the eight Iroquois captives were liberated. There could be but one response. There were not as many men capable of bearing arms in the colony as there were Iroquois warriors, so that an ofifensive policy was impos- sible. The eight Iroquois were released, and the four Frenchmen restored to their homes. Then that undaunted hero, Father Le Moyne, exposed himself to a martyr's fate by going for the fifth time on a self-imposed mission to the Iroquois. As a result, the nine Frenchmen in the hands of the Onondagas were released at once, and a promise given that the others would be sent back in the following spring. Those who survived reached Montreal in Au- gust, 1662. Encouraging though they seemed, these exchanges of courtesy and of prisoners did not stay the war. The released Frenchmen and their escorts met on the way a prisoner in the hands of a band of savages, who were exulting over the murder of Mons. de Maistre, one of the priests of St. Sulpice ; two months afterwards another priest of that order, Mons. Vignal, fell a vic- tim to Mohawk ferocity. The lower St. Lawrence was troubled with apprehension only, being exempt from actual attack dur- ing the autumn of 1661, and also the summer of 1662, when the Iroquois were harrowing the Algonquin tribes to the north and south of the upper river. The arrival of the ships in 1661 was late. It was the third of August before a boat from Perce, having on board the Abbe Queylus and others, brought news that a new Governor to succeed d'Argenson, Mons. d'Avaugour, was close at hand. It was a poor consolation to welcome merely a governor and his secretary, when what all were praying for was an army to drive back the Iroquois, and carry the war into the enemy's territory. D'Argenson done as well perhaps as could be expected. He had more than once exposed his own person to risk of capture ; and d'avaugour succeeds d'argenson as governor. 359 his plaint to the home government as to his helplessness, with an empty treasury and empty barracks, while hostile barbarians were scouring the country, is very pitiful. Though not a great captain or a profound politician, he was a man of sufficient observation and common sense to form an accurate opinion as to what the colony needed in its governor. Writing to his brother, the year before his recall, on the subject of his successor, he urges him to use his influence and "to do his best to induce the Company to choose a person who should possess, besides real piety, great de- cision of character and vigorous health. Another qualification, which is absolutely necessary," he says, "is that he be a man of such rank that no one can despise him by reason of his birth, and so rich that no one can accuse him of coming out to Canada to make his fortune. A mere suspicion of selfish motives would counteract all the good he might attempt to do." He himself, during his administration, did really more fighting with the Bishop than with the Iroquois, and the record of his administration is one of dire distress, humiliating disasters inflicted by a savage foe, and petty domestic skirmishes, which he had neither tact to avoid nor the skill to win. CHAPTER XVIIL Governor d^Avaugour's Administration — The Earth- quake of 1663* The new Gorernor did not enter on the performance of his functions till d'Argenson sailed in September, occupying the in- terval with travel and study of the country and its conditions, and of the elements that would aid or oppose him in his official capacity. The situation on the whole was not encouraging. A triangular fight was in progress between the Governor, Father Queylus, and the Bishop; and it was clear that the Bishop was getting the best of it with both his opponents. It became a serious question how long the Bishop and he would remain on good terms. The quarrel over the brandy question had broken out, and the Bishop's views were so extreme that in October he had three men shot for selling it to the aborigines. In the eyes of the new Governor such rigor was excessive. As to the country itself, it impressed him most favorably, and he gave glowing ac- counts of it in his despatches. Had he examined conditions, how- ever, with a more practical and statesmanlike eye, he would not have postponed an appeal for help until writing his second de- spatch; for a month's experience should have been more than sufficient to satisfy him that the colony was in dire straits, and that, unless the Crown of France assumed the cost and respon- sibility of defending it, there was nothing to look forward to save annihilation. Nor would it have required a very large army to subdue the Five Nations just then. They had been weakened by continual warfare, in which, though successful, their numbers had been gradually reduced, and they had not yet recruited their d'avaugour's dream of conquest. losses by absorption. The Relation of 1660 computes their fight- ing strength as follows : Mohawks 500 Oneidas 100 Onondagas 300 Cayugas 300 Senecas 1,000 Making a total of 2,200 Grenlaugh estimates their forces, in 1677, as — Mohawks 300 Oneidas 200 Onondagas 350 Cayugas 300 Senecas 1,000 Total 2,150 The Senecas had taken only a subordinate part in the wars with the French and their allies, and had consequently suffered the least. The Tuscaroras were not incorporated as a sixth nation until 1712. The number of Indians inhabiting the continent at the time of the advent of the whites is unquestionably exaggerated in popular estimation. So far as any data exist, the members of the Huron and Algonquin tribes adjacent to the St. Lawrence, who were allies to the French, were even less numerous than those of the Five Nations, while, as war material, they were of course vastly inferior. D'Avaugour, however, was neither a careful observer nor a sensible adviser, to judge by his last despatch, published in the Collection of Manuscripts, Vol. I, page 155. It is such an incredibly senseless document, and so expressive of the unfitness of the men chosen by the Company, and confirmed by the Crown, as Governors of New France, that it is worth copying in full : "Monseigneur — My first despatch describes the length and breadth of the great river St. Lawrence : My second was upon the 362 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. necessity of fortifying the city of Quebec: In the third I present the unwisdom of ceding the colony of Plaisance in Newfoundland and Gaspe, and now, Monsieur, I venture to propose to you a project for the conquest of the two towns inhabited by the Eng- lish and Dutch, thus making the King master of the continent and its people. These people, who are all heretics of the Reformed Religion, so-called, live under a kind of liberty, and have Gover- nors over them only at intervals. They are very rich, through enjoying the fishing and trafficking with the Indians. *Tf His Majesty would only capture these towns, he would be ruler of the finest portions of America, for the winters are not as cold as in Canada. Only four large war vessels, with 4,000 men, are required. My hope is that His Majesty will put me in com- mand. If he does, I will reduce the towns of Boston and Manhat- tan between the months of May and July, and return by Albany, leaving garrisons in all the towns to hold the people in sub- jection." This bold project, to conquer with 4,000 men the 40,000 report- ed some years before by Druillettes as composing the fighting population of New England, not to mention the Dutch of the Hudson, was signed on September 2nd, 1663, just a fortnight before — as the result of his misunderstanding with the Bishop — the Governor was replaced by de Mezy. Whether the valiant Governor's despatch had much influence at Versailles may be doubted, for facts, only too well known in France, spoke for themselves. The Relations of the Jesuits had for years past described the forlorn condition of the French inhabitants, scattered in little villages along the banks of the river for over 200 miles, and of the larger but still insignificant groups, organized as towns, with a population of less than 3,000 souls ; never sowing a crop with any certainty of being allowed to garner it, or so much as issuing from their homes with any sense of security for their lives. Had they all been men, they might have left their homesteads and attacked the Iroquois, but they dare not desert their women and children. Year after year, more- over, the Superior of the Jesuits had sent one priest and another to plead in France for their flocks. Father Le Jeune had gone AN APPEAL TO THE KING. himself on this mission in the autumn of 1660. And now, in 1661, the people despatched a delegation to urge their cause. They and the new Governor selected a good advocate in the per- son of Mons. Boucher, commandant of Three Rivers. He had lived thirty years in the colony, and his visit to France was opportunely timed. Mazarin, who had been too busy in maintaining his own dubious position to give much care to the condition of the colony, had passed away more than a year previously, and the young King, Louis XI\\, was begi-nning to practice the theory of kingcraft which his father's great minister had inculcated — to be a king in deed as well as in name. He therefore heard with interest, and questioned with intelligence, the sturdy colonist, who, if not versed in court etiquette, possessed, after the manner of frontiersmen, the higher qualities of the true gentleman — stern honesty and modest courage. The monarch in response promised to send a regiment of soldiers to drive back the Iroquois, and a contingent of settlers to recruit the depleted population; better still, he decided to cancel the charter of the commercial company, and to take over the gov- ernment himself. The time was ripe for a successful forward movement, if France had been alive to the value of her colony, and willing to brace herself for the effort necessary to secure its present safety and its future development. Cromwell's vigorous colonial policy had been closed by his premature death — a policy which had cost Spain some of her most cherished West Indian Islands, and France the Colony of Acadia. Louis XIV. might re- peat the Protector's colonial achievements, for Cromwell's succes- sor in England was not a man to oppose him vigorously. More- over, Charles II. was parting with the only minister, Shaftesbury, who would have been a match for Louis' adviser in all marine and colonial matters, Colbert, had a struggle arisen at that time. In order to obtain independent information, Louis XIV. sent a special commissioner to Canada, the Sieur Dumont, and, as a pledge of his interest. (k\«^patched with him two shiploads of immigrants, who arrived October 27th. Dumont, judging Montreal to be the most needy and also the most important outpost of the colony, carried his colonists thither. The population 364 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. of Montreal must indeed have been reduced to a low point, for, even with this large addition and subsequent increments, the inhabitants in 1666 numbered only 625. Of seventeen deaths in Montreal in 1661, fourteen were at the hands of the Iro- quois. The population of Montreal was in fact being rapidly ex- terminated when the contingent under Dumont arrived to recruit its numbers and its courage. Apart from its claims as a religious outpost of the Church, it was, from both a military and a mercantile point of view, of cardinal importance. Montmagny and subsequent Governors, with their feeble forces, judged it unwise to attempt to defend the upper river; but, had their military resources been sufficient, they would doubtless have made of Montreal a barrier for the defence of the population and trade of the lower river by establishing there a fortress of sufficient strength with an adequate garrison. As it was, Montreal pro- tected Three Rivers and Quebec simply by satiating the appetites of the Iroquois, who so harassed the unfortunate inhabitants as to reduce them to famine and despair during the years 1662 and 1663. The people of Quebec did not suflfer till the latter year from actual attack, but the town was in an agony of suspense and anxiety, as news of one disaster after another was brought by white messengers from Montreal, not to speak of reports, true and false, brought by the Indians, of marauding bands setting out from the Iroquois country. There was dreadful apprehension for the safety of Father Le Moyne and the French captives among the Onondagas, and these fears were heightened by the appearance of seven canoes of Iroquois braves on the loth of September, who paddled past the city and killed two Frenchmen on the Island of Orleans. Nevertheless, though war was in progress, the hostiles were true to their promise, and on the 15th of September Father Le Moyne appeared with the released captives, to the infinite joy of the inhabitants. It was an exciting summer, for the Iroquois band after killing two Frenchmen fell on a Huron family on the Island of Orleans, after which they hurried down the river, and murdered more Frenchmen near Tadousac. Returning, they flaunted their con- tempt for the French by firing on some Huron canoes immediately A MONASTERY SCANDAL. in front of the town. As if these troubles were not enoug-h, there was dissension among the French themselves. Following close in the wake of Father Le Moyne's canoe came Mons. Le Ber's boat from Montreal with Mons. de Maisonneuve on board, bound for France to make another appeal for help. Immediately on landing, Mons. Le Ber was arrested as an accomplice in some real or suspected conspiracy, and his goods were confiscated. What the act was with which he was charged, or against whom the conspiracy was aimed, the records do not give the faintest hint. The fact is simply stated in the Journal des Jcsuites^ which further mentions that, as a consequence, Mons. de Maisonneuve changed his plans and returned to Montreal. The Governors were, in fact. Governors of Quebec, rather than Governors of the Colony, and had always shown jealousy of the growing im- portance of the struggling town at the mouth of the Ottawa. De Lauzon had, during his tenure of office, cancelled Maisonneuve's right to his warehouse in Quebec, and possibly this interference with the plans and movements of the Montreal Governor may have been simply another instance of the exercise of arbitrary power instigated by jealousy. The Bishop had excommunicated all who were engaged in the traffic, and had sailed for France to lay before the King a formal complaint against the Governor, and defend his own posi- tion. During his absence the Jesuits did their best to continue his policy. But while the good Fathers were willing to use all the powers of the Church and of the State to check the demoralization of their converts through the use of ardent spirits, they were by no means total abstainers themselves, or advocates of it. Just then, indeed, a little occurrence within their own doors showed what accidents may happen in the best regulated communities. It was their custom to give their choristers beer, and at Christmas time they supplemented it with a flask of wine. That might not have done much harm, but the chief warden, without their knowledge, duplicated the dose, which proved too much for the youngsters. That such a catastrophe, which it was impossible to conceal, should have happened at a moment when they were thundering excommunications against all 366 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. persons, high or low, guilty of selling drink to the savages, was, to say the least, embarrassing, and must have exposed the rev- erend gentlemen to not a little irreverent chaff. Unfortunately other crimes as well were rife. La Badande's house was rifled by thieves, and then burnt to conceal the robbery ; but the criminal, one Larose, was speedily apprehended and hanged. Other thieves were caught after this, but so lax had become the standard of civil authority, or so antagonistic the attitude of the civil officials towards the reverend conservators of public morals, that no convictions could be secured. The Fathers were in despair, vvhen the whole country was suddenly frightened into a sense of its wickedness by the most violent earthquake on record in Can- ada. The foci of greatest disturbance w^ere then, as subsequently, at or near Baie St. Paul, where a little hill is described as toppling into the river, and then, through the elevation of the land, re- appearing as an island. Quebec, near the center of the move- ment, felt the shocks acutely. Father Lalemant describes the movement as less violent in elevated localities than in low-lying ones ; it is probable, therefore, that the shores of the St. Law- rence and the lower town were more violently shaken than the upper town. There had been premonitions for months previously of an im- pending convulsion, aerial voices, fiery serpents flying through the air, magnificent double suns, and a solar eclipse with other natural and some most abnormal phenomena — all interpreted afterwards as supernatural warnings. All passed unheeded, however, until half-past five on Shrove Monday, 1663, when the people were pre- paring for the feasting and revelry of Shrove Tuesday. Suddenly there was a noise as of a furious conflagration, followed by a rock- ing motion, which overturned household articles, cracked walls from cellar to roof, threw down chimneys, crushed the ice on the river, shivering it into splinters, and terrified the whole population into such an access of piety that ''Shrove Tuesday was happily converted into Good Friday," to use the Jesuit description, and the rush to the confessionals kept the priests busy the whole night. But the reformation was shortlived, as Father Lalemant is willing to confess in his letter to the General of the Order, which was not in- A MEMORABLE EARTHQUAKE. tended for publication. "The whole region," he says, "was shaken at one and the same time by a violent earthquake on the 5th day of February. It was not continuous, but intermittent — now more, now less violent. There was a wonderful commotion of men's minds at the start, producing conversions, both among the French and the natives ; but these were so transitory that an increase, rather than a decrease, of the scourge was deserved by many. However, no notable loss was felt, if you except the loss of some chimneys, which immunity is rightly attributed to the special favor of God. These things seem proper to be written to you fraternally in this my private letter. I send another — a public one — with matters more fully considered as regards our plans about combat- ing future wants." — Thwaite's Jesuit Relations 47, page 255. In fact, despite the consternation with which the phenomena were viewed, and the exaggeration with which they were described, this earthquake was probably not much more violent than many that have occurred since, but which, from familiarity, create little or no terror. There had been slight shocks in 1661, but this was the first occasion when the new settlers experienced the horrible sensation of cosmic instability which results from the discovery that the solid earth is really elastic, and that the ever- lasting hills themselves may shake and tremble. Physical fear was intensified by superstitious terror and belief in the interference of supernatural and malevolent agencies. Mere Marie de I'lncarna- tion expressed the current opinion when she tells us that "the devils undoubtedly mix themselves up with natural occurrences." As always happens, the further removed the phenomena were from the actual observation of the narrators, the more extra- ordinary they were described as being. At Three Rivers, when the rocks were cracking and actually disappearing, a horrid, shapeless and monstrous specter was seen crossing from east to west along the edge of the moat constructed for the military de- fence of the town. At Montreal the terror was less, because, as the Church declared, the consciences of .the pious people there were not disturbed on account of their sins — more probably he- cause, owing to the greater distance from the center of dis- turbance, the shocks were less violent. The duration of the 368 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. disturbances was prolonged into August, by which time the compunction for sins had grown fainter than even the expiring throes of the troubled earth. Towards the end of May the community was startled by news of the burning of the Sieur de Beaulieu's house on the Island, and the discovery of the remains of the master and his valet in the ruins. It was not long before the supposed accident was suspected to be a crime, and circumstances pointed to another servant of the deceased as the probable culprit. He was arrested, and the criminal, after being tortured on the public scaffold, was shot. The public hangman was not idle, for next month a fugitive from justice from Tadousac was arrested, and hanged on the following day. A few brighter incidents, however, are recorded. An English bark brought in seven Frenchmen, rescued from the Iroquois. It was probably a ship sailing from New Amsterdam which was glad to carry this Hving cargo as an excuse for trading within pro- hibited limits on the St. Lawrence. Then there returned from the Ottawa country all but two of the little band so recklessly allowed to go thither three years before, when the colony was in the direst straits for men. The 150 Indians who accompanied them brought down in thirty-eight canoes a good stock of beaver skins — a most welcome consignment when nearly all the avenues of trade were blocked by the Iroquois. Whether the Fathers of the Society of Jesus had a lien on these skins is not expressly stated, but Father Lalemant assures us that the Society's outlay on the expedition exceeded the value of the skins by 800 livres. It was, in truth, not without heavy outlay that the Jesuit mission was maintained, and therefore not without good reason that the Franciscan Recollets, with their stringent vows of poverty, had been forced to resign this missionary field to the more opulent order. The Jesuits were fulfilling their duty as hosts to the Indians in the most generous manner. In the previous winter, in addition to the destitute Hurons who had sought the protection of the fort, there had congregated in and about Quebec between 300 and 400 Algonquins from Sillery, Nova Scotia, and Tadousac, fleeing from forest, lake and river — haunted by the specter of the dreaded Iroquois. The Indian population of the QUEBEC AND MONTREAL. 369 town was therefore well nigh as numerous as the white, for before winter set in the shifting, seafaring class had vanished. The support of this concourse of helpless savagery devolved necessarily on the Society. There was no money in the public treas- ury for their relief. The Company was bankrupt, even if its agents had been willing to help ; and the people were poor. The Society of Jesus was therefore alone in a position to protect the fugitives from starvation. What wonder that the Algonquin tribes yielded so gener- ally to the sweet influences of charity, and adopted a form of Christianity, which not only gratified their senses with its pic- turesque and significant ritual, but gave them wherewithal to be fed and clothed? Though the town was exempt from some of the disastrous results which to-day attend the close contact of the aboriginal races with immigrant Anglo-Saxons, nevertheless the existence of a certain amount of immorality and even crime, arising from such intercourse, had to be admitted. The adherents of the Bishop attributed the vice entirely to the baneful influence of brandy ; but it was in part, without doubt, due to the laxity of Indian habits and the easy morals of a large section of the un- married French, who were already acquiring too great a fondness for Indian ways in other matters than mere forest roving. The contrast between the exemplary piety of the Montreal col- onists and the greater license of the port of Quebec was not wholly due to the strict rule of Maisonneuve and the stern religious and municipal influence of the Sulpicians at Ville-Marie. The two towns were very differently situated, and to maintain order in Quebec must have taxed the energies of the Bishop and his secular clergy with all the aid the Jesuits could render. During the busy season of navigation the influx of reckless sailors had a most de- moralizing effect, and during the idle time there was great tempta- tion for the men to amuse themselves with the Indians in a way which the Church could not commend. These unfavorable condi- tions did not exist in the sister town to anything like the same extent ; and there was little therefore to counteract the influence of a pious clergy and of civil leaders who were themselves reli- gious devotees. 370 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Meanwhile great changes were taking place. Canada had ceased to be governed by a trading company, and had become a Crown Colony.* * The Indian population of the Eastern Provinces has probably not very much decreased between the 17th century and to-day. The census of the existing Indian population of the Province of Quebec, as given in Roy's Bulletin, March, 1 90 1, is as follows : Becancour Abenaki Reservation 49 St. Pierre du Lac Abenaki Reservation 374 Maniwaki Algonquin 396 Temiscamingue .Algonquin 190 Viger-Temiscouata Amalicites iii Hurons at Lorette Quarante Arpents and Portneuf 449 Charlesbourg Amalicites , 34 County of Quebec Abenakis 19 Saint Urbain Abenakis 23 Caughnawagha Iroquois i»995 St. Regis Iroquois IjSS? Oka Iroquois 1,130 Maria (Baie des Chaleurs) Micmacs 86 Restigouche Micmacs (under Capouchins) 541 Escoumains Montagnais 35 Bersimis Montagnais 45 1 There are, therefore, of Algonquin origin in the Province of Quebec, 1,300; of Iroquois converts of the Jesuits, drawn from the Five Nations, 4^462 ; and of Hurons, 449. CHAPTER XIX. The Dissolution of the Company of One Hundred Associates and the Assumption of the Government by France. The Company of the One Hundred Associates, after a feeble existence of thirty years, died in the year 1663. Organized by RicheHeu, it was hailed at the time of its creation as a practical refutation of the contention that commercial activity was only to be found in association with the theology of the Reformation and advanced political views. The history of the Company certainly established the negative fact that being a good Catholic did not necessarily make a Frenchman a good business man. It also brought out the irreconcilable antagonism between the service of God and the service of Mammon, as illustrated by the exploiting of a territory for purposes of gain by men working under a charter which bound them to make the conversion of the natives to Christianity their chief concern. The commercial company failed to make money, and failed to govern the country successfully. Its headquarters were in Paris. The scene of its operations was three thousand miles away. Half a year must elapse before in- structions followed the report of events. The constitution of the Company required that the head of the corporation should reside in France, and yet a free hand had of necessity to be given to, or at any rate assumed by, the local authorities, more especially as the people were debarred from all active participation in their own government. Every opportunity was thus afforded to the local commercial agents of the Company, as well as to the Govern- ment officials, for furthering their private ends at the expense of the corporation and the country which employed them. Even had the Company not been virtually bankrupt wlien it was launched on its career, its ultimate failure was almost inevitable. Till its charter was modified in 1645 ^ ^^ss extent subsequently, it 372 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. was burdened with the care and expense of a system of colonial government not of its own devising. It was taxed to support a church whose ministers actively opposed — both in France and in the colony itself — its commercial policy. As a monopoly it was hated by the whole population, which thought it no sin to engage in illicit trade. The articles which it could export were few in number, and the furs which composed its most valuable resource were poached upon by foreign vessels in the gulf, and by the Dutch and English landward. It was carry- ing on its operations in northern seas, and upon a river where the risks of navigation are to this day considered extra hazardous — and all this during troublous times, when war was almost con- tinuous, and when peace, if dependence were placed on it, might prove more dangerous to commerce than war itself. The one hundred charter members had been reduced by death and debts to thirty-six, the resources of those who remained were greatly impaired, and things generally had been brought to so desperate a pass, that in 1660 the Company sent Peronne du Mesnil to investigate its affairs. He brought suit against all the local officials, but Mons. Gaudais, the Commissioner sent out in 1663 to take over possession of New France on behalf of the Crown, dismissed the several actions.* On the 24th of February, 1663, the Company resigned its charter, and the King accepted the charge, with somewhat un- gracious reflections on the shortcomings of the One Hundred Associates, which, had he been able to look forward to his own ill success as an administrator, he would have had some hesitation in making. Bishop Laval was at court at the time with his budget of charges against Governor d'Avaugour. Mazarin was dying; and Colbert was entering on power, impatient to rival his pre- decessor, the great Cardinal, as a colonial minister. The Bishop, having easily triumphed over d'Avaugour, returned to his diocese with a new Governor and a new constitution. The history of New France as a Crown Colony thus began in 1663. The first adminstration under the new constitution, if that * Mons. Sebastien Cramoisy, the famous printer of the Relations, was one of the incorporators. THE CONSTITUTION OF 1663. 373 can be called a constitution which gave no effectual representation to the rights of the people, was that of the Chevalier de Mezy. Though de ^^lezy's short rule was politically of small ac- count, it was distinguished by a bitter quarrel between himself and his friend, the Bishop, over the liquor traffic and the imposi- tion of tithes. The controversy reached such a pitch that the Bishop excommunicated the Governor, receiving him back into the Church only on his recanting his errors, just before his death. The quarrel convulsed the whole community. But the King, instead of seeking a corrective in some measure of moderate popular control, riveted new trammels of officialism on the submissive colonists, and increased the already excessive power of the Church. For, to replace the unfortunate de Mezy, there came out to govern the struggling and straggling population of 2,500 Frenchmen, scattered over the vast territory from Acadia to Lake Superior, a Lieutenant-General, representing His Majesty, a Governor, and an Intendant. So attenuated was the population that the very first decree of the King, as colonial ruler, was to cancel the title to all uncultivated lands, in the hopeless endeavor to concentrate the population and thus render it easier for them to defend themselves against the Iroquois. The plan, however, was impracticable and, though the order to enforce it was re- peated, it seems not to have been carried out, even tentatively.* To return to the constitution. The edict of Louis XIV. of April, 1663, constituted a Sovereign Council in imitation of the Council of State of the parent kingdom. It was to sit and deliber- ate in Quebec, unless the King ordered otherwise. Its members were to be de Mezy, as Governor for the time being, representing the King; Bishop Laval, or the principal ecclesiastic, whoever he might be, as representative of the Bishop; five councillors, to be chosen for one year by the Governor and the Bishop ; and a pro- ciireur, empowered to administer oaths. The council was author- ized to take cognizance of all cases, civil and criminal, following as nearly as possible the procedure of the Parliament of Paris. The King, however, reserved to himself the right of changing or * Talon's Three Bourgs, near Quebec, were laid out as experimental defensive villages. 374 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. abrogating laws and ordinances at his good pleasure. The Coun- cil, besides being the highest court of appeal, was empowered to supervise the pubHc finances, pass laws for the regulation of the traffic in furs with the Indians, as well as of interstate trade and commerce; to create and control a police force for the whole colony; and to establish courts and appoint judges of the first in- stance for the districts of Quebec, Three Rivers and Montreal.* The nomination of the first secretary of Council was vested in the Governor and the Bishop. The five councillors, though not elected by the people, were charged to keep themselves in touch with the people, and with popular needs, as brought to their notice by the syndics of the urban and village communities. The new constitution possessed even less of a popular charac- ter than the provisional decree of 1647. 1^ ga-ve co-ordinate au- thority to ecclesiastical and civil chiefs, and became thus the source of endless confusion. It excluded the people from that faint trace of representation which, under the constitution of 1647, ^^ey en- joyed through the direct influence of the syndics in its delibera- tions. The constitution underwent a slight modification in 1675, not in the direction of greater popularization, but of greater cen tralization, through the growing influence of the Intendant, whose duty, as confidential agent of the Colonial Minister, was to act as * Very strange cases came up in appeal before the Council. For instance, Louis Gaboury was condemned by the Judge of the Prevoste Court to pay a cow and its milk for one year, to be bound to the public post for three hours, and to be led to the door of the church of the Island of Orleans, where on his knees, with his hands joined and his head bared, he had to ask pardon of God, the King and the law for having eaten meat during Lent without permission of the Church. In addition he was condemned to pay a penalty of twenty francs, to be applied to works of piety and to the cost of defraying the expenses of said parish. The sentence was slightly mitigated on appeal to the Sovereign Council. According to Ferland, there are on the Sovereign Council only three or four suits against persons accused of sacrilege. In 1669 two soldiers were accused of carrying about their persons symbols accounted to be magical, and of having used them for improper purposes. They were condemned to pay a fine and to suffer imprisonment, the Council further decreeing that they should be taught the error of their ways — a decidedly milder course than putting them to death, which would at one time have been done in New England. An interesting case is quoted by Chauveau in his Memoir on the Sovereign Council : the wife of Jacques Fournier was accused of irreverence in printing a petition to Frontenac against the procureur of the Jesuits, couched in burlesque language, partly in prose and partly in verse. The Governor enjoyed the joke and replied in the same strain, but this did not protect her from prosecution and fine; though, at the intercession of the Governor, the fine was turned over to her children. CREATION OF THE WEST INDIA COMPANY. 375 a check on the Governor, in case the latter might be inchned to yield to local influences. In 1675, the King, after preluding his edict by announcing the abolition of the Company of the West Indies, and the entire and absolute assumption of the government by himself, added to the number of councillors designated by the Edict of 1663, the Intendant and two additional members, assigning to the Intendant the third place in the council chamber, and appointing him its President. Duchesneau was the In- tendant sent out in that year. The quarrels which then arose as to precedence between him and Frontenac were even more acrimoni- ous than any between the Governor and the Bishop. This con- troversy waxed hottest in 1679- 1680, ^i^^ it was settled that the Governor, should receive his full title of Governor and Lieutenant-General, but not that of Chief and President of the Council ; and Duchesneau that of Intendant of Justice, Police and Finance, and that the Intendant, as commanded by His Majesty in 1675, should fill the seat and fulfil the function of President of the Council. Frontenac had come out as Governor in 1672, when Talon was still Intendant. One of his first acts illustrates the con- flict between his own ideas of what was good for the colony and those of the King. Believing he could popularize the govern- ment and advance the interests of the colony by convoking a rep- resentative assembly of the clergy, nobility, judiciary and com- mons, to discuss public afifairs, after the manner of the States General, he summoned such a parliament accordingly, and it met in the church of the Jesuits. The Intendant, Talon, with admir- able caution, absented himself on the plea of indisposition. He had a suspicion that the action of the impulsive Count would not meet with the approval of their royal master. He was right, for in reply to a dispatch reporting what he had done the Governor received something very like a reprimand from the Minister, who reminded him that the King had ceased to convoke the Etats GenSraux, instructing him at the same time, not only to refuse all demands by the people for popular representation, but even to suppress the election of all syndics, if that could be done without exciting popular commotion. The new constitution was far, therefore, from being drawn on popular lines. 37^ QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. The independent, almost rebellious, bearing of England's col- onies towards the mother country offered a warning to Colbert and his master, Louis, to keep their own colonies well in check. In obedience to this policy a year was spent in framing a consti- tution for a Company that, in theory, was to avoid all the errors of the preceding ones. In a long preamble the King explained that, as the Company of the One Hundred Associates had failed, and had consented to the cancellation of its charter, on condition of being reimbursed certain of its losses, he declared created the Company of the West Indies, which is to absorb the Company of the Terra Firma of America, and its fleet, and to be composed of shareholders whose operations will embrace the west coast of Africa, South America between the Amazon and the Orinoco, Acadia, Newfoundland and Canada. The commercial ex- ploitation of these regions is only the secondary object of their organization ; the first is the Christianization of the native tribes. To this end the Company must transport and maintain enough priests to convert the Indians to the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion, and must also build churches. All the subjects of the King, as well as foreigners, might become shareholders, and nobles would not lose dignity or privileges by investing in its se- curities. The minimum subscription was 3,000 livres. Those subscribing 10,000 to 20,000 livres might vote. Those subscribing more than 20,000 might be elected to the directorate, and be en- titled to the rank of bourgeois in whatever town they lived. For- eigners investing the sum of 20,000 francs in the Company would be entitled to the right of French citizenship while stockholders, and, if they retained their interest for twenty years, might be- come Frenchmen without taking out letters of naturalization, and their relations would inherit. The head office was to be in Paris, and the number of directors nine. The Company was granted exclusive privileges of trading within the sphere of its operations, and all ships and their cargoes trading illegally within these limits were subject lo confiscation. A bounty of 30 livres was promised on each ton of merchandise imported into the colonies, and 40 livres for each ton exported to France in the Company^s ships. Goods admitted to France in the Company's ships could be ex- MISFORTUNES OF THE COMPANY. 377 ported to foreign countries without paying export duty. The Company was endowed, hke its predecessor, with all the rights and privileges of seigneurs in all new countries which it might conquer during the forty years of its charter, as well as over the whole vast territory designated above, the King reserving only foi et hommage as liege, which the Company must render on the succession of each king with a gold crown of the weight of thirty marks. But while enjoying seignorial rights the Company might deed its land, contrary to the feudal custom in any part of France. The Company might work mines without paying the crown any royalty, build forts, manufacture implements of war, levy troops for defence, and equip vessels of war. The Company might nominate Governors for confirmation by the King, and make treaties of offence and defence with the kings and princes of the colonies — the chiefs of the red and black men. The appointment of judges and nomination of the members of the Sovereign Coun- cil was vested in the Council subject to confirmation by the King. The legal code to be used was the Coutiime de Paris, As an in- ducement to the savages to adopt Christianity, their conversion would entitle them to French citizenship, and artisans who had worked in the colony for ten consecutive years were to be reputed Maitres de Chefs d'Oeuvres throughout the kingdom. To assist the Company the King lent it, without interest, ten per cent of its capital stock. Of many of these privileges the Company never availed itself — among others the privilege of nominating the mem- bers of the Council ; but their chief clerk occupied a seat in the Council next to the Intendant. The stock of the Company thus royally patronized was readily subscribed, and within six months a fleet of over forty vessels was armed and equipped ; but in less than three years the whole capital had been absorbed in part payment of previous rights and by losses. In November, 1667, the balance due on the islands of the Antilles was 620,000 livrcs, and on current account 300,000, while the fleet, through the loss of ships at the hands of tlie Eng- lish and by accident, had been reduced to thirty-two, the largest of which was only of 400 tons burden. Such a protest was raised against the monopoly in France, that the King was induced to 3/8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. curtail certain of the privileges, but others were accorded in their stead. Nevertheless, by 1672 the Company was hopelessly ruined and in debt 3,523,000 francs. A commission was then appointed to report on its condition, and to advise. The advice was to wind up the old concern and to create another company whose opera- tions should be restricted to Senegal. The King remitted the loan made to the old Company; returned the shareholders the original value of their shares; assumed possession of, and absolute do- minion over, all the territory which had been covered by the Com- pany's trading privileges and administrative control; and threw the trade of the Antilles and Canada open to his subjects. This, however, was far from meaning free trade in the modern sense. Before the West India Company went into bankruptcy, the King, who had assumed the government of the Colony, determin- ed to make effective, provision for its administration and protec- tion. To conquer the Iroquois, he sent out troops under the command of Alexandre de Prouville, Marquis de Tracy, who, as Lieutenant-General, was to represent him in his South Ameri- can, West Indian and Canadian possessions; but it was under- stood that he would only hold this pre-eminent office for a short period, or until things had quieted down in Canada. Mons. de Courcelle was appointed as Governor and Mons. Talon as Intend- ant. Talon had won experience and distinction as Intendant of Hainaut, and proved to be one of the best administrators ever sent to Canada. The Marquis de Tracy had left France the autumn previous with four companies of the Carignan-Salieres Regiment, but, as his instructions required him to take over Cayenne from the Dutch, he visited the West Indies before proceeding to Canada, where he landed on June 30th, 1665. The four companies of his troops, and others to the total number of 1,200, landed during the course of the summer, officered by men who have attached their names to Canadian geography, such as Mm. de Saliere, de Repen- tigny, de Sorel and de Berthier. One of the first official acts of the Lieutenant-General was to have the edict establishing the West India Company registered by the Sovereign Council, thus inau- gurating the operation of the new Company. The Governor and talon's census of 1666. 379 Intendant arrived at the seat of their government on the 12th September, 1665. With the arrival in Quebec of high officials, representing the august majesty of Louis XIV., and faintly reflecting the glories of his court, accompanied, moreover, by a garrison of from 1,000 to 1,200 men of the great monarch's army, including four com- panies of one of the most distinguished of his regiments, which had fought and conquered over all Europe, from Italy to the Ne- therlands, and from the Atlantic to the Adriatic ; with the creation of the Sovereign Council, modeled after the King's Council of State, but exercising in addition the functions of the Parliament of Paris ; with the prospect in the near future of the erection of the Apostolic Vicarate into the Bishopric of Quebec, and the or- ganization of a cathedral chapter ; and with the recent addition of a theological seminary to the large college already possessed by the Jesuits, Quebec had sprung from the rank of a village to the dignity and dimensions of a town. Nevertheless, despite all these special advantages, it did not prosper commercially or grow in population. Talon gives the population of Canada in 1666 as 3,568, distributed as follows : Quebec 678 Beaupre 555 Beauport 172 Island of Orleans 471 St. Jean Frangois, St. Michel 156 Sillery 217 Notre Dame des Anges and St. Cliarles... 118 Cote Lauzon 6 Montreal 584 Three Rivers 461 Total 3418 In the following year he gives as the population of all New France 4,312, of whom 1,566 were capable of hearing arms, 88 were young men of marriageable age, 55 unmarried girls over fourteen years of age. There were 11,174 acres of land under 380 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. cultivation, and 2,136 horned cattle. Horses were still rare. One had been given to Governor Montmagny in 1647, we do not read of any others being shipped to Canada till 1665, when twelve were brought out by Mons. Bourdon, who had gone to France to protest against Governor de Mezy's arbitrary actions. It was not Talon's fault that so little progress was made. He believed in the possibilities of the country, and pleaded for colonists and for funds. But Colbert's reply was not encouraging. The King, he said, refused to depopulate France in order to people Canada. In truth, if one-fourth of the men he sacrificed, first and last, to his insatiate ambition in war could have been induced to emigrate, they would have settled the Iroquois question and other still larger problems. He did, however, spare some money and men ; but so much of his time was spent in deciding trivialities alto- gether beyond the reach of his knowledge and experience, that he could not help exaggerating to his own mind his efforts on behalf of Canada. This explains probably how it was that ten years afterwards he told Frontenac that he could not believe that there were only 7,832 souls in all Canada, because he had sent a greater number than that him- self to the colony during the previous fifteen years. Every- one, however, was making calculations, and the King may have confounded the Bishop's calculation as to the fecundity of the population with the Intendant's actual return, for the King in 1672 wrote to Talon that the Mons. de Laval assured him that "there will be 1,100 births next year." The King's response to Talon's appeal for aid was substantially that he needed every Frenchman able to carry arms as food for powder, but that, for that very reason, there were plenty of marriageable girls to spare,, notwithstanding that he had already sent many lusty wenches to Canada. The young women referred to certainly brought their virtues and their charms to an active market, for Colbert in 1671 expresses the King's pleasure at hearing that of the 165 shipped the year previous, only sixteen remained unmated. The poor bach- elors, in fact, had no other choice than to marry, for unless, within fifteen days after the arrival of a batch of girls, they chose a partner, their license to hunt was cancelled. What wonder SLOW GROWTH OF THE COLONY. 381 that many of them preferred to choose a squaw at will instead of taking a wife of their own nation under compulsion? To encourage marriage the King was willing to spare a trifle from the wealth he lavished on his own illegitimate children. By an ordinance of 1676 parents with ten or more children born in wedlock, and not vowed to celibacy, were granted an annual allowance of 300 hvres, and an additional sum of 20 livres for each girl or boy at the date of their marriage. A list exists of fifty young couples to each of which a marriage dot of fifty francs was given by the King. Nevertheless, despite per- suasion and coercion, the total population in the year 168 1 had only increased to 9,666, and that of Quebec to 1,345. The colony of Virginia was founded in 1607, only one year before Champlain established Quebec as a trading post, and by 1642 it contained 15,000 whites and 300 negroes. New England, though only twenty-two years old, contained 26,000 souls. The slower prog- ress of Canada as compared with the Enghsh seaboard colonies may at first sight be attributed to the same climatic and geo- graphic causes as operate to-day in retarding the progress of Quebec. But Louisiana was in many respects as favorably situated as Virginia, yet it lagged far behind her in growth. One must seek the explanation elsewhere, and no one reason will perhaps suffice. Rigid bureaucracy in politics, monopoly in trade, ultra- montanism in religion, and interference by the Church, both in politics and in domestic life, all combined to make the colony unpopular in France. The exclusion of the Huguenots is not an adequate explanation. It is doubtful whether they would have emigrated to Canada, even if permitted. Very few took refuge after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in New England. Puritan rigidity was not attractive to them. England, under William and Mary, was a more congenial home than America. Many of the Kcformers wandered in search of lib- erty far away to the little Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope, where the Jouberts and the Du Plessis still retain, not only the names of their forefathers, but their ancestral stern opinions and indomitable determination and courage. Nevertheless, the restrictions of personal liberty in New France seem not only to 382 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. have prevented immigration to Canada, but to have driven settlers out of New France back to the motherland, for that there was a steady reflux the official correspondence conclusively demon- strates. Even had New France been founded on the same prin- ciples as New England and Virginia, Frenchmen, unless of the reformed faith, and driven out by persecution, would not have been any more willing to leave old France in the seventeenth cen- tury than they are in the twentieth.* Had Canada been a refuge for the Huguenots, as New England was for the Puritan, and had the home government not interfered in the development of the country, we might possibly have seen a new nationality created in the Western World, which, retaining Gallic character- istics, would have developed a type of national existence as dif- ferent from that of Old France as the New England type now differs from that of Old England. It was not to be. New France was destined to stagger under the weight of Old France's political and ecclesiastical rule until she sank under the burden. Still, to be just, it must be admitted that Canada lacked New England's splendid opportunities for commerce. The Puritan came to the sterile shores of Massachusetts for gain as well as for conscience sake, and he soon learned that it was more profitable to turn his attention to trade than to agriculture, for the crops which the bleak land yielded were scanty compared with the rich reward to be reaped from sea-going traffic. The French of the St. Law- rence, even if they could have defied the navigation laws of the land as arrogantly and successfully as the New Englanders did those of England, could not escape being icebound for half the year, nor do away with the fact that they were planted two hun- dred leagues from the ocean. The command of the St. Lawrence gave France the opportunity of controlling the heart of the con- tinent, but she forfeited all the advantage which this magnificent position gave her by not fighting, as she should have done, for an ocean outlet in the beginning. Virginia and New Eng- land instinctively appreciated their advantage and her weakness * While we need not adopt Balzac's theory that the Englishman is an emi- grant because he is in a hurry to get away from his odious island, we can under- stand the unwillingness of the Frenchman to leave a land that possesses all the at- tractions of every other. THE CANADIAN MILITIA. when they so persistently attacked her seaboard, and drove her first from Acadia and Newfoundland, and then from Cape Breton. The Marquis de Tracy who had supreme control as Lieu- tenant-General of the King, and commanded in person the cam- paign against the Iroquois in 1666, returned to France in 1667. In his administrative capacity he seems to have interfered as little as possible with the actions of the Governor, de Courcelle, and the Intendant. The latter had not been a month in the colony before he published a tariff fixing the price of merchandise and the value of beaver skins, the only currency used for purposes of barter. The dearest article was brandy — 140 livres the barrel. A white Normandy blanket the trader might exchange for six beaver skins, v/hile one skin was to be counted worth two pounds of powder or one pound of lead. A barrel of Indian corn was valued at six skins. De Tracy probably recognized that his mission was not to regulate prices, but to reconcile the civil and ecclesiastical powers of the colony, and conquer or restrain the Iroquois confederacy. While in Canada he succeeded in repressing the impatience of Courcelle under ecclesiastical interference, but it was quite beyond his power to establish any rules adequate to prevent friction under later adminstrations. He was an old man of over sixty, yet he conducted in person a decisive campaign against the Mohawks in the autumn of the year following his arrival, which dispelled from the Iroquois mind any hopes which Courcelle's ill-advised winter campaign may have excited. In these campaigns the Canadian militia first displayed that wonderful endurance and courage which has ever since character- ized it, and exhibited such soldierly qualities that the men of the Carignan-Salicres regiment did not think it derogatory to treat them as comrades. The campaign was bloodless, but was none the less effective in demonstrating to the Indians the power of France and her ability to take the offensive. De Tracy had the satisfaction, the winter before he sailed, of making a peace with the Mohawks, which secured tranquillity to the colony for several years. CHAPTER XX. The Intendant Talon, Commercial Activity, and Terri- torial Expansion. During the period from 1665 until Frontenac appeared on the scene in 1672, Talon is the most conspicuous figure in Canada. Even when temporarily in France, and represented in Canada by Mons. de Boutonville, his personal influence was paramount, and overshadowed that of the Governor, the Bishop and the Council. His tact and recognition of the Bishop's and the Jesuits' services prevented their publicly opposing him on account of his Gallican tendencies, and saved the people of Quebec from the unedi- fying spectacle of endless bickering in high places, and himself from waste of time and energy in quarreling over trifles. He could thus devote his talents to an intelligent effort to discover other re- sources in the country than hunting, or despoiling the Indians who did the hunting. He probably first conceived dimly, as the West was reached and rumors of the Mississippi country floated about him, the policy subsequently adopted by Frontenac, of en- circling the English colonies in a ring of French posts, and thus shutting them in between the sea and the Alleghenies. The policy is usually represented as that of the French government : it was rather that of the far-sighted Frenchman whom Colbert sent out than of the central power itself. Nevertheless, to judge by the instructions given to him in Paris, and bearing date March 27th, 1665, it was intended that his first care should be to hold the balance between the temporal and ec- clesiastical authorities — the latter represented by the Bishop and the Jesuits — in such a manner that the ecclesiastical power should be subordinate to the civil in the management of affairs. He was advised, however, as the Jesuits had not only local knowledge and influence, but the correspondence and min- Talon. INDUSTRIES OF THE COLONY. 38s utes of the council, to wheedle out of them all they could give or tell, without exciting their suspicions. During Talon's second administration he was instructed to use the Recollets and the Sulpicians as a buffer against the pre- tensions of the Jesuits. By the same mail Colbert wrote to Bishop Laval, the Jesuits' friend, assuring him of the King's high esteem, and flattering him with the declaration that the colony had had no life until he devoted himself to its welfare. While Talon was keeping the peace in the official household, he was marking the passage of Canada from the control of a trad- ing company to that of the government, by inducing the people to engage in manufacturing, so as to be, not importers, but ex- porters, of such things as the soil was capable of producing. Wheat was already raised in excess of home consumption, and was exported. Vaudreuil gives the exportation of flour in 1709 as 958,955 pounds, while lumber, which had always been an article of export, was shipped in large quantities. We find Talon begging that a millwright may be sent out capable of erecting sawmills. As a subordinate industry to lumbering and clearing of the soil, the making of crude potash from wood-ashes had always been prac- ticed, and the export of black ash was now beginning. A tannery was started, and shipbuilding on a scale not heretofore attempted was giving employment to the Quebec carpenters. Colbert con- gratulated Talon in 1671 on the fact that three ships of home build had sailed with cargoes from Canada to the West In- dies; and Father Dablon, in the preface to his Relation of 1671-1672, speaks of a 500 ton ship being under construction, and of one still larger being designed. Cod fishing and sealing on the river were stimulated by the right of entering cured fish into France and selling it at the same rate as though a product of the mother country. Even mining was not neglected. The titanifer- ous iron ores of Baie St. Paul were examined by a Mons. de la Tesserie, but, though existing in large quantities, they were wisely left untouched. The more fusible bog ores of the St. Maurice were reported on favorably by the Sicur la Potardierc in 1668. Though Frontenac wrote strongly in favor of the building of a forge, and though his successor, Denonvillo, reiterated the advice, 386 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. over fifty years elapsed before one was erected and iron made in New France. There was no little excitement over the report that silver-bearing galena had been found in Gaspe Basin, but nothing came of it. Not so, however, regarding the discovery of copper on Lake Superior. The use of malleable copper by the Indians had early been observed by the Europeans, and rumors of its existence in the native state had reached the Inten- dant even before Father Dablon, in the Relation of 1670, describ- ed the famous copper mass on the Lake Shore. Talon some time before this had sent Jean Fere, a Quebec merchant, who was willing to travel far in search of trade, to Lake Superior with Joliet to look for copper, and had received from him an enthusias- tic report on his discoveries. As for Joliet the atmosphere of the West had inspired him with a higher motive than gain ; he was now seized by that passion for exploration which was destined to render him the joint discoverer, with Father Marquette, of the route from the Lakes to the Mississippi. All this activity centered in Quebec, where, instead of a solitary ship or two, bringing the mails and stores, and returning with pel- tries and a few sticks of timber, a fleet of eleven ships rode at an- chor in the summer of 1668. The trade of the port continued sub- sequently to increase until Lower Canada became one of the gran- aries of Europe, and its principal source of lumber. In other respects as well the town grew in importance and activity, as French influence extended over the West, and Frenchmen, if not the government of Versailles, began dimly to appreciate the des- tiny which hovered over the continent, of v/hich they would have had chief control, had fate only so willed, and had those money- making, restless and tenacious nation-builders on the other side of the Alleghenies not stood in their way. With the able rulers sent out when France assumed the reins of government, there arrived in Quebec many a notable character whose name still clings to the soil of what is now for Frenchmen a foreign land, though few of those who tread that soil ever identify the scenes around them with the heroes by whom the primeval wilderness was first penetrated and made known. La QUEBEC THE CENTER OF ENTERPRISE. 387 Salle, with its zinc furnaces ; Joliet, with its glowing steel works ; De Pere, in Wisconsin ; Duluth, all alive with its railroads, docks and huge lake steamers and their consorts ; Marquette, now better known as a shipping port for Michigan iron than as the name of one of the most saintly of the saints ; all these places immortalize in their names the deeds of men who made these closing years of the seventeenth century memorable in the history of the New World. These men and many others congregated and made their plans in the little town of Quebec, whence they scattered to do their work. Some were fired with religious zeal, caught from their associations with the Seminary, the Jesuit College, or the RecoUet Monastery. Others had imbibed the enthusiasm of Talon and Frontenac, and saw visions of wealth for themselves and of glory to France from the possession of the vast interior of the great continent, which, the further it was penetrated, revealed ever more majestic natural features, in lakes that were inland seas, river after river of wondrous length, prairies of boundless extent and fertility, stretching to the base of mountains described to be of fabulous height, and which might hide in their depths, as they were afterwards found to do, treasures such as had raised Spain to the pinnacle of wealth and grandeur. As this amazing panorama was unrolled before the mission- aries, the pioneers and coiirciirs de hois, who met in the churches, the taverns and the chateaus of old Quebec, there was created one of those furores of exploration which seize on whole communities, rouse its most ardent spirits to action, and usher in the great cy- cles of geographical discovery. Could Louis XIV. have looked with the eye of imagination on the American continent, and allow- ed himself to catch a spark of the enthusiasm which inspired some of his servants in the New World, events might have taken a very different turn. As it was, he simply looked with arrogant indif- ference on foreign trade, and on the inroads which England was making on his commerce, though the broader mind of Coll)ert, justly regarded trade as the mainspring of national greatness and prosperity. The King's opinion was candidly, if not very intelli- 388 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, gently, expressed when he wrote : "If the English would only be satisfied with being traders and let us be conquerors, an arrange- ment could be easily arrived at. We should be quite content with one-fourth of the world's commerce and concede to her the rest." France, nevertheless, thanks, to a large extent, to the in- dustry and intelligence of the minister, became the world's work- shop for artistic products, and has remained so ever since. To the energy of the same untiring worker, spurred by the ambition of his royal master, must be attributed the building up of the French navy, as it were by magic. Unfortunately, so absorbed was the King by war and the machinery necessary for its pros- ecution, and so proud was he of domestic France, with its palaces and its factories, which he saw springing up under the wand of his patronage, that he had neither money nor time to bestow on what, had he been able to see a little further into the future, he would have recognized, to be not merely New France, but Greater France. During this period of territorial and commercial expansion, the Church was as active as ever, and the rivalry of its several orders -helped, rather than hindered, missionary work. There was com- petition in the work of saving souls, openly hostile in character, between the Jesuit and Recollet bodies, and friendly between the Jesuits, the priests of the Quebec Seminary and the Sulpicians of Montreal, the questions chiefly in debate being as to their re- spective spheres of action and influence among the aborigines. The zeal of the clergy, it must be admitted, was scarcely more free from the alloy of jealousy than that of the laity. The Recol- lets, as we know, were brought over by Talon to checkmate the Jesuits. The priests of the Seminary were not as cordial towards the Jesuit College on the other side of the market place as Bishop Laval was to its Superior ; while the Jesuits, on their side, regard- ing all New France and Louisiana as their rightful field of opera- tions, resented the interference of the barefooted Friars, and did not view with favor the missionary efforts even of the Seminary priests and Sulpicians. The secular clergy, not without reason, opposed the encroachment of the regulars on their parish pre- serves ; and finally the Recollets, fully reciprocating the dislike of La Salle. IMPORTANT ARRIVALS. 389 the Jesuits, did not scruple to charge them with exaggerating the success of their holy endeavors among the aborigines as a help towards securing financial and political aid in France. In the early summer of 1675 a cargo of very diverse humanity sailed from France for Canada. Laval, now Bishop of Quebec and no friend to the Recollet Fathers, was on board, to- gether with the bustling, egotistical Recollet Friar, Father Hen- nepin, and a man of very different character, already known in Canada, and destined to become famous as perhaps the most daring and original of all the explorers of the Great West, Sieur Robert Cavelier de La Salle. There were also among the pas- sengers a number of girls going to the colony in search of hus- bands. The gallant Cavelier, though educated, as Hennepin as- serts, for the priesthood in a Jesuit college, and the merry girls broke the tedium of the voyage by dancing and revelry, but as these pastimes were indulged in under the eye of the Bishop they cannot have been very shocking. Nevertheless they called forth the severest reprimand from the Friar, who, like many an- other pious person, was willing to "compound for sins he was inclined to by damning those he had no mind to." To the good Friar lying was a venial offence, dancing a deadly sin. Long after La Salle was dead the Friar tried to rob him of the credit of his discoveries. He pretended, moreover, that La Salle had sent him to what he expected would be his death in return for the scoldings he had given him for unseemly levity on that otherwise unmcmorable voyage. In reality La Salle had merely given him an opportunity to achieve a little greatness on his own account. This was not the first time La Salle had crossed the ocean, but it was now that he was to begin that heroic effort to forestall the English trade in the Illinois country, and to win for France the Mississippi from its source to the Delta. Under the influence of his protector, Frontenac, he chose Recollets rather than Jesuits for the religious side of his expedition. The youth and the energy of that sanctimonious busybody, Father Flennepin, recommended him as one of the missionaries of the party, but fortunately another of the same fraternity, Father Zenobe Membre, accompanied the expedition, and has left a memoir of his chief's explorations, as 390 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. conspicuous for its modesty as Hennepin's story is remarkable for the reverse. Though Louis XIV. had warned Talon and Frontenac to con- centrate their limited forces, rather than scatter them, and in pursuance of this policy to discourage western exploration and trade expansion both Intendant and Governor virtually defied, on this point, the instructions of the monarch. They were confident of their own better judgment, and knew that the Court could not control their actions at so great a distance from the seat of authority. Frontenac doubtless believed that he could rely on the support of the colonial minister, Colbert ; and, in any case, he felt that it was vain to resist the impulse which was carrying French Canada westward and southward along the great water- ways of the continent. In 1679-1680 the Sulpicians, Dollier and Gallinee, explored and mapped the north shore of Lake Erie, and in the following year St. Lusson, La Salle and Nicholas Perrot were commissioned to explore the West, and establish trading posts, which they did, with the assistance of the Jesuit Fathers who had preceded them, at Michillimackinac, Ste. Marie and elsewhere. Marquette and Joliet had reached the Mississippi by way of Green Bay and the Wisconsin River. Dulhut reached it and the Sioux country from the western end of Lake Superior. Hennepin had met Dulhut while ascending the river from the mouth of the Illinois, and at length, after disappoint- ments and failures that would have broken the spirit of any other man. La Salle carried out his scheme for exploring the country of the Illinois and Ohio, and reached the sea by way of the Mis- sissippi. These expeditions — all undertaken probably at private expense — were an outcome of the greater freedom of trade which was granted after the dissolution of the West India Company. They expressed the spirit of nationality which the new constitu- tion, devoid though it was of popular features, and the passage of government from the company to the crown, had excited. At the same time they also brought wealth to Quebec, as the furs from those new posts in the distant West contributed their share to the trade of the port, and otherwise stimulated the life of the place. Quebec, however, was also keenly interested in operations ACTIVITY OF THE CANADIAN MILITIA. nearer home which shed lustre on the Canadian mihtia, a race of soldiers which has become famous in the annals of irregular warfare. Newfoundland, which commanded the mouth of the St. Law- rence, was a perpetual menace to the chief towns and ports of the St. Lawrence as long as it was held in hostile hands. The Can- adians of New France recognized the important strategic position of the tenth greatest island of the world more accurately than the Dominion does to-day ; and Iberville, by his dashing campaign and his capture of St. John's, should have stimulated France to make an effort to maintain permanent and comiplete possession of the island. But the Hudson Bay question, as we shall see in a later chapter, assumed greater importance to the mercantile community of Que- bec than even the possession of Newfoundland. To defend the rights of France in that region also the Canadian militia were called into active service, and responded with cheerfulness and promptitude ; for the French Canadian, unlike his English neigh- bors, never devoted himself heart and soul to trade or agriculture. He loved pleasure and he loved war, and therefore made a good soldier. Previous to the arrival of the Carignan-Salieres Regi- ment in 1665, but few regular troops had been sent to Canada from time to time, and the people had consequently been compelled to defend themselves. As early as 1649 the militia forces had been organized, but the regular militia establishment of Canada dates from a later period. In the census of 1679 there are enumerated 1,800 guns and 169 pistols. As there were then about the same number of Canadian families as of firearms, the inference is that one member of every family at any rate was enrolled for military service. The militia, as organized by Talon, Courcelle and Fron- tenac, remains a more or less effective offensive and defensive force to our own day, when the law requires every man to be a soldier. The flagpole which has ever since distinguished the rallying point of the village militia was then first raised in front of the captain's house, "capitaine de cote," l)ut the habitant is not now so often called on to drop his spade and shoulder his musket for 392 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. actual warfare as in the days when he sprang to the summons of a Le Moyne d'Iberville. The efficiency of the militia was improved by infusion into it of the spirit and discipline of the old soldiers of the Carignan- Salieres regiment, and of contingents of other regiments which were encouraged to, and did actually, settle, in Canada and join the militia. There were sent to Canada between 1665 and the end of the century about 4,000 men as King's soldiers, but probably at no one time were there over 2,000 in the colony. Many of the rank and file were mustered out in Canada and became Canadians, while a number of the officers accepted large grants of land as seignories. The Iroquois no longer invaded the lower St. Lawrence, but the Richelieu, the Ottawa, and the posts and mission stations on the Lakes needed protection; consequently the larger portion of the scanty force available was scattered west of Quebec, a small garrison, not more than sufficient to give dignity to the Governor's position, being retained at the seat of government. The census of 1681 gives the number of soldiers in the Chateau as only twenty-one — no more than a corporal's guard. CHAPTER XXI. Frontenac as Governor. De Courcelle, as we have related, came out as the first Gover- nor after the charter of the Company of One Hundred Associates was dissolved. Though he had the strong head and hand of Talon to guide him, his health broke down under the worry and fatigue of war and negotiation with Indian foes as dangerous in the one as they were treacherous in the other. Louis de Buade, Comte de Pallua et Frontenac, was appointed to succeed him in 1672. No Governor of Canada under the French regime, made so many enemies as the great Count, yet none has ever won in so large a measure the confidence and admiration of the col- onists. When he obtained, as a reward for thirty years of active military service, the Governorship of New France, he was still in the prime of life ; for he had received his first commission in 1637, when a lad of seventeen, and he was now fifty-two years of age. During his military career in Europe he had risen to the rank of field officer, and fought in Flanders, Germany and Italy. His last campaign was in Crete, which he was unable to save from falling into the hands of the Turk. Three years afterwards, trans- ported to the Western World, he was devising schemes to frus- trate a very different but no less wily foe, the Iroquois; and his genius is conspicuous in the versatility with which he could abandon the military lessons of a lifetime and adapt himself to the wholly dissimilar conditions of Indian warfare. But though he left his tactics behind him when he came to Canada, he did not leave his personal characteristics, one of which was an arbitrary and violent temper, which the habit of military command and the sufferings and vicissitudes of a soldier's life had not done anything to soften. Such a temper, it need hardly be said, was not likely to aid him in the delicate task which had proved to be beyond the capacity of his predecessors, of maintaininc;' a just equilibrium between the civil and the eccles- 394 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. iastical power. The Intendant, Talon, was still in office when Frontenac arrived in 1672; but as he left soon afterwards, Frontenac found himself in undisputed control of both civil and military affairs, saving the possible interference of the Court. The colony was so near bankruptcy that no one but a trained economist endowed with independent control, could have rescued it, or have reconciled the interests of the West India Com- pany with the prosperity of the people and the welfare of the State. But if camp life had not made of Frontenac a statesman or financier, it did train him to become the saviour of Canada at a crisis in her history when absolute confidence in his own judg- ment and unshaken courage in carrying out his policy were need- ed to impress on the enemies of France in America, both savage and civilized, respect for her military strength, and to infuse into the disheartened colonists a spirit of nationality and an ardor for territorial expansion. He conducted no important campaign against the English or the Iroquois during his first administration, yet by the force of his character, by his natural gift of oratory, supplemented by pictur- esque and significant gesture — language, he so impressed the Iro- quois, during the great peace conference at Montreal in 1680, with awe and respect that they refrained from any overt act of barbarity till after his recall in 1682. His removal was due to ir- ritation at Versailles over the constant friction between himself and the Bishop, with whom the Intendant, Duchesneau, generally sided. Talon had sailed away after Courcelle, and Frontenac was unhampered by any civil colleague for three years. During this period Bishop Laval was absent in France, to secure the erection of his episcopal charge into an independent diocese, and his own appointment as Bishop of Quebec. In his absence his functions, civil and ecclesiastical, were committed to MM. Dudouyt and de Bernieres, as vicars apostolic, who did their best to main- tain the asserted rights of the Church against infringement by the Governor. But it was not till Laval himself returned as Bishop of Quebec in September, 1675, after an absence of nearly four years^ accompanied by a new Intendant, Duchesneau, who had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that his principal duty was FRONTEXAC'S SUCCESSORS. 395 to be a spy and a check on the Governor, that the controversy be- tween Church and State was supplemented by a bitter feud be- tween the Governor and his civil colleague. This at length grew so tiresome to the King and so detrimental to the interests of the colony that both Governor and Intendant were recalled in 1682, and a poor substitute for Frontenac was sent out in the per- son of old ^lons. Pierre de la Barre, while Jacques de Meulles re- placed Duchesneau. The chief incident in Governor de la Barre's administration was an abortive campaign against the Iroquois — the Senecas being the special objects of attack on account of their hostility to the Illinois, who, mainly through the explorations and trading operations of La Salle, had become allies of the French. Then a treaty was made, which met with repro- bation in the colony and such emphatic disapproval in France that, in his instructions to Marquis Denonville, de la Barre's suc- cessor, the King regretfully remarks that he had chosen Mons. de la Barre to put an end to the dissensions between the Governor and the Intendant, and he now recalls him on account of his great age and the shameful peace he had condescended to make with the Iroquois. Denonville fared worse than his predecessor, for though he gained notable advantages over the Iroquois, he was unable to de- fend the colony against the measures of revenge taken by the foe upon the settlers on the Richelieu and at Montreal, and on the Indian allies of France. Quebec and its vicinity did not suffer directly from these Iroquois attacks, but trade and all internal progress were arrested, and the colony was brought to the very verge of ruin. Fvcn the fort at Cataraqui, the stronghold which Frontenac first built, and which La Salic rebuilt and main- tained, and on which the defense of the West so largely depended, was dismantled and abandoned. Meanwhile, in 1685, as the King states in a memorandum to Mons. de Meulles, seeing tliat Mons. de la Barre had been unable to settle the difficulty with Bishop Laval regarding the status and remuneration of the cures, he had accepted the Bishop's re- signation, and appointed the Chevalier Mons. dc Saint Vallier in his place. 396 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Frontenac's chief clerical opponent, having thus no longer a seat in the Council, and the place of his incompatible colleague, Duchesneau, being now filled by Jean Bochart de Champigny, the way was open for sending baci^ the Count to Canada as the one man who could save the colony by his personal prowess and re- nown without assistance from France — for the King would pro- mise nothing. The people were at one with the King and his coun- cilors in regarding Frontenac as their only possible deliverer, and so when he landed in Quebec for the second time, in October, 1689, though there was no parade or noisy rejoicing — for the town was too dispirited for hilarity — he was greeted with what was more flattering still to the grand old veteran, a visible resurrection of hope and confidence among all classes. War, famine, pestilence and poverty had chased each other from end to end of the colony, and now all were to be banished under the influence of the mighty name of Frontenac. The flight of James II. and the accession to the throne of Will- iam and Mary had produced acute changes in the relation of the French and English crowns and colonies. De Callieres, Governor of Montreal, propounded a radical plan of campaign for settling the Iroquois question, namely, to conquer New York ; but, before that was accomplished, the English applied the same radical treat- ment to the Abenaki question by attempting to capture Quebec. Sir William Phipps, having taken Port Royal in May, 1690, ap- peared before Quebec on October 16, with thirty-two ships and over 2,000 men. The news of his approach reached Frontenac in Montreal, where he was holding a pow-wow and giving a great feast to his Western Indian allies. He was winning their hearts by dancing their dances and sharing their unpalatable cookery; but he hurried back to Quebec, and de Callieres, the Governor of Mon- treal, followed so expeditiously with 800 regular and irregular troops that he arrived only two days after his commander, his men marching down the Grand Allee in such high spirits that their shouts could be heard on the hostile ships. That same day Phipps sent his peremptory summons to Frontenac to surrender. He had imitated, when framing it, a similar document sent by Kirke to Champlain ; but conditions, as well as men, had changed. Phipps' THE SECOND SIEGE OF QUEBEC. 397 challenge reads like burlesque in the light of the ignominious failure of his expedition. Nevertheless, in defending the town in its hour of danger, Frontenac displayed not only military skill, but great fertility of resource. We read that when Sir William Phipps' messenger was led blindfolded up the steep road from the landing into the tumble-down Chateau, the few inhabitants of the town jostled the poor fellow as though they had been a multitude, which the narrow road could not contain. The handful of soldiers meanwhile, with their drum- mer and trumpeter, passed and repassed before and behind the blind, bewildered herald, like the army in a play where men march and countermarch through the wings of a stage. When the envoy was unbandaged and allowed to read his message, mercifully offering advantageous terms of surrender, he found himself in a room of the old Chateau which showed no signs of being a tottering building, surrounded by a crowd of officers in their best uniforms, who confirmed the gallant Mar- quis's haughty reply by their well-acted, contemptuous gestures. Frontenac said haughtily that he did not need the hour for delib- eration offered by the Admiral of the rebel King William, and in- dignantly refused to send any other reply to the summons to sur- render than shot from the mouths of his cannon. The defences of Quebec in men and guns were vastly greater that when Kirke summoned the helpless Champlain to surrender ; for, though still indifferently protected landwards, the town was impregnable from the river, and it was on that side that the only vigorous attack was made. Phipps made a fruitless attempt, as Wolfe subsequently did, to advance on the town from the Beauport Flats. Failing, he used his broadsides ; but the bombardment of the town from the fleet was answered by a better directed fire from the city batteries. With some ships disabled Phipps gave up the attempt, and returned, to suffer more from tlic elements in the Gulf than from the fire of the Grand Battery. His tardiness in reaching the field of operation, combined with the incongruous elements of his naval and land forces, made failure almost a foregone conclusion ; nevertheless, so short was the gar- rison of provisions that the addition of de Callieres' forces to the 398 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. poverty-stricken and hungry town would have made surrender in- evitable, had Phipps known the true state of Frontenac's com- mand and been bold, or rather rash, enough to run the risk of November storms in the Gulf. Mons. Saint Vallier was building at the time a little church in the Lower Town, on the site of the old Company's store, and this he dedicated to Notre Dame de la Victoire. The first Sunday after the 22nd of October of each year is still ob- served as a feast day in commemoration of the victory. The same unpretentious little chapel was re-dedicated to the Virgin twenty- two years afterwards, in recognition of her intervention in wreck- ing Admiral Hovenden Walker's fleet in the Gulf ; and it has since been known as Notre Dame des Vic to ires, the plural form repre- senting her two interventions on behalf of the pious town which had always been particularly devoted to the worship of the Holy Family. The Quebec clergy were willing to attribute the whole credit of Phipps' — as they were subsequently of Walker's — defeat to divine aid.* The brilliant defence was soon known to the uttermost parts of New France, nor was it long before the defeat of the attacking fleet and army was reported and bemoaned in the villages and towns of the English colonies. A medal was struck by the French government in commemoration of the victory, but no adequate forces were sent to Canada to protect her in future. The exploit raised the renown of the Governor among white men and red^ and restrained New England from making any further attempt to capture Canada's stronghold during Fron- tenac's life. Louis XIV. was slow in recognizing his debt to the Count, even to the extent of conferring on him the Cross of St. Louis. He declined to make him a lieutenant-general, but allowed him a gratuity of 6,000 livres for his chaplain, secretary and * The English, after the final capture of Quebec, were less humble, for in a sermon preached by Samuel Cooper before Governor Pownall and the Massa- chusetts Council and House of Representatives, the reverend gentleman allows Divine Providence only a share, as co-operating with the British navy, in the honor of the final victory. To quote the speaker's own words — "These con- quests, great as they have been, are owing to the favor of that Being, who is the sole monarch of the ocean, where even the British navy cannot triumph with- out the aid of His providence." \ LIFE AT THE CHATEAU ST. LOUIS. 399 surgeon. Phipps' challenge and defeat aggravated the rancor- ous feeling between the neighboring French and English colonies, rendering more vicious the border raids in which Christian men on both sides enlisted the services of the Indians, and thus made themselves responsible for the abominations and barbarities of savage warfare. Happily, before Frontenac passed away in the autumn of 1698, there was a lull in this hateful strife consequent upon the establishment of peace between France and England; and one of his last public acts was to entertain at dinner in the old Chateau John Schuyler, of Albany, who had come, on the procla- mation of the Peace of Ryswick, to negotiate for an exchange of prisoners. The defeat of Phipps was the only heroic incident in an ir- ritating, ignominious border warfare. It was, however, not only the constant terror to which the frontier settlements of ]\Iassachu- setts were exposed, but alarm at the far-reaching schemes which Frontenac had formed to hem the English colonies within a circle of French forts, stretching from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, that goaded the New England colony to desperation, and inspired the attempt to extinguish at one blow French power on the Continent. Turning now from deeds of warfare to the social life of the colony, it is impossible not to regret that Frontenac was not ac- companied to Canada by his brilliant Countess. Her womanly tact, it is safe to say, would have kept him out of many difficulties into which he rashly ran. The Chateau under the Old Regime famous though it was through the men who, in peace and in war, had held council within its walls, had seldom been the scene of such social hospitalities as women alone can devise and conduct. Life in the Old Fort was modest and simple enough in Cham- plain's time, and conducted with almost monastic severity, especi- ally during his later years, when his Jesuit advisers had an un- disputed ascendancy. There was one short interval when his young wife shed a little brightness over its scanty accommoda- tions. Governor Montma^y, during his long rule, carried out strictly and faithfully his vows of celibacy, and as the black robes were very intimate at the Chateau his suite must have been 400 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. compelled to observe a like restraint, and women must have found its atmosphere uncongenial. Madame d'Aillebout, who was mis- tress twice, was, though devout, a fascinating woman, and won men's hearts, as well as their respect, long after her austere hus- band had gone to his well-deserved reward. The Chateau was cer- tainly not the scene of much public revelry during its occupation by the three Governors who, after de Lauzon, successively represent- ed the Company of the One Hundred Associates. None of them were accompanied by their wives. All were in conflict with the Bishop, and none therefore — publicly at least — dare aggravate their sins by encouraging such gaiety as a public ball. In the early days fireworks and plays were exhibited at the fort to amuse the Indians and instruct the people, for the Jesuits had none of the Puritan scruples against theatrical performances, which were given in their College by their pupils on special occa- sions, and as part of the annual closing exercises ; but they had all John Wesley's aversion to dancing, or to amusements which brought the sexes into too close proximity. On the assumption by the King of actual rule over the Colony in 1663 and the arrival of the Carignan-Salieres Regiment to give eclat to the King's viceroy, de Tracy, who landed with be- fitting dignity from a fleet of ships, everything changed, and with it the strict rule of the early Jesuit period. Though the Bishop was not a lover of pleasure, and the clergy of the Quebec Diocese were then, as they have ever since been, strict disciplinarians, en- forcing a rigid code of morality, they did not restrict their flocks in the enjoyment of innocent amusements. It was different at Montreal. The gay Baron Lahontan complained bitterly, when stationed with his regiment there, of the strict surveillance which the Reverend Seigneurs, the priests of St. Sulpice, maintained. They not only forbade all dancing, gambling and masquerading, but took noble ladies to task, and deprived them of the sacrament, because they dressed in gayer colors than the sombre priests ap- proved ; and they never hesitated to upbraid the culprits from the pulpit, a habit which got them into trouble when the Abbe Fenelon went so far as to criticise Frontenac himself in one of his sermons. They were also extremely particular as to what they allowed MORAL DECLENSION. 401 their flock to read. This probably was a restriction of personal liberty little objected to by a community kept ever on the watch for the Iroquois and not much given to literature. The French officers, however, were not over devout, and the books which they brought with them and allowed to lie about their quarters, alarm- ed and scandalized the good Fathers in a shocking degree. The Cure in the Baron's absence saw fit to ransack his room and found a copy of the works of Petronius, which, being a perfect edi- tion, the Baron particularly valued. But it remained perfect no longer, as the angry cure tore out a number of objectionable leaves. The Baron, on discovering the mutilation, swore he would tear as many hairs out of the priest's beard as the priest had torn leaves from his book. His indignation, however, finally yielded to the entreaties of his landlord not to get him into trouble by such a mode of resenting the injury. From Montreal the Baron was removed to Boucherville, where, the cure being more tolerant, he enjoyed himself in a round of parties and picnics. Of the Quebec secular clergy he has only kind words to say ; he admits and appreciates the self-denial of these poor priests who contented themselves with the bare necessities of life, and applauds the good sense with which they refrained from meddling with matters outside their province. It is to be feared, however, that the lenient rule of the Quebec clergy was taken advantage of by their parishioners, for Bishop Laval, in 1682, was obliged to reprove the women for not only coming to church, but taking the sacrament and distributing pain benit, with bare arms and low-neck dresses and uncovered heads. The abuse had grown to such a pass that he was com- pelled to forbid the priests administering the sacrament to women thus underclad. The excesses or deficiencies in dress were per- haps a symptom of a social condition requiring great watchful- ness on the part of the clergy, for we find the Bishop threatening to excommunicate all who took part in a charivari, a noisy mode of expressing popular disapproval of unsuitable marriages which has survived to our own day. But a few years later still worse demoralization threatened the pious town, for Frontcnac, besides giving a public ball at the Chateau in the winter of 1694, went 402 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. SO far as to propose that Moliere's "Tartufife" should be per- formed. The Jesuits had patronized by their presence serious tragedies, such as Corneille's ''Heraclius" and ''The Cid," but they had dis- approved absolutely of a ballet given at the Company's store in 1647, vv^hich a certain ''petite Marsolet," a pupil of the Ursulines, had attended in defiance of their commands. When Fron- tenac enlisted the dramatic talent of the garrison in the per- formance of Racine's "Mithridate," no protest v;^as made; but v^hen he proposed playing "Tartuffe," and assigned the manage- ment to a certain Lieutenant Mareul, a gentleman, who, though only a year in the colony, had already become notorious for his gallantry, his old friend, Bishop Saint Vallier, loudly protested. It is assumed as true by the Abbe Ferland that Frontenac suggested that it would do the religious ladies and their scholars good to see a certain phase of life depicted in its true colors. If there is any truth in the story, Frontenac must have intended it for a joke, in the same spirit as that in which he met the Bishop when he accepted 100 pistoles from the fat purse of the wealthy prelate in consideration of withdrawing the piece. The Bishop did not see the joke. The Governor kept his promise ; but the Bishop, to en- sure the fulfilment of the pact, thundered mandements against such irreligious plays, and included Mareul himself by name as "an impious creature, who even in public talks in a manner which should make the very heavens blush and call down the vengeance of God." "Tartuffe" contains some expressions that verge on the indelicate and which might be omitted without injuring the play; but no pruning could conceal the fact that the motive of the whole comedy is a satire against religious hypocrisy. Tartuffe was a lay, not a clerical, hypocrite, and the play was aimed against the Illuminati and their courtly advocate, Des- marets. So clearly was this recognized at the time of its first presentation that it met, according to Michelet, with the approval of the papal legate himself ; but none the less its application to hypocrites in general has made it popular with every generation, and odious to certain classes. Neither Laval nor Saint Vallier had the least reason to fear a personal reference, but the wealthy Jes- A THREATENED PERFORMAXCE OF "tARTUFFE." uits, accused, whether justly or not, of augmenting the already great wealth of the Society, by engaging in trade under the guise of mission work, might well dread to see the comedy performed. Whether Bishop Saint Vallier loved the Jesuits or not, he dare not allow any body of clerg}^ to be exposed to ridicule. The Bishop therefore threw himself impetuously into the fray against the play, against the Governor who had suggested it, and against the officers who were to act in it, thus alienating his best friend, the Governor, and antagonizing the army. He even induced the Sovereign Council to arrest ^lareul for blasphemy, and kept him in prison until Frontenac almost by force procured his release.* * The quarrel between Bishop Saint Vallier and Frontenac over Tartuffe was a repetition of a somewhat similar feud between Bishop Laval and the In- tendant Talon, growing out of a ball given by M. Chartier de Lotbiniere in 1667. The brotherhood (confrerie) of the Holy Family in Canada originated with the Jesuit Father Chaumont. He had, to use his own words, "conceived for fourteen years or more the ardent desire that the Divine Mary should have a large number of spiritual children by adoption to console her for the suffering she underwent through the loss of her Jesus. Once when I was smitten by this ardent desire to obtain for the Virgin Mother this saintly and numerous posterity, I suddenly heard distinctly in the depth of my soul these words, which appealed to my heart: ' You will be my spouse, since you desire to make me the mother of so many children.' Filled ^ith shame and confusion, in that the Mother of God should think of doing me such an honor, I was abased by the consideration of my nothingness, my sins and my wretchedness. Nevertheless, she told me that she was my spouse." Thus originated in Canada, the brotherhood of the Holy Family, which Bishop Laval favored, for the creation of which he obtained bulls from Alexander VIL, for the guidance of whose members he laid down wise and stimulating rules intended to assist them in imitating the life of the Holy Family. As the women members were urged to ask themselves on every critical occasion, " How would the Holy Virgin have acted under these circumstances ? Would she have done this ? Would she have spoken thus ? Would she have dressed in this fashion ? " and as they promised to abstain from frivolities in which the Holy Virgin would not have engaged, the range of gayeties in which they might participate was limited. Some of the ladies, who, in their enthusiasm, had joined the fraternity, yielding to more worldly impulses, went to M. Chartier's ball, for which they were gravely reproved by the Bishop and the priests of the Semi- nary, who were the spiritual managers of the fraternity. It would seem to have been quite within the province of the Bishop and the clergy to reprimand delinquents for disobedience of the rules of the fraternity and neglect of their purely religious duties, and even to suspend the members of the confrerie. But the Intendant Talon regarded the Bishop's action as an infrigement of the social liberty of the citizen, and as a reflection on the character of the entertainment. He therefore brought the matter before the Council, and a committee was ap- pointed to investigate. The Committee reported that the Carnival entertainment had been harmless, and tha subject was then dropped in the Council; but not by society in the little town, where the secrecy of the fraternity's meetings gave scope for abundant scandalous rumor. The whole incident affords a curious example of the extremes to which the leaders of the Church and State will go when looking for causes of offense and excuses for a quarrel. 404 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. The presence of the military had, in the long run, a demoral- izing effect on society, though, if we are to credit the Jesuit narra- tive, when the Carignan-Salieres Regiment first came out there was a veritable revival of religion in the ranks. Talon writes to the King that he, Mons. de Tracy, and Courcelle had assisted at the abjuration of his heresy by a certain Captain Berthier of the regiment, at the hands of the Bishop, and that sixteen soldiers had within a month been converted. The effect was not in all cases evanescent, for a certain Captain Petit subsequently took holy or- ders. Mons. Laval, writing to the Propaganda, names twenty- two who had abjured their heresy in the year 1665, and states that at least thirty-three of the soldiers who had landed with typhoid fever, and had been treated at the Hotel Dieu, had done likewise. Many of the Catholics had never been confirmed, and the famous regiment had evidently enrolled in its ranks not a few Huguenots. The poor fellows landed from the pest ships were not only met with kind nursing from the nuns, but found themselves in a re- ligious atmosphere such as they had never before breathed. Of course, this paroxysm of piety passed like most revivals, and the ways of the world which the soldiers introduced became a source of great alarm and anxiety to the priests. Some of the officers engaged in trade, and the men drank ; and neither officers nor men had any scruples in treating the Indians, whether to assist a bargain or from sheer good fellowship. And that old sol- dier, Frontenac, though a good Catholic and a strict attendant at mass — not however at the Cathedral, but across the Place d'Armes at the Chapel of the Recollets — one who conducted household prayers himself every evening and went into retreat every year, adhered to the old tradition that dancing was the best training for good marching, and that the soldier was entitled to more than ordinary license, as a compensation for the greater risks of his profession. The calm old Chateau, therefore, during his two terms of office was the scene of more gaiety than it had ever been before. With a temper so impetuous and methods of government so arbitrary, it was inevitable that Frontenac should make enemies; but it was unfortunate for his reputation that he quarrelled so bit- SOCIAL FOLLIES, terly with the higher Church authorities, and that he tried to pit one rehgious body against another. It was unfortunate, too, that his friends were the comparatively ilHterate Re- collets, and his enemies the astute and highly educated Jesuits. The result was that he had no literary defenders, and that con- sequently there has been handed down, and received as true, a whole budget of derogatory stories, affecting not only his own but his wife's good name. She was the beautiful, dashing, and eccentric Anne de la Grange, one of the Lieutenants and Marechalc de Camp of the Grande Alademoiselle, when she made her triumphant entry into Orleans during the war of the Fronde. A woman so conspicuous, and of so marked a character, was sure to be talked about, and notoriety at the Court of Louis XIV. was hardly compatible, in the case of a woman, with unblemished repute. Saint Simon, the amusing gossip- monger of that generation, seems to have disliked Frontenac. He always mentions him with disparagement, or faint praise, and casts insinuations and shadows of suspicion over the character and actions of his brilliant Countess. Calumny even followed his mortal remains, for the unauthenticated and improbable tale is repeated by standard historians to-day of how Frontenac, upon his deathbed, gave instructions that his heart should be sent in a silver casket to his wife, and how she indignantly declined to receive it on the ground that in life it had never been hers. Social manners certainly became freer during Frontenac's ad- ministration and they declined rapidly afterwards. Bishop Saint Vallier, on his way to Montreal, in 1694, was shocked by gossip about the intimate friendship of an officer with a married lady at Batiscan, and a quarrel in which a lady's name was involved gave rise to a fatal duel in the streets of Quebec. As the regulations of the army forbade officers to marry without leave, lefthandecl marriages were common ; but it was not until Governor Vaud- reuil's time that even the convents were invaded by the prevalent levity. Bishop Saint Vallier had to appeal to the Council to use its influence to induce Governor Vaudreuil not to enter the con- vent himself, and to cease giving authority, as he had been doing, to all sorts of persons to disturb the seclusion of the nuns. 406 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Madame de Vaudreuil, a Canadian girl by birth, had been elevated by her marriage to the rank of marchioness. Through Denonville's influence she had obtained the post of under- governcss of the Royal Family at Versailles. When she returned to Canada she brought back with her some of the man- ners of Versailles. She carried her head so high as to be the envy of her sex, and, being a woman, made free to enter with her suite the nunneries when she listed. And thus the evil grew until good Bishop Dosquet, Saint Vallier's successor, had to deplore the fact that the religious ladies, to the great scandal of the pious, went so far as to attend dinner and supper parties at the Chateau and the Intendant's palace. Kalm himself fifty years later prints the menu of an excellent dinner given him at the convent of the Ursulines, but he does not say whether the religious ladies par- took of it with him. To secure peace the ecclesiastical authorities had to yield more or less to the officers of State, if we may judge by Bishop Dosquet's description of Bishop Saint Vallier's attitude. CHAPTER XXII. Arrival of Bishop Laval as Bishop of Petraca and Vicar Apostolic, and the Creation of a Parochial Clergy. Before the capture of Quebec by Kirke the Recollet Friars, had by dispensation, performed parochial duties in the absence of the secular clergy. After its restoration the Jesuits alone, as we have seen, were allowed to return, and, for twenty-seven years they were the only ecclesiastics performing regular parochial functions in the colony. There came out with Champlain in 1634, a secular priest, LeSueur de St. Sauveur by name, and we have met Mons. Gilles Xicolet, but to neither of them seem to have been assigned any stated duties until 1639, when the UrsuHne and Hospital nurses arrived. Quarters were assigned to the Hospitalieres in the Company's house opposite the Fort, but as the rooms were un- furnished, and their bedding was still on board the ship, the Abbe Jean LeSueur busied himself in making them as comfortable as possible, gathering boughs and sapin branches for their beds. Although the branches were found to be full of caterpillars, the kind services of the Abbe were appreciated, and the nuns made him their chaj)lain, but seemingly not their father confessor. His devotion perhaps did not compare favorably with that of the Jesuits, for we find that Father Minard replaced him in 1641 as chaplain, and acted as confessor for three years, when more active duties required liim to resign his post in favor of their original spiritual adviser. M. FeSucur is the only secular priest who occupied a prominent position in these early days, and his name is perpetuated in that of the suburb of St. Sauveur. Subsequently there accompanied M. d'Aillebout to Canada M. Vignal, another secular priest, as chaplain and father con- 408 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. fessor to the Ursulines. He seems to have been a quiet, unas- suming man, who did his duty unostentatiously and shunned no- toriety. The post was a congenial one, and he retained it until removed by the energetic Father Queylus, during his short reign. Good Father Vignal subsequently fell a victim to the Iroquois. With Bishop Laval there came out in 1659 Jean Torcapel and Phillipe Pelerin as priests, Henri de Bernieres, a ''simple tonsure/' and Charles de Lauson-Charny, who had entered holy orders, and of whom we have already heard, as having temporarily held the office of Governor after the departure of his Father, M. Jean de Lauzon. After that date parish duties in and about Quebec were discharged by secular clergymen, but the Jesuits continued to perform them at Montreal until the arrival of the Sulpicians in 1657. Canada was favored by sharing most bountifully in the fruits of the great religious revival which took place within the Church of Rome itself in the seventeenth century. The Ursulines and the Sisters of the Congregation as teachers of the young, and the Hospitalieres (Nuns of St. Augustine) of the Hotel Dieu, as nurses, filled positions which the impecunious Company and the needy colonists could not possibly have supplied by paid workers. The example thus given of true practical Christianity, appealed much more forcibly to the poor white colonists, and the still more indigent aborigines, than the secluded self-abnegation of the strictly cloistered orders could have done. Both orders were creations of the Reformation in its wider sense. We have already mentioned the Recollets, who were the first to teach and to prac- tice in this remote field and in the hidden recesses of the continent, the principles of the Master and of his disciple, the gentle Saint Francis. As to the Jesuits who succeeded them it may briefly be said that they exhibited a devotion to duty coupled with a scorn of danger and of death itself in its most cruel forms, which has compelled the admiration of those even who least admire their system. The story of the Missions of the Jesuits in the seventeenth century, whether in the West or in the East, must be allowed to offset a large part of the odium which has attached to the Order on account of its unhappy tendency to blend THE SULPICIANS AT MONTREAL. 409 politics with religion. Perhaps their Canadian missionary annals express more truthfully than other chapters of their history the real purpose and intent of their remarkable founders. Neverthe- less, it must be admitted that they were a serious burden on the infant colony, while their Relations distracted attention in France from the urgent needs of the French emigrants, fastening it ex- clusively on the needs of their own missionary work among the aborigines. A healthier, if less historically important, outgrowth of the Reformation than the Society of Jesus was the Seminary of St. Sulpice, in Paris. Here we find a body of earnest and able secular priests choosing as their leader and director a man of recog- nized saintliness of character, Olier, and pledging themselves to follow his principles and rule of life without severing them- selves from the general body of the clergy, like the Jesuits, or taking monastic vows, like the mendicant orders. M. Olier was a contemporary and disciple of St. Francis de Sales and St. Vincent de Paul, and while animated by their pity for the poor and helpless, he recognized that, if Catholicism was to maintain its influence over the educated classes, it must be through a highly educated clergy. Becoming the Cure of the large parish of St. Sulpice, he gathered around him in the busy Fau- bourg of St. Germain a group of scholars devoted primarily to educating youths aspiring to the office of the priesthood. At one time he longed to become himself a missionary to Canada, but though unable to fulfill this wish, he was from the first one of the associates of the Montreal Company, and a friend of M. de Maisonneuve and Mademoiselle Mancc. Accordingly, when in 1-656 M. de Maisonneuve saw reason to fear that the Jesuits, who had heretofore fulfilled all the clerical functions in Montreal, might not be able to spare a priest much longer, he applied to M. Olier for assistance. Tliere is in the complimentary reference made by the Montreal Company to the Jesuits, and in the reciprocated compliments of the Jesuits, a tliinly discfuiscd vein of jealousy. "Re that as it may, M. Olier designated four of his colleagues who were willing to undertake tlie liar(1s]iii>s and risks of service in Canada. One of these, M. de Queylus, it was 410 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. suggested, should be consecrated Bishop before leaving, but failing to secure this position, he was created Grand Vicaire by the Archbishop of Rouen, who claimed Episcopal authority over the Canadian Church.* That the Jesuits did not frustrate the invasion of their territory by the Sulpicians as they had so successfully done in the case of the Recollets, may be due, as Suite suggests, to their temporary discomfiture in France through the attack of the Jansenrsts under Pascal. Ultimately the Sulpicians became the most wealthy ecclesiastical body in Canada, for in 1640 M. de Lauson trans- ferred to Dauversiere and other founders of the Montreal Com- pany, the seignory of Montreal, and in 1663 this Company dis- solved voluntarily in favor of the Sulpicians. These ecclesiastics thus became, not only independent and self-supporting, but, according to the Swedish traveller and writer, Kalm, able to remit to their Order in France. The Jesuits were ultimately expelled from Canada. The Re- collets after the Conquest retired; but the Sulpicians have lived through revolutions in France, through changes of government in Canada, and through even greater changes in their social sur- roundings, and still retain influence both in the Old and in the New World through the consistency of their lives with their religious profession. Renan, who was educated by the Sulpicians in their Seminaries at Issy and Paris, and who may be accepted as a candid witness, after speaking of the high attainments of some of his professors, adds: "But it is not to eminent scholarship that the teachers of St. Sulpice attach the highest value. St. Sulpice is above all a school of virtue. It is chiefly in respect to virtue that St. Sul- pice is a remnant of the past — a fossil two hundred years old. Many of my opinions may surprise the outside world because they have not seen what I have seen. At St. Sulpice I have seen, *The Archbishop of Rouen was also primate of Normandy. The eccle- siastical Province of Normandy closely corresponded geographically to the lines of the Duchy, and as Brittany owed homage to the Duke of the Nor- mans, the primate of Normandy claimed the emigrants from Normandy and Brittany across the sea, as within his episcopal province. A HOTBED OF MYSTICAL PIETY. 411 coupled, I admit, with very narrow views, the perfection of good- ness, poHteness, modesty and self-sacrifice. There is enough vir- tue in St. Sulpice to govern the whole world. And this fact has made me very discriminating in my appreciation of what I have seen elsewhere. A future generation will never be able to realize what treasures, devoted to the advancement of the welfare of mankind, are stored up in those ancient schools of silence, gravity and respect." In their humility the Sulpicians have even refrained from attaching their names to their writings. Hence Dollier de Casson's "History of Montreal" can only be assumed to be from his pen, and the Abbe Faillon's ''Histoire de la Colonie Frangaise en Canada" is anonymous. The Sulpicians are rather a community than an order, being bound together by obedience to an idea and by unity of purpose rather than by rigid vows. This was true also of another group of devotees in that surging period of religious revival — les Filles de la Congregation,'^' to whom Canada owes much. In the Hermitage of Caen, under M. de Bernieres, there was assembled a group of men as profoundly imbued with the spirit of expansive Christianity as the Brethren of St. Sulpice, but whose zeal exhausted itself in mystical self-communing rather than in the practice of useful duties. The bonds created by the mere memory of a pious founder and obedience to his mystical precepts, were too feeble to hold together his followers for two generations. We have met with ^I.de Bernieres as married to, and yet not the husband of, Mme. de la Peltrie. and seen how she went with the Ursuline Nuns to Canada while he remained in France to administer the finances of the institution. t His sister, Gourdaine de Bernieres, was Supe- rioress of the Ursuline Convent at Caen, and in the yard of the Nunnery his brother built a hermitage to which both clerics and *"Les Filles de la Congregation," an associatirvn formed by Marguerite Bourgeois in Montreal, was composed of devoted women under mere!}- simple vows (voeux simples) in distinction to "voeux solennels." — Charlo voix II, Page 95. To-day this order has not fewer than 25,000 pupii'^ Bentzon "Notes de Voyage," Page I78. tGosselin. in his Life of Laval, supposes the marriage not to have taken place. Vol. L Page 79. 412 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. laymen retired for spiritual intercourse and solemn communing. Like Olier, whose book, ''Jo^^^^^ Chretienne," has become for his disciples their rule of life, so de Bernieres poured out his soul and his conceptions of the duties and destinies of man in a treatise entitled ''Le Chretien Interieur," at first pubHshed anonymously. As it savored of Quietism, it was placed on the Index till the ob- jectionable passages were expunged. What renders the Hermitage a spot of interest to us, apart from the fact that M. de Bernieres presided over it, is that both Bishop Laval and M. de Mezy, nominated by the Bishop himself, as suc- cessor to d'Avaugour in the Governorship of Canada, as well as de Bernieres' brother, who was subsequently Grand Vicaire to the Bishop, were its inmates, and imbibed their religious inspi- ration from its atmosphere. Had the discipline of this establish- ment been as rigid as that imposed by Loyola on the novices of the Society of Jesus, and had de Bernieres' teaching been as specific in its injunctions as the "Letter on Obedience" and the "Constitu- tions" of the great Founder of Jesuitism, two prominent members of the Society could hardly in after life have opposed one another so bitterly as Bishop Laval and Governor de Mezy did over the question of the respective provinces of Church and State. The Canadian Church fortunately had drawn its priests and nuns from sources exceptionally pure, and the secular clergy, as time went on, identified themselves intimately and disinterestedly with the domestic and social life of the people. It was doubtless due to these circumstances that the interference of the Church did not arouse popular, as well as official, resentment. The quarrel was entirely confined to the higher clergy and the chiefs of the civil government. The people, in the days of Jesuit supremacy, there is reason to believe, fretted under it, but after they had secured secular priests and cures, they left the struggle between Church and State to those who were more immediately affected by the result. The struggle commenced in earnest with the arrival in Quebec on June i6, 1659, of Frangois de Montmorency-Laval de Montigny, Vicaire Apostolique and Bishop of Petraea in partihus iniidelium. From a strictly ecclesiastical point of view the presence of a NEED FOR A BISHOP IX CANADA. bishop in the country was certainly much required. The Jesuits were energetic enough in the performance of their clerical func- tions in Quebec itself, but the settlements at Beauport, Beaupre, the Island of Orleans and other points near by, whose population in 1666 was thrice that of the town, and at an earlier date probably proportionately as large, had to be content with their occasional ministrations, and with such aid and comfort as they received from Messieurs Le Sueur and Nicolet. When ]\Ions. de Maisonneuve was in France in 1645 the subject of a Bishop for Canada was mooted, and AI. Gauffon (Suite III, page 139), an associate of ^lons. Olier, was nominated, but died before action could be taken. The matter was not, however, allowed to rest. Anne of Austria, according to Charlevoix, is said to have favored the Jesuit Father Le Jeune as Bishop ; and at another time an agitation was excited in favor of Father Lale- mant, by reason of his eminence in the order to which Canada was considered to owe so much. But the rules of the Society for- bade his accepting a Bishopric, even if the Pope had approved of him. As the constitution of the Church required that every com- munity must be under some Bishop, Father Vimont in 1647 (Jour- nal des Jesuites, Aug. 15, 1653, page 185), after consultation with his superiors in Rome, obtained from the Archbishop of Rouen a patent appointing the Superior of the Jesuit Mission his Vicaire General. In connection with this arrangement every possible pre- caution was taken for the protection of the Society ; yet Charlevoix asserts that the pretensions of that prelate to exercise authority over the Church in Canada were not founded on a valid title, and that the Bishops of Nantes and LaRochelle held better claim to the privilege. However that may be, as long as it was a Jesuit on whom power was conferred, the authority of the Archbishop of Rouen was never questioned ; but when another Archbishop of Rouen appointed the Abbe Qucylus his Grand \^icairc in 1657, giving him authority over even the Superior of the Jesuits, though the Jesuits submitted, it was with an ill grace, and trouble speedily supervened. M. Dollicr de Casson, the Siilpician historian of Montreal,, admirably describes the diplomatic expressions of 414 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. pleasure with which the Jesuit Fathers welcomed the Grand Vicaire, and tells us how short-lived was the truce. Father de Quen, the Superior of the Jesuits, recognized the Abbe's authority at first, and allowed the Jesuit Father Poncet to be confirmed by him as Cure of Quebec. But when Father Poncet, as the Abbe's app'ointee, acted without authority and permission of his Jesuit Superior, Father de Quen, exercising his authority as Superior, assigned him to an Iroquois Mission and appointed Father Pijart in his place. Father Poncet in passing through Montreal reported to the Abbe, who in hot haste went down to Quebec and assumed the duties of Cure himself. After this there was at best an armed peace between the Abbe and the Jesuits. They could not deny the Archbishop's authority under which they themselves had served, or refuse to recognize his appointee, but they freely used their right of criticism, if we may judge from the frequent refer- ences to the obnoxious M. Queylus in the Journal, and from a letter written by the deposed Father Pijart to M. Lambert, which came indirectly under the Abbe's eye, and in which he was de- scribed with true theological vigor as a ''worse enemy than the Iroquois themselves." Irritated beyond endurance, the Vicar Gen- eral used the vantage ground of the pulpit in his own parish church from which to attack his detractors. Altogether the Abbe was very human in his weaknesses, and his anger was impolitic ; but despite his irritable temper he was a thoroughly kind man. He flung excommunications against some of his parishoners, who were suspected of having burned a neighbor's house, but he flung his purse and gave his services generously to the needy. His fiery character and unbridled speech were in marked contrast with the polite demeanor and imperturbable self-control of his Jesuit co- workers, who, despite the bitter feeling expressed in their private Journal, refrained from questioning his authority in public, and observed a discreet silence respecting him in their Relations. One of the Abbe Queylus' first acts of hostility was to serve a summons on the Jesuit Fathers to vacate their presbytery, or else return the 6,000 livres which the City had contributed towards it on the express condition that it should be built as the property THE ABBE QUEYLUS AND THE JESUITS. of the parish church, a condition with which they had not com- pHed, as they had built it as their own. After four months of deHberation on the part of the Governor, and of warm debate on the subject by the people and their ecclesiastical guides, the Abbe was adjudged the 6,000 livres for his presbytery. Never- theless, whatever rancor the Fathers might feel, they paid their New Year calls on their ecclesiastical chief who had fallen sick and could not return them. On his side, when the Fete Dieu came round he co-operated with the Jesuits in the procession, and ac- cepted an invitation to dine at the Jesuits' table with the Governor. Still they were always on the alert to pick a flaw in the Abbe's conduct or in his logic, and he was not a man to deny them the opportunity. On the burning question of the sale of brandy to the Indians (Journal, March 31, 1658, page 233), the Abbe at first took the commercial and civil view of the question, but later was converted to the prohibition and ecclesiastical side. Instead of rejoicing and giving him the credit of sincere conversion. Father de Quen chuckles over the inconsistency of the Abbe, who, after supporting the traffic, had turned round and preached against it, even pro- nouncing it a mortal sin to give brandy to a savage, on the ground that he never drinks except to get drunk. The Abbe could stand their silent taunts and ill-disguised con- tempt, but when they produced a patent, probably from the Bishop of Nantes or LaRochelle, appointing the Superior of the Jesuits Grand \^icaire, he bowed to higher authority, and left Quebec for Montreal in company with the Governor, Mons. d'Aillc- bout, and his wife. Had his own credentials limited his ecclesias- tical control to Montreal and the adjacent districts already under the rule of St. Snipice, there would probably not have been any trouble, but it was not in human, especially Je'-uit. nature to yield to his assum])tion f)f government over a territory which had before been so absolutely under their own spiritual and political control. The Abbe remained with his co-religionists in Montreal for a year. ]\Teanwhile, in 165^. P>ishop T.aval arrived to take episcopal charge of almost the whole of North America. The dissensions 4l6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. among the clergy, and the dominant control exerted by a single order of regulars, certainly demanded the presence without delay of an ecclesiastical chief, and of a body of secular clergy unat- tached to any order or community. The Abbe had either a pre- monition or a hint of the attitude the Bishop would assume in the quarrel between himself and his rivals, for he came to Quebec on August 7 on his way to France. He accepted the hospitality of the Fort, and is mentioned as preaching in the Chapel of the Hotel Dieu, but not in his own old church — now the Cathedral. On the eve of embarking he received a communication, probably from the Archbishop of Rouen, which might have emboldened him to assert his claims as Grand Vicar; but just as the same juncture, the Bishop, whatever his original commission may have been, received a letter, giving him episcopal jurisdiction over both Mon- treal and Quebec. All Mons. Queylus could do was to bow and re- tire from the Colony. He appears twice again in Canada, but for only a brief span. Nevertheless he continued to occupy a large space in Canada's ecclesiastical history, as the representative of the Archbishop of Rouen's claims in his prolonged and bitter contest for the episcopal control of Canada. Two years subsequently to his defeat by the Bishop he returned (August 3, 1661). The Bishop forbade him to go to Montreal. Though he set the order at defiance, his resistance was short lived, as he was opposing, not only the Bishop, but the King himself. He sailed away in October of the same year, to the serious loss of the Colony, which could ill aflford to part with a man of so much talent and stubborn inde- pendence, whose influence, notwithstanding that he was himself an ecclesiastic, would probably have tended to mitigate the exces- sive pretensions of ecclesiastical authority. He returned to Mon- treal in 1668, but by that time the authority of the Bishop was unquestioned in matters spiritual, nor did he attempt to op- pose it. If the Jesuits could not under the Constitution of their Order allow a member to accept episcopal dignity, the Society was not forbidden to exert its influence in favor of a candidate; and in the selection of Frangois de Montmorency Laval de Mon- tigny as Vicaire Apostolique of Canada, and in the bestowal on LAVAL SENT OUT AS VICAR APOSTOLIC. him of the title of Bishop of Petraea z/z parfibus inHdelium, we can recognize the guiding hand of the Society of Jesus, which was as strongly opposed to Gallicanism as to Protestantism itself. The Pope, in refusing to appoint the Abbe Queylus, who was the choice of the French clergy, and in selecting Laval, acted, as he claimed, independently, but his preference doubtless coincided with that of the Society of Jesus. Difficulties and delays innumerable occurred before means could be devised of consecrating the Bishop owing to the oppo- sition of the Archbishop of Rouen and his friends. As Cardinal Mazarin was at least luke-warm in support of his candidature the King's consent was secured through the influence of the Queen mother. Even after that was obtained, all the in- genuity of the Papal Xuncio, Piccolomini, was needed to persuade the Archbishop of Paris to permit his consecration within his diocese. But, once consecrated, and strong in the conscious- ness of Papal support, Laval was prepared for any foe who might challenge him. As Vicairc Apostolique he considered himself directly answerable to no one but the Pope of Rome. His own principles were those of extreme ultramontanism, and are well expressed by Abbe Gosselin, the delightful biographer both of Laval and of his successor, Saint-\^allier, when he speaks of the true Catholic as one who ''knows well that the Church to which he has the happiness of belonging is a society immortal, infallible and perfectly organized, which holds its mission through Jesus Christ himself, and is as superior to the State as the soul excels the body; that although these two societies ought to remain independent, each occu])\ing its own sphere, yet in- asmuch as the interests of the one surpass those of the other, as Heaven is higher than the earth, whenever their interests clash, the State must submit to the Church." Tn older communities where these sweeping premises are sometimes admitted as matter of faith, certain precedents and rules are still recognized as deter- mining the relative positions of ecclesiastical and state officials, and the limits of ecclesiastical interference. But in Canada the Bishop entered on his office rosolved to construe literally the protestation of every French ruler, from Francis T. onward. 4l8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. that the evangelization of the world and the glory of God were the. foremost motives of all colonizing schemes. In that new land where there were no heretics, and where such weeds as Jansenism and Gallicanism, and even Quietism, had been rooted out with holy zeal by the Jesuits, there was a better opportunity than in France of realizing the ideal of a City of God, where Truth, as interpreted by the Church, should be the law, where a rigid morality should be enforced by legal penalties, and where the head of the State should be guided in all matters pertaining to faith and righteousness by the one competent, because divinely inspired, authority, the Bishop. Laval, as the scion of an old house and a family of warriors, was himself by instinct a fighter. Compromise was as hateful to the Montmorency, as to the Churchman it was wicked. Advancing to battle, thus formidably equipped, he wrestled with Governor after Governor till, under Frontenac, the quarrel assumed so grave an aspect as seriously to threaten the safety of the Colony. While disputing every inch of ground in the interest of his prerogatives, the Bishop was founding and organizing a seminary for the education of the priesthood, establishing country parishes and placing in them men of the same simple-hearted, earnest type as those who to-day make the Roman Catholic Church in Canada the brightest example to the world of what the system in its purity can produce. So whether we admit or not the validity of his claims as the anointed of the Lord, or whether we approve or disapprove of his methods of warfare, all must applaud the courage with which he fought for what he was convinced was right, and admit his title to a foremost place among the great ecclesiastical educators of the Continent. Possessing so strong an instinct of authority, and holding such extreme hierarchal views, Laval sided of necessity with the Jesuits against the Abbe Queylus. In the exercise of his powers as Vicaire ApostoUqiie, he abolished the office of Vicaire General, and ordered the Abbe to leave the colony. For a time the re- ligious communities hesitated to surrender to the Bishop's claim. The Bishop of Petraea was not Bishop of Que- bec, and it was not clear exactlv what rights the title conveyed. A VIGOROUS ECCLESIASTICAL RULER. 419 But whatever doubt they might have on this point, the holder of it left no uncertainty in their minds as to his understanding of his position and duties ; and before his bold, unhesitating assumption of full episcopal dignity and rights, all hesitation and resistance soon vanished.'^ He had made good his position, indeed, even be- fore the King ordered Governor d'Argenson to publish in the Colony his confirmation of the Bishop's appointment, and to expel all who refused to submit to his authority, and expressly com- manded the Abbe Oueylus not to return to Canada. The quiet- ing however of a mere ecclesiastical squabble did not make peace in the Colony, for there was the endless quarrel with the Civil Power still to be fought out. Unable as the people were to foresee the influence for good or evil which Mons. de Laval would exert, it must have been a festive day in Quebec when the Bishop with his accompanying Clergy ar- rived. As they stepped to land on tlie bank where stood the Com- pany's house and store, and the mercantile establishments of the five hundred inhabitants of the little town, they were greeted by the Jesuit fathers, the Governor and staff, and all the notable inhabi- tants. We can see them as they wended their way on foot up the path, which has been widened into the present Mountain Street, to the Church where they were to thank God for their safe voyage, and can imagine the effect which the glorious scenery, the strange motley crowd of savages, and the complete novelty of the situation must have produced on their minds. To Laval himself it must certainly have seemed that here was a land of unbounded promise, of infinite possibilities for the Church of which he was an instru- ment ; nor was he greatly in error if, in prophetic mood, he felt assured that with him it rested to give a direction to its growing civilization, a stamp to its moral and intellectual development, which ages would not wholly eflPacc. The Jesuits, in 1647, had commenced building a stone church, designed as a basilica, on the site of the present Cathedral, after * As Vicatrc Af'OstoUauc lie wns not entitled to the privilepo<; r^f ,i Bishop, but held the office and title of a Bishop; there beinp no higher authority on the continent, he claimed and maintained his right to Episcopal authority. — Gosselin I, page 177. 420 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. the destruction by fire of Champlain's wooden church of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance. It had been opened for service two years before the Bishop landed, but was not consecrated until 1660. There was no presbytery, however, still less an Episcopal palace. The Abbe Queylus' presbytery, for which he had got a judgment of 6,000 francs, had not been built so the Bishop was fain to accept the hospitality most gladly offered by the religious bodies. We may assume that apartments in the Fort were at his disposal, but he wisely judged that social relations with the Gov- ernor might afterwards embarass him in his public capacity, and restrict his liberty of action ; so after lodging for a few days with the Jesuits, he took up his abode in a room of the Hotel Dieu. There he remained for three months, but the Hospital being crowded, more especially after the arrival in September of the plague ship with its fever-stricken passengers bound for Montreal, he removed with the three priests who had accompanied him, to Madame de la Peltrie's house, which stood near the corner of Garden and Donnacana Streets. It was within the confines of the nunnery, and was occupied by pupils who had to be transferred to the main building. In order to obey the canons of the Order, Mere Marie de ITncarnation, the Superior, had to erect a fence to shut ofif the Bishop's house and garden from the nunnery grounds. The Bishop paid Madame de la Peltrie 200 livres a year rent, and kept the house for two years.* He felt, however, that he was putting the nuns to inconvenience, and he therefore returned in *Mme. de la Peltrie's legal husband was the M. de Bernieres, the ascetic mystic who had been Monsieur Laval's spiritual guide. News of de Bernieres' death had quickly followed the Bishop to Canada. Had the Bishop written his autobiography, with minute and candid reports of con- versations, as the writers of his own age were in the habit of doing, and had he incorporated in his personal memoirs the conversations between the widow and her husband's friend, the memoir would have given a clearer insight into the workings of the human mind under such artificial condi- tions, than volumes of theological and metaphysical speculation. To render the situation more dramatic, M. de Bernieres' own nephew, and therefore her nephew, Mons. Henri de Bernieres, was a member of the Bishop's suite, consequently one of her own tenants. ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH. 421 the winter of 1661-1662 to the Jesuit College. In the spring of 1662 he and his clergy moved into a small house which he pur- chased, probably on the site of the present office of the Fabrique in Buade Street, to which, as his biographer states, he trans- ferred the rule of life he had practiced at AI. de Bernieres' Hermit- age at Caen ; but his heart and his steps turned continually to the Hotel Dieu, where he would gladly have ended his days in close contact with sickness, sadness, sorrow, and death. But to return to the Bishop's early labors. He wasted no time before entering seriously on his great mission work. He had the wide experience of the Jesuit College to draw upon in his dealings with the Indians, and he hastened to rivet his influence over them by providing a great feast, which he seasoned by salutary advice and hearty encouragement. Before the month was out, prepara- tions had been completed for a pontifical grand mass, the gor- geous ceremony of which made strong appeal to the red man, endowed as he was, and still is, with a keen sense for color and an appeciation of graceful gesture and posturing. The mass was made the more solemn by the public abjuration of his damnable heresy by one of the few Calvinists who had drifted into the Colony. Thus the new Bishop was enabled by significant acts to express his purpose of maintaining the dignity of the Church, the purity of its doctrine, and its charitable methods in dealing with the erring and the hungry. The Abbe Queylus had begun the good work of organizing regular parishes. Among others was that of Ste. Anne at Beau- pre, the corner-stone of the foundation of whose famous primitive sanctuary was laid by Governor d'Aillebout. It became at once the scene of miracles of healing, and to-day the Bonne Ste. Anne continues to bless the faithful who appeal to her for relief in the sumptuous stone church that has replaced the former humble wooden structure. The Bishop had brought out with him some secular priests whom he meant to assign to these parishes. He was keenly alive to the necessity of organizing the Church on a parochial basis. He at once named M. dc Lauson Charny, pres- byter and judge in the ecclesiastical council. In August he ap- pointed Mons. Torcapel, a secular priest, cure of the parish of 422 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Quebec. In recognition of the eminent services of the Sulpicians at Montreal, he conferred the same office on one of them, a Mons. Souart, who had the merit of appearing to be more submissive than his brethren to the authority of the Saint Siege (Holy See), as represented by himself. Close as his relations may have been with the Jesuits, he did not think it wise to retain them in the ful- filment of parochial duties, and consequently relegated them to the performance of their proper functions as educators and mission- aries to the natives. As a member of the Governor's Council, the Bishop within a month of his landing received his first lesson in Indian diplomacy at the grand council held with the Mohawk ambassadors, who came to plead for the release of their tribesmen, held as hostages ; and he was perhaps gratified, perhaps bored, by a theatrical per- formance given in his honor by the pupils of the Jesuits in their chapel. Indian and white scholars took part in these exhibitions, which testified, not only to the efficiency of the teaching, but to the breadth of the system of Jesuit education, which, while rigid, ad- justed itself to the weaknesses of human nature. His sympathy for the Indians was early brought into exercise, as we find him paying half the ransom for two Iroquois prisoners before he had been three months in the country. CHAPTER XXIII. The Breaking Out of the Contest Between the Church and the State. The first inkling of the Bishop's assertion of the pre- eminence of the Church over the State, and of its ministers over the officers who wielded civil power, is given in the Jesuits' Journal of the December after his arrival. On the eve of the festival of St. Xavier the fathers would fain have asked the Governor and the Bishop both to dinner, but dare not for fear of fanning into a flame the smouldering quarrel over the right to the first place at the feast. This Governor, the Viscount d'Argenson, was not a very masterful man, yet he was sufficiently proud of his lineage and of his office to resent the assumptions of the Bishop. The first recorded controversy turned on the trifling question as to which of . them should occupy the seat of honor within the altar rails. Had Laval been the Bishop of Quebec, and not merely Vicar Apostolic, with titular rank as Bishop, the dispute could not have arisen. It was settled as the Bishop, who was de- termined to be a real Bishop, willed. A further quarrel grew out of the midnight Christmas mass. The Governor had heretofore been incensed by the Deacon. The Bishop's instructions were that he should henceforth be incensed not by the Deacon, but by the Thurifer and after the Clergy. The controversy waxed very hot. The Governor based his case on precedent, and the text of the Ceremonial. The Bishop based his on what he claimed was the custom in France. The intention of the Bishop clearly was to exalt the claims of the Church above the civil power, and of the clergy above the officers of State, more especially when the former were performing- their sacred functions in the house of God. Some adjustment of the quarrel, we are not told what, was brought about by the Jesuits. 424 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. On Epiphany in 1660, the providing of the Pain Benit fell to the soldiers of the garrison, on which occasion they marched from the Fort to the offering, with drums beating and fifes playing, and in like manner came again to the church at the end of the mass. The Bishop was shocked by the interruption and unnecessary noise. Nevertheless, when they brought him the chanteau (a piece of the Pain Benit offered to the person who was expected to preside on the following Sunday), he returned the compliment by the gift of two pots of brandy and two pounds of tobacco. Though subsequently the Bishop fought valiantly against the sale of liquor to the Indians, it is evident that he was not by any means a prohibitionist. When it was the Governor's turn to provide the Pain Benit, and the drums and fifes again took part in the ceremony, the Bishop interposed and insisted that hence- forth the Pain Benit must be delivered at the church before the mass. In Holy Week the Governor by mistake knelt on the Bishop's cushion at the altar rail, and when he discovered the error, rather than move to his own, he left the church. Inci- dents of this kind must have amused the onlookers, even in Holy Week. The Governor, whether from a desire to avoid misunderstandings, or from lack of devotion, was not very punctual in his church attendance. This may have been the Bishop's excuse for striking his name from the list of Honorary Churchwardens without notification. The Bishop's own dig- nity and position were not in this instance in question, and his act bears the appearance of a harsh and arbitrary exercise of ecclesiastical authority, admitting that he acted entirely within his prerogative. But Bishop Laval never lost an opportunity of proving to his flock, not only that he was clothed with power, but that he had courage to use it against all who opposed themselves. Mons. d'Argenson, people could not help remembering, had been the host and friend of the Abbe Queylus. It was not only in matters affecting his own pretensions, however, that the Bishop went to the very limits of his authority. For example, he removed a serving girl from the house of a respectable citizen, a M. Denis, and put her in charge of the Ursuline Nuns. The only explanation he vouchsafed was that, un- A CASE OF DIABOLIC TOSSESSION. der the seal of the confessional, he might have become acquainted with information that warranted the act. The Journal of the Jes- uits in December, 1660, contains the following interesting entry : ''Barbe Hale was brought from Beauport. She had been for five or six months possessed at intervals by a devil. At first she was put into a room of the old hospital, where she passed the night in the company of a guardian of her own sex, and of a priest and attendants." The story is only half told. The other half is delightfully narrated by Madame de ITncarnation. It seems that there was a certain miller who was adjudged by the Church an apostate and a magician. He, by his diabolical arts, had bewitched the girl and persuaded her to m.arry him. The proof of his intercourse with the devil was that the poor hysterical girl declared that he visited her by day and by night, after demons had appeared to frighten her. The Bishop sent the Jesuits to exorcise the devil, and he himself adopted measures to the same end ; but Beauport was so far away that he decided on plac- ing the girl under the charge of the Hotel Dieu nuns, and put- ting her sweetheart in prison. This treatment, it must be acknowl- edged, was mild compared with the fate which would have over- taken the pair in New England. The authority of the Qiurch in Canada, sagaciously administered by responsible men, had at least the effect of restraining such mental vagaries as were attributed to witchcraft in New England and Germany, and which in those countries were punished by most cruel penalties. The Bishop held that neither the crime of witchcraft, nor yet those of heresy and blasphemy, fell under the jurisdiction of the civil power; and Father Lalemant, in i66t, tells us that the quarrel between the civil and ecclesiastical authorities came nearly to extremities over a sentence passed, probably by the Bishop's ecclesiastical tribunal, on a certain Daniel Vvil. He, perhaps, was the heretic who had renounced his errors so opportunely and dramatically on the occasion of the Bishop's first mass; if, so, he now figured in another act, for shortly after Hov- ernor d'Argenson handed over his cares and his quarrels to his successor, d'Avaugour, poor Daniel Vvil was summarily shot for having relapsed into heresy, and another was shot for the 4^6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. crime of selling brandy to the Indians. The Bishop was no advocate for half measures when moral suasion proved ineffective. Before Governor d'Argenson left Canada one unseemly insult had followed another. In February, on a public occasion, the children who were acting in some performance were assigned parts which kept their hands so busy that instruction was given them not to salute either the Governor or the Bishop, both of whom were present. Two little urchins, however, by direction of their father, saluted the Governor to the great offense of the Bishop, for which they were soundly flogged by their spiritual fathers. Immediately after this incident, the Governor's suite, "so-called gentlemen," as Father Lalemant sneeringly calls them, took their place in a procession after the Governor and in advance of the churchwardens. This led the Bishop to forbid all future processions. It would have been well if the prohibition had re- mained in force, but on the Fete Dieu a public procession took place, as previously. A temporary altar stood before the Fort. The Bishop had requested that the soldiers take off their hats on the approach of the Host, and to this the Governor, who was ill and not present, consented ; but when the procession was approach- ing the Bishop further insisted that the soldiers kneel, on pain of his passing and not exposing the Host upon the altar. Knowing that his consent would be interpreted as a relinquishment of his military command into the hands of the Bishop, the Gov- ernor refused and the Bishop accordingly executed his threat. Terrible events were meanwhile transpiring in the Colony, which was never nearer destruction at the hands of the Iroquois than at that moment. That the Bishop would in such a crisis have intentionally weakened the military and civil influence of the Governor is not to be believed, for the Bishop was a patriot ; yet he was possessed with such an almost fanatical belief in the sacredness of his office, and so unquestioning a reliance on divine guidance, that he was blind to the consequences of his acts. He had yet to learn that, even in a colony swept clean of heresy, there might be a certain spirit of defiance of, if not disbelief in, ecclesi- astical authority; and that, unless the civil power co-operated in maintaining moral order, the ecclesiastical authority, appealing only to the conscience, might fail. M. d'avaugour succeeds m. d'argexsox as goverxor. 427 If Governor d'Avaugour, d'Argenson's successor, consented, immediately on entering on his office, to the execution of Molette and another culprit for selling liquors, he speedily repented, for in January and February Father Lalemant records in the Journal that there was no little noise over the permission granted by the Governor to sell liquor to the Indians. D'Avaugour was a just man, and of inflexible determination and consistency. After hav- ing inflicted the death penalty on one culprit, and listened to the violent denunciations launched by the Bishop against all who sold brandy to the Indians, he was not prepared for a sudden change of policy, when Father Lalemant pleaded with him for a French woman convicted, on full evidence, of the same crime. In the eyes of the Governor the kindly motive of the suppliant was no excuse for his inconsistency. Not only was the request vehe- mently refused, but, identifying opposition to the liquor trade with ecclesiastical ultra-pretensions, the Governor came to regard the moral and humanitarian position of the Bishop and his clergy as a mere pretext for the usurpation of authority belonging to the civil power. D'Avaugour was utterly indiflferent and careless as to the trifling matters of precedence which had so worried his predecessor. As far as he was concerned, in these the Bishop might have his own way : he was quite willing to walk after the churchwardens, or to let the soldiers both kneel and take oflF their hats to the Host ; for his part he was girding up his loins to fight the Bishop on what he regarded as a more weighty issue. He began by what in modern parlance would be called packing the Council. Of his own authority he removed certain members and appointed others, replacing even the syndics, and also made other innovations. He was preparing to fight the Bishop a ou trance on a question — that relating to the sale of brandy — on which the latter could command but little support in the Colony. With a quick perception of the situation, Laval took ship for France in August. iT/")!. to plead his cause at th.o foot of the throne. .So effectually did he do so, thnt he returned to his diocese in thirteen months, with d'Avaugour's recall in his wallet, and with a Gov- ernor of his own choosing in his trnin — the Clu'vnliiT de M;'7\-. One of Governor d'Avaugour's moves to weaken the influence 428 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. of the Jesuits and the Bishop in the Council had been the sup- pression of the office of the City syndic, who had a seat, and who sided with the priests. It was an unwise, as well as an irregular act, for in so doing, he deprived the city of its municipal chief, and disorganized what little local government existed, and consequently the machinery for the suppression of crime. In the winter of 1663 thieving was rife, and in one case, in which the thief, to cover his crime, set fire to a house, the death penalty was inflicted. The priests attributed the frequency of the crime to the disregard of the Bishop's excommunication of those who sold liquor. A more natural explanation might have been found in the weakening of the civil power, owing to dissension between the Governor and the Bishop. The Governor had been publicly insulted in his person and in his office, and the Bishop was known to be in France using every effort to supplant him. The situation was one well adapted to encourage the criminal classes. On the i6th of September, 1663, the King's ship brought back the Bishop, and with him the new Governor. The Chevalier de Mezy had been one of the Bishop's companions in the Bernieres Hermitage at Caen, and was the nominee of the Jesuits and the Bishop's own choice. In the instructions given two years after- ward to the Intendant Talon, he is told that it was due to the com- plaints of the Jesuits that Sieur d'Avaugour had been recalled, and that the king, in order to satisfy them, had further allowed them to nominate his successor. The dispatch goes on to narrate how their choice fell on de Mezy, who they had no doubt would act in conformity with their wishes; but that they had made a mistake, for, when once in power, he gave free rein to his pas- sions, his greed, etc., etc. Thus the Bishop, in the eyes of the people must have appeared to be endowed with the powers of a Minister of State, able to make and unmake viceroys ; and the prelate himself, we may be sure, did not put any lower estimate on his own influence. What tran- spired during de Mezy's short administration to transform the friendship existing between him and the Bishop into bitter enmity is not clearly recorded ; but that veracious document, the YET ANOTHER GOVERNOR IN TROUBLE. 429 Jesuits' Journal, indicates at least the progress of the alienation. The Governor and the Bishop arrived together. On the feast of St. Xavier they dined with the Jesuits in their refectory on refectory fare. On the first of January the Governor and the Bishop take part in the Vespers procession, and the Governor invites the Bishop to dine with him, but not the Superior of the Jesuits, though he (Father Lalemant) and the Governor's con- fessor, Father Pijart, had made their customary New Year call. Almost the next entry tells of the breaking out of trouble over the payment of tithes, and then follows a reference to public dis- order in the way of drunkenness and to the blasts and counterblasts of the Bishop and the Governor over the sale of liquor to the Indians. The mention of the Governor's name at high ecclesiastical functions is now dropped ; and as the alliance between the Bishop and the Jesuits was known to be close, it was probably deemed wise as a concession to public opinion, and as a proof of the inde- pendence of the Bishop, that all the secular clergy should leave the Jesuits' quarters. Personally the relations of the quondam friends had become so strained that the two would not even travel together. On the 25th of April, 1664, Father le Moyne returned from the Iroquois country, bearing the report of an important negotiation. The Bishop started next day for Three Rivers and Montreal, the Governor following two days subsequently. By September open war was declared. The Jesuits claimed that the Governor was acting under the instigation of Peronne Dumesnil, the agent of the extinguished Company of the One Hundred Asso- ciates. We know that he arbitrarily dismissed from the Council Bourdon, de Villeray, and d'Auteuil, because they sided with the Bishop against himself on tlic tithes question. Such action was not only arbitrary, but unconstitutional. His next step was even more prejudicial to himself in the eyes of the King, when the proceedings were reported. He had the astounding folly to propose to the Bishop that the successors of the deposed C(Mincil- lors should be elected by popular vote. This of course the Bishop refused to agree to. Bourdon, one of the deposed Councillors, sailed on the 21st of September to lay the case before tlic 430 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. King. On the 24th the Governor nominated new Councillors. The Bishop protested. On the 28th the Governor published the names of the new Councillors. On November ist the Bishop instructed Mons. Pommier to denounce him and his illegal acts from the pulpit, and to fulminate against him a decree of excom- munication. The instruction was obeyed and the Governor's Jesuit confessor, being bound to respect the excommunication, could neither accept his Excellency's confession nor grant him absolution. The quarrel had been carried into municipal affairs, and the inhabitants of the town all became participants. The people elected as their syndic a M. Charron, He was persuaded to resign, on the pretext that he was a merchant, but really through clerical pressure, because be was a friend of the Governor. Party feeling thereupon ran so high that the next attempt at an election failed. In the third, which was attended by some irregularities, a Mons. Lemire, a friend of the Governor, was elected, and a protest was lodged by the Bishop's adherents in the Council, led by M. de Charny as the Bishop's repre- sentative. The Bishop kept his temper — the Governor lost his. Technically the Bishop was in the right; at the same time he took the most ingenious means of exasperating his foe. To pray for your enemies in private is laudable ; praying for them as sinners publicly is to insult them. It is a weapon which exists only in the armory of the Church, and the Bishop used it freely and without scruple. Still, on New Year's day of 1665, the usual courtesies were observed. The Jesuits called on the Governor, although, as Father Lalemant remarks, "he was on bad terms, not only with them, but with all the priests." The Governor, not to be backward in cour- tesy, sent his Major to return the call, and took the opportunity of forwarding by him the vouchers for the Jesuits' allowance, which he had for some time held back. The Governor's health was fail- ing. During Lent he became so seriously ill that he was removed by his own wish to the hospital of the Hotel Dieu. As death ap- proached he sought the good offices of the Jesuits, and through them made peace with his enemy. The ban was removed ; he con- THE CHARACTER OF DE MEZY. fessed, received absolution, and died in odour of sanctity on May 7th. He was buried in the common burying ground of the Hotel Dieu, in conformity with his own request as expressed in his will, but no doubt with such state and circumstance as the Church with its limited resources could muster to do honor to a vanquished and repentant sinner. On this point, however, the Relations and the Journal are both silent. Thus the second French Governor who died in office lies in an unmonumented grave. In trying to estimate the character of the Governor and to render judgment between him and the Bishop, due account must be taken of the ambiguities of the Constitution which they were trying to put into force, and which left their respective positions dangerously indefinite. In the constitution of the Sovereign Council and the prominent place assigned to the Bishop — a rank almost co-ordinate with that of the Governor himself — we clearly see the influence of the Queen Mother whose papal connections caused her to take very strongly the side of ecclesiastical authority. Laval was probably not exceeding his powers, nor yet the private instructions given him when he took out de Mezy almost as a member of his ecclesiastical establish- ment. But many years of this joint, but really disjointed, civil- ecclesiastical rule had not elapsed before Colbert, with the clear vision of a statesman, recognized the impossibility of maintaining order and prosperity, where elements so irreconcilable were yoked together in the work of administration. As early as 1667 the Minister found himself regretting that the Bishop had a seat in the Council. De Mezy, it is evident, was an impulsive, enthusiastic, ill-bal- anced man. In his youth he is said to have been wild. License was succeeded by austerity, and as Laval's companion and fellow- inmate of the Caen Hermitage, he showed himself so ol)e(lient to authority that, when the selection of a Governor for Canada was virtually entrusted to Laval, he selected him as likely to be completely submissive to his episcopal dictation in the new state, the Constitution of which the Bishop himself had framed. But the Bishop had not counted on another phase of his friend's character — a stubborn obstinacy and unreasonable suspicion, 432 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. coupled with a temper violent when aroused. The Bishop was no less obstinate than the Governor, but he had been educated in a Jesuit College. He had learned the first lessons of the astute code of the Society of Jesus — absolute obedience to your Superior and control over yourself. In Canada he recognized no superior. The thought of his high and sacred office completely dominated his mind, and with calm, unflinching determination he carried out his duty as he understood it. He was obeying the dictate of Heaven, as revealed to and formulated by himself. That he was doing irreparable injury to the Colony by weakening pubHc respect for the law, in the person of its chief representatives, would not have arrested him in his course, even could he have appreciated the fact. That such was the case was proved by the increase in the Indian liquor traffic, despite the re-enactment of the prohibi- tions, with the approval of the Governor, who agreed in this re- spect with the Bishop. De Mezy was palpably in the wrong, and yet so maddened was he by the calm and exasperating acts of his foe, that we cannot but pity him. Had de Mezy been the only Governor with whom the Bishop quarreled, we might attribute the fault entirely to him ; but no, he was only one in a succession of Governors with all of whom the same Bishop either had quar- reled or was destined to quarrel on one plea or another. Unless the civil Governor would bow implicitly to his will and opinion, no matter what the question at issue, he would use against him all the artillery of the Church. To doubt his own infallibility on cer- tain questions never occurred — could not occur — to him. To win over his enemy by propitiatory tactics was not in his nature. The charity which suffers long and is kind was not a characteristic of Canada's first Bishop, at this period of his life. The reports made by the Bishop of the Governor's misdeeds, confirmed by Bourdon's personal appeal to the King for redress, led to de Mezy's recall. M. de Courcelle, who came out as his successor, M. de Tracy, who was appointed to the still higher office of Viceroy and Lieutenant-general of all the possessions of France in the New World, and the Intendant Talon, were com- missioned to investigate the charges against him, and, if they were found true, to send him under arrest to France. He had died VICEROY^ GOVERNOR, AND INTEXDAXT. 433 before their arrival ; but it is not probable that they would have found him guilty of any crime punishable by a more serious forfeit that loss of his office, and of that he had already been deprived. The new rulers themselves had not been long in the country before the Governor at least commenced to smart under the thraldom of his ecclesiastical colleagues in the Council ; and it required all the tact of his associates to prevent a recurrence of the disorders they had come out commissioned to correct. Colbert had to warn the Governor to behave with tenderness towards everyone, and to restrain his irritation, and not cast blame publicly on the actions of the Bishop. Talon, the Intendant, having Galilean tendencies was impatient under the yoke. The deposed members of the Council were nevertheless restored, and only one of de IMezy's ap- pointees, de la Tesserie, was re-appointed. Bourdon was made Pro- cureur General, and de \'illeray Deputy Chairman of the Council. By this action the chiefs of the State justified the Bishop and the Jesuits and condemned de Mezy, who, there can be little doubt, was carried by his passionate narrowness into committing acts of injustice, when he accepted Dumesnil's indictment of friends of the Bishop and of the priests without sufficient investi- gation and proof. The first friction between the new Governor and the ecclesi- astical authorities occurred after de Courcelle's unfortunate and ill-advised winter expedition against the Iroquois. He was to have been joined by a large party of Algonquins. As they failed to keep their engagement, and thus left him without guides, the enterprise ignominously failed. The Governor blamed the Jesuits for the perfidy of their converts, and the Intendant sided with him in his opinion or his prejudice. Whether he was right or not is incapable of determination, but the incident afifords proof, if proof be needed, of the incongruity of using ministers of religion to conduct negotiations of State, and of the complications which are almost sure to ensue. The Jesuits had been used as instruments of statecraft in the dealings of the colonial Government with both the Iroquois and the Algonquins. Even Lahontan admits that their intimate knowledge of the Indian languages and of Indian customs made the enlistment of 434 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. their services almost a matter of necessity. At the same time, by accepting such commissions, they exposed themselves to blame which often should have rested on the perfidious savages v^ith v^^hom they had to deal. i I CHAPTER XXIV. Laval as Bishop of Quebec, and the Tithes Question. Th€ Marquis de Tracy came out as Viceroy to hold office only temporarily, his special mission being- to restore peace and estab- lish equilibrium between the Church and the State. At that time, when the influence of the Queen Mother and her Jesuit directors was paramount, it was expected that these two forces would combine to enable France to fulfill in America her double mission of empire-builder and evangelizer. As long as the per- sonal influence of the Viceroy was exerted, Courcelle as Gov- ernor and Talon as Intendant maintained an attitude of respectful deference to the ecclesiastical power ; but neither during his first nor his second administration could Talon reconcile himself to the pretentions of Laval, while Courcelle was overtly hostile to both the Bishop and the Jesuits. It w^as in consequence doubtless of the opposition they manifested that the Bishop wrote to the Propaganda shortly after his departure from Canada, in 167 1 : "T have learned by long experience how little weight the title of Vicar Apostolic carries with those charged with the political busi- ness of the king's colony. I mean the officers of Court, who are perpetually at odds with, and casting contempt on, the ecclesiastical power, objecting that the authority of a Vicar Apostolic is a doubtful quantity and should be kept in check. This is the reason why, after mature consideration, I have come to the conclusion to throw u]) my charge and not return to New France, unless I am created a Bishop, and unless fortified by bulls constituting me the Ordinary. This is the purpose of my journey to France, and this my earnest prayer." Thus he wrote prior to 1671, though in the previous year 43^ QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Quebec had been erected into a town by the Consistorial Congregation, and its parish church made a Cathedral. The French Court was anxious that he should be created a Bishop, with full episcopal powers ; nevertheless three years of negotiation between the See of Rome and Louis XIV intervened before his consecration took place. The difficulty grew out of the revival of the old claims of the See of Rouen to exercise episcopal juris- diction in Canada. The Crown of France wanted to bind the new colony, ecclesiastically, through its Bishop, to a French archiepiscopal see. The Pope refused to nominate a Bishop, unless he were made directly responsible to the See of Rome, and unless the new diocese were placed on a footing which would preclude any such claims to local independence as were then being mooted by the Church in France. The King had ulti- mately to yield to the Pope, and subsequent events justified in great measure the wisdom of the papal contention ; for when the country passed from the dominion of France to that of Great Britain, the transfer caused no such complications as would have resulted had the Church in Canada been subject to Gallican juris- diction. It was September, 1675, before Bishop Laval returned to Que- bec as its Bishop. Notable changes had taken place during his absence. Governor de Courcelle had been recalled three years before ; Canada had greeted in his place Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, a man who meant to be Governor in reality, and not merely in name; the Intendant Talon had taken his departure a month or two after the new Governor's arrival. The latter had been carrying things with a high hand. Two priests had already been thrown into prison. The first of these was Mons. Morel, who exercised curial functions on the South Shore ; his offence was re- fusing to recognize the jurisdiction of the Council when summoned to answer for alleged irregularities committed by himself and his churchwardens. The second was the Abbe Fenelon, a Sulpician, elder brother of the great Fenelon, who siding with Mons. Perrot, the Governor of Montreal, in a contest which he was waging with the Governor General, had denounced Frontenac from the pulpit as a tyrant. Having in consequence been cited before the Coun- LAVAL AS BISHOP OF QUEBEC. 437 cil, he appeared, but merely to deny its right to try him; and so he followed Mons. Morel to prison. Alons. de Bernieres, the Bishop's representative had also been summoned before the Council to give evidence in the Fenelon case. He obeyed the summons, but claimed his right to the Bishop's seat. Fron- tenac refused to recognize the claim on the plea that Mons. de Tracy had altered the constitution of the Council, and that neither the Bishop nor his representative had for years taken part in its deliberations. In this case, however, the Governor did not go to the length of imprisonment. Matters had reached a deadlock, owing to the indisposition of the Council to render definite judgment, and the whole case had been referred to the King. Frontenac had been appointed while Laval was still in France, and his masterful and domineering character must have been well known to the Bishop. The idea seems a plausible one that he was chosen by Colbert to counteract the power of the Church : so that while the King was with one hand strengthening the position of Laval, he was, with the other, signing the commission of a Governor, who was expected to prevent any ecclesiastical encroachment on the province of the State. The contest between Laval and d'Avaugour over questions of precedence, and that between the Bishop and de Mezy over tithes and the appointment of councillors, were mere skirmishes com- pared with the battle which was now imminent. The prospect of a fight with an adversary like Frontenac must have impelled Laval to hurry back to his see. During his absence sad gaps had been made in the little group of his intimate and sympathetic friends. The first generation of the makers of Canada was passing away. He had probably helped to lay to rest, just before sailing from France, the remains of the great Cardinal's niece, the Duchess d'Aiguillon. Madame de la Peltrie, that charming embodiment of religious devotion and impulsive generosity, whose house was at everyone's dis- posal, had breathed her last in November, 1671, in the nunnery of the Ursulines, of which she was the lay founder. Less than six months later she was followed to the grave by her devoted 438 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. partner, the Mere Marie de I'lncarnation, the first Lady Superior of the UrsuHnes. It often happens that the closest friends differ diametrically in disposition; and it may, therefore, have been because of their wide diversity of character that these two Pious women remained through life such ardent admirers of each other's virtues, and co-operated so actively, though by oppo- site methods, in the same noble work — the one almost too busy in worldly affairs, the other almost a mystic ; the one winning the Indians by her solicitude for their temporal welfare, the other attracting them to herself and the Church, through the same quietness of spirit and demeanor, and the same proneness to dreams and ecstatic visions, which are conspicuous in the Indian's own character. The latter, notwithstanding the touch of exaltation in her character, was a woman of rare good sense, whose letters are more valuable as sources of contemporary his- tory than even the Relations of the Jesuits. They describe simply but graphically what was occurring in the little community, every event of interest in which was known and well talked over within the walls of the nunnery before being written down for the en- lightenment and edification of her dear son, Claude Martin. They were not indited, as were the Relations, for the purpose of exciting emotion or of drawing pecuniary contributions from the devout laity of France. These were not the only losses sustained by the religious com- munity of Canada. In the year following the translation of Mere de ITncarnation there passed away Pere Jerome Lalemant, who had been twice Superior of the Canadian mission ; had spent years in active service with the Hurons before their dispersion ; had crossed and recrossed the sea to plead for the Indians in France ; and had for the last time returned to Quebec with Bishop Laval himself in 1659, when sixty-six years old. He was seventy- two years old before he resigned the office of Superior for the last time to Father Mercier. The entries in his journal bespeak a growing querulousness rather than the mellowness of spirit which we like to think of as associated with advancing years. Nev- ertheless, he was doubtless to many others what Mere de ITncar- nation said he was to her — ''Of all men in the world the one THE RECOLLETS RE-ESTABLISHED IX CANADA. 439 to whom she owed the most for his spiritual advice," — one also, as she further acknowledges, from whom she had received valua- able worldly counsel in the establishment and management of her nunnery. To Laval, ignorant of the characteristics of the native races, and of the temper of the colonists, Lalemant's conversa- tion on their long sea voyage, and his counsel in many trying dilemmas afterwards, must have been invaluable and most wel- come. It may be doubted at the same time whether his advice was always for the best, for Lalemant's predilections and opinions harmonized too completely with the Bishop's to fit him for a peacemaker. Xow he was gone — with his eighty years of ex- perience and his deeply implanted prejudices — and the Bishop himself was growing too old to make any more close friends. A still more picturesque figure disappeared during the same period — Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, one of the lay founders of the Hotel Dieu of Montreal, who had braved all the dangers of the Iroquois war, when Montreal was protected by nothing better than a stockade. She, however, was a figure with which Quebec was but little familiar. It did not help to console the Bishop for the loss of so many of his old friends to find the Recollet Fathers, whom he had been obliged to welcome by order of the King before his departure, in favor alike with the people and the civil powers. The Francis- cans had never abandoned their hope of returning to their work, and re-entering on the possession of their property in Canada. The Company of the One Hundred Associates, however, considered that the payment of a subsidy to one religious body was burden enough ; while the Jesuits naturally preferred not to share the glory of converting the continent with the members of an order with which, though it had given to the Church many saintly lives, they had few points of similarity, and consequently only a moderate degree of sym- pathy. Still the Jesuits were not universally popular, and thus, while the friars on one side of the Atlantic longed to return, there was a large section of the people on the other which as heartily wished to see their sandaled feet treading again the banks of the St. Charles. Tradition remembered their ecclesiastical rule 440 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. as mild compared with the iron thraldom of the Bishop and his Jesuit co-laborers. Doubtless the laxity of the earlier regime was exaggerated in memory, while the grievances of the pres- ent were aggravated by political feeling and party dissension. A certain section of the people had always been disposed to be restive under priestly dominance, and these, since the time of de Lauzon, had formed a more or less coherent party, sympathizing with the Governor in his quarrel with the Church. The imposition of tithes which was popularly regarded as a piece of ecclesiastical robbery, had helped to bring about the re- turn of the Recollets. Some of the old inhabitants remembered the mendicant friars who had lived and labored among them with- out demanding tithes or fees, to say nothing of enforcing them by process of law, and they asked to have them back. Mons. Talon had been only too glad in this instance to obey the popular voice, and exert his influence for their recall, hoping to use them as a buffer against the Bishop and his allies. Consequently, when he returned to France at the expiry of his first term of office, in 1668, he secured the assent of the King to the return of the Recollets, and induced His Majesty to embody it in an edict, in which they were bidden to resume their duties, and authorized to re-enter on the possession of their property in Canada. The first detachment of the Fathers sent out suffered shipwreck and all were lost; but in 1670 Pierre Germain Allard, Provincial of the Order, himself accompanied three friar priests, a deacon Frere Luc, renowned as a painter, and a convers, m order to see them installed at their work in their old monastery, and to secure for them such a reception by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities as the King's support and their former labors in the country entitled them to. When they arrived Courcelle was still Governor, and was as strongly opposed to the Bishop as the lingering influence of his official guide and mentor, M. de Tracy, allowed him to be. Laval was still Vicar Apostolic, and grieving that the lack of full epis- copal dignity derogated from his influence. The Governor and his colleague, the Tntendant, were not disposed to use the Friars offen- sively against the Jesuits or the secular clergy, and the Recollects themselves were religiously intent only on preparing themselves, THE RECOLLETS ANTAGONIZE THE BISHOP. 441 by learning the native language, and familiarizing themselves with the country, to re-engage in the missionary work which they had so successfully inaugurated more than half a century before. Subsequently their attitude toward the Bishop changed. Having no independent sources of revenue, they lived by beg- ging, or, to speak euphemistically, by accepting voluntary contribu- tions. All countries, however, where such professional ecclesias- tical mendicants have become numerous, have found that, after the first flush of real religious enthusiasm has waned, the work actually done by them is quite as costly as that performed by the paid clergy, if not more so. But just as people are ready to pay more in indirect taxation for the support of the State than they would be willing to contribute in direct assessment, the amount of which on each occasion they are distinctly aware of, so there is a seeming advantage in the gratuitous enjoyment of spiritual ministrations by beings so saintly that they live on nothing. Sooner or later it is discovered that there is an underlying fallacy some- where. Italy and Spain and all the former dependencies of the latter country have made the discovery to their cost. Canada was saved by the strong sense of Bishop Laval from the inroad of the monks, and this is one of the blessings for which the Church and people of Canada have to thank him. He was as austere and simple in his mode of life as they, but he wished to see the church placed on a sound financial footing, and with that mendicacy was incompatible. It was, however, not only in their pretence of rendering ser- vice without remuneration that the Recollets ran counter to the Bishop's plans. When the feud broke out between Frontenac, as champion of the rights of the State, and Duchesneau, who came to Canada as Tntendant in 1675, and who, owing his ap- pointment to Bishop Laval, was entirely on the side of the Church, the Recollets became ardent partisans of the Governor, professing their obligation to obey his commands, even if tlicy contradicted those of the Bishop. They carried the controversy into the pulpit, to the great indignation of the Bishop, who seem- ingly forgot that he had himself used the same unassaila1)le plat- form from wln'ch to attack Frontenac's less powerful and resource- ful predecessor, Mezy. 442 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. An instance of this occurred when Laval appointed a certain local friar, Father Adrian, to preach the Advent sermon in the Cathedral. The preacher in his discourse more than hinted at his disapproval of the alliance of the Jesuits and the secular clergy v^ith the Intendant, Duchesneau, against the Governor; whereupon the Bishop called him to account, and imposed silence on him in regard to matters not affecting morals or doctrine. The episcopal admonition was not received, however, with per- fect submission, for the preacher claimed that, once in the pulpit, he was under the inspiration of a higher power than even the Bishop, and dared not refrain from uttering the message en- trusted to him by the Spirit. While the Recollets were thus asserting their independence, preaching and administering the sacraments beyond the hmits pre- scribed by the Bishop, and bringing the parochial clergy into dis- favor, they were, despite their vows of poverty, accumulating considerable property. On their return, their first effort was to restore their monastery of Notre Dame des Anges, which grew rapidly into large proportions. As it was a mile and a half, however, from the center of the town, they petitioned the King for a lot in the upper town on which to build a hospice, where the sick of their own order would be nearer medical assistance than on the banks of the St. Charles. This petition was granted in 1681, and a large lot, known as the '"emplacement de la Senechaussee," covering part of the enclosure now occupied by the English Cathe- dral and also a part of the Place d'Armes, was given them. The Bishop's Grand Vicar, Mons. de Bernieres, and Mons. Soiiart, a Sulpician from Montreal, assisted in the official act of taking pos- session ; and the Bishop, not without serious misgiving, consented to the erection of the hospice, but only on the conditions attached to the grant by the King, namely, that it should be used solely for the treatment of the sick of the Order, and that mass should be said with doors closed to the pubHc. But the Recollets were expert financiers. The King allowed them the small sum of 1,200 livres for their support, on express condition that they forbore to beg; and they not only succeeded in living on this trifling sum, but in building a monastery and a church on the site of the unpretentious A ''hospice" that developed. 443 hospice. La Tour, Laval's first biographer ("]\Iemoire sur la vie de Mons. de Laval, Cologne, 1761,") gives a terse account of the wonderful development of this humble hospice. "A beginning was all that was needed. Every germ is fertile if planted by a monk. The infirmary soon became a hospice for all the monks, whether sound or sick, and the hospice grew into a convent. The latter became a chapel, and the chapel transformed itself into a church. A choir and a sacristy grew up together. A dormitory was added to the infirmary, and a refectory and kitchen were necessary adjuncts to the dormitory. The doors which at first were shut during the celebration of mass opened of their own accord. At first only some devout penitents entered, but soon the public followed. Low mass became high mass, and one by one all the functions of the priesthood were exercised. They preached : they heard confessions ; they celebrated the feasts of their order. A bell was hung in the steeple, merely to remind the monks of their religious observances, but it also called the people to wor- ship." The Recollet Monastery was built partially on the site of the present English Cathedral, but as few houses divided the Place d'Armes from the present market place, the Cathedral and the Jesuit Church stood in sight of one another ; and the monks, officiating in their detested conventicle, despite episcopal disap- proval, were drawing away the parishioners from the teachings of the secular clergy, and sowing political discord. The Bishoj:) could not silence the monks' tongues, but at least he succeeded in silencing the unlawful ringing of the monastery bell. Its clapper remained dumb until Bishop Saint Vallier bought their monastery of Xotre Dame Des Anges, and converted it into the General Hospital relieving them, as a condition of the transaction, from the restriction which Bishop Laval had imj)osed upon their ministrations in the I'p|)cr Town.* The monks, through the persistency with which they invaded *It should be mentioned to tlicir credit that they were free enough from bigotry to permit of tlie Episcopal service being performed in thei' chapels at Quebec and ATontreal, before the Protestant Episcopal church "Was able to provide church accommodation for their own body. 444 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. tEe established parishes, and preached and administered the sacra- ments, instead of confining their ministrations to the four Indian nations to which they had been assigned, were naturally a source of intense irritation to the Bishop, who felt that, by their assump- tion of a character of peculiar sanctity, they disturbed that implicit confidence in the cure which it was so important that parishioners should repose in their appointed pastor. It has not therefore been without reason that the secular clergy have always looked with jealousy on the monastic orders. It is right to add that, if the monks have so long reHeved Canada of their presence, the reason is to be sought, not only in the severity of the climate — unsuited to their pecuHar costume, the very cut of which is as sacred as the rule of their order — but also in the fact that the clergy, preserving the pure tradition of the seminary founded by Laval, have fulfilled their spiritual functions so thoroughly and so faithfully that there was no room left for interlopers. If the itinerant monks were temporarily welcome until the cure became a national institution dear to every French Canadian heart, it may have been, as Bishop Creighton truly, but half jocularly, pointed out, because ''naturally men preferred to confess to a wandering frair, whom they had never seen before, and hoped never to see again, rather than to their parish priest, whose rebuke and admonition might follow them at times when the spirit of contrition was not so strong within them." The position of the monks was unstable while Laval was Bishop, but Bishop Saint Vallier found them use- ful as allies in his controversy with the Seminary and the Seminary priests, and gave them a status in the city which had been refused them by his predecessor. Laval's observations during his many years' residence in the colony had convinced him that the Jesuit fathers, by reason of the rules of their order, were not fitted to fill the functions of parish priests ; and, therefore, while he was in France in 1663, he issued an order establishing the Seminary in Quebec for the education and maintenance of priests, whether they were occupied in teaching or in serving the parishes. He further ordained that the tithe of one-thirteenth of the produce of the farms should be pay- able to the Seminary, to which the parish priest was to remain OPPOSITION TO THE LEV^'ING OF CHURCH TITHES. 445 attached as to a collegiate body, though removable at the will of the Bishop. The inhabitants of the parish of Quebec, which at that time covered the seignories of Lauzon and part of the Island of Orleans, were for some years to pay only one-twentieth. On October loth, 1663, the Supreme Council, which was constituted immediately after the Bishop's return, registered the tithe ordi- nance, and it was confirmed by Royal patent. But the poor, struggling habitants did not submit to the imposi- tion and collection of these dues without a murmur, rising almost into revolt, and Governor de Mezy sided with them. La Tour says that a section of the Council opposed the registration of the letters patent, and that de Mezy appealed to the King on behalf of the habitants, claiming that the imposition would ruin them and the country, and arrest fur- ther immigration. The exact scope of the imposition was also a matter of dispute. The wording of the ordinance, as drawn by the Bishop, was that the tithes were to be paid, not only on the produce of human labor, but on what the land produced by itself, tant de ce qui nait du travail des hommes que de ce que la terre produit d'elle mcme. When the opposition became violent and widespread, the act was interpreted as applying only to agricultural products, the fruit of the soil and the direct results of human industry, and not, therefore, to lumber, and still less to manufac- tured articles : but the wording of the ordinance is so vague and comprehensive that it may well have given rise to apprehension that the clergy would claim a large percentage of the total wealth of the whole country. In this matter, however, Laval displayed a forbearance and reasonableness remarkably at variance with his attitude on points of prerogative and on the liquor question. The noble side of his character is here shown in a strong light. To him it seemed that, however necessary it might be that the servants of the Church should be endowed with inde- pendent means of subsistence, yet he and his clergy could live for a time on charity without injury to their sacred character; on the other hand, as Bishop of New France, he felt that the position of his successors to all time would depend on his stubborn defence of the episcopal prerogative. As to the sale of brandy to the 44^ QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Indians, it involved, in his opinion, their very souls' salvation, and was, therefore, not a matter for compromise. There were, it is true, many other interests more important to the colony and more worthy of consideration, even by the head of the Church, than the prerogatives of the clergy. There were other methods of checking the use and the abuse of the liquor traffic than perpetually quarreling with the great state officials, because they were not prepared to use the severest form of coercion, which at best would have proved but a temporary remedy, and would cer- tainly have injured trade. Still it was not entirely on this account that the Bishop was unrelenting. Moneymaking and money- getting were abhorrent in his eyes, and the moneymakers were entitled to no mercy. Hence the injury to the trade of the company was not worthy of consideration. And, to be consistent, if love of pelf in others were wicked, love of pelf in his clergy was still more so; and therefore he was willing to concede a point in the matter of tithes, while remaining obstinate in opposing every infringement of his official pre- rogative and every practice which would endanger the salvation of the Indians. The brandy traffic primarily affected the interests of the trading company and the local traders, but the tithes came out of the pockets of the poor habitant, and for him the Bishop, though an aristocrat, perhaps because an aristocrat, had much sym- pathy. He consequently modified his first proposal and fixed the tithes for the whole colony, as well as Quebec at one-twentieth, first for six years, and then for the term of his life. And, as in 1665 discontent was still rife, he consented that no tithes should be collected until the King's will could be known. The Royal decision was not expressed until 1667. Popular feeling rose high, especially in the neighborhood of Quebec, where the Bishop and his secular clergy were personally known. The ten- ants of the Seminary's own seigniory at Beaupre were so incensed that the cure, Mons. Morel, had to be recalled. The people were undoubtedly desperately poor. The surplus of produce over and above what was necessary to maintain life was small, and this sur- plus was the only commodity convertible into money or goods. That so much of it should go to the Church must have seemed SETTLEMENT OF THE TITHE QUESTION. 447 a hardship, the more so as the Jesuits were the largest property holders in New France, and the Bishop and his Seminary were absorbing a large part of what was left. The people of Canada were all, it is true, Catholics ; but they had come only recently from Old France, where other forms of revolt against extreme ecclesiasticism than Calvanism were rife. The last chapter of the story of the tithes is soon told. The Marquis de Tracy, at the suggestion of the Intendant, Talon, and with the approval of the Bishop, so far yielded to the discontent of the people as to reduce the tithes to one-twenty-sixth for twenty years. But the tithes were payable to the cures themselves in thrashed wheat, delivered free of charge, not to the Seminary ; and to avoid frauds the cure could have the harvest estimated a fort- night before the harvest time, a proviso which indicated clearly the friction still existing between the Church and its children upon this burning question of finance. The council soon cancelled the condition which permitted the cure to assess the value of the crop, and moreover exempted all new lands for five years from the imposition of any tithes. The ordinance of Alons. de Tracy also severed the dependence of the cure on the Seminary, and this severance was made absolute by the decree of the King in 1679, when the tithe of one-twenty-sixth was made perpetual. Xeverthe- less, though the clergy became thus more intimately allied with their flocks, friction still continued. If the tithes fell heavily on the habitajit, the reduction to one-twenty-sixth fell still more heavily on the cure. Frontenac in 1678 for once took the side of the Bishop in a conference held to devise ways and means for meeting the clerical budget. The best they could suggest was the proposition to pay each cure 500 francs a year, 200 to cover per- sonal expenses and 300 for board in the family of a parishioner. The scheme failed, inasmuch as board and lodging could not be secured at less than 400 francs. So in the following year the subject was renewed in the Sovereign Council, and a circular issued calling on all interested in the subject to submit their views before the spring of 1680. Mons. Pierre Franchcville presented a memorial from the clergy at the time specified, pointing out the anomalies of their position, and |)rn\ing that a mcthorl of relief 448 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. should be devised, and funds provided for paying them a suf- ficiency of income v^hen the tithes failed.* A complicated system of determining the tithes was devised by the Council; and the King, under the advice of the Marquis de Seignelay, son of the great Colbert and his successor in office, agreed to supplement the revenue of the clergy, derived from the tithes, by payment to the Seminary of 8,000 francs annually, of v^hich 2,000 francs was for the support of aged and infirm priests, and 1,200 for a church construction fund. The Seminary became the depository and dispenser of the fund, and remained so until Mons. de Saint Vallier insisted on assuming that function himself. The clergyf made one more effort to secure the original toll of one-twelfth of the total produce of the soil, including flax, tobacco, fruits, vegetables, hay and grain, but their petition was refused ; and by the ordinance of the 12th of July, 1707, the tithes were fixed at one-twenty-sixth of cereals alone, an arrangement * Governor de Denonville came to the conclusion, with Abbe de Cheva- lieres, that fifty-one parishes were required, and that the cures could not live on less than 400 francs, though he once thought 300 sufficient. Fifty- one multiplied by 400 equalled 20,400 francs, and as the tithes yielded only 6,196 francs, the King asks Mons. de Champigny, the Intendant, how he expects the balance to be provided. fin 1705, two priests, M.M. Boulard and Dufournel, claimed that a copy of the ordinance of the 23rd of August, 1667, which they produced, gave the Church tithes, not only on grain, but on all cultivated products of the soil. They were called on to plead their cause before the Council, but the Sieur d'Auteuil, the Procureur General, carried his point against them, and the Court decided that the ordinance by wfiich tithes were to be paid only on grain was of later date, namely, dated Septetmber 4th, of the same year, though not even a copy of this later ordinance could be pro- duced. None has since been found, but Judge Beaudry discovered among the judicial archives of Montreal the original ordinance of Aug. 23rd of which the two cures had a copy. The ordinance of Sept 4th could not have been signed by Tracy, as claimed, for, according to the Journal of the Jesuits, he had sailed for France on Aug. 28th. Nevertheless, though the decree may not have been signed by the Viceroy on Sept.. 4th, it is inconceivable that the clergy would have submitted at that date to such a curtailment of their dues had such an ordinance not been passed. The subject is discussed in detail by Thomas Chapais in his "Life of Talon," A FIRMLY-ESTABLISHED ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 449 that has subsisted from that day to this ; for, as under the Quebec Act, the French of the Province of Quebec retained their civil laws and their religion, the Church of to-day has the same power over its flock as it possessed before the Conquest. Its parish priests still collect their tithes of one-twenty-sixth by process of law, and the arret of July 12, 1707, is virtually in force at this hour. That the opposition of bygone days to the compulsory payment of tithes, when heresy was virtually illegal, should have disap- peared to-day, when exemption can be secured by any one claim- ing it on the ground of change of faith, affords a striking proof of the greater hold religion possesses when voluntarily adopted than when forcibly imposed. CHAPTER XXV. The Brandy War; Laval and Frontenac in Conflict* As already stated, the brandy question, while it did not touch the interests of the farmer so sensibly as it did those of the trader, still affected not a few of the habitants in outlying settle- ments, who engaged in occasional mercantile transactions with the Indians. Brandy was found to be the cheapest article of exchange, and, when judiciously administered, a valuable aid to negotiation. The mercantile class, and the agent and members of the mercantile company, regarded freedom of sale of intoxicants to the Indians as the sole means of successful compe- tition with their Dutch and English rivals, who, despite certain mild prohibitions, used whiskey, which the French called rhom de hiere, because made from barley or other cereals, as the most attractive article of barter. Col. Dongan, Governor of New York under James II, in one of his letters to Governor de Denonville, bluntly expresses the views of the English colonists. "The British King," he says, "is as zealous to propagate the Faith as anyone." He had himself asked for a missionary to dissuade the savages from their drunken debaucheries, "though certainly our rum does as little harm as your brandy, and in the opinion of Christians is much more wholesome." He adds the remark that "to keep the Indians temperate and sober is a very good and Christian performance, but to prohibit them all strong liquors seems a little hard and very turkish."* On the other hand the Church regarded strong drink as the most demoralizing and destructive agent to the life and well-being *During the invasion of the Mohawk Country in 1692 by the French the chiefs of the Five Nations begged Governor Fletcher to prevent the sale of liquors to their braves "while the war is so hot." A CLERICAL VIEW OF THE BR.\NDY QUESTION. of the aborigines ever introduced by Europeans, and it fought against its sale or administration to the Indians under any plea, with all the weapons, spiritual and temporal, which its arsenal contained. The arguments used by the Church were, from a moral point of view, unanswerable, and have been concurred in by the governments both of Canada and of the United States, the laws of both countries providing heavy penalties for all venders of whisky to the red men. Nevertheless, the benevolent and humane efforts of the Church to stem the tide of drunkenness aroused bitter opposition on the part not only of the Governors but of the people of New France. Self-interest accounts for that opposition no doubt in part, yet there is good reason to believe that, had the officers of the Church confined themselves to argument and moral suasion, instead of proceeding, as they did, to violent denunciation, excommunications and political intrigues, they would have effected more good and excited less anger. An interesting document (supposed by the Abbe Faillon to be from the pen of the Abbe Belmont, author of the earliest history of Canada) has been published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec, being the history of brandy from the Church's point of view, and consequently revealing not a few divine secrets confided by Providence to the clergy alone. From it we gather that it was because La Chine was one of the most intemperate of the Indian villages, that its inhabitants were handed over to the vengeance of the Iroquois, who were used by God as the ministers of His justice. The same place we are told was further punished by the destruction of its crops, for having entertained eighty canoe loads of visiting Indians at a famous drinking bout ; "that evening," so the narrative reads, "the wheat crop was the finest in the world ; the morning after the horrible revel it was rusted and withered as by a fog." The connection between the debauch and the blight is not apparent, nor were signs and wonders needed to prove that the traffic was nefarious. The crimes committed l)y tlic infuriated savages ; the rapid disappearance of whole tribes unrlcr the ravages of wliiskey and debauchery ; the flemoralizing effect on the white traders of being allowed, first to intoxicate and then to swindle 452 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. their dusky victims, made up a catalogue of evils, resulting from the brandy traffic black enough and long enough to appall the most callous, without the addition of any heaven-sent calamities. Churchmen, however, even in the 17th century did not alto- gether overlook utilitarian arguments. The j)randy question hav- ing been laid in the first place before the theologians of the Univer- sity of Toulouse, the traffic was pronounced to be not illicit in itself, but legitimate or illegitimate, according as it might be carried on. And the reasons given by the traders in favor of the selling of spirits to the Indians were considered by the theo- logical faculty as conclusive. They were : First, that the sale of brandy attracted the Indians to the French, and therefore brought them under the humanizing and refining influences of that nation. Secondly, that, when temperately used, brandy enabled them to resist the great cold to which they were exposed. Thirdly, that it withdrew them from intercourse with the Dutch and the English, and so protected them from heresy. The Sorbonne, on the other hand, twice pronounced on the subject, declaring it a mortal sin to encourage drunkenness among the Indians, or to sell liquor wholesale to the taverns where it was retailed to the Indians. In presence of these contradictory rulings from equally high authori- ties Frontenac felt justified in authorizing the traffic, and the Bishop, no less justified in anathematizing all who engaged in it. In the words of the chronicler : "The quarrel reached such a pass as to divide the Church and the world, the temporal and the spiritual powers, the rulers of the Church and the rulers of the State. The controversy was waged with an animosity which deeply grieved all moderate men, the more so as each side was able to array a host of maxims, reasons and precedents in support of its case." The Hurons and the few Algonquins in and near Quebec being under strict ecclesiastical control, were more or less safeguarded from the evil, which was seen at its worst at the annual fur fairs at Montreal, when hundreds of Indians came down from the upper lakes with the coureurs de hois and white traders, all of whom, as well as the local traders, were, from good fellowship as well as self-interest quite ready to indulge in drinking them- VIEWS OF THE CIVIL AUTHORITIES. 453 selves, and to encourage the habit among the Indians. From Montreal the revelry spread to La Chine, to the Bourg of St. Louis, and to the Indian settlements of the neighborhood, where treating on a large scale was practiced. But though Quebec saw least of, and profited most from, the actual drinking, it was acutely perturbed^being the headquarters of the court and religious community — by the endless controversy which had divided public opinion ever since the restoration of French rule. Champlain had taken the side of the traders. The Bishop and d'Argenson fought over the question, which raged fiercely well into the next century. Till the Company of the lOO Associates was dissolved in 1663 the Governor's chief function was to protect its interests, which made it difficult for him to be a disinterested or an independent ruler ; but Courcelle, Frontenac, and their successors were at liberty to consult the commercial interests of the colony at large, and their judgment may therefore fairly be regarded as impartial. D'Argenson complained that the Vicar Apostolic hurled his excommunications against people who were acting in conformity with regulations approved by the civil authorities. D'Avaugour at first co-operated with Laval in his efforts to suppress the liquor traffic among the Indians, but afterwards, exasperated by the interference of the Jesuits and the Bishop in matters of State, took advantage, as we have seen, of the inconsistency of the Jesuits, in pleading for a woman guilty of an infraction of the liquor law, to cancel his previous prohibition. He also quarreled with Maisonneuve, denying his right as Governor of Montreal to make prohibitive regulations in \^illemaric opposed to his own general ordinance as Governor of the whole of New France. During the unhappy rule of his successor, De Mezy, the same confusion prevailed, the authority of the Governor General being arrayed against that of the priests of St. Sulpicc, who, as scti^uenrs of Montreal, were its actual rulers, the local Governor at the time we speak of, and till some years later, being their nominee. Laval left his diocese in 1662 to plead his cause and secure the dismissal of the obnoxious d'Avaugour. During his absence the excommunications continued to be promulgated, to the dis- organization of all good government, against men who were in 454 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. no sense violating the law. That the Church was right in oppos- ing the abuses connected with the liquor trade few could deny; that its methods were wise and patriotic only partisans will con- tend; but matters were rapidly approaching the point where the conflicting views of statesmen and priests could not fail to cause serious social disturbance. The growth of commerce consequent upon the cancellation of the exclusive rights of the old Company of One Hundred Associates, the influence of the correspondence of the military and civil officers on the French court, and the increasing public irritation against the intolerant attitude of the Church, all had their effect on Talon, who, in 1668, just before retiring from office for the first time, suspended the existing provisions against the sale of liquor to the Indians. The Council confirmed the Intendant's action, giving as a reason that it was the King's desire that the French and the savages should live in closer intercourse, and that brandy was the best pledge of friendship. No prohibitory edicts could be enforced. It must be borne in mind that the coureurs de hois practically refused to obey either priest or King, and that there was no police and no court in the depth of the forest either to collect evidence against, or to con- vict, those independent rovers. Moreover, the prohibitive ordi- nances merely encouraged smuggling and iUicit trade, crimes both of which could be practiced almost with impunity in a wilder- ness like Canada, with thousands of miles of open frontier and keen Yankee traders on the other side of an ambiguous dividing line. The same conditions rendered inoperative all laws for- bidding brandy to be taken into the woods, after it had been made illegal to sell it to the Indians in the settlements. Laval, as member of the Council, had been present at the meeting in which it was ridiculously pretended that brandy was to bind the colony to the Indians in an alliance of perpetual amity and good will; but he refused to sign the edict, and continued to excommunicate and punish with all the pains and penalties of the Church those who disobeyed his orders. Talon left finally for France in November, 1672, two months after the arrival of Frontenac ; and until Duchesneau came to the country, nearly three years later, on the 1 6th of September, A MASTERFUL GOVERNOR. 455 1675, Frontenac filled the functions of Governor and commander- in-chief of the army, as well as those of Intendant. During these three years, therefore, he governed with fewer trammels than any of his predecessors or successors. The absence of the Bishop from the country removed the only check which might have been placed upon his arbitrary temper. He was thus for a time left free in the fullest sense, and he ruled with a high hand ; im- prisoning priests in spite of the capitularies and canon law ; seizing and incarcerating the local Governor of Montreal ; packing the sovereign council with his own appointees ; refusing to allow the Bishop's Vicar General to occupy his seat in the Council ; planning a campaign and collecting men and supplies on the most approved system of commandeering; caring as little for the Bishop's an- athema as for public approval or disapproval ; doing what he thought best for the general good and safety of the colony, with- out considering too carefully whether his action would be sanc- tioned by the Court and minister. What mattered that? He was doing what he deemed right, and the disapproval of his acts could only be received from France eight months afterwards. We may be thankful we are not victims of his arbitrary will ; but looking back, the fierce and undaunted visage of the veteran war- rior, and the austere form of his adversary, the Bishop, stand out as the most imposing and impressive figures among that group of seventeenth century heroes, who stood on the rock of Quebec, framed by the impenetrable forests, and washed by the mysterious and majestic river, whose source the black-robed priests were the first of their race to explore. We may blame the governor for assuming powers with which he was not legally invested, and we may blame the Bishop for wielding unmercifully the terrible weapons the Church put into his hands : but who dare charge either with false or sordid motives? The insinuations made against Frontenac that he colluded with the coureurs dc hois: tliat he shared in the profits of illicit traders ; that he founded the fort of Frontenac simply as a trading post in the interest of himself and his partner. La Salle; that his violent measures against Pcrrot. the Governor of Mont- real, grew out of jealousy of a commercial rival, who occupied a 456 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. commanding commercial position; that he approved of the sale of liquor to the Indians, not so much because it assisted trade at large, as because it advanced his own private interests; that he introduced the system of permits merely to prevent the priests investigating his nefarious trading operations; that his bitter dislike to the Church and all its clergy, except the Recollet friars, originated in selfish motives — all these aspersions find their only justification in the innuendos of that inveterate gossip, Saint Simon, and the charges of his bitter enemy and underhanded fel- low-official Duchesneau. Saint Simon's accusation rests on the unproved allegation that Frontenac, who had left France poor, returned rich. Had that been true, and had he used his official position during the first administration to fill his purse, is it likely that, during his second term of rule, he would have continued to live in the tumble-down old Chateau, hardly protected from the weather, while the few thousand francs which he pleaded for from France were being tardily contributed for its reconstruction? Considering that the brandy war raged during the whole of his administration, the wonder is that so few charges were made against him. The controversy assumed its acutest phase when the Bishop emphasized his protest against the traffic by making it a cas reserve, thus removing it from the sphere of all civil or legislative action and sent his most diplomatic priest. Father Dudouyt, to Paris, to plead his cause before the Court. The Intendant Duchesneau recommended Dudouyt to Colbert ; Frontenac, of course, did what he could in the opposite direction. On April 27th, 1677, Bishop Laval's delegate was granted an audience by the minister, who insisted that the clergy of Canada must confine themselves to their proper ecclesiastical functions, and not interfere with matters of state policy. The priest, of course, argued that a practice detrimental to man's body and ruinous to his soul, fell within their province; that it had been pronounced so by the highest ecclesiastical authorities ; that it was held to be so by God's agent, the Bishop, who was respon- sible for the salvation of his flock; and that no prohibition or persecution could make him or his clergy swerve from their duty. They parted as they had met — the minister firm in his determina- THE QUESTION DEBATED IX FRANCE. 457 tion to support his subordinate, the Governor, the priest unmoved by the displeasure of the great man. But though Frontenac in the wilds of Canada was willing to risk the displeasure and the censure of the Church, the minister, in his very different sphere of action, did not consider it politic to do so. That the Church was in earnest in the matter was evidenced by the fact that Colbert's confessor refused him absolu- tion because he had decided with the Governor against the Bishop. In another interview with the priest the minister pointed out that, by making the sale of brandy to the Indians a cas reserve, and hurling excommunications right and left, for a practice accepted as legitimate in white communities, the Bishop was bringing the Church into discredit. I\Ions. Dudouyt saw that he could not carry his point and secure prohibition, especially as Talon was in France, and had the full confidence of the minister. Talon, in 1668, argued, as d'Argenson had done, when he persuaded the Council to pass his obnoxious edict, that it was unjust to make unequal laws. Mons. Dudouyt therefore shifted his ground, and pleaded for some measure which would minimize the evil, if not extirpate it. At the same time he wrote to the Bishop asking him to send over by the first ship a well-authenticated statement of facts regarding the liquor question, and begging him most earn- estly in the meantime not to irritate Colbert by further excommuni- cations. The Bishop followed the advice of his representative, and sent a statement, which, while it did not entirely convince the King, impressed him so deeply, that he instructed Frontenac in conjunction with the Council, to call together twenty of the oldest and most influential inhabitants, and ascertain their views on the vexed question. The committee met in October, 1678, and drafted a report on the 26th of that month, which was emphat- ically in favor of free trade in spirituous liquors. The members of the committee, though not wholly disinterested — seeing that, apart from the priests, nearly every prominent man in the country had some direct or indirect concern in the liquor trade — were all notable and honorable men, and their report, which was almost unanimous, if it did not fully prove the correctness of their deci- sion, at least relieved Talon. Frontenac and others, who had taken 45S QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. up a position opposed to the Jesuits and the Bishop, from the odium of having acted from purely private aand interested motives.* The v^^eight of pubHc opinion was decidedly upon their side. The Council transmitted, by the hands of Mons. De Puort and Mons. De Peyras, the report with all the documents asked for by the King. The representatives who took the report to France were known to be hostile to the Bishop's views and pretensions and therefore, feeble and suffering though he was, the prelate took ship at once to plead in person the cause of his Indian flock, and expose what he persisted were the sordid motives of his opponents. On his arrival in France he was persuaded by Mons. Dudouyt to abate his extreme demands, and in his interview with the King he merely asked that an edict should be issued prohibiting the carrying of liquors by white hunters or traders into the woods, as an article of barter with the Indians, and the selling of brandy to the Indians in their villages. The King was so impressed with the Bishop's description of the injury done both to red men and to white men by the traffic in brandy that he submitted the ques- tion to his confessor, Pere La Chaise, and the Archbishop of Paris, w^ho joined in recommending him to issue an edict in conformity with the Bishop's moderated proposal. This was done, and the Bishop professed himself satisfied. He cannot be considered to have won a victory, and in point of fact the slight restrictions imposed on the liquor traffic were of little avail in arresting the evil. Shortly afterward, in 1682, both Frontenac and the Intendant Duchesneau were recalled ; and the *La Salle, in his evidence on the brandy question, as a member of the special council called to report upon the subject, says that the sale of beaver skins reaches 60,000 to 80,000, and that the savages who buy brandy number about 20,000, and that there is usually given for a skin one chopine of brandy ; and if, therefore, every Indian drinks only his chopine of brandy per year, he is not much the worse, and the country secures one-quarter or one-third of all the beaver skins bought. The opinion of each of the dele- gates is given separately. All are in favor of the sale of brandy, but Joliet opposes its sale in the woods, and would restrict the sale to the settlements. Margry I, page 145. Proces verbal de V Assemble e tenue au chateau de Saint-Louis de Quebec les 10 octobre, 1678, et jours suivanfs, au sujet des boissons enyvrantes que I'on traite aux Sauvages. Plan of (Juel)ec made by Kranriueliii in irxS.'i, to illustrate a sclu-ine of harlior iin|>r(.vfineiils. LAVAL RESIGNS HIS SEE. 459 brandy question was almost forgotten in the calamities which before long overtook the colony, and which popular opinion attrib- uted so decidedly to the absence of their former vigorous Gov- ernor, that no other course seemed possible but to send him back to Canada in 1689. Meanwhile the advance of age and his increasing infirmities had compelled Bishop Laval to lay down the burden of ecclesias- tical and civil work, which he had by voluntary assumption made very heavy. It was now his turn to smart under a ruling which he did not venture to disobey, and at the author of which it would have been rash to attempt to hurl an excommunication. In 1687, after his retirement from the active exercise of his episcopal functions, and while waiting in Paris for the acceptance of his resignation by the King and the papal bull appointing his successor, serious divergence of opinion occurred between himself and the Bishop-elect, Saint Vallier, respecting the management of the Quebec seminary. It was drifting into bankruptcy, and the Bishop, aged and ill though he was, decided to return to Canada to adjust the affairs of this institution founded by himself and so very dear to his heart. He would then be willing to die in his adopted country, and be buried in the chapel of his own erection, where masses would perpetually be said for the repose of his soul by a succession of priests, for whose education, comfort and sup- port provision had been made by his pious forethought, and whc^ would naturally hold his memory in deep regard. To his dismay, he was forbidden by the King, through the Marquis de Seignelay, to return, on the plea that his presence in Canada would cause dissension. The old man wrote a dignified, though pleading, letter to the minister, but obeyed. Twenty-eight years of experience of active life and of the exigencies of statecraft may have taught him moderation, and raised a doubt in his mind as to the wisdom and righteousness on the part of fallible man of applying any principles so severely and uncompromisingly as he himself had been in the habit of doing. The prohibition was removed as soon as his successor was consecrated, and on June 3rd, 1688, he landed for tlic last time at Quebec, to the infinite joy of the whole population ; for, though 460 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. they may have opposed his interference in purely civil affairs, and deprecated the friction which it created, all recognized the sin- cerity of his devotion, not only to the infant church, but to the colony, and were especially hearty in their approval of his founda- tion of a seminary capable of providing an education for a secular clergy, drawn from the ranks of the people themselves. After the Bishop and the Count had both gone to their rest there was still friction between Church and State, but the quarrels were reduced to bickerings. The never-settled question of precedence continued to give trouble. Whether Bishop Saint Valher would admit the Governor, Vaudreuil, to the sanctuary, or permit him to dip his finger into the holy water, instead of being sprinkled like the common folk, or whether the Carignan-Saliere Regiment was in its proper position in the Recollet Church in Montreal — these and similar subjects of dispute, however they may have agitated the minds of those immediately concerned, had little interest for the pubHc. The country was growing, and matters of more importance were claiming attention. A noisy controversy raged as to the proper and rightful position of the captains of militia in the church processions, till a royal decree settled the order in which the various dignitaries were to be marshalled and to walk. Utterly trifling as these questions were, they had to be settled by the King, for under the rigid system of centralization, which Colbert had inaugurated, all these ignoble details were reported to, and passed upon by, the overworked monarch and his minister in the cabinet. Louis XIV. would have needed to be, as he actually regarded himself, an incarnation of deity, to be able to examine and decide such an infinitude of questions as were presented to him for settlement by his officials at home and abroad. Well might Michelet say, "He who grasps at too much can see nothing." Matters of importance are not recognized as such when the mind is distracted by trifles. If the same mind which shapes and directs the policy of the State has also to pass judg- ment upon the shortcomings of a nun or the promotion of a can- noneer, there is great danger that the larger interests will at times be sacrificed to the smaller. After the century closed the people of the colony were endowed with no greater control over their own CLOSING OF THE HEROIC AGE. 461 affairs than they had enjoyed before, and, if we except the Intend- ant Hocquart, no man of the stamp of Frontenac and Laval was sent to rule over them. With the disappearance of these two majestic figures from the drama of Canadian history, the interest of the plot languishes, and the story drags on towards a miserable ending. CHAPTER XXVI. Quebec as the Seat of Clerical and Lay Education. Quebec may claim the credit of occupying a prominent place as one of the first seats of learning on the Continent. In the City of Mexico was built the first University, created by Royal Charter in 155 1, but it was planned and erected on so sumptuous a scale that the century was closing before it was opened. Harvard dates its birth from 1640, when the school developed into the College, by the aid of the Rev. John Harvard's gift of £1,700 and his library of 260 volumes, the object of which was "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity," the testator ''dreading to have an illiterate ministry to the Churches, when its present ministers shall lie in the dust." It was twenty-seven years later before the older colony of Virginia, through the perseverance of the Rev. Dr. Blair, came to possess the William and Mary College ; and sixty-one years after the foundation of Harvard, Yale was opened with the avowed purpose of making it a training school for ministers. The first schoolmaster in Canada was the Recollet Brother Pacifique, who taught some little savages at Three Rivers as early as 1616; the second was Father Le Caron, of the same order, who two years afterward opened a school in Tadousac. The monks of Saint Francis, had their means been sufficient, might have established the Seminary at Quebec, which their general Syndic, M. Charles de Boiies, recognized as an essential adjunct to missionary work ; but, once the Jesuits entered the field, higher education was felt to be rightfully within their province. When the Jesuits returned to Canada without the Recollets, after the Restoration, Father Le Jeune promptly opened school with two scholars, and in 1635 the Society built a schoolhouse, in which they tried the co-education of white and red boys with very CENSUS OF 1 68 1. 463 indifferent success. At first the teaching was of an elementary character, but in twenty years the school had developed into a college, with a teaching staff which included professors of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy and the humanities. The Jesuit college, as a college, was virtually extinguished by the conquest of Canada in 1759, from which date the Lesser Seminary, organ- ized by Bishop Laval, whose pupils had previously received in- struction in the Jesuit College, became a teaching institution and preserved the continuity of college education. Education, in fact, occupied the energies of a large proportion of the inhabitants of the little town, nor were women overlooked. The Census of 1681, after enumerating the Establishment of the Governor as twenty-one persons, that of the Intendant at ten and the military force at twenty-one, gives in detail the staff of the Seminary, the Jesuit College, the Recollet Monastery and the nunneries : In the Seminary were Monseigneur the Bishop, M. de Bernieres, the Superior, 23 Priests 25 Boarders 20 Male servants 18 Wives and daughters of the servants 4 4 cows, 2 horses, i ass, at the farm of 60 arpents. The Household of the Jesuits consisted of Priests 8 Brothers 7 *Frcres donncs, or lay servants under vows 4 * Freres Donncs were laymen who pledfjed themseh-es to serve for life without other remuneration than their maintenance, in whatever class of labor might be imposed on them. The members of this lay order, as first organized to assist the missionaries, took a vow of service and wore a religious habit ; and on the other hand the Society undertook to maintain them till death, without any reservation. The Jesuit authorities in Rome refused to sanction the formation of what was substantially a sub-order; but when Father Lalemant proposed to abolish the habit, and to relieve the Society from the obligation of perpetual maintenance, by claiming the right to discharge an unworthy servant, the General Vitelleschi permitted the institution of this class of lay helpers, who were most useful in the western mission stations. 464 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUARY. Servants not under vows 10 The number of pupils is not given. In the Recollet Monastery were Monks 7 Freres donnes 3 Wife of Frere Donne Guibault. 4 oxen, 4 cows, i horse on the farm of 30 acres. The Convent of the HospitaHeres (The Hotel Dieu Hospital) had on its staff of nurses : Mothers 19 Sisters 9 As boarders were Madame d'Aillebout, the widow of the ex-gov- ernor, and her servant Edme Chastel. The good lady had twice entered the Ursuline Convent — once during her husband's Hfe, with his consent, and again after his death; but her resolution was not equal to her piety, and the seclusion of the nunnery taxed beyond power of endurance her active temperament, which found a more congenial sphere of duty in the Hospital. In the service of the Hospital were : Male servants 23 Female , i and the live stock on their farm of 150 arpents, consisted of 30 horned cattle, 40 calves and 40 sheep. The Ursuline Nunnery harbored : Mothers 22 Sisters 7 French boarders 17 Indian boarders 10 On the farm of 200 acres were 4 male servants, 40 head of cattle, 3 horses and 13 sheep. Thus, to minister to the spiritual wants and to the educa- tion of its male population, there were in Quebec 47 ordained priests and friars; 29 Ursuline nuns taught the girls, and there were 39 mothers and sisters in the Hospital. In the five religious houses there were 104 priests and nuns under solemn vows, and they employed in the service of their households and farms some 67 men and women. Of the population, therefore, of 1345 over THE URSULINE CONVENT. 465 12 per cent was engaged directly or indirectly in religious, edu- cational or hospital service. The Ursuline nuns then as now taught day scholars as well as boarders, and their school at that date was the only agency for imparting female education. Though, as we have seen, they had on their roll ten little savages, the hope with which Madame de la Peltrie and her friend Mere Marie de ITncarnation had founded the nunnery, that it would be a training school for Indian girls, whom they wished to fit for becoming the wives of French bachelors, was fading year by year. Experience showed that French husbands were more prone to follow their squaws into the forest than the squaws were to settle down into French housewives. Nevertheless Frontenac himself still cherished the belief that he could win the western tribes over to the French side by nobler motives than the mere desire of gain, and in his cortege from Fort Frontenac there were generally some Indian girls whom he was bringing to Quebec to be educated and civilized by the Ursulines. The standard of female education was not high in those days. Mere Marie de ITncarnation said in 1661 : "Some pupils remain six or seven years, others in the short space of twelve months must be taught their prayers, reading, writing, and arith- metic, and the Church's doctrines and morals, in short, all that is most essential in the education of females." But if the girls were not crammed with learning, they were taught the exquisite graces of courtesy and reverence for holy things, which, grafted on their native vivacity, excited the admiration and respect of such gallants as La Hontan and such grave' savants as Kalm ; and which became so deeply implanted in their natures that it is inherited by their sisters to-day. It is sad to record that the good ladies had to bear more than their share of calamities. A second fire broke out while the nuns and their pupils were at mass on Sunday morning, Oct. 20, 1686. It destroyed the nunnery with its valuable records, and the chapel, sparing only ^^adamc de la Peltrie's house. Misfortune, however, only stimulated their ardor and the interest of others in their work ; for, on the reopening of the convent after the fire, 466 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. just half a century after the members of the order first landed in Canada, the community numbered 34 members, devoted exclusively to education in Quebec. Yet they were prepared for other tasks when called upon, for, as we read, the convent consented to spare some of their members to undertake the duty of nurses, in the nunnery established in 1697 in Three Rivers, where the population was too small to support both a school and a hospital. The Court at Versailles did not look with favor on this multipli- cation of conventual establishments, and the King, while not refus- ing permission to open the Convent at Three Rivers, declined to confer on it Letters Patent. In the same dispatch he commented with disapproval on Bishop Saint Vallier's plan of putting the General Hospital in charge of a separate community of the Hos- pitalieres, and insisted that it should be subject to the Inspector of Hospitals. While in Paris in 1663, or eight years after the opening of the Jesuit College in Quebec, and twenty-three years after Presi- dent Dunster was inducted as principal of Harvard, Bishop Laval, took the step of creating by Letters Episcopal the Seminary of Quebec for the theological education o'f the clergy of Canada. The King con'firmed this act, by letters patent, of date April 30, 1663, and the Bishop landed in Quebec in September of the same year, accompanied or preceded by M. M. de Maizeret, Pommier, Dudouyt, de Bernieres, Lechevalier and Forest, who had been engaged to perform clerical functions and to conduct his contem- plated seminary. The intention of the founder was that the Seminary should be an establishment in which young clerics, "who might be judged fit for the service of God, should be educated and trained. And to that end they should be instructed in the manner of administering the sacraments and the methods of catechising and preaching apostolically ; also should be taught moral theology, the cere- monies of the Church, the plain Gregorian Chant, and whatever other studies are necessary to fit them for fulfilling well the duties of the priesthood." The Jesuit College was already giving the community advanced training in secular learning, and its course of preliminary studies THE QUEBEC SEMINARY. 467 was adapted to those proposing to enter the Church and undertake pastoral work. Bishop Laval, when he founded the Greater Semi- nary, confined the instruction given by its professors to purely theological and ritual subjects, entrusting the instruction of his future clergy in secular subjects to the able hands of the Jesuits. Even after the Lesser Seminary was established, it was first used more as a boarding house than as a complete educational establish- ment. The Church draws a distinction between education and instruction. As an educator it exercises, in its educational estab- lishments, constant supervision over its youth; it studies the idiosyncrasies of each of its younger members, endeavoring to repress all evil, and to foster and develop all virtuous, tendencies. In its seminaries, and even in the Universities under its control, a much stricter watch is kept over the pupils, and much less latitude of action and study is allowed to them, than in Protestant schools and colleges. The Lesser Seminary of Quebec, which Bishop Laval opened in 1668, was in this sense, up to the date of the Conquest, more an educational than a teaching institution, confining itself to the religious and elementary training of its pupils, the regulation of their morals, and the direction of their natural tendencies. To the Jesuits, in their better equipped col- lege, was entrusted instruction in secular subjects and the intel- lectual development of the seminarists. The Lesser Seminary (still Le Petit Seminaire) became also a training school for the priesthood, though it originated in a difYerent manner. The first impulse towards its establishment came from France, when Colbert communicated to the Bishop the King's earnest desire that the Christian Indians should be Frenchified, and his opinion that this could best be done by teaching Indian boys the French language and French manners. The most Christian King was liberal with his theories and his advice, but stingy when asked to pay for carrying them into practice. The Jesuits had essayed in vain to civilize and denationalize the Indians more than thirty years before, and they wisely declined to attempt the cx})cr- iment again. Whether Bishoj) Laval believed or not in the possi- bility of success, the Kinc;- had commanded, and like a loyal old noMe he obeyed, and opened the Petit Seminaire on Oct. 9th, ir)r>h Chapel and Caihedral of (Quebec l)ff(>re ihc alloralioii of the Fa(;ade in 1S4;>. Itoih liartlett's Canatiitiii Srciiirv. 1 lir r.aviliia — lliitraiu c to the Seiniiinrv ami part <>f the Seminary I'nildings. SEMINARY TWICE DESTROYED BY FIRE. seigneur de Saint \'allier. But neither his own pleading nor Monseigneur 's sad tale could wring much money out of the empty pockets of the people, or induce the King to spare a gift of more than 4,000 francs a year till the Seminary should be rebuilt. The poor Canadians, spurred by the Bishop's courage and the example of self-denial set by himself and the Directors, con- tributed the balance, wherewith to rebuild the schools on an enlarged scale. The Seminary possessed substantial resources from the first, but owed most of its available cash to the Bishop's liberality. The revenues of the Abbey of Maubec, conferred on him were turned over to the Seminary. He secured for it also the Isle aux Coudres, the beach and shores of the St. Lawrence and the St. Charles from the Sault au Matelot to the Hotel Dieu; also the Seignory of Beaupre. His personal property was given on con- dition that — First, the Seminary support for three months of each year two missionaries among the Indians. [Of this condition the Institution was relieved by the donor in 1699.] Second, that the priests of the Seminary say a low mass daily for the repose of his soul, and those of the departed members of the Seminary of Foreign Missions. Third, that the seminary support and educate for the priesthood eight pupils to be chosen by the Directors. The revenues derived from these seignories and French Abbeys would not, however, have sufficed to maintain the teaching staff, still less to erect the buildings, had not the Seminary con- trolled the tithes, and been the patrons and the bankers of the clergy of the diocese, whether engaged in education or in parochial work. As the population increased, the revenue from fees and board, moderate as tlie charges were for these, became a sub- stantial source of income.'^ *Till 1730 scholars were boarded, clothed and taught by the Seminary free of charge, but after 1730 the relatives were required to furnish clothes and books. At present the scale of charges is: In the Petit Seminaire, for board, lodging, tuition, $111 per annum. Demi-pensionnaires, who dine in the Seminary, pay $6 a month. In the Grand Seminaire the annual fee for board, lodging and tuition is $120. Moreover, in those early days the Parish of Quebec, as well as the 484 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. The need of a Catholic University was recognized by the Fathers of the First Provincial Council, held in 185 1. Among the various seminaries which might claim the right of originating and conducting it, the choice could only lie between the Seminary of Quebec and that of St. Sulpice in Montreal, which opened its doors under the Abbe Queylus, manned by the able priests from the parent Seminary in Paris, some five or six years before Bishop Laval issued his ordinance for the establishment of the Quebec Seminary. The Seminary of Quebec was chosen, and it has right loyally fulfilled the trust, having out of its own funds expended in the erection and equipment of a university, which could be called by no other name than that of Laval, about $300,000. And the standard it has maintained has been worthy of the name it bears. The Chateau of St. Louis has disappeared; the old fortifica- tions are crumbling ; the guns on the Grand Battery have become useless ; the Jesuit College, where highly trained teachers carried out a system of free tuition,* was first devoted to secular uses, then demolished; but the Seminary still stands, projecting the past into the present, and more vigorous and useful than ever. Within its old buildings priests, imbued with its old traditions, and true to its old constitutions, still teach. As a corporation it has kept Cathedral Chapter, was supplied by, and at the cost of, the Seminary, in accordance with the Bishop's original plan. The arrangement survived, not without some misgivings by Bishop Laval's successor, till 1768. In that year the Seminary resigned its cure to the Bishop on account of the growing burden of the charge, both on its staff and on its resources. Bishop Hamel, in his sketch of Laval University in "Canada — an Encyclopaedia," says, "The greatest income of the Seminary is a negative one, and consists in the fact that the thirty priests who are employed as professors in the University and in the College give all their time and their energy without remuneration. They are not paid. They have their board with heat and light, and are allowed $10.00 per month for their clothing, mending and washing, and this is all. The Superior of the Seminary, who is de jure the principal of the University, receives no other salary." *A feature of the Jesuit Colleges which has deservedly won them students, and entitled the Society to credit, is that the education provided both in school, college, and university has always been absolutely free. Laval's Chair now in the Quebec Seminary. INFLUENCE OF SEMINARY EDUCATION. 485 aloof from politics and its course of study has expanded — so far as the limitations imposed by the Church's regulations would allow — with the growth of human knowledge and the require- ments of modern society. Whether a system of education framed by ecclesiastics and superintended by priests builds up boys into energetic, progressive, independent men may be questioned, but it must be admitted that it makes them gentlemanly. Bishop Saint Yallier himself was struck, as even the most casual observer is to-day, by the appro- priate behavior of the little Seminarists, who serve as acolytes dur- ing mass. The exquisite grace with which they enter two by two, and after bowing to the altar, salute each other before taking their seats, is a charming exhibiton of what careful training can accom- plish. The influence is felt throughout life of such acts and gestures of reverence and politeness, and these, repeated genera- tion after generation, become hereditary and leave an indelible impression of refinement and gentle bearing on the race. It must not, however, be supposed that complete satisfaction with the management of the Seminary and its funds has always reigned. Its wealth, however benevolently expended, created jealousy. There is a letter from a M. de la Marche, a nephew of M. Boucher of Three Rivers, to Count Pontchartrain, the French Colonial ^linister, complaining of the cupidity of the Seminary, as shown by the wealth it had accumulated in lands and houses, and the miserable pittances doled out to the poor cures ; also of the preference shown to its own infirm students when incapacitated for work — all of which charges were partially- true, without being unanswerable. While Bishop Laval was not so prescient as to depart from the standards and systems of primary and classical education preva- lent in his day and long afterwards, he did recognize the need of a technical school, in which those who showed no aptitude for purely intellectual pursuits could learn a trade. The experiment of such a training grew out of his experience at the Seminary, where he soon found that there existed youths whose natural bent was toward any other occupation than the priesthood, and who would be more useful to society as farmers or mechanics. To 486 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. meet this want he estabhshed a branch of the Seminary under the towering cliff of Cap Tourmente, at the Grande Ferme de Saint Joachim, where an elementary literary education was given and some instruction in practical and theoretical agriculture and the manual trades.* Bishop Saint Vallier, with the laudable inten- tion of enlarging the scope and usefulness of the Farm School, introduced into the course of study a classical element ; but it was soon found to be foreign to the purposes of the Institution, as well as uncongenial to its pupils, and it was abandoned. When Bishop Laval's controversy with his successor was at its height, in 1691, not wishing to embarrass him by his presence in Quebec, he took up his abode at Saint Joachim, and the farm became so dear to him that in 1693 he founded six scholarships under the following conditions, which express clearly his intentions in establishing the school, and bespeak his good sound common sense: "The six children must be natives, of good habits and fit for work. Their choice is to rest with the Superior and Directors. They are to be fed, clad and trained to habits of politeness and piety, instructed in reading and writing, drilled to do honest work, and in the prac- tice of the trade by which they expect to gain their livelihood, till they attain the age of 18, when they should be able to provide for themselves." Eight years afterwards M. Soumande — a priest of the Sem- inary and Director of the Farm — created three more scholar- ships, and endowed the school with 8,000 francs, to be devoted to the salary of a master who should train the three youths as school teachers. In addition, therefore, to founding a Seminary, which has grown into one of the great Continental Universities, the Bishop showed his appreciation of the value of technical education and training, by establishing, with the assistance of his able directors, the Grande Ferme des Maizerets. He doubtless approved the *Tbe Technical School at Saint Joachim has long been closed, but the Seminary farm is still cultivated. There Laval himself rested and gratified the love of nature which was so amiable a trait of his character ; and thither to-day the priests of the Seminary go for rest and recreation. THE SECOND BISHOP OF QUEBEC. 487 action of ]\Ions. Soumande, who in the year 1702 added a normal school to the technical department. Thus did this truly great man round off his storm-tossed, militant carreer. His later years — he lived till 1708 — were not ruffled by any serious controversy with either the Governor or his episcopal successor, who was a prisoner in England or France from 1700 to 1713. The second Bishop of Quebec was almost as picturesque a figure on the stage of Canada as his predecessor, but was far from possessing so creative a spirit. He from the first opposed Laval's plan of making the Seminary the trust company, as it were, of the parochial clergy. Thus after Laval's self-control had been tested in France, it was put to a much more severe trial in Canada, and that, not by a civil governor or a member of the State, but by his own successor in the Episcopal See, a man, endowed by virtue of his office, with the same spiritual pre- rogatives and authority which he himself had claimed to possess. When the new Bishop reversed Laval's whole church policy, by which the appointment and support of the secular clergy were vested in the Seminary, he did so in a manner as arbitrary as Frontenac himself could have adopted. Yet, although the subject was one of far more importance to both Church and State than most of the matters which in his earlier years he had deemed so vital, the retired Bishop now confined himself to expressing his opinions with vigor, but without anger. He did not conceal his poignant regret, but he refrained from imputing ignoble motives to those who were wounding him and his old colleagues to the quick : and when further opposition could only have embarrassed his successor and distressed the Church, he retired to his seminary farm at St. Joachim. The mellowing influence of age and mature judgment was never better exemplified than in thus tempering the impetuosity of a noble character. When Saint A^allier first went to Canada as Laval's Grand Vicar he was fascinated, in the course of a tour which he at once made of his immense diocese, stretching from the ocean to the Lakes, by certain attractive phases of Canadian society; by the free, generous and genial character of the 7'ov(J(!^curs : by the pure, simple and self-reliant habits of the habitants; by the open-handed 488 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. hospitality of all classes, and the genuine earnestness of the Seminary priests. "The people, generally speaking," so he wrote in his famous letter on the State of the Church, "are as devout as the clergy appear saintly. One remarks among them the same virtues as we admire in the primitive Christians — simplicity, de- votion and charity." To one brought up as he had been in the artificial, stifling, not to say immoral, atmosphere of the Court, still young and with little knowledge of mankind at large, Canada seemed by contrast like paradise itself, and as such he described it. But when he returned to Canada, one illusion after another was dispelled. He came into close touch with the city, though only a provincial one, and its sins ; he recognized that the love of power was as strong in priest as in politician, and as likely to distort the judgment of the cleric as of the civil ruler. Then, like all. men of vigor and passion, when they change their opinions, he went from one extreme to another. Instead of primitive purity, he now saw only sin and selfishness in priest and layman, while he described the country as being on the very verge of ruin. Bishop Saint Vallier sailed for France in the Autumn of 170a, but on his return voyage was captured by the English, held a prisoner for some years, exchanged, but forbidden by the French King to return to his diocese till 1712. It was perhaps as well. He was as firmly persuaded of his infallibility as the great prelate, his predecessor. But Laval was consistent — Saint Vallier was not ; and infallibility without consistency is not convincing or con- ducive to obedience. He therefore always had a batch of quarrels on his hands, and possessed a most unfortunate faculty for making enemies and for doing the right thing in the wrong way. The *Though M. de Saint Vallier had been selected as his assistant by- Bishop Laval himself on the recommendation of Pere Louis de Valois, a Jesuit, and M. Tronson, superior of the College of St. Sulpice, his con- firmation by the King was from motives of policy. He had been for years attached to the Court as almoner. He was a man of family and property, and therefore, according to the customs of the time, by rank and social position, eligible for a bishopric. His conduct had been exemplary; he was a man of abundant zeal, energy and honest intention, though, as afterward appeared, lacking in self-restraint and prudence. ILL-DIRECTED ZEAL. 489 breach between himself and the Seminary was never completely healed. He had alienated the attachment of the Grey Nuns of the Hotel Dieu by establishing the General Hospital under the charge of the same order, but not as a branch of the parent institution. He had been in closest friendship with Frontenac, inasmuch as neither loved the Jesuits and both were at feud with Laval ; and yet he quarrelled with him on so trifling a matter as a proposed performance of the comedy, "Tartuffe.'' Though the Intendant, Champigny, was a very faithful son of the Church, yet because he espoused the side of the Ladies of the Hotel Dieu against the Bishop's pet scheme, the General Hospital, he incurred the severe displeasure of the prelate. He used the Recollets most dexter- ously for a time against Bishop Laval and the Jesuits, and re- warded them accordingly ; then quarreled with them over a matter of precedence involving Governor Callieres of Montreal, and closed their church at that place. With a perverseness beyond conception he alienated his friends ; forged w^eapons for his ene- mies ; and made his position so untenable that, as he would not resign his diocese, he was twice detained for years in France at the will of the King. He was generous and yet often inconsistent. He gave liberally one moment, and withdrew the gift the next. He built a costly episcopal palace, and lived like a mendicant in his Gen- eral Hospital. Taking everything into account, Canada owes him much. His General Hospital has been a boon to Quebec, and the parochial system of fixed cures, independent of the Seminary, has bestowed on the Church organization an elasticity which it would probably not have possessed under Bishop Laval's system, and has enlisted more warmly for his priests the sympathy of their parishioners. Whatever his faults, his openhandcdness and sympathy with the suffering and the indigent atoned for them in the eyes of ene- mies as well as of friends ; for Frontenac, in almost the last sen- tence of his last dispatch, commended him to the ]\rinistcr "for his charity in succoring the poor and his activity in every good work.'' CHAPTER XXVIL Quebec as It Appeared at the End of the Seventeenth Century. With the close of the seventeenth century terminated the ''heroic period" of Canadian history. Frontenac died in 1698; Bishop Laval lingered until 1708; La Salle had been mur- dered in 1687; the formative period of French colonial rule was drawing to its close. City life with its clerical and official elements and its segrega- tion into classes was assuming a type not dififering widely from that of to-day; and the shores of the St. Lawrence from Les Eboulements to Lachine were fringed by the homes of habitants, clustered around their churches. Though the colony was not a century old, the people had acquired a distinct national character. The educational effects of self-reliance, despite the weakening influence of their political institutions, had, in less than three gen- erations, created in Canada a farming population very different from the tillers of the soil in Old France. Many of the colonists had been drawn from the seafarers of Brittany and Nor- mandy, and when sailors turn farmers they carry some of the habits and mental characteristics acquired in their old calling into the practice of their new. Others had been soldiers of the Carig- nan-Salieres Regiment, who in fighting all over Europe had gained a certain cosmopolitan character before reaching the St. Lawrence. Lahontan tells us that when he was garrisoned with his three companies on the Cote de Beaupre, in the year 1691, he was struck with the air, not only of comfort, but of independence which distinguished his hosts. He soon found that he must not call them peasants. They were "habitants," and resented the term peasant as vehemently as would a Spaniard. "Perhaps," he adds, Plan of the Upper and Lower Towns of Quebec in 1G70. QUEBEC IN 1698. 491 ''because they were not compelled to recognize allegiance to the seigneur by the payment of sel et taille. Perhaps because they have the right of fishing and hunting. Be the explanation what it may, their free life puts them on the level of the nobles them- selves." Not only the gallant Captain Lahontan, and the sedate La Potherie, but the Swedish naturalist, Kalm, all agree in praising the delightful gaiety and intelligence of the Canadian women, the self-reliant demeanor of the men, and the courtesy among all classes, which even entitled the habitant and his wife to be ad- dressed as monsieur and }}iadanie. The beauty and charm of man- ner of the Canadian girl has been the theme of every traveler since then. Even the Jesuit Father Charlevoix is rapturous on the sub- ject, and not without reason attributes these qualities to the educa- tion the girls receive from the nuns, who, like the priests, drew a distinction between education in its wider sense and mere intel- lectual training. But the greater freedom of intercourse which boys and girls in Canada have always enjoyed, as compared with their kinsfolk in Old France, has also been a potent factor in devel- oping certain national traits which two hundred years ago shocked Governor Denonville. who saw in them only symptoms of danger- ous lawlessness and filial disrespect. The river above Quebec was still considered as unnavigable for ocean ships, small as they were in those days. It was not until after Kirke's conquest that trading vessels ventured above Tadou- sac, nor was it until the steam tug came to the assistance of the sailini? vessel in 1809 that Quebec lost her prestige as practically the head of ocean navigation. ^Montreal did not become a port of entry until 1832, when T17 vessels, coasting and foreign, dis- charged 27.7x3 tons ^arc^o on her wharves. Quebec itself was still a very small town. The religious cen- sus taken by Bishop Laval in t68t assigns to it a population of 239 families and 1,354 souls, but it had grown to 1,988 souls before the census of 1698 was taken. Tn the whole government of Quob'-c there were onlv T.460 houses, 37 churches and 26 mills. The Indian population on the five reservations consisted of 1.540. of whom 355 were in the Abenat-i and ATontagnais settlements of the 492 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Chaudiere, and 122 in the Huron village of Lorette. Being at the head of navigation, and no trade being lawful with the English colonies, it was the mercantile depot for the whole interior con- tinent. Between the French and English colonies not only was trade forbidden, but traveUing to the Hudson without a permit was punishable by death. New England would have been wilHng enough to open a highway that could be used either for war or for trade ; but Canada's safety as well as her theological purity depended on isolation.* It was not until 1730 that there was even *For the state of Canada and Quebec at the period now in question we have in the Edits et Ordonnances of the Sovereign Council a mass of official decrees and correspondence dealing with every imaginable subject, from minute regulations of the daily life of the people to important state affairs. But just as the gossipy Journal of the Jesuits gives us a more intimate and homely view of current events than the more studied narratives of the Relations, so we have a more lifelike portrayal of people as they were two hundred years ago in Lahontan's and La Potherie's books of travel than in the official records. Baron Lahontan was a sailor, though he had command of some companies of soldiers in La Barre's war with the Iroquois. He took somewhat free and liberal views of men, women and manners, and expressed them so frankly, that he was forced to publish his book in Belgium. He arrived in Quebec just as La Salle had reached there with his startling story of the Mississippi, and was hurrying on to report his great discoveries in France. Even though the great explorer may have kept his secret from the .public, the guests of the Chateau must have known it. Lahontan's adventurous spirit was moved, but not sufficiently so to induce him to forego the good things of life, and exchange the charms of Canadian female society for those of the Illinois squaw. La Potherie was less of a gallant than Lahontan, and not nearly so good a story teller. He was with the fleet that Iberville commanded when he recovered Hudson Bay, after having performed his daring and successful exploits in Newfoundland. He also relates events in a series of letters, which, though not as fresh and amusing as Lahontan's, are probably somewhat truer to facts. It was towards the close of the first half of the eighteenth century that Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, visited the St. Lawrence and made those minute and accurate observations of the country and people which have rendered the book he subsequently published a complete repertory of information on the subject. Canada changed so slowly that the next half century made no very noticeable difference in the aspect of the land or the character of its inhabitants. NATUR.\L FEATURES OF THE CITY. 493 a road between Quebec and ^Montreal. The rivalry between the two towns had existed from the earhest day. When in 1658 it was deemed advisable to send two of the Hotel Dieu nuns from Que- bec to A^illemarie, the transfer had to be made secretly by reason of the opposition of the ^Montreal Company. Again, when it was proposed to appoint a successor to Bishop Laval, ^Montreal claimed the see in virtue of her more central position; failing that, she held that she was at least entitled to have a bishop of her own. Commercial rivalry aggravated ecclesiastical jealousy. When de Lauzon virtually confiscated the store of the Montreal Com- pany in Quebec, and d'Avaugour confirmed the action, the process was begun which long continued to cause dissatisfaction in Mon- treal — that of compelling the western town to trade w^ith the eastern, and so rendering the ^Montreal merchants contributory to the wholesale houses of Quebec. The city itself has changed but little, for it possesses the ad- vantage to the historian and antiquary over many another city that its leading topographical features are so prominent, that they must always determine its general plan. ^Mountain Hill, when it was a mere bridle path up a steep, rocky ridge, was what it is to-day — the only direct road from the beach to the summit of the cliff, or from the Lower to the Upper Town. The direction of the streets was determined by strongly marked natural elevations or depres- sions in the contour of the city site, except when deflected for the purpose of reaching or avoiding the large tracts given in the early days to the religious bodies or subsequently bought by them. * Nevertheless some natural features have disappeared. The stream which De Gaspe in his "Les Anciens Canadiens" describes as running, even in his day, from Cape Diamond and rippling through the market place between the Cathedral and the Jesuit College, has been absorbed by the drainage system of the town. Not until 1853 did Quebec enjoy the advantage of a water system or efficient sewage, and some of us still recollect the water cart ♦The city of Quebec contained, when the seignorial tenure act passed in 1854, ten original concessions subject to the charge of lods ei rentes on each change of ownership. 494 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. drivers backing into the dirty water of the Cul de Sac, bucketing the turbid fluid into their barrels, and distributing it at 12^ cents (sevenpence halfpenny) per barrel into other barrels in the cellars of the upper town houses. No wonder that during the cholera epidemic of 1832 one-ninth of the whole population was swept away in a few weeks — some 3,000 souls out of a population of 27,000. In 1637 twelve acres in the heart of the future city were ceded to the Jesuits, who at once commenced building their college thereon. Twelve more were deeded to the Duchess d'Aiguillon for the Grey Nuns, whose hospital was under way when they arrived in 1639. This tract lay to the north and east of the Jesuits' ground, and occupied the brink of the steep cliff overlooking the estuary of the St. Charles. The Hospital and garden now occupy part only of the original tract, as the nuns have laid out in streets and sold a large portion of the property, including their old graveyard, lying to the east of their enclosed ground. An- other grant of twelve acres was made to the Ursuline Nuns. It lay close along the west line of the Jesuit property. On it they commenced building immediately on their arrival. At a later date they likewise sold, for residence purposes, portions of land lying on the outskirts of their grant. There is in their archives an interesting plan submitted to and approved by Fron- tenac, showing the plots they proposed laying out for secular purposes. The space occupied by Champlain's Chapelle de la Recouvrance was too small to accommodate the Presbytery, and therefore additional ground was acquired for it and the parish church, which was already erected when Bishop Laval arrived. The Bishop lost no time in securing for his Seminary a large tract, extending from the rear of the Cathedral to the cliffs over- hanging the St. Lawrence and the mouth of the St. Charles. Dur- ham and Dufferin Terraces were occupied by the Chateau of St. Louis and by a battery of small guns, which still stands, a monu- ment of the past, to the west of Frontenac Hotel. The site of the Court House was even then devoted to law as administered by the senechatissee. It had been the meeting place, it is supposed, of the Sovereign Council prior to temporary occupation of Talon's 5&(-LtTnrCHAMPLA|Nt St Little Champlain Street. ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY. 495 brewery and pending the erection of the Intendant's palace. The adjacent ground, on a portion of which is now built the Episcopal Cathedral, was ceded to the Recollets, whose Church extended over part of the present Place d'Armes. Bishop Saint A'allier in- creased the area of ecclesiastical property by securing for his palace a site adjoining the Seminary Garden to the west, near the summit of ^Mountain Hill. Thus of the total area of about eighty-three acres which the old Upper Town covered, a far larger area was occupied by the religious communities, and assigned to defence or other public purposes, than even to-day, when, excluding the esplanade and glacis of the Citadel, which were not then within the city limits, about 40 per cent, of the area of the city consists of ecclesiastical and public property. The Jesuit College reservation has ceased to be religious and become municipal property. The Recollet tract has changed hands, but most of it is still in the possession of a religious body. The Ursulines and the Hospitalieres have slightly contracted their reservations, but it is signficant of the stability and conservatism of the Church that it recognizes the power which resides in real estate, and can rarely be tempted to convert it even into money. The characteristics which pervaded old Quebec are still stamped on the modern town, and the spirit of the past is there expressed as nowhere else on the Continent by the same old walls, enclosing the same old gardens, colleges, nun- neries and hospitals.* * The census of 1716 enumerates the streets of the Upper Town, and indicates that the Upper Town consisted of a small group of houses clustered around the Market Place or the Place Notre Dame, and stretch- ing out along the Grande Allee and St. John Street. The names are still familiar — Rue Saint Lnuis, Des Jardins, because it ran along the Jesuit Garden ; Sainte Anne, which was then a short street corresponding only to that part of St. Ann Street, which now bounds the English Cathedral; Treasure Lane, not named, but de of [cMiit Cliim li and ( atlicdral, taken Iroiii llic IMacc d'Ar l\fj)r()ducfd from Siiiart"s drawing, 17')'.'. THE OFFICIAL CLASS. commandant, reports that the corvee was fixed at five days' labor for a man and horse. Men without horses had to work ten days, if they supported themselves, or fifteen if they received rations. The religious communities were required to contribute their share of labor ; and when the Recollets, on the plea of pov- erty, refused, the Commandant took the ground that, as they had been endowed with valuable property, as they sold beer, sailed two ships, and let out a horse for hire, they should also bear their share of the public burden. When every one was making money for himself, and civil servants and military officers had all turned traders, friars and Jesuits may be judged leniently if they helped out the revenues of their orders by a little buying and selling; which it would seem they did, if we may judge by the charges of illicit trading freely bandied about at home and hurled at one another across the sea. The only body of men whose hands were so clean that suspicion never touched them were the priests of the Seminary and the parochial clergy. The garrison of Quebec, as we have seen, was small ; but the city, though meagrely supplied with troops, was abundantly pro- vided with civil officials. If Canada did not prosper, it was not for lack of bureaucratic organization in France and the colony. The colonial office in France became in course of time a veritable re- pository of accurate statistics, and a council for the discussion of colonial topics ; but this was somewhat later than the date of our narrative. The Sovereign Council of Canada, with its seven mem- bers and its official staff, was the governing body, as well as the highest court of justice. It heard complaints even of the most triv- ial kind, made laws, registered the King's edicts, tried cases in ap- peal, and in general fulfilled functions very similar to those of the Parliament of Paris. The Council had on its creation appointed local judges who were enjoined to dispense justice without too much technicality {myis chicane) or lengthy procedure, but these were abolished in 1677, and replaced by an inferior court for the trial of civil and criminal case?, that of the Prcvdtc royale, presided over by the Lieutenant-Gencral. The crown business was con- ducted by a Procureur du Roi and a Grand Prcvot — Provost Marshal. A recorder, two notaries and two bailiffs were attached 506 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. to the court, and the Grand Prevot had two deputies and an archer or constable.* After 1677 the Marechaussee, or Marshalsea Court for tracing and punishing vagabonds, was estabHshed. Six mounted police were its active officers. The Admiralty Court was not opened until 1717. Judges were but poorly paid, receiving only 400 livres salary, but they were relieved from the cost of wearing gowns and caps. In addition to these legislators, there was a Grand Maitre des Eaux et Forcts — the Master of Streams and Forests ; an Intend- ant of Commerce and Marine, a Commissary of Marine, a Keeper of the Royal Treasury, a Comptroller of the Beaver Trade, the King's Clerk, a Commissioner General of Provisions, a Surveyor- General and other officials. As all of them were poorly paid, not a few considered themselves justified in supplementing their in- come by such means, fair or foul, as might offer. Of all the officers sent out from France the Intendant had the best opportunity of enriching himself, though few — be it said to their credit — took advantage of their position. The first Intend- ant, Talon, has already been described as a man of unimpeachable honesty and of great administrative ability, who apprehended more clearly than any other nominee of the Government at Versailles the real needs of the colony. The man who last filled the office, Bigot, was a scoundrel and libertine in private life, and a robber of the state and people. Of the intervening occupants of the office, *The position of a notary in Canada has always been, and is to-day, very different from that of the holder of a notarial commission in the United States. He is a member of a distinct learned profession, like the Writer to the Signet in Scotland. He draws deeds, marriage contracts, wills, and thus performs many of the offices of an attorney. He is the guardian of the original deeds which he draws, which must never pass out of his keeping, and which after his death are deposited in the Registrar's office, becoming thus official documents accessible to the public in all future time. The first notarial deed is said to have been drawn in Canada on August nth, 1647, by Laurent Baurman, Long prior to that, however, Champlain had created the office of Greffier, or register, and appointed to it a certain Nicolas. The profession has always been numer- ous. In the census of 1681, besides the two official notaries attached to the court, five others seem to have found employment in the town, or one to something less than 300 inhabitants. WESTERN EXPLORATION AND TRADE. 507 Jacques Duchesneau, Frontenac's enemy, fulfilled most efficiently one of the functions for which it was created, that of a spy and check on the Governor. The office in France was created by Riche- lieu, and the incumbent was to be the supervisor of internal taxes and of public works ; but under Colbert he was endowed with, or at least came to assume control over, judicial and eccle- siastical affairs as well. The expansion of the Intendant's power in Old France was reflected in the'greater importance and influ- ence which these officers arrogated to themselves in New France, where they finally eclipsed the Governor himself. But while the Intendants were entrusted with high administrative functions, and were in some cases men of marked ability and framers of the most important measures passed by the Sovereign Council, it was none the less their duty to draw up ordinances for the most trifling regulations of city and country life. As every ship had to be provided with a doctor, the medical profession was always well represented in the city. The city was supplied with an abundance of tradesmen. There seems to have been even a superfluity in some branches. There were, for example, no less than ten carpenters. Horses, however, were so few that there was no need of a saddler. Apparently the French housewives did not bake at home, as there were three bakers and two pastry cooks to three butchers ; and poor as the citizens were, they would not wear home-made clothes, for there were nine tailors in the town. Priests and nuns were numerous, but all were more or less usefully employed. The stirring events of the closing years of the seventeenth century, from the beginning of Frontenac's first administration to the end of his second, must have filled Quebec with exuberant excitement. Of the great men who have left their footprints over half the continent, a certain number were of European birth, but most of those who went forth, inspired by the newly awakened spirit of exploration which a dawning realization of the vastness of the new world had stimulated, were natives of the colony. It was to the progress of western exploration that Quebec owed in larcre measure its growth in commercial importance. Though the furs were not sold by the Indians or the coureurs de hois in Quebec 508 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. it was the seat of exchange, and the headquarters of all the princi- pal mercantile houses. The policy of the Iroquois, to deflect the trade in peltries from the northern route via the Ottav^a to the Hudson through their own territory, must therefore have been a matter of anxious interest to the merchants of Quebec ; and nat- urally Courcelle's plan to intercept the furs of the Lakes at a fort built at the discharge of Lake Ontario would meet with their hearty approval. But when the scheme took shape under Fron- tenac, and an arrangement was made by him with La Salle, by which the latter was to enjoy certain exclusive trading privileges on condition of his rebuilding the fort and manning it, suspicion, bred of jealousy, was aroused in the mercantile community ; and, in La Salle's absence, the fort was seized on behalf of his cred- itors. Finally Frontenac's successor, Denonville, failing to appreciate the strong strategical position which the fort occupied from a mercantile, as well as a military point of view, dismantled and abandoned it. Poor La Salle! One can hardly follow his career without comparing it with that of more modern adventurers of the same type. Just as events in their relative importance cannot be prop- erly gauged by contemporaries, so the character and achievements of men can be adequately appraised only when their life-histories have been told, and the totality of their work and influence comes distinctly into view. La Salle was to his contemporaries a more or less unscrupulous trader and political schemer. To subsequent generations he stands forth conspicuously among the great makers of America, as Rhodes will probably do among the builders of Africa. Each made great mistakes, each had great faults, but their mistakes and their defects of character become obscured in the blaze of great deeds accomplished, and the still greater achievement which the example of high purpose, masterf-ully ful- filled, stirs a later generation to attempt and consummate. The country folk, or habitants, were poor. Few houses had glass windows, the substitute being paper. Every habitant had his little flower and kitchen garden, in which onions occupied a large space. Though the potato was in use in New England, it was still held in contempt both in Canada and in Old France. The ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. 509 Canadian farmer was not then allowed to raise his own tobacco, lest he should interfere with the interests of France's West Indian Islands. This restriction was not removed till the administration of Intendant Hocquart. The country farmer at that period was so dependent on France for many of the staples of life that, when the ship ''Seine/' in 1704, with Bishop Saint Vallier on board, was captured by the English, the colony, while it could cheerfully resign itself to the detention of its Bishop, was almost driven to despair and famine by the loss of the ship's cargo. The laws against colonial manufacturing and colonial trade were only then being sufficiently relaxed to make it legal for the farmer to adopt that primitive mode of life, of which vestiges are still visible in the more remote parishes, where each family raises its own food, grows its own flax, weaves its own linen, shears its own sheep, converts the wool on domestic looms into coarse cloth, and in general provides for all its necessities without drawing on the outer world. Flax had been recently introduced, for it appears in 1707, in the Edict on Tithes, as one of the articles of cultivation from which the Church derived revenue. Dogs were more commonly used as draught animals than at present. They were harnessed to the sledges of the rich and to the sleighs of the poor, for horses were still rare. The few horses in use by the farmers were, like the horses in the Northwest to-day, so inured to cold that they were turned out in winter to provide for themselves until the snow became too deep ; and when more than one horse was harnessed to a sleigh, they were driven tandem, as is still the case, owing to the narrowness of the snow roads ; while oxen were bound to their loads, as they still are in some places, by the horns instead of by a yoke. The conservatism of the Canadian is certainly one of his saving virtues. It is strikingly revealed in the persistence of trifling customs through two centuries. For instance, the habitants arriv- ing overnight in the old days with their small stock of farm produce, camped on the river bank along the Cul de Sac, where they would light fires for culinary or other purposes, until the practice was forbidden by an ordinance of the Council, on the ground that it endangered the safety of the Lower Town. Till re- 5IO QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. cently, the small farmer from the distant parishes on the south shore never entered an inn, but slept by the roadside, and so timed his journey that he came during the last night within easy reach of the early market. To protect the city from fire, a chimney tax was imposed in 1707, and the size of chimneys was regulated. The tax was expended in providing leather buckets, which were to be always kept full of water, and were distributed, 24 at the Chateau, 20 at the Intendant's palace, 25 at the Jesuit College, 20 at the house of Frangois Hazeur, the finest private house in town, on the Place Royale, facing the harbor and in view of the Church of Notre Dame de la Victoire, and lastly 20 at Aubert's house in the Rue Sault au Matelot, then the most populous street in Quebec. The tax, it would seem, left a balance, which was expended on the repair of the stairway leading from the Lower to the Upper Town, and providing it with a gate wide enough only for foot passengers, thus shutting out beasts of burden, which had hereto- fore used this short cut to the detriment of the steps. A regular ferry between the city and Point Levis was not estab- lished until 1722, when a ten years' contract was given to Sieur Lanouillier for boats propelled by some kind of mechanism, un moidin de bateau. The old-fashioned horse-boats in which the pad- dle-wheels were turned by horses, by means of a rude mechan- ical contrivance, were used as ferry boats for nearly half a century after steam was employed as a motive power upon the river. In the city the luxury of good living was freely indulged in. Kalm somewhat later tells of the excellent dinners of many courses that he enjoyed at the Jesuit College and the Ursuline Nunnery, washed down with an abundance of good claret. The appetite before breakfast was whetted by a glass of brandy, but light wines were the beverage most indulged in by men who could aflford them: the women confined themselves to choco- late and coffee. Beer was the beverage of the poor, and one of Talon's enterprises, as we have seen, was a brewery in Quebec. The tables of the rich were well served, silver forks and spoons being laid beside each plate; but every diner was supposed to provide his own knife, a survival of the early habits of the hunter. The bonnet — rouge in Quebec and bleu in Montreal— was the PRICES REGULATED BY LAW. habitant's distinguishing article of dress, and still hold^ its place in Canada, while in France it has been relegated to the top of the liberty pole. Men servants were plentiful, but women servants so scarce that even wealthy housewives had often to do their own work. Pierre Boucher, who was sent to France in 1662 to plead for reforms, wrote a little book for intending emigrants containing more correct information than we are apt to find in modern docu- ments of the same kind ; for while he admits that ''good people may live in Canada very contentedly," he warns *'bad people not to go, because they are too closely looked after." He gave the world the first information of petroleum when he tells of a ''spring in the Iroquois country from which exudes a greasy water that is like oil, and that is u^ed in many cases instead of oil." He gives the price of light wines at ten sous a quart, brandy and Spanish wines at thirty sous a quart, wheat at 100 sous a bushel of sixty pounds, though he says it sometimes rose to 120 sous. Wages in winter were twenty sous with food ; in summer thirty sous with food. Clothes, he says, were about twice the price of the same article in France, and money so much dearer that fifteen sous in France would go as far as twenty sous in Canada. But prices rose and fell even in a community where they were regulated by ordinances, for the records of the Council show that it could not always enforce its own tariff. On one plea and another merchants, charged with the offence of selling their goods at higher than tariff prices, escaped with light fines. Twenty- two livres was an insignificant penalty to impose on Jacques de la Mothe for selling his claret at too livres the harriquc'^, when the tariff price was 60 livres : and his tobacco at 60 sous, when the tariff price was 40 sous. There were even corners in wheat, for in 1668 it was so scarce that 190 bushels brought down from Three Rivers were held at seven livres, or francs, the bushel, till the Jesuits, who had a stock on hand, broke the market by selling theirs at five francs. "The barriquc varied in the different provinces of France from 200 to 250 quarts. 512 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Lahontan in 1685 puts the price of a barrique of Bordeaux at from 40 to 60 livres, and brandy at 80 to 100 livres; but a glass of wine, sold over the bar, cost six sous of French money, and a drink of brandy 20 sous. Sugar cost from 20 to 30 sous a pound.* The Sovereign Council not only regulated prices of merchan- dise and of beaver skins, but filled the functions of a municipal assembly. There are ordinances which laid down rules for the tavern-keeper, such as forbidding wine to be sold with meals except by permission; others prescribed the exact width of streets, such as that which requires Ste. Genevieve Street to be eighteen feet clear from fence to fence; others forbade fire- wood from being piled in the streets, or in vacant lots between the houses; and prohibited the use of shingles as a roofing material except on dormer windows. Tin soon became the favorite cover- ing, as tin plate was then really tin plate, being coated with as much as five per cent, of the unoxydizable metal, and as wood smoke did not attack it the old roofs remained bright as silver till the second half of the last century, when coal came into partial use as domestic fuel. The cost of living was high, if luxuries were indulged in; but money was rapidly made in trade by certain favored classes, and Quebec, being the center of trade, as well as of ecclesiastical and civil power, received its share of profits from many sources ; while Montreal, being nearer the sources of wealth *The copper currency of Canada consisted of deniers, worth i/i2th of a sou ; double deniers, worth i/6th of a sou, and the Sou, worth i/20th of a livre, or a franc. The ecru was worth 3 livres. A piece of money known as the quart d'ecu, or 15 sous, or sols, was in circulation. The sou differed in value, as did the livre of Paris and of Tours, but the cheaper sou was raised to the value of the standard by being stamped with fleur de Us, when it was known in Canada, and referred to in the ordinances as pieces tapees. If, as Boucher says, 20 sous in France were worth only 15 sous in Canada, money was at a premium of 33 per cent, instead of 25 per cent, as he states; but he probably meant that a 15 sou piece would buy in France as much as 20 sous in Canada. See interesting Note on Currency of Canada in Chapais' "Jean Talon," Page 214. SCANT INTELLECTUAL LIBERTY. — the fur-bearing regions of the Ottawa and the Lakes — was not left to starve. There was no printing press in Canada to disseminate truth and falsehood, to preach morality, and to distribute scandal. The administration discouraged pubhcity and freedom of discussion, and the Church was at one with the State on that question ; for though in 1665 the Jesuits had discussed the advisability of im- porting a printing press, it was in order to print exclusively les langnes, presumably either Greek and Latin classics or books in the native languages. This absence of the printing press coupled with a close censor- ship over imported literature, and the prohibition of all inter- course with the English Puritans, assisted the government and the Church in excluding heresy. Nevertheless a few heretics did find admission, some as soldiers, but more as clerks. Laval in 1670 memorializes Colbert strongly on the subject, pointing out that French merchants, those of the true faith, entrust their interests in the colony to dangerous heretics, who insidiously diffused their influence, and by their behavior, which was often unexceptionable, weakened the popular prejudice against their persons and professions. Lest these theological reasons should not carry sufficient weight, he drew the Minister's attention to the danger of revolution to which the presence of a large body of Protestants in the colony would expose the State. If any heretics remained in the colony it was not for lack of warning from France, for the King in a letter to Denonville in 1685 congratulated himself on the number of conversions that had been made in France through the cogent arguments brought to bear after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes ; and urged his Lieutenant to use soldiers and severity, as well as the assis- tance of the P)ishop, in persuading the few heretics in the colony to abandon their pernicious opinions. In the same dis- patch he recommends the encouragement of the wool industry and tanning. The King as an administrator could pass from the affairs of this world to those of the next, as easily as, in private life, he could exchange the counsels of his confessors for the charms and endearments of his mistresses. Fortunatelv there were so 514 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. few Huguenots in Canada on whom to billet his troops that the King, however willing he might be, could not repeat the horrors of the dragonnades. Canada's history, therefore, has not been blotted, nor the character of the inhabitants debased, by such horrors as were committed in France in the name of religion by an arbitrary monarch, under the inspiration of a bigoted woman and a vindictive hierarchy. Canada suffered commercially and poHtically from the exclusion of the Huguenots, but her peo- ple and clergy did not receive into their veins the venom of that uncharitableness which is the bitter fruit of religious dis- sension. There was thus a homogeneity in the population, its habits and its institutions, which should have made the colony powerful and able to resist a foreign foe, if only it had been ade- quately supported by the mother country, or else freely allowed to work out its own salvation. But while no assistance was extended to it from France, it was forbidden to help itself ; and the inevita- ble happened. Nevertheless New France is still New France, and her relations to the neglectful parent are well expressed by Th. Bentzon in ''Notes de Voyage." "Canada/' so says the author, "reminds me of a widow, who after a passionate, amorous marriage, finds in a second matrimonial experiment the safety, peace and material advantage which result from alliance with a man of means and sober habits. Her heart, nevertheless, remains in the keeping of her first love, who, despite his faults, worshipped instead of merely respecting and supporting her. She would not, it is true, exchange her present comfortable estate for those joyous days of youthful madness, still she sighs when she thinks of them, and even takes pleasure in bemoaning her past sufferings." CHAPTER XXVIII. The Struggle for the Fur Trade of Hudson Bay; the Quebec Hudson Bay Companies, and a Discussion on Colonial Policy. Two names appear conspicuously in the annals of trade and exploration in the latter half of the seventeenth century. Aledard de Chouart, Sieur de Grosseilliers, and Pierre d'Esprit, the Sieur Radisson, were more closely united by kindred tastes than even by family ties; and so highly were they esteemed for their energ}' and knowledge that, even after being suspected of treason, they were received back into favor by the Canadian authorities. Grosseilliers was married to Radisson's sister, but both were attracted to the Indians and their free, un- trammeled life, and both had in a great measure thrown off, together with their prejudices, those sentiments of patriotism and honor, the absence of which leaves human nature poor in- deed. Their intercourse wath the Indians of the Upper Lakes had instructed them more or less accurately as to the geography of the land lying between the Lakes and the Mississippi, and between the Lakes and the Hudson Bay. If the early voyagers and mis- sionaries learned so little of the more remote regions of the conti- nent, it was owing to native suspicion and secretiveness, for the knowledge of the Indians is as wide as their wanderings, and their power of observation as strong as their memory. Where they could have given minute descriptions, they only dropped vague hints. Whether Grosseilliers and Radisson had actually reached Tames Bay from the Height of Land which divides the Lakes from that sheet of water, or whether they derived the information from the Indians who hunted there, they certainly ascertained that a rich field for traffic in furs existed in the country to the north, which tlic Englisli claimed by riglit of discovery, but which they had not actually occupied. It is believed that they 5l6 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. proposed to the agent in Quebec of the old company, which was then moribund and about to receive its coup de grace, that the company should equip an expedition by water to retrieve its for- tunes in this inexhaustible and productive region ; but all the thanks they got was a fine for trading without a license. In disgust they carried their knowledge and enthusiasm first to Boston, where, through Grosseilliers' persuasion, Capt. Zachary Gillam became interested in the fur trade, and was induced to sail his ship to Hudson Bay. This attempt failed. After further disappointments in the American colonies the Huguenot adven- turers so inspired the English commissioners, then in New Eng- land, with their own enthusiasm, that these officials urged them to accompany them to London. There, under the patronage of Prince Rupert, and with the pecuniary aid of the Prince, and other titled and untitled notables, two ships were fitted out and sailed in 1668 for the Bay. Only one, the "Nonesuch,'^ owned by the same Capt. Zachary Gillam who had made the unsuccessful at- tempt to enter the Bay in 1664, reached the appointed destination. Its crew wintered at the mouth of Prince Rupert River, near the head of James Bay, and not over 150 miles from the nearest French settlements; built Fort Charles, and brought back their ship with so rich a cargo of furs that the foundation of the Hud- son Bay Company, under a most liberal charter from Charles II. » was the result. Prince Rupert, Radisson's and Grosselliers' patron, was the first Governor, and gave his name to one-half the North American continent, which till our own day was known as Prince Rupert's Land. Rumors of this invasion by the English of a territory which the French claimed as their own, by virtue of its having been in- cluded in the sweeping concession given by Richelieu to the Com- pany of the One Hundred Associates, having peached the Intend- ant, Talon, he comjnitte^ to the Jesuit missionaries the task of watching the English. These he could, without reserve, rely upon to aid in frustrating the schemes of the heretics. To this com- mission we owe one of the most interesting narratives of the Relations— i\\2ii describing Father AlbaneFs journey to Hudson Bay. Starting from Tadousac in August, 1671, with two French ENGLISH TRADING IN HUDSON BAY. and Indian guides, he passed the winter on Lake St. John. As soon as Spring unlocked the icebound rivers he proceeded, ac- companied only by Indians, on his journey by way of Lake Mis- tassini to Hudson Bay, which he reached in the end of May, con- vincing himself of the presence of the English by seeing two of their deserted huts, and also a boat flying the English flag. As usual, the Jesuit acted as a political agent, and at a great pow-wow held on the Height of Land urged the Indians to stop trading with the English in the north, using as an argument that they did not pray to God.* He begged them to turn their steps back to Lake St. John, where they would always find a black-robed priest ready to teach and to baptize them. Although Father Albanel claimed that he always found the savages very easily moved by descriptions of hell's horror and heaven's delight, he admits that the argument which appealed most forcibly to his sav- age hearers was the relief from Iroquois raids which they owed to the assistance of the French ; for even in that distant region the Iroquois had spread terror. Dreary mementoes of the incursions of these exterminating savages were met with almost to the very shores of Hudson Bay; but since the campaigns of Tracy and Courcelle the range of their predatory operations had been cur- tailed. Father Albanel's report confirmed the rumor of the presence of the English, and it was clearly seen that, if they were allowed to gain a footing on the Hudson Bay, Canada would be threatened from both north and south. Nevertheless the Hudson Bay Com- pany was allowed for ten years longer to build and maintain trad- ing posts — Fort Rupert, on the southeast end of James Bay ; !Moose Fort, on Hayes Island, at the mouth of Moose River; Fort Albany, on the Albany River, and a fort at the discharge of the Nelson River. The Coutpagnic des Indes, which had replaced the Company of the Hundred Associates, looked on apathetically, while this trading company was making its position good, * Unparliamentary compliments were then paid with less reserve than at pres- ent. Charles II. took for the Crown an interest in the stock of the Hudson Bay Company. On presenting a dividend of 225 guineas on /"300 of stock to William the Third, the directors apologized for its not being larger by explaining that they " have been the greatest sufferers of any company from those common enemies of all mankind, the French." 5l8 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. and preparing to defend itself, not only against French attack, but also against New England poaching and illicit trade. When at last France moved, it was at the in- stigation of an opposition trading company — the Compagnie du Nord, in which, as we have already said, Quebec was deeply interested. Colbert had urged Duchesneau in 1678 to take meas- ures to oust the English from the Bay, but nothing was really done, except sending Joliet to report on their operations at Fort Albany. He brought back the same report of the successful trade in which they were engaged. It was not till 1681 that Gros- seillier and Radisson, having obtained pardon for their treachery, were employed by the Compagnie du Nord to command two barks, the ''St. Pierre" and the "St. Anne," commissioned to that region. At first they did not venture to attack the strongest Eng- lish forts, but seized the post of St. Therese, near which Fort Nelson was subsequently built. What then happened is not very clear. According to one account they found young Gillam, the son of Captain Zachary, and Governor Bridgar in charge of the post, and carried them captive in the Hudson Bay Company's own ship to Canada. The other account is, that on their way back to Can- ada they fell in with a Boston ship, the ''Gargon," a trespasser on the Hudson Bay fur preserves, which they took to Quebec. Whether it was the Company's ship or a poacher, La Barre, the Governor, for reasons that are not very clear, but to the great disgust of its captors and of the colonial stockholders of the French Company, released it and its owner, Benjamin Gillam. This was not the only unsatisfactory experience of the Compagnie du Nord with officials. The two ships returned laden with peltries, but the agent of the Farmer of the Revenue ("Societe de la Ferme du Canada"), Mons. Chalon, interfered to prevent the Company transferring its furs at Isle Perce to another ship for transportation and sale in Holland and Spain. De la Ches- naye, who was the principal merchant of Quebec, and his partners of the Compagnie du Nord, protested. Though the Intendant, de Meulles, did not decide the question, he did order the ships to dis- charge their cargoes in the roadstead of Quebec. De la Ches- naye proposed a compromise, but the question was not settled THE COMPAGXIE DU NORD. until the following year. Nor did this end the friction between the Compagnie dii Xord and the Farmer of the Revenue. The feud existed at least until 1685 ; for though the Governor and In- tendant both agreed that Hudson Bay was beyond the jurisdic- tion of the Farmer of the Revenue, the Farmer's agent claimed that the Hudson Bay traders were diverting peltries from the Montreal market, where tolls could be levied on them, to ports be- yond their supervision, thereby depriving them of their dues. More stirring events were then transpiring, and a Thirty Years' War for the possession of the Hudson Bay had begun. It would seem that the partners had separated : Radisson had sold himself to the English; his brother-in-law remained true to Can- ada ; for Radisson in the ship "Happy Return" had surprised, in 1684, his nephew, Jean Baptiste Grosseilliers, then in the employ of the Compagnie dii Nord, at a post near the mouth of Hayes River. Besides capturing his relative, he impounded 300,000 francs' worth of furs. The loss of the peltries was seriously felt by the Compagnie du Nord. The subscribers and directors in Canada of what is called "The Hudson Bay Company, established in Can- ada," held a meeting in Quebec on October 31st, 1684. After expressing their regret that they did not send an agent in 1683, to plead for the King's assistance in their efforts to destroy the English trade in the bay and conquer the lands around Fort Nelson, they resolved to send le Sieur de Conporte and le Sieur Pierre Soumande to France, to secure the King's permission to despatch a canoe force overland to suprise the English and frus- trate the schemes of the faithless Radisson. The allowance made to the Sieur Conporte to cover expenses was to be 1,200 livres, but if he was obliged to spend more, he was authorized to do so. The Sieur Soumande, who was evidently going to France on his own business, was allowed his expenses from La Rochelle to Paris and his expenses while detained in Paris. The mission was suc- cessful, for the Company received their patent of incorporation in May, 1685, and they made reprisals on the other Hudson Bay Company with a vengeance. Governor Ea Rarre was about to retire, and one of liis last act? was to authorize Juchercau Joliet, the brother of Louis, to 520 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. take official possession of the River Nemiskan as a challenge to the Hudson Bay Company. Radisson, guarding the English in- terests on the Bay, forbade the French to traffic with the Indians. The response was the Chevaher de Troyes' winter expedition by way of the Ottawa to Hudson Bay. This brilliant exploit was the forerunner of many others, in which the heroism of Iberville and other Canadian leaders stands forth conspicuously. The Canadian Company was reorganized repeatedly, and there was perpetual confusion as to its title. It was called indifferently by various names. In the original document quoted above it is called the ''Compagnie de la baye d'Hudson, etahlie en Canada." In another original document in my possession, dated 1697, the King, in a communication to the shareholders, addresses them as adventurers of the "Compagnie du Canada." They reply as shareholders in the ''Compagnie du Nord" Dr. William Doug- las, in his ''Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Plant- ing of the British Settlements in North America," published in Boston, 1760, summarizes the tedious war in the following brief paragraph : *Tn the summer, anno 1686, in time of peace, the French from Canada became masters of all our Hudson's Bay factories, Port Nelson excepted. Anno 1693 the English recovered their fac- tories, but the French got possession of them again soon after. Anno 1696 two English men-of-war retook them. In Queen Anne's war the French from Canada were again masters of these fac- tories; but by the peace of Utrecht, anno 1713, the French quit- claimed them to the English so far south as 49 D. N. lat. Hitherto we have not heard of any attempt made upon them by the Can- adians in this French war, which commenced in the Spring 1744." And thus Hudson Bay remained ultimately in the possession of the British ; but while the struggle for its trade was in progress, the control of the Hudson Bay Company was a perpetual subject of dispute between the French and the Canadian shareholders. The Rochellois in 1693 contended that they held a majority of the stock, and that the trade should be conducted direct with La Rochelle, and not through Quebec, where the merchants made 60 per cent profit on supplies, and where the Farmers of the State THE BEAVER TRADE. 52 1 levied heavy taxes. Quebec nevertheless continued to make its gains. The Company cannot then have been very prosperous, for it was unable either to share the expenses of Iberville's expedition in 1696, or profit by his capture of Fort Bourbon. Its influence, as well as its financial status, must have continued to decline, as we find that in 1697 it was obliged to refuse to incur expenses in de- fending Fort Bourbon, and in 1700 its exclusive privileges were revoked and bestowed upon the inhabitants of Quebec. The Compagnie de Castor, or de la Colonie du Canada, was then founded. The Compagnie du Canada was a more popular and purely Quebec company than its predecessor.* Its constitution was framed by Canadians. Every trader in Canada was obliged to take an interest in it; and, to secure a market for its furs the Farmer of the King's Revenue, Alons. Oudiette, was com- pelled to buy and sell in France all the peltries the Company might oflfer. Poor Oudiette had paid 350,000 livres for the privilege of being ruined, and the Company soon found that the Farmer of the Revenue could not pay for what he bought, unless there was a market for the wares. The Company, therefore, speedily follow- ed Oudiette into bankruptcy. But a certain enterprising pro- moter, a Mons. Aubert, reorganized it. His panacea for securing a market for the Company's goods and preventing private trade was to impose a heavy penalty on any trader w^ho should retain a beaver skin in his possession for over forty-eight hours, and re- fuse to accept as cash the Company's promise to pay. Beaver skins were declared legal tender at 4 francs the pound ; the promises of the Company were, of course, never redeemed. Promises and beaver skins became plentiful, but money scarce. In the primitive days barter satisfied the requirements of private life, * In the appendix will be found a copy of the contract between the Com- pany and fifteen coureurs de bois whom it was employing for Fort Bourbon. They were to be paid three hundred francs a year, but besides their wages they were to have the right to use caribou skins out of which to make shirts, overcoats, trousers, mittens and moccasins for their own use while in the North; but they were not to traffic in furs on pain of forfeiting their wages. They were to give a year's notice before leaving the Company's service. If they died their wages were to be paid to the date of their death to their heirs. If taken prisoners, however, their wages were to be paid only to the date of their captivity, and no ransom was to be paid for their release. Three only of the fifteen were able to sign their own names. 522 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. but when Canada engaged in foreign trade and international com- merce, currency and credit were required, and she possessed neither. This need of some currency, other than beaver and moose skins, had been felt before this date, for the Intendant Meulles as far back as 1685 reported to the Finance Minister that the idea had occurred to him of putting into forcible circulation notes of various denominations, made by cutting playing cards into quart- ers, and stamping each with the fleur-de-lis and a crown. The cards were signed by the Governor, the Intendant and the Clerk of the Treasury of Quebec. They were convertible into bills of exchange. The next move was to issue a card in France payable to the bearer on demand; and the example was followed by a colonial issue, to be confined to the colony. As all were received by the Treasurer in Quebec in payment for bills of exchange on the imperial treasury, so long as the bills were paid, the cards were popular and circulated as currency in domestic trade. But when the French treasury was emptied by the costly wars and ex- travagant expenditures of the Court of Louis XIV., and the treas- ury bills came back to the colony protested, card money was, of course, discredited, and fell rapidly below its face value. Never- theless, it continued to be issued, for, according to Parkman, in 1714 there were 2,000,000 francs of card money in the hands of the 20,000 inhabitants of Canada, while 1,000,000 of good money was ample for the needs of trade.* Beaver skins continued to be the most valuable and profitable article of trade, but their value declined with their consumption. Fashion changed, and hats with lower crowns and smaller brims diminished the trade long before silk and rabbit fur actually displaced the beaver. Quebec exported in 1788 130,758 beaver skins and 200,358 bushels of wheat. But the trade in furs declined as the export of wheat increased. Mackenzie reported that in 1798 only 106,000 skins entered the market, and that 13,364 of the best * As compensation for the refusal of civil rights and urgent restrictions of trade, the people had enjoyed the great advantage of freedom from direct taxation and the advantage of merely nominal duties on exports. Ten per cent was levied on wines and tobacco, and one-fourth of the beaver skins and one-tenth of the moose skins were collected as a direct tax on the mercantile classes. COLONIZATION COMPANIES, PAST AND PRESENT. of these found their way to the United States. The Hudson Bay Company's returns in 1891 account for only 460 beaver.* The beaver trade of France was disadvantageously affected by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Many of the Huguenots, who were hat makers, carried their skill to other lands, especially England, which drew its supply of beaver skins partly from the Iroquois through the Hudson, and partly from Canadian traders, who smuggled their goods across the New York and New Eng- land frontiers. Lahontan tells in his own witty way how^ the trade was conducted in his time, and how !Mons. Perrot, the Gov- ernor, though receiving a salary of only 1,000 ecus a year, man- aged in a very few years, through an illicit use, presumably, of his official influence, to make a fortune of 60.000 ecus out of furs. As a consequence of restriction French trade was so heavily handicapped, as Charlevoix tells us, that after de Troves' suc- cessful raid on the English post in the Hudson Bay, the two governments of England and France agreed that Fort Nelson should be a neutral trading post — a scheme which Denonville very sensibly opposed, mainly on the ground that, as the English merchants always paid more for furs than the French, they would monopolize the trade, t Dismal as had been the failure of the colonization companies, France was not yet convinced of the futility of advancing coloni- * Wolley in his Two Years' Journal in New York, published in 1701, gives as the price of beaver skins los. 3d. a pound. t Alexander Henry, in his Travels and Adventures, says: " Under the French Government of Canada the fur trader of Canada was subjected to a variety of regulations, established and enforced by royal authority, and in 1765, the period at which I began to prosecute it anew, some remains of the ancient system were still preserved. No person could go into the countries lying northwest of Detroit unless furnished -with a license, and the exclusive trade of a particular district was capable of being enjoyed in virtue of a grant from military commanders. The exclusive trade of Lake Superior was given to myself by the commandant of Fort Michillimackinac, and to prosecute it I purchased goods which I found at his post at twelve months' credit. My stock was the freight of four canoes, and I took it at the price of 10,000 pounds weight of good and merchantable beaver. It is in beaver that accounts are kept at Michillimackinac, but in default of this article, other furs and skins are acceptable in payment, being first reduced into their value in beaver. Beaver was at this time at the price of 2 shillings 6 pence per pound, Michillimackinac currency; other skins at 6 shillings each; martin at i shilling 6 pence, and others in proportion. To carry the goods to my wintering place on Lake Superior I engaged twelve men at 250 livres of the same currency each, that is, 100 pounds weight of beaver skins. For provisions I purchased 50 barrels of maize at 10 pounds of beaver per barrel." 524 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. zation through the machinery of commercial monopolies. She tried it again with like ill success in the Mississippi Company of 1717. Strange to say, after a long period of vicissitudes, the system has been revived in our own day by all the great and some of the smaller powers of Europe, with consequences which bear, under widely different conditions, some resemblance to the com- plications which arose in New France. Not a few of the forays on the borders of New France and New England would no more have been conceived and carried out by consent of the cen- tral government, than the Jameson Raid would have been planned and committed by Great Britain, had the territory north of the Transvaal been a crown colony instead of a chartered one.* In comparing the policies pursued by the parent States, France and England, towards their respective colonies in North America, the virtue of greater consistency at least must be allow- ed to France. If France lost her colonies by the fortune of war, England lost her's in a manner less creditable to her statesmanship — by revolt. From first to last, in the creation and management of the Eng- lish colonies, the people took the initiative ; the home government did little else than introduce the element of confusion. Through- out the whole colonial period we can recognize suspicion between the mother country and her colonies, and the vacillating policy of the former. We see charters granted and repealed; proprietary titles conferred and then cancelled and recreated. On the part of the colonists there was selfish reluctance to co-operate for mutual defence and refusal to allow the mother country even to introduce unity into the military system. On the other hand, Parliament passed unjust navigation laws intended to benefit England's interests at the expense of her dependencies — laws which encouraged smuggling and piracy and every form of illicit * A commercial company may be an apt colonizer when the article of com- merce it exploits can only be produced by encouraging colonization; but in Canada furs were substantially the only article of export, and the wild animals yielding them had been exterminated in proportion as colonization had progressed. The development of Manitoba and the Great Northwest as an agricultural region was with reason retarded by the Hudson Bay and the Northwest Companies, as is proved by the rapidity with which the buffalo and fur-bearing animals of the Plains and of the Rocky Mountains have disappeared before the advance of agriculture and settlement. FRENCH AND ENGLISH COLONIAL SYSTEMS. trade in colonial ports, and provided no machinery for their own enforcement, or penalties for their violation. England's naviga- tion laws, in fact, operated rather as irritants than as measures of oppression to the colonies. At the base of England's colonial policy was the honest intention to form self-governing communi- ties, which would carry with them across the seas English laws and customs, as opposed to Spanish officialism and French abso- lutism.* As time advanced and complications multiplied, the ne- cessity became apparent of some organic tie which would cause the units to coalesce for mutual defence against the foreign foe, and harmonize internal interests and differences. England thought that her Parliament, which had been the safeguard of English liberty, should be trusted by Englishmen everywhere to legislate on matters affecting the common good and common safety. The English Kings, with less reason, thought that as representing the nation, they might at times exert their authority in matters of colonial administration. But the colonists would submit neither to Parliament nor to King. Schemes of federation such as those proposed by Penn, and later by Franklin, met with the hearty approval neither of England nor of her dependencies. The danger was not great enough to induce the colonists to forget their hereditary jealousies, and abandon their selfish and narrow views ; and England looked askance at any scheme for a Colonial Parliament, lest sooner or later such a body should arrogate func- tions belonging to the Imperial Parliament alone. The opposi- tion at present against an Irish Parliament is doubtless inspired by a similar apprehension.! * The charter of the Hudson Bay Company describes the inhospitable lands ceded to that company in free and common socage as one of the Plantations or Colonies in America. t Pownall, in his Colonial Administration, while recognizing the good cause for growing discontent among the American colonists, and advocating a vague scheme of imperial federation, warns Great Britain against the danger of further- ing any movement looking towards consolidation of the colonies themselves; while now the first step towards imperial safety is recognized to be the con- solidation of the various colonial groups as a step towards their incorporation into an imperial federation, whose constitution shall unite the divergent fiscal and economical interests of the different parts of the British Empire, and solve the ever recurring problem of how to impose an imperial tax for imperial purposes, without violating the principle that the taxpayer alone can tax himself. This is a principle, strange to say, departed from only in the Territories of the United States, where delegates may sit in the Federal Legislature, but not vote, and where American citizens may not cast a vote for President. 526 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. French statesmen must have seen, in the Enghsh haphazard colonial policy, and in the jealousy prevailing in her colonial fam- ily and their suspicion of the parent State, the only safety of their North American dependencies. For a United Britain would, with the aid of the Iroquois, or even without their aid, have ren- dered the valley of the St. Lawrence untenable by France. But if the same statesmen flattered themselves that a merely consistent policy necessarily gave strength to the system to which it was applied, events were soon to arise of a nature to disabuse them. One respect in which the French colonial system differed es- sentially from the English was in giving the Church almost co- ordinate powers with the State. The position assigned to the Superior of the Jesuits in the preliminary council of 1647, the Bishop or his coadjutor, in the Supreme Council of 1663 ; the charter granted to a professedly religious community like that of Ville Marie, carrying the right of nominating its own governor; and the permission accorded to a religious body like the Sulpi- cians, to exercise seignorial control, with haute, moyenne and basse justice, over what shortly became the most im- portant defensive position, from a military point of view, on the St. Lawrence, are anomalies such as cannot be laid at the door of English policy. Had the English government attempted to force a system of this nature on English colonists, the attempt would not have succeeded. Had the French system been^obnox- ious to the majority of the French colonists, and opposed to their national habits of thought, it would have been resisted. There was no resistance ; and, as a consequence, a colonial system of dual government by Church and State was called into existence, with far-reaching results. Looking backward, we can appreciate better than could his contemporaries the full scope at once of Frontenac's genius and of his colonial policy. His plan of throwing out a chain of posts between the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, of which Cataraqui was to be the first link, was admirable. The adventurous temper of many of the colonists who had emigrated to Canada was a splendid qualification for men who were to defend a girdle of forts, make each a center of settlement, and thus win a wilderness to civilization and a continent to France. The mother CHARTERED COMPANIES OF RECENT DATE. country could well have followed the example of England, and spared many of her more turbulent children to create a New France across the sea. Early in the i8th century France was beginning to seethe with the discontent which was to cul- minate in the Revolution. Had her rulers looked across the chan- nel, and duly estimated the quantity of dangerous explosive ma- terial in England for which America was affording an outlet, they would have encouraged emigration, rather than discouraged it by refusing, as they did, political liberty and freedom of thought and of creed to the colonists. A slight relaxation of political and eccle- siastical thraldom would have induced much larger numbers of the more restless and energetic of the French population to migrate than actually found their way to the St. Lawrence. Once free, and inspired by the atmosphere of the American forest, prairie, lake and river, they would have become an irresistible horde of cotireurs de hois, who would have peopled the whole West while the English were slowly preparing to consolidate themselves into a political confederation east of the Alleghenies. As it was, Frontenac's plans not only failed, but they weakened the de- fensive power of the colony by scattering instead of concentrating its feeble forces. A copious stream of immigration was necessary to their consummation, and that Canada never enjoyed under the French regime. When we consider the complete failure, from the point of view of colonization, of the chartered companies of the seventeenth cen- tury, we may well feel surprised at the revival by England of this method of national expansion in the latter half of the nineteenth. All the chartered companies of to-day are, however, understood to be merely forerunners of Government, and speedily resign their charters for a pecuniary consideration, after giving the powers creating them a title to the district exploited. The British North Borneo Company, founded in 1881, gave place to a protectorate in 1888. The Royal Niger Company of 1886 sold its rights and territory to the British Government for ^865,000. The Imperial British East Africa Company, created in 1885, disposed of its possessions to the British Government in 1894 for £250.000. Cecil Rhodes' famous British South Africa Company is still in 528 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. existence, but its powers as a governing body have been very much crippled since the Jameson raid and the war against Loben- gula. The German East Africa Company resigned its governing functions in 1890, and the German New Guinea Company fol- lowed its example in 1899. The British African Commercial Com- panies alone have undoubtedly added to the Empire about 2,000,- 000 square miles of territory, whose value is by some belittled, even as the worth of Canada was depreciated by the statesmien of France, as it also was by those of England when they resigned Kirke's conquest without a murmur. The charters of the modem companies differ in many material respects from those of the seventeenth century, but they resemble strangely, in their essential features, those of France in the seventeenth century, in so far as they are endowed with political functions while organized as money-making corporations. APPENDIX. 1. pROCES Verbal of a Conference Held in Quebec on October 31, 1684, AT WHICH Certain Delegates were Appointed TO Lay before the King the Needs of the Compagnie de la Baye d'Hudson, Establie en Canada, and Ask his Assistance against the English who have Established a Post at Two Hundred Leagues from Fort Nelson. Nous Soubz signes Dirrecteurs et Intereses En la Compagnie de la baye D'hudson Establie En Canada Ce soubz le bon plai- sir de Sa ^lajeste et de lagrement de Nos Seigneurs le General, et Intendant Estans Assembles En la Maison de Monsieur De Comporte Tun des dits Interessez, pour Conferer sur les Ex- pediens que Nous Jugerions les plus Convenables et plus Ad- vantageux pour faire reussir Enterprise desia Commancee pour la d. baye D'hudson, et comme il a Este remarque par la d. Compagnie que faute Davoir Envoye en france Lannee der- niere quelque personne dicelle Capables et Intelligente pour supplier Sa Ma j este de vouloir L'honorer de Sa protection pour la d. Enterprize Contre les Efforts des Anglois qui la menacent de ly traverser et Nuyre autant quils pourront au succeds quelle pretend y faire par son Commerce et obtenir de Sa d. Majeste La grace d'avoir en propriete les terres de la d. bay Dhudson au port Nelson en telle quantite Et droits quelle Jugera, et, d'autant que les dits Interesses assembles apres une I^Iure de- liberation ont Juge a propos ayant Eu La permission de Nos dits Seigneurs Le General et Intendant denvoyer deux per- sonnes de la d® Compagnie cette annee en france pour obtenir de Sa Majeste sy faire se pent la propriete du d. port de Nelson en la d. baye d'hudson, et quil soit permis aux dits Interesses d'y Envoycr les Navires ou barques quils Jugeront pour faire valloir leur d. Commerce et Mcsure a Cause des grands risqucs quil y a d'y Envoyer par i\Icr soir par les glaces soit par les difficultes qui se Rencontrent pour y arriver que pour les an- 529 530 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. glois qui soubz pretexte d'un Establissement quils y ont des- puis quelque annees a deux cents Lieux de celluy de la d. Com- pagnie, pretendent nous en deffandre L'acceds et Nous Menas- sent duzer Contre Nous, les Navires ou barques, et Contre les gens qui les Monteront touttes sortes dactes d'hostilite affin de la suplanter du d. Poste dhudson et la Contraindre de ny plus revenir par les perthes quils luy cauzeront et Ce quelle a lieu de Craindre particullierement Cette annee par la Mauvaise Volonte du Sieur Ratisson qui sest alie Contre lengagement quil avoit avec Elle, avec les dits anglois pour la Ruiner et des- truire, pour quoy les d. deux personnes qui seront Choisis par elle pour aller En france y representeront quil seroit Neces- saire davoir la liberte D'envoyer Un Certain Nombre de Canots et Canoteurs avec des Vivres et Merchandizes pour se Randre en La d. Baye Dhudson par les Rivieres qui y Communiquent et Conduize dans la profondeur des terres pour sy Randre En seurete et pour En avoir les advis quil Conviendra pour soustenir le d. Establissem* et au Cas que les dits anglois Eus- sent Commancee de faire rupture de la paix qui est Entre Nous et Eux quil soit permis a la d. Compagnie, d'avoir droit de re- prezailles En supliant sa d. Majeste de luy ayder et Maintenir La d. Compagnie, laquelle assemblee a Jette les yeux et fait choix de la personne du d. Sieur de Comporte, et de Celle du Sieur Pierre Soumande de lorme Interesses, et les a pries de vouloir agreer Le Choix quelle a fait deux pour passer en france et y Re- presenter toutes Choses pour le bien et advantage de la d. Compa- gnie outre ce qui est dit cy dessus et le tout Sous le bon plaisir de Sa Majeste et aprobation de Nos dits Seigneurs le General et Inten- dant, Ce que les dits Sieurs de Comporte et de lorme ont ac- cepte volontiers dans le dessein de lobliger et luy procurer par leurs soings leur Capacite et Credit tout ce quelle pent attendre d'eux, et pour Lentreprize et reussite du d. Voyage La d. Compagnie a Resolu de fournir au d. Sieur de Comporte La somme de douze Cents Livres argent de france pour subvenir aux fraix et despance du d. voyage et au Cas quil Juge a propos de faire quelque depance quelle ne Peut pre- voir elle luy Donne pouvoir de faire les Emprunts dont II aura QUEBEC IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. besoing se refferant pour Cet Effait a sa prudance et probite, et de plus promet payer La despance que le d. Sieur Saumonde (de lorme) fera pour se randre de la Rochelle a Paris, et sejour au d. Lieu, dont et de ce que dessus Les dits Interesses ont Convenu, et donneront aux dits Sieurs une procuration Con- formement a la deliberation Cy dessus et tels memoires quils Ju- geront pour leur servir avec leur lumieres et Experience dinstruction, fait A Quebec Le 31® octob. 1684: Et apres que les dits Interesses ont requis le Sieur Gitton fils qui a assiste a la desliberation De lassemblee de la signer il En a fait refus et a desclare quil Nestoit point de la d^ Societte Le Sieur Chanjon luy ayant fait Entrer Contre Son Consente- ment, pour quo\', la d. Compagnie a deslibere de ne plus Re- garder Le d. Sieur gitton Comme associe dont sera dresse acte en forme au premier Tour avec protestation de tons depands dommages et Interets Contre le d. Sieur gitton, fait au d. quebec Les Jours et an susdits. De Comporte Charles Aubert de la Chenaye Pachot Chanjon Jean lepicart Le Ber Catignon P. Soumande Delorme f. hazcur Migcon DeBranssat Bouthier Aujourdhuy a la Requisition de Monsieur Maistre Philippe Gauthier Escuyer Sieur dc Comporte Consciller du Roy prevost de nos Seigneurs Les IMareshaux dc france En cc pays demeu- rant en son hostel En cette villc rue St Pierre, Des Sieurs Charles Aubert de la Chenaye, Jacques leber frangois Vienne Pachot. fran- gois hazcur Guillaumc Chanjon, Charles Catignon Jean Bai)tiste Migeon de P'ransart, Pierre Soumande De Lorme Guillaume Bou- thier Et Jean Le Picart ALirshands Et habitans dc ccttc WWc 532 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Et de Mont royal directeurs Et Interessez en la Compagnie de la baye dhudson en Canada pays de la nouvelle france, Nous Gilles Rageot Notaire Royal au d. Quebeq En la pn^® des tes- moins cy apres nommez nous sommes transportez, au domicile du Sieur Jean Gitton fils marshand y demeurant riie soubs le fort, sur le quay, ou estant parlant a sa personne luy avons mon- tre, Exibe Et faict lecture de la deliberaon cy devant, Ce faisant nous dit notaire avons somme Et Interpelle par ces pntes le d. Sr. Gitton de garnir Et fournir p'ntement ce quil doibt pour sa part Et portion au sol la livre, pour les frais quil a este trouve a propos de faire pour le bien proffit, utilite et conservation de la d. Compagnie faute de quoy, Quelle persiste allencontre de luy de tous despens dommages Et Interets, Et a le d. Sieur Gitton fait response q.^ est prest dexecuter Et suivre le traitte q.^ a fait avec la ditte Compagnie le trentiesme oc- tobre mil six cent quatre vingtrois, Et comme La ditte Com- pagnie na point suivy le dit traitte ayant fait des advances de plus de soixante mil livres audela du montant du d. traitte. Et y ayant receu plusieurs nouveaux Interessez, Le d. Sieur Gitton se desiste de la ditte Compagnie dans laquelle II ne veult avoir Interest, attendu que Le dit traitte quil a signe na este suivy, de- mandant aux Interessez de la ditte Compagnie le remboursement et advance q^ a dans la d. Compagnie, compris ce qui luy est deub des Sieurs De Saurel Et Bruno Interressez dans la d. Com- pagnie, a faulte de quoy, II a proteste de tous ses despens dom- mages Et Interests, fait Et passe au dit Quebecq En la Chambre du d. Sieur Gitton Le Neufiesme Jour de Novembre mil six cent quatre vingt quatre Espresence de Antoine Pacault et de Denis Roberge, tesmoins qui ont avec le d. Sieur Gitton et notaire signe. Dont acte Et dont du tout a este laisse Coppie au d. Gitton J: Gitton pour mon pere. Roberge Pascaud Rageot II. EXTILA.CT FROM THE LeTTER OF THE KlXG, DaTED 1 697, AdVISING THE Shareholders of the Compagnie du Nord that an Expedition is being Fitted out to Attack Fort Bour- bon^ AND Offering it when Taken, to the Company, under Certain Conditions: And the Reply of the Com- pany, Declining the Offer on Account of the Heavy Losses it has Sustained. Extraict de La Lettre du Roy de 1697. Elle a bien voulu faire encor La depence dun armement de cinq de ses vaisseaux pour aller attaquer et prendre sur les an- glois Le fort de Bourbon de La baye du Nord, afin de Leur oster Le Commerce du Castor, dont La pocession de ce fort, a cauze de la proximite des nations Superieures qui fournissent Le meilleur, Leur donne la preference a Lexclusion des frangois et au pre- judice de la Compagnie de Canada Etablie pour Le Commerce de cette baye, Laquelle Sa ^lajeste y veust bien retablir, et Luy faire remettre Le d. fort en Lestat quil se sera trouve avec Les armes et munitions en rembourgant Les depenses de Lentretien et de La Subsis'^^ de la garnison depuis La prise jusques au temps q'^ sen remetteront en possession, a quoy Les d^ Sieurs de frontenac et de Champigny tiendront Les Interressez en la d^Compagnie disposez et en retireront la declaration avec Leur Soumission quils enverront par Le retour des premiers Vais- seaux, afin quelle puisse estre asseuree quils y feront Les en- voys necess''^^ pour Lannee prochaine a la decharge de Sa Ma- jeste ou quelle y puisse pourvoir autrement sur Leur refus. Aujourdhny Treziesme Jour d'octobre mil six cent quatre vingt dix sept avant midy pardevant Le notaire Royal en la pre- voste de quebec soijs signe y residant et temoins cy Bas nom- mez Sont Comparus Monsieur DcVilleray premier Conscillcr au Conseil Souverain de Ce pays au nom et Comme fai- sant pour Messieurs Doudiettes Interressez En la Compagnie du Nord pour La Somme de soixante trcizc mil cent qua- tre vingt treize Livres dix sept Sols ; Maistre Pierre Dcbenac 533 534 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Controlleur general des fermes du Roy en Ce pays faisant pour Le Sieur Demonic Interresse En la d. Compagnie pour La Somme de deux mil quatre cens dix neuf Livres ; Pour Le Sieur Marnot marchand de paris Interresse pour La Somme de Cinq mil Livres; et pour Le sieur frangois Duprat marchand de la Rochelle Interresse pour la Somme de quatre mil huit cens soixante douze livres dix huit sols; Monsieur Aubert De la Chenaye Conseiller au d. conseil souverain Interresse pour Luy pour La Somme de vingt deux mil deux cens vingt Six Livres unze sols ; et faisant Pour Monsieur Patu Interresse pour la Somme de Cinq mil quatre Cens Soixante unze Livres, Le Sieur frangois haseur marchand Bourgeois de Cette ville Interresse pour La Somme de dix sept mil Cinq Cens vingt une Livres ; Le Sieur frangois Pachot aussy marchand et Bourgeois de cette ditte ville Interresse pour luy pour la Somme de dix mil trois Cens Soixante treze Livres dix Sols six deniers Et faisant pour La Damoiselle Neuve et heritiers De Deffunt Maistre Jean Bap- tiste Migeon Sieur Debransat vivant advocat au parlement de- meurante a montreal Interresses pour La somme de Cinq mil quatre Cens Cinquante neuf Livres ; — Le Sieur Jea^t Le Picart aussy marchand de Cette ditte Ville Interresse pour la Somme de six mil quarante neuf Livres dix huit sols; Le Sieur Charles Macart aussy marchand de Cette ditte ville Interresse pour La Somme de Cinq mil trois cens trante neuf Livres ; Damoizelle Catherine Nolan Espouse et procuratrice du Sieur Mathieu De- lino aussy marchand de cette ditte ville absant Interresse pour La Somme de deux mil quatre cens soixante huit Livres dix sols ; Et Le Sieur Jean Gobin aussy marchand de cette ville In- terressee pour La Somme de dix sept cens quatre vingt Douze Livres ; Lesquels Dits Sieurs cy dessus denommes Esnoms quils agis- sent ont dit et desclare qu'ayant En Communication D'un article de la Depesche Envoyee par Sa Majeste a Monseigneur Le Conte de Frontenac Son gouverneur et Lieutenant general En Ce pays de Canada Et a Monseigneur De Champigny Intandant de Ce dit pays auxquels Sa Majeste a Bien voulleu ordonner de Com- muniquer Le d. article aux dits Sieurs Interressez En la Com- QUEBEC IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 535 pagnie Du nord pour quils ayent a Deliberer Entr'eux sy ou non lis veuUent accepter Loffre que Sa Majeste a La Bonte de Leur faire de Leur Remettre Le Fort Bourbon De la Baye du Nord avec Les armes et munitions apres quil aura este Repris sur les anglois par Les Cinq vesseaux quelle a Envoye pour Cette Ex- pedition pour par Les dits Sieurs Interressez y Retablir Le Com- merce et Ly Continuer en Rambourgant a Sa Majeste Les De- pances De L'entretien et de la subsistance de la garnison Depuis la prise Du d. Fort Jusques au tems que les d. Sieurs Interres- sez en la d. Compagnie S'en Remetteront En possession; Et apres en avoir Delibere par assemblee faitte Entr'eux Le d. Sieur de \'illeray faisant pour Les d. Srs. Doudiettes, Le d. S"". Debe- nac faisant pour Les d. Srs. Demonic, Marnot, et Duprat, et Le dit Sieur delashenaye pour Le dit Sieur pattue Ont dit qu'a Leuregard lis ne peuvent repondre aux propositions que Sa Ma- jeste fait aux Interressez En La d. Compagnie quy sont habitues et Establis en Ce pays attendeu que Les dits Sieurs cy dessus Denommes sont Demeurans en france et quils n'ont aucun ordre de leur part pour y repondre; mais quils Leur Donneront advis de la d. proposition et off re de Sa Majeste pour quils ayent a y repondre ; Et a Legard Des dits Sieurs de la Chenaye en son nom hazeur, pachot tant pour luy en son nom que faisant pour la d. damoizelle Veuve et heritiers Migeon ; picart, macart, deli- no ; Et Gobin tous demeurans en ce d. pays lis ont d'une Com- mune voye Reconneu et advoiie quils ne sgauroient qu'avec Toute les humbles soumissions que de veritables sujets doivent a Leur Roy Remercier Sa Majeste De la Bonte et de la Charitte quelle a de voulloir procurer Les moyens de Retablir La d. Com- pagnie Du nord par les offres advantageux quelle Luy fait mais que les grosses advances pour Lesquelles chascun deux y est In- terresse sans aucune esperance de Les Retirer sy Sa Majeste n'a La Charitte de Continuer ses bontes pour La d. Compagnie Leur oste Les moyens de sepuiser pour faire de nouvelles ad- vances pour Le Retablisscment et maintien de la d. Compagnie Du nord surtout pandant que La guerre Durera Estant Imposible que la d. Compagnie puisse soutenir et faire Les Dcpance neces- saire pour garder Le d. fort bourbon par Elle mesme sans le 536 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. secours de Sa Majeste ; qu'ainsy sy Sa Majeste veust bien Con- tinuer ses Bontes a Legard de la d. Compagnie Elle aura La Charite de conserver et maintenir Ce poste pendant le terns De La Guerre et apres la guerre finie de Le Remettre Entre Les mains de la d. Compagnie quy dans Ce tems La fera toutes les ijouvelles advances possible pour Le maintenir et Garder ; ou que sy II se forme une nouvelle Compagnie en france qui veulle En- treprendre De Garder le dit poste et Le maintenir pendant que la Guerre Durera Les d. Srs. susnommes marchands de ce pays de Canada offrent de s'y Interresser pour une huitiesme partye sy Sa Majeste veust bien Leur accorder, Desquelles Declarations Les d. Sieurs susnommez Chacun a leur egard ont requis Le present acte qui a este fait pour Leur servir en Tems et Lieu ce que de raison fait au d. quebec Le jour et an susd. es presences des Sieurs guillaume Gaillard marshand et de frangois Aubert Commis Temoins demeurants au d. quebec qui ont avec Les d. Sieurs Susnommez et no^® signe; Rouer DeVilleray Charles Aubert de la chenaye Gobin f. hazeur Pachot Benac Catherine nolan Macart . Lepicart G. Gaillard Aubert Chambalon III. Contract between the Directors of the Compagnie de la CoLONiE and Fourteen Men, who Undertake to Serve the Company at Fort Bourbon. Pardevant Le notaire Royal en la prevoste de quebec sous signez Residant et temoins cy-bas nommez furent presens Jo- seph des hostels dit lapointe, antoine forestier, frangois Perthuis, Jean Baptiste Cuillerier, Jean cotton dit fleur despee, et Louis Viger, tous demeurans a ^lontreal ; frangois L'ancougne, Jean Sezart dit Gardelet, et Joseph favreau habitans de boucherville, noel lamy; claude duplex Philbert ]\Iazeau, et Jean Boisseau aussy habitans de contre-coeur, et Rene Cosset de batiscan, et Louis hot de charlesbourg, de present en cette ville de quebec, Lesquels de leur bon gre se sont volontairement Engagez a Messieurs Lec directeurs Generaux de la Compagnie de la Colo- nic de ce pays sous signez a ce presens et acceptans quy les ont pris et Retenu pour le Service de la d. Compagnie a Commencer de ce jour et Continuer Jusques a leur Retour en cette ville ou a leur arrivee en france a I'egard de ceux quy y voudront volon- tairement passer au lieu de s'en revenir en ce pays pour quitter le service de la d. Compagnie et non a I'egard de ceux quy pour- ront estre commendez pour passer en france pour le Service de la d. Compagnie, dont les Gages Coureront Egallement Comme a ceux quy Resteront au Xord jusques a leur arrivee en ce d. pays, Pour par eux s'embarquer Incessamment sur le navire de la d. Compagnie pour aller Servir Icelle au fort bourbon en la baye du nord soijs les ordres de la dite Compagnie et sous les Commendement de Monsieur delisle de tilly commendant au d. Lieu pour la d. Compagnie, et a ceux quy auront droit de Leur Commender sous luy et en son absance auxquels lis promettent d'obeir en tous les travaux sans exception d'aucuns quils Icurs commanderont pour le Service de la d. Compagnie, et de leur obeir avec toute la fidelite Requise. ccs engagements ainsy faits a la charge par La d. Compagnie de les Nourrir ; Et outre Ce de leur payerachacun d'eux Leurs gages ct Salaires a Raison de trois Cens 537 538 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. livres par au Monnoye de ce pays; a Condition qu'outre leurs dits Gages II leur sera permis a chacun d'employer des peau de Caribou provenant de leur chasse a se faire des chemizes, capots, Cullottes, Mitasses, et Souliers Sauvages pour leur Ser- vice pour durant tout le terns qu'ils seront au dit lieu du nord, Et qu'ils ne pourront faire aucun trafic, Commerce, Ny negoce pour leur proffit particulier directement Ny Indirectement a peine de pertes de leurs Gages ; quil sera permis a chacun deux de quitter le Service de la d. Compagnye pour s'en Revenir en ce pays en en avertissant le d: Sieur delisle ou ceux quy seront a Sa Place Un an auparavant quils s'en puissent Revenir pour que Le d: Sieur delisle ou autres Commendant en puisse don- ner avis a la direction pour que la direction ayt le tems d'y en Envoyer d'autres a la place de ceux quy s'en voudront Revenir I'annee suivante ; qu'a L'egard de ceux des dits engages quy des- cedderont soit pendant laler, leur sejour, ou retour Leurs Gages seront payes a leurs heritiers depuis le d. jour de leur depart jusques au jour de leur deceds; Et a legard de ceux quy se- ront pris prisonniers par les Ennemis de lestat leurs Gages leurs seront payez jusques au jour de leur prise seulement, sans que la Compagnie soit en aucune Maniere obligee n'y teniie de payer aucune rangon pour le rachapt et liberte de leur personnes, soiis aucuns pretextes que ce puisse estre, Car ainsy a este Regie, entre les dits Engagez susnommez et mes dits Sieurs les direc- teurs generaux, sous lobligation &c Renongant &c Fait Et passe au d' Quebec en lestude du d. notaire a legard; des dits Engages avant midy Et a l'egard de mes d' S'"^ les directeurs generaux en leur Bureau le Vingt Septiesme jour de juin Mil Sept cens quatre en presence des S'"^ frangois rageot et Pierre huguet praticiens temoins quy ont avec mes d. S'"^ les direc- teurs generaux, Les dits forestier, Perthuis, Cuillerier et Bois- seau et notaire signe; les autres susnommez ayant declare ne sgavoir signer de ce enquis Cuillerier F. perthuy Boisseaux R. L. Chartier de Lotbiniere QUEBEC IX THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 539 Ruette Dauteiiil Delins Pinaut Rageot Perthuis P. huguet Chambalon IV. Canadian Census. The slow growth of the Colony is graphically expressed by the following summary of successive censuses taken from the Census of Canada, 1870-71 : 1608 Quebec founded — 28 settlers wintered there, including Champlain. {Champlain, Edition Laverdiere, tome III, page 173.) 1620 Population of Quebec: 60 persons. {Champlain, Edition Laverdiere, tome VI, page 8.) 1628 Population of New France, 76, who wintered, including 20 French and the Missionary returning from the Hurons. {Champlain, Edition Laverdiere, tome VI, pages 205 and 231.) 1629 After the taking of Quebec, about 117 persons wintered, 90 of these being English belonging to Kertk's Expedi- tion. {Champlain, Edition Laverdiere, tome VI, page 320.) {Relations and Parish Registers of the time.) 1 641 The sedentary population of New France was still only 240. {D oilier, Edition 1868, page 31. Relation de 1642, page 36.) 1653 Population of New France about 2,000. {Mere Marie de V Incarnation, — Lettres Historiques, XLVIIL) 1663 Population of New France 2,500, of whom 800 were in Quebec. {Leclercq, Edition i6gi, vol. II, pages 4 and 66.) {Boucher, Edition Canadienne, page 61.) 1665 Population de jure of New France: 3,215. {''Census of Canada.") 1667 Population of New France : 3,918. Census of Canada.'') 1668 Population of New France: 6,282. {Archives de Paris.) 1673 Population of New France: 6,705. {Archives de Paris.) 1675 Population of New France: 7,832. {Archives de Paris.) 1676 Population of New France: 8,415. {Archives de Paris.) 1679 Population of New France : 9,400. Census of Canada.") 540 QUEBEC IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 54I 1680 Population of New France: 9,719; besides 960 Indians col- lected in villages. (Archives de Paris.) 1681 Population of Xew France : 9,677. Census of Canada.") 1683 Population of Xew France: 10,251. {Archives de Paris.) 1685 Population of Xew France: 12,263; including 1,538 of the Indian population collected in villages. (''Census of Canada.") 1686 Population of X^'ew France: 12,373. (Archives de Paris.) 1688 Population Canada.") of Xew France : 11,562. C Census of 1692 Population Canada.") of X^ew France : 12,431- C Census of 1695 Population Canada.") of X^ew France : 13.639- Census of 1698 Population of X^ew France : 15.355- (" Census of Canada") INDEX. Al)€naki8, Algonquin tribe, colonists contemplate alliance with, 188 ; supply col- onists with corn, 190 ; prosperity of, 192 ; guide English traveler, 210 ; in council, 283 ; accompany French envoys to Is'ew England, 311 ; solicit aid at Quebec, 329. Acadia, religious dissensions of colonists. 74-75 ; Champlain in, 70-77 ; advanatges of, to France, 81 ; trade monopoly of, granted to de Monts, 82 ; duties on goods from, 82-83 ; failure of de Monts' colony in, 83, lu6 ; peaceful relations of French and Indians, 90 ; De la Mothe in, 128 ; English dispute French right to, 13t> ; invasion of Argall, 159 ; Jesuits in, 171 ; conditions of treaty of St. Germain concerning, 221-222 ; rights of trade reserved, 2SU ; a menace to New England, 306 ; loss of, due to Cromwell, 306, 363 ; importance of. to Canada, 383. Achmet I., Sultan of Turkey, treaty with France cited, 95. Admiralty Court established, 506. Africa, modem occupation of, compared to early contest for America, 7, 10; early French coast trade, 67. Agona, Indian chief, 38 ; welcomes Cartier, 42 ; crowns Cartier with wampum, 43 ; conspires, 45. Agriculture, aboriginal, at Quebec, 35, 40-41 ; French at Quebec, 44, 78, 86. 89, • 120-121, 126; neglected by colonists, 130, 163. 169; farm established, 177. 178; checked by Iroquois, 276-277, 357; limitations of early farmers, 508- 509; manner of bringing produce to market, 509-510. Aiguillon, Marie de CombaUet (nee Vignerod), Duchess d", sketch of, 257; land given to hospital by, 257, 265, 494 ; in Quebec topography, 332-333 ; death mentioned, 437. Aillehout, Mine. Barbe d' {n€e Boulogne), arrival at Quebec, 277; at Chateau St. Louis, 301, 400; at the Hotel Dieu, 464. Aillehout, Louis de. Governor of New France (1648-1651), deed drawn by, 242; arrives at Quebec, 277 ; deputy to France, 291 ; succeeds Montmagny. 293, 298, 329 ; concessions secured by. 293-294 ; memorable incidents of adminis- tration. 299 ; disinterestedness of, 299 ; negotiates with New England, 305, 310. 339, 340; succeeds Charles de Lauzon as Governor ad interim. 346. 347- 348 ; settles claims of precedence, 353 ; death of, 356 ; lays corner-stone of Church of Ste. Anne de BeauprO, 421. Ajoaste, Indian tribe, village of, 34. Albanel, Charles, Jesuit, left at Montreal, 357 ; journey to Hudson's Bay, 516- 517. Albany, N. Y., plans for reduction of, 362. Albigt uses, mentioned, 114. Alexander VI.. Tope, character of. 11 ; bull of demarcation. 14. OS. Alexander, Sir William, fits expedition against French, 211 note; complains of poachers, 215. Algonquinft, meeting place of, 51 ; home of, 54 ; origin of strife with Iroquois, 54- 55, 59 note; drive out Iroquois, 55; alliance with Champlain, 57, 90-!)i, 93- 94, 97; Champlain attempts to reconcile with Iroquois. 1(52; excite fears of colonist's, IKO; forego trade with English, 228-229; opposed to white men, 232; defend Three Rivers, 249-2."'.o ; religious training of, 249-251, 277, 2S.S ; guide French to Huron tf)wn, 2.'»5 ; participate In Qu<'l)ec ceremonies, 255- 256, 263; give captives to French, 283; seek French alliance against Iroquois 544 INDEX. and New England colonists. 287-288 ; value of alliance to Frencli, 296, 303 ; Druillettes with, 303 ; seek refuge at Quebec, 369 ; in Province of Quebec, 370 notej fail de Courcelles, 433. AUard, Pierre Germain, Recollct, arrives at Quebec, 440. '* Alouette," ship, chartered by Jesuits, 174 ; dispatched against pirates, 177. Ambrose, Jesuit brother, brews beer, 321. America, analogy between early and present systems of occupation, 7 ; early dis- coveries and discoverers, 7-18; Asiatic theory, 9; Cartier's second voyage closes first cycle of discovery, 9 ; importance of discoveries ignored, 10 ; European politics controlling force of, 13, 18. Ancre, Concino Goncini, Baron de Lussigny, Mar6chal d', assassination of, 123. Anjou, annexed to France, 15. Ann street, site of Jesuit college. 475. Anne of Austria, 211, 332 ; indifferent to Canada, 276 ; confirms commercial con- cession, 280; favors Le Jeune, 413; supports Laval, 333, 417, 431, 435. Annedda, Indian remedy for scurvy, 36, 54, 89. See also Balsam. Arithoine, Dom, question as to priesthood of, 30. Anticosti, Island of, passed by Cartier, 22 ; Cartler near, 23. Appendix, pp. 529-539. Archer, GaMeh arrival at Jamestown, 157. Archives de Paris. See Paris. Argall, Samuel, raid on Acadia, 76, 77, 91, 128, 159, 187. Argenson, Pierre de Voyer, vicomte d', governor of Canada (1658-1661), recep- tion at Quebec, 348 ; campaign against Iroquois, 348-350, 357, 358 ; disputes Laval's claim to precedence, 353, 423-424, 426; administration, 358-359; sails for France, 360 ; ordered to support Laval, 419 ; opposes Laval on brandy question, 453. Armament, supplied by Louis XIII. for defense of Quebec, 151-152, 196-197. See also Artillery, Firearms. Arnold, Benedict, at Quebec, 499. Artillery, used at religious celebrations, 117, 249, 263, 317, 322, 324. Bee also Armament, Firearms. Artois, annexed to France, 15. Auhert, , reorganizes Compagnle du Canada, 521; trading policy of, 521. Auhertj Francois, witness. 536. Aul)ert, Thomas, explorations of. 19. Auteuil, Buette de, dismissed from council, 429 ; resists claims for tithes, 448 note J director of the Compagnie de Colon ie, 538. Avangour, Pierre du Bois, Baron d', governor of Canada (1661-1663), succeeds D'Argenson, 358; first days in Quebec, 360; dispatch to Cond6. 361-362; replaced by de Mezy, 362 ; impeached by Laval, 372, 427 ; conflict with Laval on the brandy trafl3c, 427-428, 453 ; confirms confiscation of Quebec store of Montreal company, 493. Asores, Islands of, point of demarcation in papal bull, 14. B. O. M. (builders' old measure), 25 note. Bacon, Oilles, discovers mines, 324. Bate des Chaleurs, named by Cartier, 22 ; trade monopoly granted to de Monts, 82. Baie St. Paul, effect of earthquake at, 366 ; ores of, 385. Baker, John, poacher, 216. Ballet, performed at wedding, 324 ; disapproved by Jesuits, 402. See also Theat- ricals. Balsam, Indian remedy for scurvy, 36-37 ; eflBcacy of, 46. See also Annedda. Balzac, Honori de, theory on English emigration, 382 note. Bance, Guillaume, house burned. 321. INDEX. 545 BaptisiuSj spectacular, 176; fails to cure, 182; fatality of, 250; administered to captives, 292. 331. Barrique (cask, hogshead), capacity of, 511 note. Barronie, a holding under feudal tenure. 80, 237. See also Feudal system. Basques, early voyages to fishing grounds, 10, 65 ; combine to preserve fisheries, 65 ; forbidden to trade for furs, 77-78 ; poach on French reserves, 162. Batiscan, Indian chief, welcomes French, 96; asked to guide Champlain, 99-100. Batiscan River, described by Champlain. 72. Baurman, Laurent, executor of first national deed, 506 note. Baxter, Richard, Call to the Unconverted, translated for Indians, 307 note. Ban of St. Clair, trade monopoly of granted to De Monts, 82. Bayly, Leiris, Practise of Piety, translated for Indians, 307 note. Beam. France, church property restored, 123. Btauchasse, , clerk, warned of meditated massacre, 128; addresses Indiana, 129. Beaudry, , Judge, discovers ordinance regulating tithes, 448, note. Beouhamais, , urges state aid for Jesuit college, 469-470. Beaulieu, Jacques Gourdean, Sieur de, murder of, 368. Beauport, first seigneur of, 180 {see also Seigneuries) ; Nigolet at, 252 ; Jesuit lands at. 323-324 ; Hurons to be established at, 330 ; religious services at, 330. 413; census of 1661, 357 7Wte ; census of 1660, 379, 413. Beauport Flats, murders on, 126. 128, 180-181, 235; efforts to cultivate, 169; fate of murderers, 189-190 ; settlers on, 264 ; lands ceded to nuns, 318, 323, 324. Beaupre, Vicoynte de, in charge at Cap Rouge, 44. Beaupre, seigneurie de, 264, 483 (see also Seigneuries) ; census of 1661, 357 note; census of 1666, 379. 413 ; need of priests at, 413. Beaver skins, price advanced by trade restrictions, 69, 83; duties on, 82-83; price advanced by free trade, 97 ; price in France, 175 ; shipped to France, 169, 175, 281, 316, 287. 324-325, 330 ; trading values, 180, 187, 216 ; soldiers al- lowed one coat of, 195; taken by Kirke, 195. 197. 213. 214 note. 215; price fixed by commercial grant, 208 ; seized from priest, 290, 326 ; a welcome con- signment, 30(J, .368; price fixed by Intendant, 383; value in brandy, 45S note; legal tender, 521, 523 note; decline in value, 522; value affected by revocation of Edict of Nantes. 523. See also Fur trade. Bicancourt, Sieur de. See Robineau. Becancourt, Que., Indian population of. 370 note. Bcecham, William. Iroquois Trail cited, 56. Biff on, Claude Michel, Sieur de la Picardi^re, escapes from fire, 499. Beira, Juan de, Jesuit, result of instructions to, 314 note. Belle Isle, Straits of, early kno\\Ti to navigators, 19, 20 ; Cartler's fleet In, 24, 42. Belmont, Francois Vachon dc, Sulpician. Hiftnirc dr la NauvcUe France cited, 273; Histoivc de I'cau dc vie cn Canada, attributed to, 451. Benac, , member of Compagnie du Nord, 536. Bentivolio, Ouido, Papal nuncio, empowers Recollets, 143. Bentzon, Thomas, Notes de Voyage cited, 411 note; 514. Bemi('r(8, Gourdainc, Ursuline, 411. Berni^rcs, Henri de, grand vicar for Laval, 394. 412; arrives In Canada, 408; at Hermitage of Caen, 411-412; tenant of Mme. de la Peltrie, 420 note; claims seat In council, 437 ; at Recollet ceremony, 442 ; arrives at Quebec to conduct seminary, 4r)6. BemiirrH, Louviyny, Jean de. mairlage to Mme. de la Peltrle, 259, 411, 420 note; at Hermitage of Caen, 411-412; death, 420 note; Le Chretien Jnterieur placed on the Index, 412. Bersimis, Que, Indian population of. 370 note. Berthier, Alexandre, Slpur de, captain In Carignan regiment, arrives in Canada, 278; nbjuv.Ttlon of. 404. 546 INDEX. Berzee, , Jesuit, result of instructions to, 314 note. Bcver^ Samuel Pierce, poacber, 216. Bigot, PranQois, Intendant of New France (1748-1760), cited, 291; character of, 499, 506. Black rohes. See Jesuits. Blair, Jam.es, mentioned, 462. Blundell, Nicholas, deposition as to bestowal of Quebec colonists, 198. Boisseau, Jean, coureur de hois, text of contract, 536-538. Bonfires, lighting of, on St. John's day, 328. Bongoust, Etienne, millwright, 322. Bonin, Jacques, Jesuit, leaves Three Rivers, 300. Bonna^sieux , Pierre, La Grande Compagnie de Commerce cited, 66. Boswell's Brewery, sovereign council held at, 500. Boston, Mass., progress of, 265; Druillettes at, 306, 308; La Tour at, 306 and note, 306-307 ; passage of French troops considered, 308 ; fighting capacity, 309 ; traders favor French alliance, 310 ; d'Avagour's plan for its reduction, 362 ; Radisson and des Grossielliers at, 516. Boucher, Pierre, people's envoy to France, 363, 511 ; Historic veritable des moeurs et productions de la Nouvelle France cited, 511, 512 note, 539. Boucherville, Lahontan at, 401. Boulanque (Boulogne) . Philippine Gertrude de, enters convent, 301. Boulard, , claims for tithes, 448 note. BoulU, Eustache, sails for Canada (1618), 128; meets Champlain, 140; at Que- bec, 141 ; guards fort, 3 48; signs petition to the king, 153; sails for Canada (1626), 174; protests against war on Iroquois, 179; takes command of " Le Coquin," 190-191 ; captured by Kirke, 194, 195-196, 215 ; knowledge of Com- pany De Caen, 206. BoulU, Hilene. See Champlain. BoulU, Nicolas, aids De Monts and Champlain, 99. Bourion, Charles, Due de. See Soissons. Bourdon, Jean, qualifications of, 253 ; elected syndic, 291 ; brings horses to Can- ada, 380 ; appeals to king. 432 ; procurer-general, 433. Bourgeoys, Margaret, character of, 283 ; founds association of Les Filles de la Congregation, 411 note. Bourne, George, Pictures of Quebec, 497 note. Boutentrein, , house burned, 351. Bouthier, Guillaume, summons Gitton. 531-532. Boutonville, , represents Talon, 384. Boyer, , Sieur de, Rouen merchant, at Tadousac, 110; opposed to Champlain, 124, 138. Bradford, William ("Jean Brentford"), Governor of Plymouth, entertains Druil- lettes, 307. Brandy. See Liquor traffic. Brazil, founded by Portugal, 14 ; Huguenot colonies, 68, 112 ; success of Francis- cans in, 170. Bread, cost of (1645), 316. Breheuf, Jean de, Jesuit, enters on Huron mission, 175-176, 177, 232-233 ; for- bidden to accompany Hurons, 229-230 ; at Three Rivers, 232 ; martyrdom. 300. Bressani, Francesco Giuseppe, Jesuit, teaches, 282 ; accompanies Hurons. 300 ; brings news of Iroquois war, 300 ; leads relief party, 302. Brest, Island of. Cartier at. 22. Bretons, at Newfoundland, 19, 65 ; names of resembling Quebec, 55 note; oppose monopolies, 74, 75. 98, 268. See also Brittany. Bridgar, John, Governor at Port Nelson, capture and release of, 518. INDEX. 547 Bridge street, 25. Brittany, Estates of, declare St. Lawrence open to Breton traders, 127 ; oppose Company of Morbihan, 205. Brook St. Michel (Riviere aux Li&vres), Cartier near, 24. Brouage. birthplace of Champlain, 72 ; salt works of, 207. Brule. Etiennc, restored by Ilurons, 100; with Champiain, 119; courcur de hois, 131, 169 ; captured by Ivirke, 195-106 ; serves English, 223 ; death, 223 note. Bruno, , in the Compagnie de la Baye d'lludson, 532. Buadc street, 241, 495 note; origin of name, 498. Buckingham, George VillUrs, Duke of, attack on Rochelle, 179. 210-211, 211-212; death, 212. Burgundy, annexed to France, 15. Butemps, , French sea captain, detained by ice, 240. Buteux, Jacques, Jesuit, arrives in Canada, 232 ; receives letter from Nagabamat, 311 312 ; killed by Iroquois, 330. Cahanne aux Topicrs River (Riviure aux Topiers, Chalifour), Jesuit lands on, 318. 324. Cabot, John and Sebastian, result of report of northern discoveries. 15, 19. Cabral, Pedro Alvarez, discovers Brazil, 14. Caen, Emery de, Huguenot naval captain, vice-governor of Canada, 166; cold re- ception of Jesuits. 172; seeks possession of Huron boy, 176; turbulence of his Huguenot crew, 177; sails to join La Ralde, 177-3 78; intercedes for cap- tive Indians, 179; refuses passage to Jesuits, 179; intercepted by Kirke, 195- 196; attempts to relieve Quebec, 198, 206-207; captured by Kirke, 198. 199, 213, 221; in Company of, 206; suspected of collusion with Kirke, 213-214; takes possession of Quebec. 214, 221, 222, 223 ; trading privileges granted to, 218 ; reports details of English occupation, 218-219 ; religious tolerance of, 224. See also Commercial Companies. Caen. Guillaume de, Huguenot merchant, letters from, 149; meets Champiain, 150; proceedings against Poutgrav^, 150, 151 ; at Tadousac, 152, 165 ; at Quebec, 162, 164 ; favors Huguenots, 162-163 ; at Cap Tourmente, 164 ; returns to France, 164 ; makes tour of inspection, 166 ; territorial claims not confirmed, 166; complaint against, 173; in Company of, 206; settlement with Kirkes, 215-217; obligations under treaty of St. Germain, 222; claim against Com- pany of Hundred Associates, 225. See also Commercial Companies. Caen, France, de Bernieres at, 259. See also Hermitage of Caen. CallUres-Bonnevue, Louis Hector de, place of burial. 242, 356; proposes conquest of New York. 396 ; hastens to defend Quebec, 396 ; asks for money to com- plete Chateau St. Louis, 502. Calvin, John, bigotry of. 75 ; dogma not attractive to savages, 107, 248. Canada, French feudal customs transferred to. 16-17 (sec also Feudal system, Seigneuries) ; early explorations of, 19-50; dark ages of history of, 51 ; lan- guage of aborigines of, 52, 53 isce also Hurons. Iroquois) ; early schemes for colcnl/ation, 67-68, 69, 70; Huguenots excluded from, 75. 113. 381; powers granted La Roche in. 79; population of (1628) 108. (1622) 158, (1666) 379, (1681) 381; Recolletfi In. 11()-117, 127; evolution from trading domain to royal colony, 141 ; Sully opposed to maintennnco of, 154; comparative settle- ment of, l.")7-161, 265, 381-3S2; wandering habits of early colonists, 160: fur trade the central pivot, 174; niunlciiiai govornment granted to, 281, 28S-289 (see also Coustltution. Council) ; habilants send deputation to Franc*-. 291- 202; seeks allianco with New England, 303. 304-305; a crown c<»lnny, 333, 37(> ; debt to Frontenac, 394; monnced by Iro(]uois, 395; raids on New Eng- land, 399; buroaucratic organization, 505-507; danger from English In the north, 517; card money, 522 (see also Currency). Sec also Now France. S48 INDEX. Canada, Church of, conflict with civil powers,, 412 ; choice of bishop of, 413 (see also Laval); diocesan claims of La Rochelle and Nantes over, 413. 415; claims of see of Rouen over, 410, 410 note, 436 (see also Queylus) ; rights secured by Quebec Act, 449, /See also Roman Catholic Church. Canada, Royal Society of. Proceedings and Transactions cited, 53, 56. Candles, directors paid with, 209-210 ; given to Jesuits, 319 ; Candlemas distribu- tion, 320 ; mistake in use of, 329. Cap de Bonne Vue, Cartier's first landfall, 20. Cap Rouge, Cartier at, 34, 35-37, 43-44, 45, 46 ; fort built at, 44 ; Indians refuse to provision, 45 ; Roberval at, 46-48 ; outbreak of scurvy, 36, 47 ; ship built at, 48 ; harassed by Iroquois, 349, 353. Cap Tourmente, beaver meadows at, 164 ; de Caen at, 166 ; supplies Quebec with fodder, 175 ; cattle farm established, 177, 178 ; harried by English, 183, 184, 187 ; seals killed at, 190 ; Nicolet at, 253 ; de Quen at, 327. Cape Blanc Sahlon, reached by Cartier, 22 ; rendezvous of Cartier's ships, 23. Cape Breton, trade conceded to de Monts, 82 ; seizure of English fort at, 221 ; in treaty of St. Germain, 221-222 ; rights of trade reserved, 280 ; importance of, 383. Cape Diamond, bounds beaten, 328 ; Iroquois terrorize, 348. Cape of Good Hope, Huguenots at, 381. Cape Piennot, Cartier at, 23. Cape Verde Islands, point of demarcation in bull of Alexander VI, 14. Capuchins, rise of order, 114 ; mission on the Kennebec, 288, 303. Carihou sJcins, allowed to coureurs de hois, 521 note, 537. Carignan-Salieres regiment, at Quebec, 378, 379, 400, 404 ; soldiers settle in Can- ada, 392 ; in disputes for precedence, 460. See also Militia, Soldiers. Carpont, rendezvous of Cartier's fleet, 42. Cartier, Jacques, first voyage, 19-23 ; second voyage closes first cycle of American discovery, 9 ; stimulus of expedition, 16 ; narrative gives limit of earlier ex- plorations, 19 ; first to explore St. Lawrence, 20 ; landfall, 20 ; reason for sailing southward, 21 ; sketch of, 21-22 ; geography of first voyage, 22 ; carries Indians to France, 22-23, 38-39, 40 (see also Domagaya, Taignoagny). Second voyage, 23-39 ; misled by erroneous maps, 23-24 ; first winter quarters, 24-27, 32. 35, 37, 87, 89, 174 (see also Stadacona) ; names the St. Croix, 24, 144; sickness among his men, 26, 29-30, 36 (see also Scurvy) ; friendship with Donnecana, 28 ; Indians oppose farther exploration, 28, 29 ; Hochelaga, 30- 31 ; distrusts Indians, 33, 37-38 ; plants cross, 38, 40. Third voyage, 39-45 ; results of first and second voyages, 40-41 ; receives independent commission, 41-42 ; sails on third voyage, 42 ; deceives savages, 42-43 ; second winter quarters, 43-44 (see also Cap Rouge) ; explores above Hochelaga, 44-45 ; meets Roberval, 45 • sails for Brittany, 45-46 ; names Canada La Nouvelle France, 47 ; uncertainty of fate of, 49 ; sent to rescue Roberval, 49 ; conclusions re- garding St. Lawrence Indians deduced from, 51-52 ; vocabularies made by, 52- 54 ; relations with Stadacona Indians, 56-57 ; on Indians of Hochelaga, 57 (see also Hiirons and Iroquois) ; influence of voyages on commerce, 65, 68; leader in colonization, 67 ; claim on French government, 69 ; object of voyages, 78-79; winter food, 88; claims of St. Malo merchants through, 102-103; under "The Tree," 322 note; first Canadian prospector, 324. " Cartier's tree," 37. Casgrain, Abhe Henri R., Sulpician, cited, 239; editor of Journal des Jesuits, 315. Casot, Jean Joseph (last Jesuit in Canada), deatk of, 315; Jesuit lands confis- cated on death of, 478, Castillon, Jacques, incorporator of Company of One Hundred Associates, 207; not qualified as seigneur, 264. Catherine," ship of de Caen Company, 174. INDEX. S49 Catignon, Charles, summons Gitton, 531. Cauohnatcauha, Que., Indian population of (1901), 370 note. Caumont, Jean, dit le Mons. clerk of Company of Associates, 145-146, 147-148. Cayuga Lake, boundary of Onondaga territory, 59. Cayugas, Huron-Iroquois tribe belonging to league, ask for peace and return of Jesuits. 358 ; fighting strength of. 361. Cazot. See Casot. Censitaircs, tenants under feudal system, 235; cens et rentes paid by, 236-237, 239; lods et vents imposed upon, 237, 239, 493 note; manner of paying, 239. See also Feudal system. Chabanel. Noel, Jesuit, death of, 301-302.. Chclon, , revenue agent, lays an embargo on goods of the Compagnie dti Nord, 51S. 519. Chatnbly Ropids, Indians desert at, 92; allies take leave of Champlain at, 94. Chambalon, , notary. 536, 538. Champigny, Jean Bochart de, Intendant of Canada (1686-1702), 396; asked how cures are to be supported, 448 note; cited, 470 ; incurs anger of Saint Vallier, 489 ; Louis XIV. to, 533. 534. Champlain, Helene Botille de, marriage contract with Champlain. 99, 243; arrival in Canada, 140, 141, 161 ; life in Canada. 167-168; death, 243; life of, 167. Champlain, Samuel de, finds relics of Cartier's expedition, 32; account of Rober- val's colony, 49 ; founds Quebec. 51, 78. 86 ; finds Stadacona succeeded by Quebec. 55, 55 note, 58, 72 ; Algonquin alliance with, 57 ; aids Hurons against Senecas, 59 ; meets De Chaste and sails for the St. Lawrence, 72 ; sketch of. 72, 243 ; arrives at Quebec (1603). 72, (1608) 78 ; joins De Monts. 73 ; experi- ences in Acadia, 73-76 ; explores New England coast, 76-77 ; appeals to Mme. de Guercheville. 77. 95; advises abandoning Acadia, 77, 83; in command of new expedition, 77 ; compromises with Basque traders, 78 ; explores the Saguenay, 7S ; at Tadousac. 78, 96. 122, 128, 140; conspiracy against, 87-88; first winter in Quebec, 89-90 (see also Quebec, habitation de) ; first raid against Iroquois, 90, 92-93, 97 ; effect of alliance with Hurons, 90-92. 93-94 ; gifts to, 94; returns to France (1609), 94; audience with Henry IV. 95; sails for Canada (1610), 95-96; at Quebec. 96, 101, 108, 120, 122, 126, 130, 132 ; fur trader. 96-97. 99-101 {see also Commercial Companies) ; in expedi- tion against Iroquois, 97-98 ; leaves Du Pare in charge at Quebec, 98 ; mar- riage of, 99 ; lieutenant of Cond^, 102, 103, 104 ; aversion to Malonius, 102- 103 ; lieutenant of Soissons, 103, 104 ; alternates winter garrison of Quebec. 104; explores the Ottawa, 100; names island of St. Helen. 110; introduces Maisonneuve to Indians. 110; establishes Recollets in New France, 111-112, 117; leaves for Huron country, 118; ignored in records of Recollets, 120. 133, 134, 135; entertains Huron chief. 120; holds council at Three Rivers, 130- 131; sails for France (1618), 132; his diflBculties in adjusting interests of colony and company. 134, 135-136. 158; his place of abode from 1620-1632, 134; refu.ses to exercise a divided authority, 136-140; convokes assembly, 152-153; organizes a civil government, 154, 506 note; deprivations at Que- bec. 161-164; work on Ch.lteau St. Louis, 164-165 (see also Ch.lteau St. Louis): leaves De Caen in charge at Quebec, 166; reports to king, 169; under De Aentadour, 170, 173; sails for Canada (1626), 174; establishes cattle farm, 177, 178; enlarges Fort St. Louis. 177 (sec also Fort St. Louis) ; opposes war on Iroquois, 179, 180. 182; arrests Indians, 180; faces famine. 182. 186. 187-1H9, 192, l!)7 ; warned of approach of English fleet. is.T; re- fuses to surrender, 184-185; releases Indians, 189-190; sends ship to F'rance, 190-101; warned of return of English. 192-193; receives sfvond summons. 193-194; submits terms of capitulation, 194. 195; cited, lur, ; deposition of. 197, 201 ; sails with Klrke, 197, 198, 199 ; informed of establishment of Com- 550 INDEX. pany of Hundred Associates, 201, 211 ; receives details of English occupation, 218-219 ; returns to Quebec as governor of New Prance, 224, 228 ; estab- lishes new posts, 230 ; builds chapel, 230-231 {see also Notre Dame de la Recouvrance) ; his austere life, 231 ; exhorts Indians, 240 ; death and funeral, 240 ; place of burial, 240-242, 242 note, 356 ; will, 242-243 ; appointment of successor, 244 ; compared with Montmagny, 295-296 ; influence on social life of Quebec, 399 ; supports traders in brandy controversy, 453 ; Des Sauvages, 72; Vomges (ed. of 1613), 78, 86, (ed. of 1619) 134, (ed. of 1632) 72, 78, 134-135, 198. See also Laverdiere. Chamhly Rapids (later Richelieu Rapids), Champlain at, 92. Chnnfleur, Franqois de. Governor at Three Rivers, letter from Jogues, 276 ; pre- sented with captive Iroquois, 283 ; sends captive to treat for peace, 283 ; absent from post, 315. Chanjon, Ouillaume, accused by Gitton, 531 ; party to suit against Gitton, 531- 532. Chapais, Thomas, Life of Talon, 448 note, 512 note. Chaplets (rosaries), Indian use of, 94. Charity, one of three Indian girls left with Champlain, 181 ; gathering roots, 192 ; included in Champlain's stipulations, 194 ; Champlain's affection for, 195 ; left with Mme. Couillard, 195. Charivari, practise condemned by Laval, 401. Charles I, of England, 199, 211 ; effect of execution of on French colonization, 112; grant to Sir William Alexander, 211 note; signs Petition of Rights, 212 ; signs treaty of Suze, 212 ; his use of treaty, 213 ; grant to Kirke's Com- pany of Canada, 214 ; price received for restoration of Canada, 214-215. Charles II. of England, poor colonial policy, 363 ; grants charter to Hudson Bay Company, 516 ; stock in Hudson Bay Company, 517 note. Charles I. (king) of Spain, V. (emperor) of Germany, 14; incites Francis I. to American exploration, 16, 40 ; destroys Algerian pirates, 16, 40 ; relations with Francis I., 40 : commercial concessions, 67 ; used to point a moral, 74. Charleshourg, Que., Indian population of 1901, 370 note. Charlevoix, Pierre FranQois Xavier de, Jesuit, cited on early explorations, 19, 23, 24, 33 ; cited on Hochelaga Indians, 54 ; documents of treaty proceedings between New France and New England, 310 ; religio-political missions of the .Jesuits, 389-340, 346; cited 411 note; praises Canadian girls, 491; describes Jesuit college, 475-476. Charnisay, Charles de Menon, Seigneur d'Aulnay de, pursues La Tour, 306 ; his widow marries La Tour, 307 note. Charron, Claude, elected syndic, 430. Chartier de LotUniere, Louis Th4andre de, gives first ball In Canada, 403 note. Chartier de Lothiniere, Rene Louis de, director of Compagnie de la Colonie, 538. Chartres ("Monsieur le Prior"), secular priest, arrives at Quebec, 277; heaver skins confiscated from. 290. Chaste, Ayrnar de, forms a company, 72 ; employs Champlain, 72 ; death of, 73. Chasteaufort, Marc Antoine de Bras de Fer, acting governor of New France, re- ceives fealty of Giffard, 238 ; delivers keys to Montmagny, 245. Chastel, Edme, servant of Mme. d'Aillebout, 464. Chastelets, Noel Juchereau, Sieur des, arrives in Canada, 224 ; agent of Company of Habitants, 281 ; charges against, 286 ; envoy to France, 292, 293 ; remains in France, 292, 293 ; concessions secured by, 293-294 ; to supply pain henit, 318 ; in Corpus Christi procession, 321 ; seignorial rights of, 323 ; manage- ment of company unsatisfactory, 325. Chastillon (Chatillon) . Jean Mignot, dlt, envoy to Huron, 293. Chateau St. Louis, site of, 145, 164, 494 ; building of, 161, 164, 165 ; feudal cus- toms at, 236, 238; garrison of, 392; reception of English envoy at, 397; INDEX. Schuyler at, 399 ; social life under French governors, 399-400 ; disappearance, 484 ; sketch of. 500-505. See also Fort St. Louis, Habitation de Quehec. Chdiellenie, a holding under feudal tenure. 80, 237. See also Feudal system. Cathedral of Quebec, raised to a basilica, 241 ; site of, 419 ; instituted, 436 ; saved from lire, 482 ; reconstruction. 498 ; cathedral chapter organized, 379 ; cathe- dral chapter supplied, 483, 484 note. Chaudiere Falls, Iroquois haunt, 355. Chaudiire River, Algonquins on, 303, 491-492 ; DrulUettes on, 305. Chaumont (Chaumonot, Chaistnont), Pierre Joseph Marie, Jesuit, arrives in Can- ada. 261 ; on Onondaga mission, 342 ; originates Confraternitj' of the Holy Family, 403 note. Chauveau, Pierre J. O., Memoir on the Sovereign Council cited, 374 note. Chauvvjny, de, Seigneur de Vaubougon, father of Mme. de la Peltrie, 259. Chauvigny, Madeleine de. See La Peltrie. Chauvin, , Huguenot naval captain, receives trade monopoly from Henry IV., 70; at Tadousac, 71 ; death of, 71. Chavigny de Berchcreau, Francois, member of council, 299. Chavin (Chauvin). Pierre, in command at Quebec, 94, 96, 103-104; returns to France, 98, Cheffault, Antoine, Sieur de la Renardiere. aids Company of One Hundred Asso- ciates through ChefFault-Rozee Company, 228 ; receives seigneury of Beaupr6, 264. Cherokees, of Iroquois stock, 56. China, trade with opened by Portugal, 7; regarded as a mirage, 7; theories on western passage to, 8 ; search for western passage, 9 ; St. Lawrence to be ex- plored for route to. 105, 173. Chinese rites, result of Jesuit discussion of, 314 note; referred to, 473. Chomina, Montagnais chief, brings venison to colonists, 188 ; pleads for accused Indians, 189 ; sent to trade with Hurons for food, 192 ; Recollets propose to escape with, 197. Chourel, Mathieu, house burned, 351. Chretiennant, a refractory servant, 316. Christian Island, Huron refugees on, 302. Churches. See Notre Dame des Anges (chapel on Jesuit Residence), Notre Dame des Anges (Recollet), Notre Dame de la Recouverance, Notre Dame de la Victoire, Notre Dame de Quebec, Parish churches. Recollet church. Citadel of Quebec, site of, 87. 495. Clement V., Pope, modifies rules of St. Francis, 115. Clement X., Pope, forbids publication of missionary records, 314 note. Cochran, Andrew William, mentioned, 315. Code yapolvon, general use of, 234 Colbert, Jean Bnptiste, French premier, effect of English republicanism on colonial policy of, 137-138, 370 ; enters upon government of Canada. 333, 303. 372 ; uses civil power to counteract ecclesiastical, 385. 437 ; ijioased with progress of Canadian shipbuilding, 385; views on trade, 387; builder of French navy, 388 ; opposed to Laval's arrogance, 431 ; warns Courcelles, 433; refused abso- lution, 457; urges expulsion of Fngllsh from Hudson Ray. 518. Coliqny, Gaspard de. Admiral of France, colonization schemes of, 68, 112. Colin. Michel, death of, 119. Collier, , partner of De Monts, 99. 102. Colonies, formative influence of English, 17; first founded through corporate co operation, 07-6K ; constitution of F'rench exemplified by concessions (1508), 7P SI, (IGO;^) 81-8.'^: constitution of Fnplish exemplified by charters (1583- 1584) 84. (1603) 156, (161H) 157-158; policy of France In. 137-1.39. 154. 199- 200, 204-205, 524, 526-527 ; policy of England In, 158-159, 100-161, 524-525, 552 INDEX. 525 note, 527-528 ; Colonial Papers cited, 214, 218. See also colonies and countries by name, also Commercial Companies. Columhus, Christopher, first voyage promoted by Spain, 7 ; counsels with Tos- canelli, 8 ; American landfall of, 8 ; effect of Asiatic theory of, 8-9 ; state of Church of Rome at period of discoveries of, 11-12 ; compared to Cartier, 20, 38-39 ; his doubt of Asiatic theory, 24 ; his caravels superior to " Le Coquin," 191. Comhalletj Mme. de. See Aiguillon, Commerce. See Trade. Commercial Companies: rise and development of, 65-67; English (early), 67, 83- 84, (recent) 527-528; character and constitution of French colonial, 78-83; created for development of North America, 154-155 ; restrictions of French, 200 ; Hanseatic League, 65 ; " English Regulated," 67, 108 ; Bonnaisseux' Grande Compagnic de Commerce, 66. Company of Associates (De Chaste's), succeeds Chauvin, 72; formation, 72 ; dissolution, 73. Company of Associates (De Monts') instituted, 73. 81-83; privileges suppressed, 74, 83, 94; establish Quebec, 83, 95, 101, 103; headquarters, 95; privileges expire, 95, 97, 98, 99 ; De Monts withdraws, 102 ; dissolved, 102 ; policy, 107 ; inadequacy, 205-206. Company of Associates, organized by Champlain, 102-103 ; patronized by Conde, 102, 104 ; powers of, 104-105 ; as a colonizer, 106, 107, 119-120, 122- 123, 124, 127-128, 135, 138; constitution of, 108; vessels, 108; jealousy among associates, 110-111, 124-125, 127 ; confiscate cargo of Rochellaise vessel, 111 ; franchise extended, 111 ; establishes Recollets in Canada, 111- 112; interests of, 121; Recollets dissatisfied with, 121, 144; affected by Huguenot reverses, 123 ; opposed in France, 124, 127 ; persecute Hubert, 125 ; articles drawn by De Monts, 124 ; gives Conde's salary to Recollets, 127, 139 ; privileges threatened by free trade act, 127; Indian policy of, 129; diflSculty in tracing history, 134 ; divided on trade issues, 135-136 ; attempts to remove Champlain, 136-137, 140 ; enjoined by Louis XIII., 138 ; Montmorency suc- ceeds Conde in, 139 ; authority of Champlain confirmed, 140 ; dissolved in favor of Company of De Caen, 146; Champlain instructed to seize property of, 147 ; protected by Champlain, 147 ; contentions with Company of De Caen, 147-151 ; consolidates with Company of De Caen, 162 ; trade, 174-175 ; causes of failure, 205-206, 224. Company of De Caen, chartered by Montmorency, 146-147 ; troubles at Quebec with Company of Associates, 147-149, 150-151 ; king's degree, 149 ; consolidates with Company of Associates, 162 ; indifference to welfare of col- onists, 163, 170, 177, 196 ; sectarian complaints against, 170, 173 ; conten- tions in, 170 ; inhospitality to Jesuits, 172 ; capital of, 173-174 ; enjoined to employ Catholic admiral, 174 ; details of trade, 175 ; quarrels with Jesuits, 179 ; weakness made known to English, 185 ; superseded by Company of One Hundred Associates, 186, 201, 207 ; hotel property seized by English, 195, 197, 215, 216-218; causes of failure, 205-206; associates, 206; object of Kirke's raid, 213-214 ; value of trade, 214 note; allowed a year for settle- ment, 218, 221 ; settlement with English, 221-222 ; expiration of monopoly, 265 ; payments received from Company of One Hundred Associates, 266. Company of MorMhan, organized, 205 ; sketch of, 205 ; constitution, 206. Company of One Hundred Associates (Company of New France, Com- pany of Canada), fleet seized by English, 185-186, 211; succeeds Company of De Caen, 186, 201, 205; established by Richelieu, 205-206; date of charter, 206 ; Huguenots barred from, 206-207 ; incorporators, 207, 372 ; duties and powers, 207-209 ; articles of partnership, 209-210 ; interregnum between in- corporation and operation, 210, 224 ; send out fleet under Daniel, 221 ; begin- INDEX. SS3 ning of operations in Canada. 224, 225 ; financial straits, 225-226. 228, 265 ; aided by auxiliary company (Cheffault-Rozee) . 225-226. 228. 265-266; resign privileges to people of Canada, 226, 279-280. 315, 371-372 (see also Company of Habitants) ; transfer rights to Louis XIV., 226, 333, 336, 371, 376 ; state- ment of accounts, 226-227 ; cedes lands to Jesuits, 230, 253 ; tenure of lands held by, 234-235, 237 ; chapel in storehouse of. 242 ; appoints successor to Champlain, 244, 282, 317, 322; promoters of religion, 248; site of store- house, 262 ; gifts for advancement of Indians, 264 ; trade checked by Iroquois, 265, 266, 276. 279 ; consent to grant of Montreal Island, 271 ; oppose estab- lishment of Montreal, 272 ; bankruptcy. 276, 369 ; relations with the church, 277-278, 279, 286 ; friction with Company of Habitants. 281-282. 286 ; popu- lar revolt against, 286-287, 372 ; under constitution of 1647. 289-290 ; retain seignorial rights, 291 ; small revenues, 293 ; lethargy, 296 ; shelters Jesuits, 316; policy. 333; sketch of, 371-372; succeeded by Company of West Indies, 376, 517; refuse to listen to Radisson and Groseilliers, 515-516; claim to Hudson Bay territory, 516. Company of Habitants, receives trading rights, 226, 279-280, 315. 371- 372; terms of concession, 280-281, 286; first transaction, 281; dissensions, 286-287. 291-292, 325 ; appeal for revision of treaty. 287 ; under Constitution of 1647, 289, 291 ; causes of failure, 292; trade checked by Iroquois, 292-293; consignments, 316, 324-3i;5. Company of the West Indies (French), abolition of, 375; succeeds Com- pany of One Hundred Associates. 376, 517; scope and object. 376; privileges and obligations, 376-377 ; history, 377-378 ; Canada under, 378-379, 394 ; per- mits English encroachment on Hudson Bay, 517-518. Compagnie du Soid (Compagnie de la baye d'Hudson. etablie en Canada, Compagnie du Canada), employ Radisson and Groseiliers. 518; successful ex- pedition, 518 ; cargo seized by revenue agents, 518 ; post seized by English, 519; hold meeting at Quebec. 519, 529-531 : patent of incorporation, 519; re- organization and confusion of titles, 520 ; disputes between French and Cana- dian shareholders, 520, 521 ; decline, 521 ; privileges revokell'/,atlon, 3o7 note ; Loance. 287; mem!)er of council. 'J99, 310; j^Ift to Jesuits, 319; In Corpus Christl procession, 321; daughter married, 334; serv- ant s drowned. 33S. GiUard'8 River, Jesuit lands on, 324. 562 INDEX. Oillert, Sir HumpJireij, inaugurator of English slave trade, 67 note. Qillanij Benjamin^ capture and release of, 518. Oillam, Zachary, sails ship to Hudson Bay, 516. Oitton, Jean fils, versus the Compagnie de la Baye d'Hudson, 531-532. OUmpses of the Monastery, 282. Ooa, Hindustan, influence of Jesuit college at, 473. Oohin, Jean, member of Compagnie du Nord, 534, 535, 536. Oodefroy, Jean Baptiste, Sieur de Linctot, fur trader, 169. Godefroy, Jean Paul, interpreter, 169; deputy to France, 279; member of council, 299 ; envoy to New England, 310, 311. Godefroy, Thomas, Sieur de Normanville, interpreter, 169 ; Iroquois capture and return, 266-267. Gold, fabulous, 37 ; Cartier's, 44, 45, 47, 324 ; Champlain commissioned to seek, 173; discovered, 324. Golf des Ghdteaux, early name of Gulf of St. Lawrence, 20. Gonzague, Louis de, patron of RecoUets, 116. Gorges, Sir Fernando, colony of, 156. Gosselin, AbM Auguste H., cited, 417 ; Life of Laval, 411 note, 419 note; St. Val- uer, 496 note. Gosselin, E., Marine Normande, cited, 69-70. Gouel, Robert, sells tools for New France, 70, Grand AlUe, length of, 291 ; bounds beaten, 328 ; in 1716, 495 note. " Grande Hermine," Cartier's ship, dimensions of, 25. Grande Madson, Eleanore de, Hurons settled on lands bought from, 338. Grandmont {Grand, Gant, Gand, Gan), Franqois de R^, Sieur de, burial place of, 242 ; transfers Sillery to Jesuits, 254, 323. Grwpes, vines planted at Quebec, 89. Great Banks. See Newfoundland. Great Britain, obligations of under treaty of St. Germain, 221-222. Bee alto Eng- land. Great Lakes. See Lakes, Great. Great River. See St. Lawrence. Greek, sent to reconnoiter English, 183. Green Bay, Wis., Marquette and Joliet on, 390. Greslon, Adrien, Jesuit, leaves Three Rivers, 300. Grey Nuns. See Hospital Nuns. Grondines, ceded to Hotel Dieu^ 265. Grosse Island, free traders at, 162. Groseillers, Jean BapHiste, captured, 519. Groseilliers, Medard Ghouart, Sieur des, brings down cargo of furs, 356 ; takes Jesuits to Lake Superior, 356 ; connection with Radisson, 515 ; desires to open Hudson Bay region, 515 ; fined in Canada, 516 ; interests Boston. 516 ; sails with English commissioners, 516 ; patronized by Prince Rupert, 516 ; pardoned and employed by French, 518 ; parts from Radisson, 519. Growte, Moses, letter of Noel to, 51. Guercheville, Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de, refuses to aid de Monts, 77 ; ad- vised by Champlain, 91 ; refuses to aid Champlain, 95 ; influenced by Jesuits, 111 ; sends Jesuits to New France, 171. Guers, Baptiste, royal commissioner, reads Champlain's commission, 141. 145; sent to watch rival traders, 145, 146 ; causes dissension in Quebec, 147 ; helps to guard haUtation, 148 ; draws up petition to the King, 153. Guesnier, Francois Bertin, Jesuit, teaches in Jesuit college, 470. Guihault, Recollet frere donne, wife of, in monastery, 464. Guillemot Guillaume. See Duplessis-Bochart. OuUiecourt, , dispatched to France for provisions, 47. INDEX. 563 Ouines, Modeate, Recollet, arrives in Canada, 127 ; meets Champlain, 130, Guatavus II. {Adolphus) of Sweden, alliance with Richelieu, 220. Guyart (Guyard), Marie de. See L Incarnation, Marie de. Guyot, Charles, servant to Cartier, 38. Habitants, designation of French farmers and settlers, first to succeed In farming, 178; type of houses of. 254; dissatisfied with local government, 279-2S0 ; permitted to barter with Indians, 289 ; in the militia, 391 ; protest against tithes, 445, 446, 447 ; affected by brandy question, 450 ; independence of, 490-491 ; statue and customs of, 508-511. See also Company of Habitants. Habitation de Quibec, location, 78. 86-87, 117; building, 78, 86; description, 88- 89, 103 ; repairs, 101 ; expense of maintenance, 101 ; De Monts negotiates for, 102; occupants of, 103, 119, 161, 198. 216; Champlain at, 117, 118, 130, 148; enlarged, 12u, 122, 131-135; council held at, 128-129; peril of, 130; ruinous Btate of, 141, 161, 3 65; neglected for church buildings, 142, 174; renovations, 145, 164, 165, 166, 175; company of De Caen demands possession, 148; to be supported by commercial companies, 149, 151 ; winter in, 163 ; finding of foundation stone, 165, 500 ; fortified to resist English, 184 ; summoned by Epglish, 193-194 ; keys delivered to English, 195 ; Kirlie takes possession, 197, 198, 223 ; burned by English, 222. -See also Chateau St. Louis, Fort St. Louis. Habitations (posts), number of priests assigned to, 208. See also Quebec, Habited tion de la. Hache, Robert, Jesuit donn6, delegate to France, 287 ; New Year's gift to, 319 ; assigned to fisheries, 3i:l. Hakluyt, Richard, translator of Cartier and Roberval, 41 ; letters preserved by, 68 ; Voyages, sole authority for early French colonization of Canada, 49. Halard, Isaac, delivers arms and ammunition to Champlain, 152. Haldimand, Sir Frederic, Governor of Canada, new chateau begvm by, 501. HaH, Barbe, victim of witchcraft, 425. Hale, Horatio, mentioned, 53. Hamel, Joseph, finds remains of Cartler's ship, 26. Hamel, Mfjr. Thomas E., " Laval University " cited, 484 note. '' Happy Return," ship of Hudson's Bay Company, 519, Harfieur, France, cod fishing industry of, 69-70 ; Champlain sails for, 73. Harvard, John, cited, 462. Harvard University , founded, 462. Harvey, , associate in Company of De Caen, 206, Havre, France, cod fishing industry of, 69-70. Hats, effect of fashions in on fur trade, 522 ; Huguenot makers of, driven from France, 523. Hawaii, rights of natives ignored, 7. Hatikins, Alfred, Picturesqur Quebec, 55 note. Hazeur, Franqois, house of, 510 ; in process against Gltton, 531 ; member of Com- pagnie du Nord, 534, 535, 536. Hubert, in charge of de Caen's ship, 1 62-163.. Hubert, Anne, marriage of. 125, 142; death of. 142. Hebert. Uuillauinc, house of. 141. Hubert, Guillernette. See Couillard, Mme. Gulllaume. Hebert. Louis. Sieur de ri*]splnny, sails with family for Canada, 125; oppressed by monopolists, 125; real estate dealings with RecoUets, 142; signs petition to king, 153; royal procurator, 153, 154; house of, 161, 165; successful farmer. 169, 178: death and burial, 178; produce of farm, 187; family of remains in Quebec during English occupation, 198; mentioned, 200; site of farm. 223; tenure <-f land. 235. Hubert, Mme. Louis (n(c Marie Rollet), tends dying Scotchman, 132-133; servant 564 INDEX. murdered, 180, 285 ; marries Hubon, 188-189 ; in Quebec duriog EngliaH oc- cupation, 223. Helie, , Recollet, breaks vow of poverty, 115. Hennepirij Louis, Recollet, events of Quebec, 119 ; his voyage to Canada, 389 ; antagonism to La Salle, 389. Henri, , servant to Mme. Hebert, murdered by Indians, 180-181, 235. Henricians, religious orders organized against, 114. nenrietta Maries queen consort of England, payment of dower made conditional to restoration of Frencli territory, 214-215. Henry (The Navigator), Prince of Portugal, 7 ; founds commercial company, 67. Henry III. of France, cause of assassination of, 64 ; stipulation to monopoly granted by, 68 ; colonizing system of, 81 ; political changes during reign of, 201. Henry IV. (The Great) of France, reasons for renouncing Protestantism, 64, 201 ; concession to La Roche, 68, 79-80 ; fails to associate Catholics and Huguenots, 74 ; colonizing system of, 81, 154 ; concession to De Monts, 81, 82, 83, 94, 95 ; presented with Indian girdle, 95 ; free trade policy of, 95 ; desires conversion of savages, 107 ; death of, checks Huguenot colonization, 107, 112. Henry VIII. of England, as leader of reform, 64. Henry, Alexander, Travels and Adventures cited, 523 note. Hermitage at Caen, sketch of. 41 1-412 ; mentioned, 428 ; influence on Seminary of Quebec, 480. Hertel, Jacques, early colonist, 169. Hihbins. William, Boston magistrate, favors Druillettes, 308. Hochalai, Indian town, location of, 34, 43 ; chief friendly to Cartier, 44 ; chief conspires against Cartier, 45. Hochelaga, Indian town on present site of Montreal, European plants found at, 20 ; believed to be a part of Asia, 24 ; the goal of Cartier, 27 ; Indians oppose Cartier's quest of, 28, 56 ; Cartier enters, 31 ; names heights of Montreal, 31 ; Indians of Huron stock, 33, 56 ; limit of Cartier's explorations, 51, 72 ; relations with Stadacona, 52-53, 60 ; language of, 52-54 ; Cartier's description of, confirmed, 54 ; disappearance of, 54, 72 ; changes found by Champlain, 54 ; destroyed by Mohawk confederacy, 58, 61. See also Hurons, Iroquois, Mont- real. Hocquart, Gilles, Intendant of New France (1728-1748), 461; removes restriction on tobacco, 509. Hoganchenda, Indian town, chief of, warns Cartier, 34. Holland, influence of wars of, on American colonies, 17 ; colonizing schemes in North America, 84, 155 ; colonial policy of, 154-155 ; a spur to French col- onization, 205 ; encourages Huguenots, 206. See also Commercial Compa- nies. Holy Family, confraternity of, in Canada, 403 note. Honf eur, France, Roberval at, 42 ; De Monts fits vessels at, 77 ; Champlain and Pontgrav6 sail from (1610), 95; Champlain and Recollets sail from (1615), 112; Champlain at (1618), 132; Champlain and family sail from (1620), 140. Honguedo, Indian town, chief of, trusts sons to Cartier, 22-23. Hooker, Thomas, victim of religious intolerance, 76. Hope, one of three Indian girls left with Champlain, 181 ; gathering roots, 192 ; included in Charaplain's stipulations, 194 ; Champlain's affection for, 195 ; left with Mme. Couillard, 195. Horses, first imported into Canada, 291, 326, 380 ; rapid propagation of, 291 ; scarcity of, 380, 507 ; hardiness of, 509 ; manner of driving, 509. Httel-Dieu, endowment fund, 257 ; land granted for, 257, 265, 494 ; nurses for, 257-258 ; establishes branch at SiUery, 269 ; chapel used as parish church. INDEX. 269 ; Sillery nuns take refuge in, 282 : shelters Huron refugees. 302-303 ; chapel dedicated. 320; age of, 322: site of. 322, 494, 497, 498; De Mezy buried in cemetery, 350 ; inmates of, 464 ; destruction of, 498. Hospital Xuns (Hospitalers. Hospitallers, Grey Nuns, Nuns of St. Augustine), devotion of. 250. 263. 282-283, 408 : order and foundation of, 257-258 ; sail for New France. 261: at Quebec. 261, 263-264, 269, 282; at Sillery. 261-262, 260; temporary house of, 262, 407; costume, 262 note; terrified by Iroquois, 282; clear land, 282; tenure of land, 318, 323; friendly rivalries, 319; claim precedence of Ursulines. 322 ; chaplain of, 407 ; alienated by Saint Vallier, 489 ; location and development of lands, 494, 495. See also H6tel-Dleu. Hospitals. See General Hospital, Hotel-Dieu, Marine Hospital. Hot, Louis, courcur de bois, text of contract, 536-538. Houel, Louis, secretary of the king, aids Champlain to establish Recollets. Ill; aids Recollets. 144 ; one of Hundred Associates, 207. Hubon, Guillaume, marries widow of Hebert, 188. Hiibon, Mme , Eni0 ; destruction of. 293. 206. 200, 320, 330; fighting strength of, 206; as refugees. S66 INDEX. 302, 338, 342, 345, 352, 368, 498 ; Bear family join Mohawks, 345-346 ; alli- ance sought by Iroquois, 347. See also Fur trade, Jesuits, Recollets. Hutchinson, Thomas, History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 311. Hythloday, Raphael, 12. Iberville, Pierre le Moyne, Sieur d', captures St. John's, 391 ; expedition against Hudson Bay, 520. 521. Iceland, boundary of fishing grounds, 10. Illinois, Algonquin tribe, country of, explored by La Salle, 390, 395 ; allies of French, 395. India, opening of sea trade to, 7 ; success of Franciscans in. 170. Indians, rights of, disregarded, 7 ; sedentary tribes prepared for advent of white men, 20 ; captives of French, 22-23, 38, 39, 40, 42 ; alliances and wars of. in St. Lawrence valley, 51-62 ; language, 52-54 r oral tradition among, 60 ; rela- tions with North American settlers affected by French alliance with Hurons, 90, 93-94 ; shrewd traders, 99 : first missionaries among, 116 ; citizens of France, 209, 377 ; more impressed by Catholic than Protestant forms, 107, 248-249, 249 note, 307 note; in French ceremonies, 263; intermarriages with French encouraged, 264 ; susceptibility to religious excitement, 340-341 ; ob- ject to instruction, 467-468 ; secretiveness of, 515. Sec also Fur trade, Hoche- laga, Jesuits, Liquor traflSc, Recollets, Stadacona, also various tribes. Inquisition, in New Spain, 17 ; brief rule in France, 113. Intendants, duties of, 506-507. Irenee, . Capuchin, goes to France to complain of Huguenots, 169. Iroquois, name covering a confederation of five (later, six) tribes of Huron-Iro- quois stock, hatred against French, 38 : in St. Lawrence valley, 53, 54, 56 ; language, 53; migrations, 54-55, 56; quarrel with Algonquins, 54, 59 note; feud with Hurons, 56, 57. 61 ; formation of confederacy, 57 ; growth and pol- icy of confederacy, 57-62, 267-268; intercourse with Dutch, 84-85, 93, 177. 286, 267-268, 275; French war on, 90, 91, 92-93. 97-98; seek alliance with English, 93 ; trade with English, 99 ; Champlain attempts to conciliate, 162 ; attack Recollet monastery, 166-167 ; defeat of, 179 ; terrorize Quebec, 180, 266, 275, 288, 301, 326. 331, 343 ; hostility of, advances trading posts, 245 ; capture Hurons, 245, 275-276 ; terrorize Sillery, 254, 275, 292 ; check civilization, 264; check fur trade, 265, 276, 279. 356, 395; capture French- men, 266, 276 ; desire alliance with French, 266-267 ; terrorize Montreal, 272, 274, 336, 337, 347, 364; threaten Fort Richelieu, 276; devastate Canada, 276-277 ; torture priests, 282 ; captured by Hurons, 283 ; in council, 283 ; kill Jogues and La Lande, 285 ; burn Fort Richelieu, 288 ; captive, baptized, 292 ; French seek alliance with New England against, 299, 305, 309, 311; de- feated at Three Rivers, 300; campaign of extermination, 300, 301, 305, 335- 338, 342-344, 347, 350, 357. 362, 364-365 ; form a buffer state between French and English, 312; captured by French, 348-349; checked by Dollard, 355- 356 ; captive, saved by Jesuits, 355-356 ; fighting strength of, 361 ; Lou's XIV. promises aid against, 363; converts in Province of Quebec, 370 note; De Tracy sent against, 378 ; De Tracy makes peace with, 383 ; awed by Fron- tenac 394 ; campaign of La Barre against, 395 ; reduce Canada to verge of ruin, 395 ; De Coiircelle s expedition against, 433 ; trading policy of, 508 ; feared at Hudson Bay, 517 ; Iroquoian Languages, cited, 53 ; Iroquois Trail, cited, 56. See also Fur trade, Jesuits, Recollets, also tribes by name. Iroquois War (Hundred years' war), beginning of, 92, 247; devastates Canada, 276-277, 279; renewal of, 285, 288; causes, 295; arrests immigration, 297; course of, 335-338, 342-344. Isabella of Castile, Queen of Spain, marriage of, 8. Island of Jamaica, Columbus at. 11. Island of Orleans (Isle de Bacchus), 24; Roberval and Cartler at, 49; distance INDEX. 567 from Quebec, 86 ; arrival of nuns and Jesuits at, 61 ; claimed by De Caen, 166 ; claim of Castillon to, 264 ; offered for Indian mission, 298 ; lands of nuns on, 323-324; Hurons take refuge on. 330-331, 338; Iroquois descend on, 342-343, 357, 364 ; population of, 379, 413 ; need of priests, 413. Island of Perd (Isle Perc6), monopoly of trade granted, 82. Island of St. Bernard, Desdames to land signal party at, 185. Island of St. CroUc, trading post on, 230. Island of St. Joseph. See Christian Island. Isle aux Coudres (Hazel Nut Island), the '•beginning of Canada," 24; boundary of Canada and Hochelaga, 34, 53. Isle aux Ruaux, Jesuit title to, 323. Isle de Bacchus. See Island of Orleans. Isle de Bonavcnture, salt sought at, 189. Isle de Jesus. Jesuit title to, 323. Isle Rouge, seals killed at, 329. Isle Terte, free traders at, 151. Italian Rtpuhlics, influence of in maritime discovery, 13. Italy, invasion of, obscures Cartier's discovery, 40 ; effect of Reformation In, 62. Jalohcrt, Marci, captain of " Petite Hermine," 31 ; sails for France, 44. Javiay, Denis, Recollet, Superior of missions, arrives In Canada, 111-112; leaves Quebec for upper St. Lawrence. 117; meets Champlain, 118, 119; return to France, 121, 125, 142; describes Recollet monastery, 142-143; signs petition to king. 153. James I. of England, charters London Company, 156. James II. of England, effect of abdication on French colonies, 396. James River, first colonists of. 157, 158.. Jamestoicn, Champlain foresees danger from. 91 ; foundhig of, 157. Jansenism, excluded from New France, 220, 418. Jansenists, attack Jesuits, 410. Japan (Zepango;, trade with, opened by Portugal, 7; distance from Spain, 8. Jesuit College, expensive grounds of, 116; chapel, 231; site. 253, 494, 498; be- quest TO, 253 ; scale of building, 253, 474, 475 ; gift for Indian pupils, 264 ; work begins in, 282 : construction of. 326, 330 ; fund for, 331 ; beginning of, 462-463 ; suppression of. 463, 474, 476. 405 ; succeeded by Lesser Seminary (Petit Sfminalre). 463 ; opening of (in Quebec), 466; curriculum. 466-467, 468- 470, 476-477 ; prominence of, 468 ; exercises at, 470-471 ; buildings, 474-476 ; reasons for decline of, 476 ; educational system compared with that of Semi- nary, 477; Laval at. 482; tuition given free, 484 note. Sec also Jesuits, Lesser Seminary (Petit S^mlnalre), Seminary (S^mlnaire des Missions EtrangC-res). *' Jesuit v oods," site of, 475. Jesuits, Inimical to Champlain, 111 ; rise of; 114 ; at Quebec, 115 ; aided by wealth, 115, 171; supersede Recoriets. 117; Influence Champlain, 135; edit the nar- rative of Champlain, 163; sent to Canada, 170; qualified to hold real estate, 171; advent In New France, 171; sail for Canada, 171-172; coldly received at Quebec. 172; sheltered by Recollets. 172; spirit and power of. In Canada, 172-173; charter ship, 174, 179, 221 ; interest In fur trade, 174-175, ISO, 278, 279, 326, 368, 478; gain possession of Huron boy, 176; strained relations with De Caen Company, 179; summoned to council meeting, 180-181; cap- tured by Klrke. 185-lHr); l)ulldlngs burned by Klrke. 191; English to protect property of. 195; visited by Klrke, 197; courtesy of Klrke to. 199; lands of, 200. 2.30. 253, 322-3L'3. 478-479, 494; chosen by Rlcholieu. 204. 207, 220; losses by shipwreck. 221. 329; succeed to property of Recollets. 223; mis- sionary labors. 229-230. 249-251, 2.S2 ; Institute Indian settlement. 253-254 (ace also SlUery) ; build hospital. 257 {see also HAtel-DIeu) ; theocratic gov- 568 INDEX. ernment, 265 ; sheltered by IJrsulines, 269 ; aid Montreal Association, 271 ; opposed by colonists, 279 ; revenues from Company of Habitants, 282, 286, 287, 289 ; temporary home, 282, 316 ; troops quartered on, 284 ; in Council, 289, 327; political aid of, 296-297, 339-340, 474; subject to arrest in New England, 303; methods of conversion, 807 note - characteristics, 314-315, 408-409 ; organization, 316 ; fast and feast days, 319-320 ; hold council, 330- 831 ; dispute with Queylus, 351, 413-415, 418 ; shelter nuns, 354 ; ransom captives, 355-356 ; difficulties in dealing with liquor traffic, 365-366 ; generos- ity to Indians, 368-369 ; policy of Talon toward, 384-385 ; relations with other orders, 388-389, 410 ; in western exploration, 390 ; parochial priests, 407 ; expelled from Canada, 410 ; debarred from bishopric, 413 ; blamed for perfidy of converts, 433-434 ; work as educators, 462-471, 472-474, 484 note (see also above Jesuit College) ; order founded, 472; work in Europe, 473- 474 ; work in the East, 473 ; banished from Louisiana, 476 ; order abolished in France, 476 ; decline in Canada, 476 ; unpopularity due to wealth of, 477- 479. Journal des Jesuites, cited, 290, 309, 315. 341-342, 365, 413, 425, 429; character of, 313-314, 492 note; loss of second and third volumes, 315; silence on political missions, 339. Relations, object of, 253, 314, 438; effect of, in France, 251, 257, 409; cited, 256, 262, 367 ; lost in transmission, 277 ; exaggerate Indian piety, 313, 340 ; origin, 314 note; cessation of publication, 314 note; injurious results of, 409; Thwaites's edition cited, 312, 367. Jogues, Isaac, Jesuit, martyrdom, 233, 285, 286, 326 ; capture of, 275 ; letter from, 276 ; returns to Mohawk country, 285 ; excites fears of Indians, 286. John XXII., Pope, enjoins Spirituals, 113. Joliet, Jucherean, to take possession of River Nemiskan, 519-520. Joliet, Louis, sent to Lake Superior, 386 ; at Jesuit college, 471 ; sent to watch. English at Fort Albany, 518, Joliet, III., origin of name, 387. Joncaire, , mission to France, 482-483. Jonquest, Etienne, marriage of, 142. Jouhert, , captain of French ship, returns to France, 221. Jubilee, observance of, 317-318, 341-342. Juchereau, Noel. See Chastelets. Julius II., Pope, period of, 11-12. Kalrn, Peter, Swedish naturalist, on luxury of Quebec tables, 406, 510 ; on wealth of Sulpicians, 410 ; admires Canadian women, 465, 491 ; Canadian visit of, 492 note. Kanibas, Algonquin tribe on Kennebec River, appeal to French, 287. Kebe-Kebec, Micmac name for contracted waterway, 55 note. See also Quebec. Kennebec River, Catholic missions on, 288 ; Druillettes on, 305, 306. Kieft, Wilhelm, Governor of New Netherlands, unwise policy of, 267. King James's War^ 17. Kinfj William's War^ 17. Kirke, Sir David, Admiral, son of Gervais, threatens Quebec, 177 ; seizes beaver skins, 180 ; raids Cap Tourmente, 183-184, 187 ; demands surrender of Que- bec, 184 ; withdraws from Quebec to meet French fleet, 185 ; captures De Roquemont, 185-186, 209, 211 ; captures " Le Coquin," 191 ; burned in effigy, 193; make second demand for surrender of Quebec, 193-194; sends Indian girls back to Quebec, 195; deposition of, 197, 211 note; at Quebec, 199; expedition against Quebec, 231 note, 212-214; restores Que- bec, 214, 215, 221, 528; organizes Company of Canada, 214; losses of, 215- 217; members of expedition at Quebec, 539. Kirke, Oervais, expedition against French, 211 note, 213-214. INDEX. 569 Kirke, Louis, sou of Gervais, takes possession of Quebec, 107-108 ; burned in effigy, 193 ; agent of David, 193, 194. 195 ; takes Indian girls to Tadousac, 3 95; courtesy to Champlain, 196; visits religious houses. 197; tolerance of, 199 ; mutiny against, 218-219 ; godfatiier of Couillard's daughter, 219. Kirke, Thomas, Captain, son of Gervais, burned in effigy, 193 ; agent of David, 193, 194-195; gives Le Bailiff charge of company's stores, 195; visits reli- gious houses, 197 ; conducts Champlain to England, 197 ; captures De Caen, 198-199; inventory of company's stores, 214 note; at Quebec, 218; trading voyage of, 218 ; permits De Caen to trade, 218 ; accused of burning hahitation, 222. Knox, John, intolerance of, 75. Koussenac {Kousenck, Coussinoc, Cushnoc), trading station, site of Augusta, Me., farmers of, 307 ; Druillettes at, 311. La Badaude, (Bedard), house burned, 366, 428. La Barre, Pierre Le Fevre de. Governor of New France (1682-1685), succeeds Frontenac. 395 ; poor Indian policy, 395 ; recalled, 395 ; releases English ship, 518 ; authorizes Joliet to take possession of River Nemiskan, 519-520. Labor, privileges conferred upon artisans. 208 ; wages paid to servants of Jesuits, 316. 322; work permitted on saints' days, 321; wages paid to mason, 324; enforced on public works, 504-505 ; craftsmen of Quebec, 507 ; rates of wages, 511 ; wages of fur companies' employes, 175, 175 note, 521 note, 537-538. Labrador, early knowledge of, 19, 20, 28 ; explored by Cartler, 19, 22 ; La Roche, Lieutenant-Governor of, 28. Lac 8t. Pitrre, IroQuois at, 349. La Cadie. See Acadia. La Chaise, Francis D'Aix de, Jesuit (Tdre La Chaise), advises against brandy traffic. 458. La Chesnnye, Charles Aubert de, in conflict with revenue agent, 518-519 ; in action against Gitton, 531 ; interest in Compagnie du Nord, 533-534, 535, 536. La Chine, Que., origin of name, 9 ; intemperance of, 451, 453. Lachine Rapids (Sault St. Louis), Cartier at, 0, 24, 31, 44. See also Sault St. Louis. La Croix, Cicile Richer de, Ursuline, sails for Canada. 260. La Danversidre, J6r6me Royer de, receives seignory of Montreal, 410. La Fert4, Jacques de, Abb6 de Ste. Madeleine, exonerates Jesuits, 278. J^a Fontaine, , punished for dueling, 321. Ln Grijie, . engaged in duel, 320. La Foricrc, Montagnals chief, warns colonists, 128. La }Iontan, Armand Louis de Dclondarce de, at Montreal, 400-401 ; admits ability of Jesuits. 433-434 ; admires Canadian women, 405, 491 ; describes Jesuit college. 468, 475; describes the habitant, 490-491; sketch of, 492 note; de- scribes fur trade, 523. Lairct Creek, 25; site of first European habitation, 25, 32. La Jonquiirc, Jacques Pierre Taffancl, Marquis de, Governor of New France (1749-1752), death and burial of. 356. La Journaye, Sieur dc, loses trading privileges, 68-69. Lake Champlain, derivation of name. 92; defeat of Iroquois at, 92-93; return from, 94; an Iroquois route, 246; first explorer of, 295. Lake Kric, migration of Iroquois to, 55; exploration of, 390. LrtA-c Huron. mlKratlfm of Ilurons to, 55; soldiers on. 284; discovery of, 295. Lak( MUttnisiui, 96; Albanel on. 517. Lake yipiHHinff, Huron line of fiight. iW ; fur trade route, 286. Lake of the Tuo Mountains. Champlain near, 101. Lake Ontario. Iroquoi.s migrate to, 55; Iroquois boundary, 56; Iroquois route, 275 ; Champlain on. 205. 570 INDEX. Lake St. John, rendezvous of Algonquin tribes, 51 ; Albanel on, 517. Lake St. Peter, Cartier on, 31-32 ; Montmagny drives Iroquois from, 246 ; Iroquola near, 267. Lake Simcoe, Brul4 dispatched from, 131. Lake Superior, sougtit by English traveler, 270 ; sighted by Olivier, 295 ; discov- ery of copper on, 386 ; monopoly of fur trade given to Henry, 523 note. Lakes, Great, cradle of Huron-Iroquois race, 56 ; line of demarcation between English and French, 91 ; abandoned by France, 92 ; limit of grant to Hundred Associates, 208 ; iourney of Jesuits to, 233. Lakes, Upper, region, confused with Saguenay, French trade checked, 32, 268, 328. La Lande, Jean de, Jesuit brother, accompanies Jognes, 285 ; death of, 285. Lalemant, Charles, Jesuit, Superior of Canadian missions (1625-1629), borrows carpenters to work on mission house, 174 ; on supremacy of fur trade, 174- 175 ; baptizes Indian girl, 178 ; sends Jesuits to France, 179 ; writes to Champlain, 186, 201 ; shipwrecked, 221 ; arrives at Quebec, 232 ; officiates at burial of Champlain. 240 ; labors in Canada, 252. Lalemant, Gahriel, Jesuit, nephew of Charles and Jerome, martyred, 233, 300; leaves Three Rivers, 300. Lalemant, Jerome, Jesuit, Superior of Canadian missions (1645-1650, 1659-1665), tells of inauguration of Company of Habitants, 281 ; appointed Superior, 284, 315 ; faith in Iroquois, 285 ; estimate of profits of fur trade, 287 ; per- mits Jesuits to trade, 290 ; admits weakness of French defenses, 293 ; serv- ant engaged by, 316 ; builds oven, 316 ; desires pay for Beauport lands, 318 ; observes New Year, 319 ; at Three Rivers, 324 ; objects to bonfires. 328 ; sails for France, 331 ; tells of typhoid among emigrants, 352-353 ; describes quarrel between civil and religious powers, 353, 425, 430 ; describes earth- quake, 366-367 ; expenses of Society of Jesus, 368 ; candidate for bishop, 413 ; appointed grand vicar, 415 ; pleads for liquor dealer, 427 ; death, 438 ; sketch of, 438-439; letter to Oliva, 469; Journal des Jesuits, 300, 313-331. 515 ; Relations, 59 note. La Marche, de, letter to Ponchartrain, 485. Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de, cited, 13 note. Lambert, Eustace, commands flying column, 337 ; letter from Pijart to, 414. La Mothe, Jacques de, fined for exceeding tariff rates, 511. La Mothe (Motte), Nicolas de, French officer, accompanies Champlain to Quebec, 128; sketch of, 128; arrives at Quebec, 130; remains in Canada, 132. Lamy, Noel, coureur de hois, text of contract. 536-538. Land, feudal tenure transferred to Canada, 16-17, 234 ; effect of colonial tenure on French commerce, 66 ; terms of feudal cessions. 80, 237 ; tenure under Virginia Company, 156-157 ; terms of grant to Company of Hundred Associates, 208, 209, 234-235, 237; grant to Martin, 223; tenure of grant to Hebert, 235; tenure of seigniorial grants, 236 ; abolition of seigniorial tenure, 237, 493 note; persistence of feudal tenure in France, 237; binding force of feudal tenure in Canada, 238, 239 ; Teutonic allodial system of tenure, 238 ; seldom transferred, 239 ; grant to Bourdon, 253 ; to Jesuits, 253, 264-265, 494 ; to Duchesse d'Aiguillon, 257, 294; to dower Indian girls, 264; absolute grants of, 204 ; granted to Lauzon, 265 ; of Montreal Island, 271 ; titles to Jesuit, 323 ; grant to Recollets, 442 ; exempt from tithes, 447 ; extent of Jesuit, 478 ; grant to IJrsuIines, 494. See also Commercial Companies, Feudal system. Jesuits, Seigneures, Seigneuries. Lan.d, " Height of," Albanel holds council with Indians at, 517. Lane, Sir Ralph, condition of Jamestown under, 91. Langlois, Marie, claim against Company of Hundred Associates, 225. Langlois, Solomon, claim against Company of Hundred Associates, 225. INDEX. 571 La yone, Joseph, Jesuit, meets Recollets with news of Kirke's departure, 184. Lanouillier, , Sittir, contracts for ferry, 510. La Peltrie, Marie Madeline de (nee de Chauvigny), Interest awakened in Canada missions, 2o7, 258 ; sketch of, 258-259 ; meeting with Marie de I'Incarnation, 260; fictitious marriage of. 259, 260, 411, 420 note; sails for Canada, 261, 411 ; arrives in Canada, 261-262; attempt to educate Indian girls unsuccess- ful, 262. 465 ; compared to Mile. Mance. 271 ; at Pointe aux Pizeaux, 273 ; house of, 282, 420 ; character, 283, 437-438 ; New Year's observances, 319 ; rents house to Laval, 42U-421 ; death, 437-438. La Place, Jacques de, Jesuit, sails for Canada, 271. La Potherie, Claude Charles Le Roy de, cited, 468; praises Canadians, 491; sketch of, 492 note; depicts Quebec, 496; describes Chateau St. Louis, 502. La Potherie, Jacques le Neuf de, arrives in Canada, 251 ; Governor of Three Rivers. 848 ; checks Iroquois. 348. La Ralde, Raymond de, favors Catholics, 163 ; neglects fur trade, 165 ; admiral of de Caen's fleet. 174; asks aid against free traders, 177; refuses passes to Jesuits, 179; fails to send supplies to Quebec, 182; arrives at Quebec, 224. La Roche Daillon, Joseph de, Recollet, sails for Canada, 172; starts for Huron country, 175. La Roche de Bretagne, Troilus de Mesgonez, Marquis de, royal concession to. 68, 79-80, 237; failure of, 70, 79. La Rochefoucault de Liancourt, Due de, 77. La Rochelle, France, merchants of, associated with De Monts. 73; arrival of Champlain at, 101 : free traders of. 104. 105, 108, 110, 140-141, 151, 162 ; merchants reluctant to join Company of Associates, 110-111 ; merchants ob- tain special license. 111 ; attacked by English. 179, 211 ; siege of, 203 ; fall of, 211 ; Montreal colonists sail from, 271 : claims diocesan rights in Canada, 413, 415; claims Hudson Bay trade, 250-251. Larose (La Rose), hanged for arson, 366, 428. Lu Routte, French pilot, in first fight with Iroquois, 92. La Salle, Rrtie Robert Cavelicr, Sieur de. forestalled by Brul^, 131 ; voyage to Canada, 389; excites anger of Hennepin, 389; enters on western exploration, 389-390; gains alliance of Illinois. 305; rebuilds fort Cataraqui (Frontenac), 395, 508; evidence on brandy question. 458 note; death of, 490; trading priv- ileges of, 508: character, 50.S. La HaUe, 111., origin of name, .386-387. Las Cams, Bartolomi, bishop of Chiapa (Apostle of the Indians), goodness of, 112 113. Lataiijuant, Gabriel, incorporator of Company of Hundred Associates. 207. La fcsserlc (La Tesseric), Jacques Descailhaut, Sieur de, member of council, 43.?. La Tour, Bcrtrand, I'Abhe de, Memoire svr la vie dc M. de Laval, cited. 443, 445. La Tour. Charles Amador de, friend of Gibbons. 306; sketch of. 306, 306-307 note. La Tour, Mtne.. defends fort. 306 ; second marriage of, 306-307 note. Laurentidc Range, 26. Lauzon, Charles dc, Sieur de Chamy, Invested with seignories of La Chine and Levis, 334 ; gnind maltre des raux et forAts de Nouvello France, 334 : marrii^s Marie Louise Ciffard, 334; (Jovernor ad interim. 335, 344. 346, 347. 34.S: returns to France and enters church, 335; Indian nolicy. 345-347; transfers office to D'AIllebf.ut. 346. 347 .348 ; returns to Canada with Laval, 408 ; In ecclesiastical council, 42L Lauzon, FranQois dr receives seipmory of La Prarle. 334; transfers seignory, 33 1. Lauzon. Jrnn de. Governor of Now Franop (1651-1656), Intondant of Company of Htindred As.soriatos. 210. 205. 333-334: estates granted to, 265. 331; grants Montreal Island to Montreal Association. 271. 334. 410; succeeds D'AlIlc- bout as Governor, 332; colonization scheme. 335, 342-343; administration of, 572 INDEX. 333-334, 335-336, 343-344; informed of treachery of Hurons, 338; sends Jesuit to Onondagas, 339 ; sails for France, 344 ; confiscates Quebec warehouse of Montreal Association, 365, 493. Lauzon, John, fils, created grand seneschal of Nouvelle France, 334; appointed judge, 334 ; marriage of, 334 ; killed by Iroquois, 335, 357. Lauzon, Louis, receives seignory of La Citere and Gaudarville, 334 ; marries Mile. de Fossambault 334-335. La Vacherie (cow pasture), lands cleared, 322; terms of patent of, 323; passing of, 499. Laval de Montmorency, Mgr. Frangoise de, nomination due to Mazarin, 333; ar- rives at Quebec (1659) as titular bishop, 351, 352, 412, 415-416, 419-421; quarrels with D'Argenson, 353, 360, 423-424. 426, 453 ; quarrels with Queylus, 360, 416. 417-418 ; has three men shot for selling brandy, 360, 425-426, 427 ; excommunicates liquor dealers, 365, 452, 453. 454 ; carries grievance to Louis XIV. (1662), 365, 427, 453, (1678) 458; returns to Quebec (1663), 372, 428. 429 ; excommunicates De Mezy, 373, 430 ; letter to, from Colbert, 385 ; returns to Quebec as consecrated bishop (1675), 389, 394-395, 436; quarrels with Frontenac, 394, 395, 418, 437, 452 ; in France, 394 ; resigns bishopric (1685), 395; austere rule of, 400, 401-402; quarre's with Talon, 403 note; founds Confraternity of the Holy Family at Quebec, 403 note; letter to Propa- ganda, 404, 435 ; at the Hermitage of Caen, 412, 428, 431, 480 ; candidate of Jesuits, 416-417; delay in consecration of, 417. 436; at Indian coimcil, 422 ; ransoms captive Iroquois, 422 ; deals with witchcraft and heresy, 425- 426 ; quarrels with D'Avagour, 427, 437 ; quarrels with De Mezy, 428-430, 432, 441 ; colony injured by, 432 ; value of Lalemant to, 439 ; opposed to Recollets, 439, 441, 444 ; preserves Canada from mendicant orders, 441, 444 ; objects to Advent sermon, 442 ; allows Recollets to build hospital, 442 ; establishes Quebec Seminary, 444-445, 460, 466, 467 ; issues tithe ordinance, 444-446 ; views on brandy trafBc, 445-446 ; sends Dudouyt to Paris to secure prohibition, 456 ; sends statement on liquor traffic to Louis XIV., 457 ; re- signs bishopric (1685), 459; forbidden to return to Canada, 459; returns to Canada (1688), 459-460; opens Lesser Seminary, 467-468; decides to educate a native clergy, 469-470 ; ordains that Cathedral Chapter shall be selected from Seminary, 479 ; consistent life of, 481 ; rescued from fire, 482 ; death of, 482, 490 ; technical school established by, 485-486 ; founds scholarships, 486 ; memorial to Colbert on exclusion of heretics, 513. Laval University, erection of, 484 ; location of, 497 ; Hamel's Sketch, cited, 484 note. Laverdiere, AbM C. H., authority on site of Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, 230, 241 ; Champlain, 59 note, 134-135, 198 ; Champlain cited, 538, 539 ; and Casgrain, Journal des Jesuits, 314. L'Ancougne, Francois, coureur de tois, text of contract, 536-638. L'Angc, , Parisian poet, with Champlain, 109 ; cited. 109 ; at Island of Ste. Helen, 110; at Tadousac, 110; sails for France, 110. Le Baillif, , clerk of De Caen Company, put in charge of company's stores, 195 ; accused of theft, 195. Le Baillif, George, Recollet, meets representatives of De Caen, 148 ; diplomatic mission of, 150 ; fails to mediate, 150-151 ; pays De Caen's demand, 151 ; carries bill of grievances from colonists to Louis XIII., 152-153. Le Beau, Guillaume, purchases arms and tools for New France, 70. Le Ber, Jacques, arrested for conspiracy, 365 ; in suit against Gitton, 531. Le Boesme, Louis, Jesuit brother, wounded by Mohawks, 337. Le Breton, Bom Guillaume, captain of the " Emerillon," significance of title of "Dom." 30; visits Hochelaga, 31. Lec, , Sieurs, directors of Compagnie de la Colonie, text of contract with, 536, 538. INDEX. 573 Le Caron, Joseph, Recollet, arrives at Quebec, 112, 117; hastens to Grand Sault. 117; leaves Huron village for Three Rivers, 120; returns to Quebec. 120; returns to France on behalf of Indians, 121 ; receives little encouragement, 122-123, 125 ; celebrates first marriage in Canada, 125 ; insists on surrender of Indian murderers. 128-129 ; signs petition to king, 153 ; returns with Hurons, 166 ; sails for Canada, 174 ; starts for threatened mission, 183 ; envoy to Kirke, 194 ; favors scheme of Recollets to remain in Canada during English occupation, 197 ; second schoolmaster in Canada, 462. Lechevalier, , arrives at Quebec, 466. Le Clercq, Chretien, Recollet. cited, 115; describes first mass celebrated at Que- bec, 117; historian of Quebec, 119; deplores Huguenot influence on Indians, 122; story of Iroquois attack on monastery, 166-167; tells of Jesuits en- couraged by RecoUots, 178 ; reasons given by, for delay of French to take over Quebec, 213 ; estimate of value of De Caen Companj'-'s beaver trade, 214 note; describes fortifications of Chateau St. Louis, 503; Etahlissement de la Foy, eO. 1691, cited, 530.. " Le Coquin," an old ship of Champlain's fleet, repaired, 188, 190 ; Pontgravfe refuses command of, 190 ; sailed by Boull6, 190 ; tonnage of, 191 ; captured by Kirke, 191. 195. Le Gendre, Lucas, member of first, later of second, Company of Associates, dis- solves with first company, 102, 103 ; writes to Champlain, 165. Le Goiipil, Robert, appointed to settle claim of Cartier, 49. Le Groseilliers. See Groseilliers. Le Groux, J., signs petition to king, 153. L' Incarnation, Marie (Martin nee Guyart, Guyard), de, meets Mme. de la Peltrle, 258-259, 260 ; marriage of. 259 ; leaves her son and enters a convent, 259, 260 ; dreams of Canada, 260 ; arrives at Quebec, 261-262 ; attributes desire of Mohawks for religion to music of church service, 341 ; tells of Iroquois attack on convent, 349; of Huron girls at convent, 351-352; describes guard- ing of convent, 354-355 ; expresses current opinion on earthquake, 367 ; Superior of Ursulines, 420, 438; death of, 437-438; character of. 438; hope of, in founding convent, 495 ; curriculum given by, 465 ; Lettres Historiques, value of, 438 ; written for her son, 438 ; cited, 539. L'Isle, Achille, Chevalier de, pursues Iroquois, 246; sent to receive Hurons, 247; Knight of Malta, 295. Le Jeunc, Paul, .Tesuit, tells of plot against Kirke, 219; describes condition of Quebec after Engli.sh occupation, 222-223, 224 ; Superior of Canadian mission, 229 ; unable to send missionaries with Hurons, 220 ; tells of austere piety of early days in Quebec, 231 ; method of evangelizing Hurons. 231 ; desire to render Indians sedentary, 231, 253; relates his experiences with Mon- tagnais, 233 ; delivers funeral oration of Champlain, 240 ; has charge of commission of temporary Governor, 244 ; returns to Quel)ec with Montmagny, 247 ; returns to Three Rivers to treat with Hurons, 247 : selects site of mis- sion of SiUery (St. Joseph), 253-254; correspondence with Mme. de Combal- let, 257 ; inspires Mme. de la I'eltrle. 258 ; succeeded l)y Vlraont. 260 ; de- scribes play performed at Quebec, 260-270 ; returns to France, 270, 362-363 ; justifies trading by Jesuits. 278. 200 ; candidate for bishopric. 413; opens school after Restoration, 402; UrUitions. cited. 50 note, 210, 222. 231-232, 233: Inflations, object of, 251-256-257, 314 note; Relations, asked to con- tinue, 260. Le Mnintrr , , Sulpiclan, killed by Iroquois. 358. Le Maisire, Simon, attorney for de Lanzon. 265. Le Mrrricr, Francis Joseph, Jesuit, meets Onondaga envoys, 338; succeeds Lale- mant. 438. Lemirc, , elected sjTidIc, 430. 574 INDEX. Lemoine, Jacques M., Fortifications et rues de QueJ)ec^ referred to, 496 note. Le Moyne, Simon, Jesuit, envoy to Onondagas, 338-339; welcomed by Onondagas, 340; returns to Quebec (1654), 340, 341, (1664), 429; invites martyrdom, 342 ; exhorts Hurons, 345 ; returns to Montreal, 347 ; with Iroquois envoys, 349, 350 ; fifth mission to Iroquois, 358 ; secures release of French captives, 358, 364. Leo X., Pope, period of, 11 ; character of, 12. Le Petit, Louis, captain in Carignan regiment, enters priesthood, 404. Le Picart, Jean, in suit against Gitton, 531 ; stockholder in Compagnie du Nord, 534, 535, 536. Le Sahlon (Anse Sablon), Cartier's fleet at, 24. Lescarhot (L'Escarhot) , Marc, cited, 24, 32, 69, 74, 97; unreliability of, 49; preju- diced against Cartier, 50 ; confidence in the existence of Hochelaga, 54 ; authority on fur trading grant to Noei, 68-69 ; opposed to free trade, 69, 97 ; a skeptic, 71, 74; gives text of concession to De Monts, 81; representations to Henry IV., 83 ; first winter at Quebec, 89 ; Histoire de la Nouvelle France dedication cited, 81. L'Espines (Espmay). See Couillard. Lesser Seminary (Petit Seminaire), succeeds Jesuit college, 463, 467; early scope of, 467, 468 ; school for priests, 467 ; opening of, 467, 468 ; college pupils lodged at, 468, 470; auxiliary to Jesuit college, 467, 468, 470; prosperity of, 474 ; buildings and site of, 481-482 ; scale of charges at, 483 note. See also Jesuit College, Jesuits, Laval. Le Sueur, Jean, dit St. Sauveur, secular priest, arrives in Canada, 253, 407 ; chap- lain to Hospital nuns, 407 ; name perpetuated, 407. Le Tardif, Nicollet (Olivier), interpreter, signs petition to king, 153; early col- onist, 169 ; surrenders keys of Quebec to Kirke, 195 ; stories of discoveries unheeded, 295; death of, 205 note. Levant, commercial rights in, secured by Prance, 67, 95. Liegois, Jean, Jjsuit brother, arrives in Canada, 232 ; at Quebec, 316 ; confers with Montmagny, 326 note; killed by Iroquois, 337, 341. Liquor, price of brandy, 383. 458 note, 511 ; French name for whiskey, 450 ; wholesomeness of rum, 450 ; price of wines, 511 ; Histoire de I'eau de vie en Canada, cited, 451. Liquor trafiic with Indians, introduced by English, 252 ; opposed by Canadian Church, 252, 450-452, 456-457 ; causes dissension between bishop and Gov- ernors, 360, 365. 373 (see also Laval) ; attitude of Queylus toward, 415; con- sidered necessary by- traders, 450, 452-453; Iroquois chiefs petition for re- striction of, 450 note; appeal against, carried to France, 456, 457; council convened to report on, 457-458, 458 note. See also Punishments. " Little River." See St. Charles River. Livre, French money, value of, 175 note. Long Point, Que., lands of Hospital nuns at, 323 ; lands of Ursulines at, 323-324. Longueil, Charles Le Moyne (Lemoine), Sieur de. burial place of, 242. Longueville, , Due de, sponsor of Huron child, 176. Loquvn, , clerk of Company of Associates, arrives at Quebec, 130, 132. Lorette, Ancienne, Jesuit mission named for the famous shrine in Italy, fugitive Hurons colonized at, 233, 352 ; population of, 492. Lorette, Jeune, Indians cf, 232 ; Hurons removed to, 352; population of, 370 note. Louis XI. of France, destroys feudal power, 15. Louis XIII. of France, colonizing system of, 81, 138 ; publication of decree of, forbidden by Parliament of Rouen, 108 ; weakness of, 123, 201-202 ; letter to Company of Associates, 138 ; confirms Montmorency as viceroy, 139 ; prom- ises armament for Quebec, 140, 146 ; letter to Champlain, 140, 146 ; decree regulating trading companies, 149 ; arms furnished by, 151-152, 196-197 ; INDEX. 575 petition of colonists to, 152-153 ; grants charter to Company of Hundred Associates, 207-209, 210; death of, 276, 332. Louis XIV. (le Grand) of France, colonizing system of, SI; bad policy of, 203; takes over rights and privileges of Company of Hundred Associates. 227, 376 ; birth of, celebrated at Quebec, 263 : fete of. 269 ; issues edicts for gov- ernment of New France (1647), 288-289, (1663) 373-374, (1675) 375; as- sumes control of Canada, 333, 363, 372, 375 ; promises soldiers and settlers for Canada, 363 ; sends commissioner to Canada, 363-364 ; abolishes Com- pany of West Indies, 375. 378 ; opposed to popular representation. 375 ; cre- ates Company of West Indies, 376-378 ; sends soldiers to Canada, 378, 380 ; takes measures to promote marriage, 380-381 ; indifference to commerce, 387- 388 ; opposes exploration, 390 ; recalls Frontenac and Duchesneau, 395 ; dis- satisfied with La Barre. 395 ; appoints La Vallier to succeed Laval, 395 ; gratuity to Frontenac, 398-399 ; forbids Queylus to return to Canada, 419 ; Issues edict for re-establishment of Recollets, 440; grants land to RecoHets, 442 ; regulates tithes, 447, 448 ; orders committee to act on liquor traffic. 457 ; infinity of details submitted to. 460 : desires institutions placed under state control, 466 ; desires that Indians shall be educated, 467 ; supplies apparatus for .Jesuit college, 469 ; gift to Seminary, 483 ; forbids Saint Vallier to re- turn to Canada, 488, 499 ; urges extirpation of heresy, 513 ; extract from letter to Compagnie de la Bale d FTudson en Canada, 532-533. Louise of Savoy, negotiates treaty of Cambrai, 40. Louisiana, Jesuits expelled from, 476. Louvigny, , report on corvie, 504-505. Loyola, lynatius, founder of Jesuit order, 30, 471 ; recognizes power of wealth, 115, 471; inspiration of system of, 233; discipline of, 412; life and labors, 471-473; education the great factor in system of, 472-473; fall of order due to education of its members. 474 ; Constitutions, 412 ; Letter on Obedience, 412. Luc, , Recollet, arrives In Canada. 440. Luther, Martin, revolt of, 11, 114, 234 ; autocracy of, 75. Luynes {Luines), Charles d'Alhert, Due de. favorite of Louis XII., 123; relations with Richelieu, 202. Luzon, Bishop of. fiec Ricbelieu. Macart. Charles, in Compagnie du Nord, 534, 535, 536. Mackenzie, Alexander, report on fur trade, 522-523. MarjdaUn Islands, explored by ("artier, 19, 22. Magyujla, vicomte, map of, 20, 23-24. Maine, exploraticm of coast of, 77 ; failure of De Monts In. 83 ; descent of Argall on, 91 ; landing of Plj-mouth Company on coast of, 156; Algonquins of, 296, 303. See also Acadia. Maisonneuve, Paul de Chouhedey, Sleur de, probably a member of Company of AssociatPS, 110; arrives at Quebec. 271, 298; urged to defer estal)lishment of Ville-Marle (Montreal), 272, 298; takes formal possession of Montreal. 272, L'74 : t-ntfrtn!ncd by I'izoaux. 273; delegate to Fran.-p. 2.s7, 291-292. 29S ; govemcrship of New France offered to. 298 ; opposed to Jesuit influence, 340, 409; governors of New France jealous of. 365. 453; applies to Oiler for priests, 4S. 300-310; ruthlessness toward Indians. 309; alarmed by French expansion. 300 ; punishment of witchcraft In, 425. Vevrfnundland, early knowledge of fisheries of, 10, 28, 6.'); explored by Cartier, 19. 22 ; Increasing Importance of fisheries, 68, 60-70 ; powers granted to La Roche In, 70; claimed by English, 136; boundary limit of lands ceded to Company of Hundred .•Vssoclates, 208; granted to Alexander, 211 note; Importance of, 3^<3. .301 ; History, cited, 36-37. Vev France, ecclesiastk al domination In. 17. 63; named by Cartier. 30, 47; re- named by Roberval. 52; Hurons In history of. 58. 62; Influence of Iroquois In history of. 62; absolutism In. 62-63, 161, 220-221 ; Huguenots excluded from. 64, 204 ; bureaucratic system of, 139 ; appanage of commercial companies, INDEX. 155 ; antagonism to New England, 161 ; advent of Jesuits, 171 ; list of arma- ment for defence of, 196-197 ; French population of, at period of Kirke's occu- pation, 200 ; appeals for representative government, 287 ; alliance with Algon- quins. 287, 288 ; receives concessions from home government, 293-294 ; devel- opment arrested by Montmagny, 296 ; value of Algonquin alliance to, 296 ; negotiations with New England for reciprocity treaty, 299, 305, 310-311 ; a crown colony, 372; population (1666) 379. See also Canada, Companies, Feudalism, Fur trade, Jesuits, Recollets. Neto Hartford Colony, planted by Hooker, 76. New Haven Colon}/, established by Davenport, 76 ; member of New England Con- federation, 308, 310. New Netherlands, narrow colonization policy of, 85, 155 ; colonists lack enterprise, 247. Newport, Christopher, leaves colonists on James Island, 157. New Spam, monastic orders in, 17. New York, people and government of, 361 ; plans for conquest of, 361, 396. Niagara River, Iroquois boundary, 56. Nicholas III., Pope, modifies rules of St. Francis. Nicolas, , signs petition to king, 153 ; office of, 154. Nicolet, Gilles, secular priest, arrives in Canada. 252-253, 407. Nicolet, Jean, interpreter and explorer, referred to, 252, 270. Noel (Indian chief). See Negabamat. Noel, Etienne, nephew of Cartier, 44. Noel, Jacques, nephew of Cartier, letters by, 24, 51, 68; loses trading privileges, 68-69, 79. Noel, John, grandnephew of Cartier, 51. Noel, Michael, grandnephew of Cartier, 51. Noiret (Noyrot), Phililtert, Jesuit, arrives in Canada, 174; quarrels with Caen and La Ralde, 179. Nolan, Catherine, represents Delino in Compagnie du Nord, 534, 536. "Nonesuch," Boston ship, reaches Hudson Bay, 516. Nopce. See Mezeray. NoremMgue (district covering part of Maine and New Brunswick), granted to Roberval. 41, 79. Normand, Etienne Jonquet, marries Ann Hamel, 125. Normandy, daring of fishermen of, 19, 65 ; merchants of, oppose monopolies, 95, 98 ; settlers from, in Canada, 264 ; free traders from, 268 ; grounds of epis- copal claims upon Canada, 410 note. Norsemen, potential colonization of, 13. Northxcest Passage, search for, 9, 15, 270. Notary, position of, in Canada, 506 note. Notre Dame de Beauport, stream of, 236. Notre Dame de la Foye, Jesuit mission, Hurons removed to, 352. See also St. Foy. Notre Dame de la Recouverance, built by Champlain in fulfillment of vow, 230, 240; site of, 230, 240-241, 494; burned, 231, 241, 242, 269, 420; funeral services of Champlain held in. 240 ; question of the tomb of Champlain in, 241-242 ; Champlain's bequest to, 242-243 ; Montmagny inaugurated in, 245 ; enlarged, 252 ; nuns at, 261. Notre Dame de la Victoire, site of, 87, 117, 164 ; dedicated (by St. Vallier) to commemorate the defeat of Phipps, 398, 496 ; rededicated on Walker's defeat, 398. Notre Dame de Qu€bec, register cited, 198. Notre Dame des Anges (Recollet), site of, 142; cornerstone laid by D'Olbeau, 142; description of, 142-143 ; transferred to St. Vallier, 143, 443 ; to serve as seminary for Indians, 143 ; gifts to, 144 ; completion of, 144 ; shelters Jesuits, INDEX. 172; Beauport murder announced at, 180-181; approach of English reported at, 193 ; visited by the Kirkes, 197 ; devastated by English, 222-223 ; restora- tion and growth of, 442. Notre Dame dis An>jes (chapel on Jesuit residence), mentioned. 172; Beauport murder announced at, 180-181 ; approach of English reported at, 193 ; visited by the Kirkes, 197 ; Protestant minister confined in, 218-219 ; devastated by English, 222; polemical discussions at, 249-250; Huron pupils of. 2o4-255 ; burned, 269 ; road to. 291 ; heating of, 317 ; feast of St. Michael celebrated at, 328; description of, 475-476. Notre Dame des Anrjes and St. Charles, population of, 379. Noue, Anne dc, .Jesuit, arrives in Canada. 174; complains of Huguenots, 177; ac- companies Br^beuf on Huron mission, 177; Lalemant desires to keep In Can- ada, 179. Nouveau, . in Company of de Caen, 206. Nova Scotia, French posts in, harried by English, 91 ; grant of. 211 note. O'DonncU, , said to have found burial place of Champlain, 240. Ohio, explored by La Salle, 390. Oka, Que., Indian population of, 370 uote. Olbeau, Jean d', Recollet. chosen for Canadian mission. 111 ; arrives at Quebec, 112; site of chapel built by, 117, 223; celebrates first mass at Quebec, 117- 118; with Montagnais, 119; at Quebec, 119, 120, 122, 130; at Three Rivers, 120; seeks aid in France for mission, 125, 127; returns to Quebec. 127; lays cornerstone of convent (Notre Dame des Anges), 142. Olicr, Jean Jacques, priest, founds Seminary of St. Sulpice, 272, 409 ; character and work of, 409-410; Journ4e Chretienne, 412. Oliva, Jean Paul, general of Jesuits, letter to. cited, 469. Olive, Jean (Peter John de Oliva), founder of sub-order of Franciscans called Spirltuales, 113. Olivier. Set Le Tardif. Onrida Lake, boundary of Onondaga territory, 59. Oneidas, Iroquois tribe belonging to league, deputies from, 350 ; fighting strength of. 361. Onondagas, Iroquois tribe belonging to league, early home of, 59 ; send delegates to Quebec. 338, 341-342, 346; welcome Jesuits, 342; destroy Eries, 342; French colony settled among. 342, 343, 461 ; take Hurons from Montreal, 346 ; escape of French colonists from, 347, 368 ; war against French, 347 ; ask for peace, 358; fighting strength of, 361. Onontio (great-mountain), Indian name for French Governors from tlie time of Montmagny. 267. 299. Orleans, Jean Baptiste Oaston, Due d', revolt of, 219. Ottawa River (River des Prairies), possible attempt of Cartler to ascend, 44; origin of Indians on, 52 ; Huron line of flight, 61 ; explored by Champlain, 109, 118 ; renter of fur trade. 117 ; priest drowned in, 175-176; Iroquois check French trade on, 268; Iroquois route to, 275; temporary security of, 286; Infested by Iroquois. 292-293. 392. Ottauras, Algonquin tribe, sought by St. Malo and Rochelle traders, 108 ; Lauzon attempts to settle P'rench colony among, 343; Iroquois inimical to, 343; am- bushed by Mohawks while conducting French, 344. Oudiette, Nicolas, farmer of the revenue, commercial ruin of, 521. Oullnin, , Recollet brother, raptured by Iroquois, 166. Oxrn. scarcity of. 291 ; mode of harnessing, 509. Parault (Pascaud), .Xntoinr, witness In suit against Oltton, 532. Parhot. Frnnrois Virvn*. In suit against GItton, 531. 534, 535, 536. Paddy (Padis), WUlinm. Kennebec trader, 307, 307 note. Pain bfnit ( ronsecratpd broad), distribution of, 318, 401; preparation of, 320; provided by soldiers, 424. 582 INDEX. Palace Hill, origin of name. 499. Paris, France, Parliament of, confirms rights of Breton traders, 127; Kirkes burned in effigy at, 193 ; Archives de cited, 539. Pa/rkwan, Francis, referred to, 131, 522. Paste de chouan, Pierre, Montagnais convert, memories of, 59 note. Patu, , shareholder in Compagnie du Nord, 534, 535. Paul v.. Pope, 143. Peas (pease), food supply at Quebec, 182, 186, 189; method of grinding, 187; distribution of, 329. Pilerin, Philippe, secular priest, arrives in Canada, 408. Penn, William, schemes of federation, 525. Pequemains, a fabulous race, 37. Peqvod tear, not due to French and Indian alliance, 93 ; Connecticut in, 310 ; neutrality of Iroquois during, 311. Perc, Jean, sent to Lal^e Superior to look for copper, 386. Perrot, Francois Marie, Governor of Montreal, imprisoned by Frontenac, 455 ; violence of Frontenac due to jealousy of, 455-456 ; gains by fur trade, 523. Perrot, Nicolas, interpreter and explorer, gives origin of Huron-Iroquois feud, 54- 55, 59 ; in Canada during Kirke's occupation, 198 ; sent to establish trading posts, 390. Perthuis, Francois, coureur de tois, text of contract, 336, 538. Petit, Captain. See Le Petit. " Petite Hermine," Cartier's ship, dimensions of, 25 ; finding of, 26 ; abandonment of, 26, 37. Petite RiviSre. See St. Charles River. Petition of Rights, signed by Charles II., 212. PetroJ)rusians, religious orders organized against, 114. Petroleum, first information given of, by Boucher. 511. Petuns (Tiontates, Tobacco Nation), Huron-Iroquois tribe, early home of, 58. Phipps, Sir William, takes Port Royal, 396 ; attempt on Quebec, 396, 397 ; re- treats, 397-398 ; commemoration day, in Quebec, 398 ; church of Notre Dame de la Vlctoire built, 398, 496 ; result of invasion, 399. Picart, Mme. See Garemand. Pijart, Claude, supersedes Poncet ,414 ; criticises Queylus, 414. PilUngs, James C, cited, 53. Pinaut, , 538. Pinel, Oilles, attacked by Iroquois, 337. Pinel, Nicolas, attacked by Iroquois, 337. Pinet. See Poncet. Piraulie (Piraul)e), Martial, writes play, 269. Pivert, Nicolas, early colonist, 169, 223. Pizeaux (Puiseaux), Pierre de, desires to join Montreal association, 278; repents of gift, 273. Plains of Abraham, origin of name, 198 ; site of, 223. Plaisance, Avangour advises against cession of, 362. Platon River, Jesuit wounded at 337. Plymouth, Eng., religious colonists sail from, 261. Plymouth, Mass., Druillettes at, 307. Plymouth Colony, political problems in, 63 ; theological dissensions of, 76 ; treaty negotiations with Quebec. 303, 308, 309-310 ; Kennebec Indians In jurisdiction of. 307 ; conditions of French alliance with, 311. Pointe Aux Alouettes, meeting of Champiain and Caen at, 150. Pointe Aux Lievres, Jesuit cattle farm on, 322-323. Pointe Aux Pizeau (Puiseaux), Maisonneuve at, 273. Poiton, France, fishermen from, at Great Ranks, 19-21. INDEX. 583 Polo, Marco, regarded as a myth, 7. Pommier, , secular priest, pronounces decree of excommunication against De Mezy, 430; arrives at Quebec, 466. Poncet, Joseph Antoine, de la Rievierc, arrives In Canada, 261-262; captured by Iroquois, 337 ; exchanged, 33S ; cur6 of Quebec, 414 ; removed by De Caen, 414. Pontchartrain, Louis PhHypeaux, Comte de, La Marche complains to, 485; Ursu- lines complain to, 504. Ponti/yar^ ( Du Pont. Sienr de Grav6), Francois. St. Malo merchant, associated with Chauvin, 70. 72 ; establishes trade at Tadousac, 70, 71. 72 ; commands De Chaste's expedition, 72 ; joined by Champlain, 72 ; arrives at Quebec, 73 ; conducts De Monts's colonists to Port Koyal, 73-74 ; commands ship in De Monts's St. Lawrence expedition, 77 ; wounded by free traders. 78 ; at Tadou- sac. 78, 88, 94, 99, 101, 112. 132; at trial of conspirators, 88; tabes prisoners to France, 88 ; to continue fur trade, 95-96 ; accompanies Champlain to France, 98; near oid Hochelaga, 100; brings Recollets to Canada, 112 ; meets Champlain, 118, 119; at Quebec. 120, 130, 141, 162-163, 164, 179; to super- sede Champlain at Quebec, 136-137; sails for Canada, 137, 140; relations with Champlain, 137, 150; aids Recollets, 142; at Three Rivers, 145, 149; sails for France, 145-146. 152, 164, 178; advises Champlain, 181-182; refuses to sail *' Le Coquin," 100; saved humiliation of surrender, 195; embarks for France. 199; arrives with commercial treaty, 281. Popham, Sir John, colony of, 156, Port yelson, aid sought by Compagnle de la Baye d'Hudson against English near, 520. Port Royal, Argall's descent upon. 76; attempt to maintain freedom of worship at, 111 ; restored to France. 215; captured by Phipps. 396. Portugal, her maritime and commercial enterprise, 7-8 ; affected by Bull of de- marcation, 14. 16; colonizes Brazil. 14; northern expeditions of, 15; daring of fishermen from, 19-20, 65; early commercial companies of, 66-67. See also Commercial Companies. Potardi^re, , report on iron ores. 385. Poutrincourl, Jean de Bicncourt, Sieur de, associated with De Monts, 73, 99; action of rival traders against. 97 : overshadows De Monts, 102. Pounall, Thonxaa, Administration of the Colonics, 525 note. Prelatists, contentions of, 17 ; theocracy of, 304. Privet, Martin, house burned. 351. Prince Eduard Island, sighted by Cartier. 22. Prince Rupert's Land, origin of name. 516. Prince Rupert's River, Radisson and Grossellllers at, 516. Printing press, absence of, in Canada, 513. Privateers. English, instructions to, 211 note; In treaty of Suze, 212 note. Propaganda, cited. 479. Protestants, dissensions of, in New England, 76; devoid of missionary spirit, 106-1(17; e.xclude(l from New France, 220. See also Huguenots. Provence, annexed to France, 15. Provost, , s»>lls land, 497. Proicse, Daniel Woodhuri/, History of Newfoundland cited. 36-37. Pueblos, Spanish mi.sslons among. 264. PuiMieux. , secretary of the king, writes to Champlain. 146, 152. Punishments, for theft. 47-4S. 329; for conspiracy, 88; for offence In carnival wet k, 231 ; for drunkards. 252. 318. 327 ; for refractory servant, 31 6 ; for sale of brandy, 360. 3t;5. 425-426; for robbery and arson. 366. 368. 42H ; for eating meat In Lent. 374 note; for practise of magic, 374 note, 425; for Irreverence. 374 note; for bn<"holnrn. 3Sn.3si ; for binsphemy, 4<»3 ; for heresy, 425; for traveling to the Hudson without a permit, 41)2. 584 INDEX. Puritans, contentions of, 17; motives and development, 158-159, 204-205; liber- ality, 199 ; not drawn to exploration, 247 ; theocracy of, 304. Quartz crystals, mistaken for diamonds, 44, 45, 47, 324. Quebec, history of. exemplifies transition from feudalism to representative gov- ernment, 18; first seen by Europeans, 24 (see also Stadacona) ; founded, 51, 78, 83, 86 ; Algonquin name superseded by Iroquois name, 55, 72, 78, 86 ; origin of name, 55 note; Champlain builds post at, 78 (see also Habitation de Quebec) ; events of 1608 at, 86-90; effect of French-Huron alliance on, 90-91 ; Montaignais at, 94 ; in charge of Chavin, 94 ; in charge of Du Pare, 98 ; Champlain at, 101 ; beginning of second period, 104-105 ; slow growth of, 107, 158 ; headquarters of free trade, 110 ; Recollets at, 111-112, 115, 117, 119, 120. 121, 130, 142; Jesuits at, 115, 172, 174, 232, 252-253, 315-316; topography in 1615, 117-118; arrival of colonists, 119; view of, in 1616; arrival of Heberts, 125; famine at (1617), 126, 130, (1627) 180-192; threat- ened by Indians, 128-130, 180-181, 255; death of Scotchman at, 132-133; Champlain to build fort at, 140 (see also Fort St. Louis) ; Champlain returns with family to, 141 ; a royal colony, 141, 158 ; building of RecoUet convent, 142-143 (see also Notre Dame des Anges) ; condition in 1620. 142-143, 144- 146; conflicting traders in, 146, 224 (see also Commercial Companies) ; peti- tions Louis XITL, 152-153; civil government organized, 154; stagnation of, 162, 176-177; building at, 164-165; Mme. Champlain at, 167; events of 1624, 177-178 ; in fear of English, 179-192 ; English fleet arrives at, 193 ; surrender of, 194-197, 213; families in, during Kirke's occupation, 198; Kirkes at, 199; abandoned by English, 214, 215, 219, 221; during Kirke's occupation, 218- 219; in treaty of St. Germain, 221-222; condition at restoration, 222-224; from trading post to town, 224, 243 ; return of Champlain to. 228 ; Hurons at, 228-229, 245 ; chapel built in commemoration of restoration, 230-231 (see also Notre Dame de la Recouvrance) ; piety of. 231, 244-245; seat of feudal- ism, 234, 238-239, 493 note (see also Feudal system) ; social life of, 238- 239, 301, 399-400, 401-402, 404, 405-406; burial of Champlain at, 240-241; fires at (1640), 241, 316, (1650) 282. (1701) 482; arrival of Montmagny, 244-245 ; threatened by Iroquois, 246-247, 266 ; effect of arrival of fleet at, 247-248 ; observance of church festivals, 248-249, 253. 255-256, 263, 317-318, 319, 320, 321-322, 327, 328, 331, 341-342 ; pictured by Le Jeune, 251 ; hospital founded at, 257 (see also Hotel-Dieu) ; arrival of nuns at, 261-262; Ursuline convent at, 261, 282 ; birth of Louis XIV. celebrated, 263, 269-270 ; English traveler at, 270 ; arrival of Mile. Mance, 271-272 ; hospitality of, 271 ; inter- course with Montreal established, 274 ; terrorized by Iroquois, 275-276. 288, 331, 336, 343, 344, 347, 350-351, 353-355, 357, 364 ; arrival of D'Aillebout at, 277 ; opposed to trade restrictions, 280 ; allowed a syndic, 281, 289, 299, 326 ; revolt in, 286-287 ; Council to meet at, 289 ; Bourdon elected syndic, 291 ; D'Aillebout returns to, 293; fugitive Hurons at, 299, 302-303, 342. 351-352, 368-369 ; Druillettes leaves, 305. 310 ; La Tour at. 306 ; return of Druillettes, 31] ; winter of 3 646, 325; events of 1647, 326-327; events of 1649, 329-330; events of 1650, 330-331 ; under Lauzon, 335-336 ; apprehensions of Jesuit In- fluence in, 340; population, (1653) 342, (1666) 379, (1681) 381; Mohawk deputation at, 345 ; reception of D'Argenson, 348 ; captive Iroquois at. 348, 349, 353-354, 355; arrival of Laval, 351, 419. 420, 436; frequency of fires in, 351 ; typhoid at, 352-353 ; French Governors buried at, 356, 431 ; census, (1660) 357 note, (1681) 463, 464-465, 498; Cayuga deputation at, 358: pro- tected by Montreal, 364 ; jealous of Montreal, 365, 493 ; earthquake at, 366- 367 ; Onondaga deputation at. 346, 358 ; or immorality of, 369- 370 (see also Punishments) ; Sovereign Council at, 373 ; Carignan-Sali(^res regiment at, 378, 379, 400, 404; from village to town, 379, 436; industrial activity of, 386; famous men at, 387, 507; return of Prontenac, 396; be- IXDEX. 585 sieged by Phipps, 396-39S, 501-502, 503; repulse of Phipps commemorated. 398 {see also Notre Dame de la Victoire) ; final capture, 398 note; secular clergy of, 401; Tartuffe to be presentea at. 401-403; Queylus at, 416; civil and ecclesiastical conflict iu. 430 (me also Laval) ; tithe question in, 446 (see also Tithes) ; brandy controversy in, 453 (see also Liquor traflBc) ; first seat of learning in America. 462 ; Jesuit estates in, 478 ; Laval University founded, 484 ; General Hospital established, 484 ; Laval's census of 1681, 491-492; a mercantile depot, 492. 512; topography of, 493-500, 495-496 note; pictured by La Potherie. 496 ; occupied by Arnold, 499 ; fortifications of, 502, 503, 504 (see also Chateau St. Louis, Fort St. Louis) ; Walker's attempt on, 398, 504 ; " Gibraltar of America," 504 ; tradesmen at, 507 ; commercial Im- portance, 507-508; fire regulations, 509, 510; establishment of ferry, 510; customs of, 510-511; sources of prosperity, 512; card currency In, 522; ex- ports of, 522 ; proves verbal of conference held at. 529-532. See also Com- mercial companies. Quebec Actj cited, 449. Quebec, District of, courts established, 374. Quebec Literary and Historical iSociety, destruction of relics belonging to, 2(5. Quebec Palace, burned, 499 ; rebuilt, 499 ; site of, 499-500. Quebec, Parish of, extent. 445 ; tithes imposed on, 445-446 ; supplied by Seminary, 4S3-484 note. Quebec Parish churches, 117, 223, 230. 321, 322, 327, 331; designed as a basilica, 419-420, 494. Queen Anne's ^yar, 17. Quen, Jean, de, Jesuit, labors in Quebec, 252; journey, 327; death, 353; Superior of missions, 414 ; removes Poncet, 414 ; criticises Queylus, 415. Quentin, Claude, Jesuit, procurer of Canadian missions, delegate to France, 287; at Quebec, 316. Queylus, Gabriel, Abb6 de. Sulpician, controversy with Jesuits, 351 ; at Quebec, 358. 416; quarrel w ith Laval, 360; removes Vignal, 408; created grand vicar, 409-410, 413; authority recognized by Jesuits, 414; character of, 414; sues Jesuits, 414-415; dines with Jesuits, 415; attitude on brandy question, 415; leaves Quebec, 415 ; at Montreal, 415 ; represents diocesan claim of Rouen, 416; leaves Canada, 416; returns to Montreal, 416; ordered to leave the col- ony, 418-419 ; parishes organized by, 421. Quietism, suppressed in Canada, 220, 418 ; Bernieres suspected of, 412. Racine, Jean, Mithridate, given at Quebec, 402. Radcliffe (RntcUffe) , John, arrival at Jamestown. 157. Radisson, Pierre Esprit, explorer and trader. 515 ; offers to open Hudson Bay region, 515; fined In Canada, 510; interests English, 516; patronized by Prince Rupert, 516 ; leads successful expedition. 516 ; pardoned and employed by French, 518 ; treachery to Compagnie du Nord, 519, 530 ; forbids French to trade with Indians. 520. Ragcot, Fran<;ois, witness. 538. Rayeot, OilUs, notary, 532. Raqucnau, Paul, Jesuit, leads fugitive Hurons to Quebec, 302-303; succeeds Lale- mant, 331; report on Jesuit college, 469; Journal dea Jesuits, 328. Raleigh, Sir Walter, results of colonization schemes, 84; charter granted to, 84; fate of colony of, 91. Rapin, , Provincial of RecoUets, arrives In Canada, 271. Ratisaon. Sec Radisson. Ray, Pierre, stigmatized by Champlaln. 195. Raymbault, Charles, Jesuit, burled I)e3i(le Champlaln, 242. Raymbaut, Captain . pursues Iro(iuois, 246. Razilly, Claude de, Seigneur de Launay, French admiral, commissioned to succor Quebec, 221. 586 INDEX. Recollet church, Canadian Governors buried in, 356 ; site of, 442, 443, 495, 498 ; conditions imposed on, by Laval, 442, 443 ; development of, 443 ; bombarded by English, 498 ; burning of, 498-499. Becollets (Reformed Fathers of St. Francis), rename the St. Croix River in honor of Charles des Boues, 25, 144 ; established at Quebec, 111, 115, 408 ; organiza- tion of order, 114, 115; hampered by poverty, 115, 170-171, 368; sketch of, 115-117 ; unable to hold real estate yielding revenue, 115, 116, 171 ; celebrate first mass in Canada, 117-118; record early history of the colony, 118-120, 133, 134, 164 ; silence regarding Champlain, 120, 133, 134, 135 ; at Quebec, 122, 125, 130, 142-144, 163 ; in France, 122 ; CondS's gift to, 139 ; angered by free traders, 141 ; industry of, 142 ; site of monastery, 142 (see also Notre Dame des Anges) ; transfer property to Saint Vallier, 143; authorized to perform functions of secular clergy, 143, 407 ; furnish men to garrison fort, 148; o.uarrel with Huguenots, 163, 170; convent attacked by Iroquois, 166- 167 ; distrust Jesuits, 171-172 ; hospitality to Jesuits, 172 ; isolation of, 174 ; inspire Jesuits, 178 ; called to attend council, 180-181 ; desire to continue Canada mission, 184, 197 ; return to France, 186 ; to hold Indian suspects, 190 ; apprised of descent of English, 193 ; English agree to protect property of, 195 ; urged by Kirke to remain in Canada, 198 ; return to France, 199, 410 ; land under cultivation, 200 ; number in Canada, 200 ; superseded hy Jesuits, 207 ; turn property over to Jesuits, 223 ; fate of chapel, 230 ; desired by the people, 279, 439, 440 ; to offset Jesuits, 385, 489 ; oppose Jesuits, 388- 389 ; favored by La Salle, 389-390 ; re-established in Canada, 439, 440, 441 ; shipwrecked, 440 ; partisans of Frontenac, 441 ; accumulate property, 442 ; lands granted to, 442, 495 ; restore monastery and build hospice, 442-443 ; religions toleration of, 443 note; Montreal church closed by Saint Vallier, 489 ; refuse to labor on public works, 505. Red River Settlement, 123. Reformation (The), issues of, transferred to America, 62-64; cause of, abandoned by Henry IV., 201 ; in France, 202. Religion, contradictory elements of, 260. See also Roman Catholic Church, Hugue- nots, Jesuits, Recollets. Renan, Joseph Ernest, cited, 410-411. Rennes, France, Parliament of, refuses to incorporate Company of Morbihan, 205. Renouard, Marie, marries Robert Giffard, 235. Rensellaerwick. See Albany. Repentigny, , with Carignan-Sali&res regiment, 378. Repentigny, Pierre Le Oardeur, Sieur de, arrives in Canada, 251, 279 ; deputy to France, 279 ; superseded, 293 ; death of, 293 ; admiral of fleet, 316. Restigouche, Que., Indian population of, 370 note. Revue Canadienne de Montreal, 289 note. Reye, Pierre, signs petition to king, 153. Rhode Island, founding of, 76. Rhodes, Cecil, compared with La Salle, 508 ; company established by. 527-528. Ribaut (Rilmtilt), Jean, Huguenot, destruction of colony of, 68, 244. " Richard of Plymouth," ship of Plymouth company, 156. Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal, Due de, colonial policy, 123, 137-138, 203-204, 205, 207, 220-221, 332; absolutism of, 187, 138, 201, 207; Cham- plain's faith in, 184-185; statecraft of, 202-208; crushes Huguenots. 203, 211 ; injures French commerce, 203 ; excludes Huguenots from New France, 204, 220 ; restricts trade, 204 ; uses Jesuits, 204 ; Minister of Commerce and Navigation, 205 ; organizes Company of Morbihan, 205 ; Viceroy of Canada, 206; commercial policy, 206, 281, 305; alliance with Protestants, 207, 220; charters Company of Hundred Associates, 207, 209 ; appoints Lauzon intend- ant of company, 210, 333-334 ; generous to conquered Huguenots, 213 ; grants INDEX. 587 renewal of trading privileges to Caen, 218, 221, 222 ; destroys feudal power in France. 220 ; establishes feudalism in New France, 234, 238 ; confirms Mont- magny. 244 : influences Muie. de Comballet, 257 ; fort named for. 274 ; river named for, 274, 332 ; dfbt of Canada to, 27(5 ; death of, 276 ; organizes navy, 332 ; rapids named for. 332. See also Commercial Companies. Richelieu Rapids, origin of name, 332. See also Chambiy Rapids. Richelieu River (Chami)ly, Riviere des Iroquois, Sorel), described by Champlain, 72. 99 ; Indians desert at, 92 ; Champlain meets Hurons at, 97 ; Iroquois on, 245, 246, 392, 395 ; origin of name, 274, 332. Ritard, . superintendent of Jesuit Estates, report of, 478. River Xcmifkan, .Toliet authorized to take possession of, 519-520. River of Canada. See St. Lawrence. Riviere aux .'Jtrrcs. Sec Brook St. Michel. Riviere de St. Charles, census of, 357 note. Riviire des Prairies. See Ottawa. Roads, site of Beauport in Cartier's day, 25 ; between Chflteau St. Louis and habitation, 164-165; narrowness of, 327, 327-238; between Quebec and Mont- real, 402-493 ; course and development of early Quebec, 495-496 note, 497- 498 ; stairway between Lower and Upper Town, 510. Roherge, Denis, witness in suit against Gitton. 532. Roberval, Jean Franqois de la Roque, Sieur de, stimulus of expedition, 16; com- mission and titles of, 41; narrative of voyage, 41, 48, 40; delay in setting forth, 41, 42 ; to govern Cap Rouge, 43 ; meets Cartier at St. .Johns, 45 ; lands colonists at Cap Rouge. 46-47 ; fortifies Cap Rouge. 47 ; renames Canada, 47 ; severity of, 47-48 ; explores the Saguenay, 48 ; on Island of Orleans, 49 ; re- turns to Cap Rouge, 48, 40; inefficiency of, 40-50; failure of, 51, 68; leader in French colonization, 67 ; titles transferred to La Roche, 68 ; method of colonization too costly, 78-70. Robincnu, Ren€, sieur de B^cancourt, sides with habitants, 286 ; commercial treaty of, 356. Rochemonteix, Camille de, .Jesuit historian, cited on origin and object of Relations, 314 note; gives the exercises of the .Jesuit college, 470; Les Jesuits et la yauvelle France au XVIIe sif'.clc, 460. Rogation Sunday, observance of, 328. Rohault, Rene, Jesuit novice, bequest of, to Jesuits, 253. Rolfe, John, marriage of, 176. Roman Catholic Church, political influence of, 11-12; arrogatlon exemplified by Bull of Alexander VI., 14; pretensions of, assprted in New France, 17; cele- bration of Ma.ss, 30. 33. 323; observances of fasts and festivals. 38, 317-318, 310-320, 321-322, 325, 327. 328, 341-342, 374 note, 415, 426; factor in French exploration. 30; issues created by European revolt against. 62-64; effect upon orders of schisms in. 114; causes of failure In Canada, 200; attractive and enduring qualities of, 248-240; opposed to liquor trafllc, 252 (see also Liquor traffic); sanctions marriages between French and Indians, 264; as- sumes pollllcal supremacy. 304; organized at Quebec, 351 (see also Laval) ; rivalry of orders In, 388 ; effect on Canada of revival in, 408-410; controversy over bishopric of Canada, 436 (see also Laval) ; wealth of orders a cause of popular discontent, 478, 470 ; parochial system of, 480. Bee also Canada, Church of, also Jesuits, Recollets. Roquemont , Claude de, one of Iltjndred Associates, endeavors to relieve Quebec, IK.'^; captured by KIrke, 1^5-1^6, 200, 211 ; news of his defeat In Paris. 103; sends to Quebec to reconnoitre, 2oi ; Incorporator of Company of Hundred Associates. 207; signs charter. 200; commands fleet, 211. Roufn, France, colonists from prisons of, 41, 42; fishing Industry of. 60-70; mer- chants In commercial associations, 73, 108, 111, 127, 200; Champlain and 588 INDEX. Pontgrave at, 95 ; action of parliament of, on king's decree, 108-109, 124 ; Champlain enters protest at, 138 ; baptism of Huron convert at, 176 ; claims episcopal jurisdiction over Canada, 410. 410 note, 436 ; diocesan claims rep- resented by Queylus, 413, 416: opposes Laval, 417, Archives of, 70. Rourmer, , sails for France, 145 ; bearer of letters to Champlain, 149. Roussillon, annexed to France, 15. Routier, Guillaume, captured by Iroquois, 353. Roxbury, Mass., Druillettes at. 307-308. Roycroft, Thomas, testimony of, 216. Roy's Bulletin, cited, 370 note. Royeye, , Sieur de, left in charge of colony at Cap Rouge, 48. Rue d'Aiguillon, origin of name, 332-333 ; highway to Recollet monastery, 332-333, 498. Rue sous le Fort, site of habitation, 164 ; in 1716, 496 note. Rupert, Prince, fits expedition for Hudson Bay, 516; Governor of Hudson Bay Company, 516; region named for, 516. Rysicick, peace of, established, 399. Sahle Island, La Roche's colony on, 70.. Sagard {Theodat), Gabriel, Recollet missionary and historian, on sectarian quar- rels, 74 ; describes habitation, 89 ; historical limitations, 118-119, 133 ; pic- tures early Quebec, 119-133 ; ignores Champlain, 134, 135 ; text of Canadian bill of grievances, 152, 153 ; arrives in Canada, 164 ; disapproves of French- men adopting Indian customs, 166 ; ignores Mme. De Champlain, 167 ; visits France to complain of Huguenots, 169-170; reasons given by, for failure of Recollets in Canada, 170 ; distrusts .Jesuits, 171, 172 ; narrovs^ views of, 174 ; excites fears of colonists, 182-183 ; tonnage of *' Le Coquin," 191 ; virtues of Solomon seal, 191 ; on preservation of church property, 198 ; holds Huguenots responsible for loss of De Caen's ship, 198-199 ; Histoire de Canada, 134, 135, 164. Saguenay region, confused with Upper Lake, 32 ; fabulous treasures of, 37 ; sought by Roberval, 48 ; sought by Champlain, 99-100 ; difficulty of protecting fur trade of, 26S. Saguenay River, Cartier at, 24, 44, 68 ; fur trade of, 51, 68, 70, 99, 117 ; explored by Champlain, 78 ; northwest passage sought through, 270. Sailors, Indian trade of French, 51 ; daring of French, 65 ; social status of, 328. " Saint Andre," Plague stricken vessel, 352, 353. Saint Angel, letter of Columbus to, 9 note. Ste. Angele (Angela Mericl of Brescia), founds Order of Ursulines, 258. See also TJrsulines. "Ste. Anne," vessel sent against English at Hudson Bay, 518; cargo levied on, 518. Ste. Anne de Beaupre, parish organized, 421 ; church built, 421. Ste. Anne de la Perade River, Champlain meets Indians at, 90. St. Barnabe (Barnabas), labor permitted on fete of, 321. St. Bartholemew, massacre of, 113. St. Benoit, priests of order of, entitled " Dom," 30. St. Bernard, Anne (le Cointre) de. Hospital nun, character of, 258; arrival In Canada, 261-262. St. Bernard, Marie de la Troche de (St. Joseph, Marie de Savonnier de la Troche de), Ursuline, chosen for Canada mission. 260. St. Beuve, Madeline de, influence on Ursulines, 258. St. Bonaventure de Jesus, Marie (Forestier) de. Hospital nun, character of, 258 ; arrival in Canada, 261 262. St. Charles River (St. Croix, Little River, La Petite Riviere), Cartier winters on, 24-25, 35, 87. 89, 174 ; named St. Croix, 24-25, 144 ; renamed St. Charles, 25, INDEX. 144; topography of. 25-26. 35. 87; called La Petite Riviere (Little River), 87, 142. 143, 172; Indians at. 88; Recoliet monastery on, 141, 142, 178 also Notre Dame des Anges) ; Iroquois on, 166-167; Jesuit mission on, 174, 177, 178 (set' a/.**o Notre Dame des Anges) ; Kirke's emissaries on, 184; Hos- pital nuns on, 261 ; Ursulines on, 261. 8t. Croix River. See St. Charles. 8t. Dominie (de Guzman), death of, 113. See also Dominicans. "St. Etienne/' vessel from Honfleur with Recollets. 112. Sainte Foy, Louis (Amantache) de, Huron convert, struggle for possession of, 176 ; baptism of. 176. Bt. Foy. Maisonneuve and Montmagny at, 273; boat building at, 273; Hurons established at, 498. -Sec also Notre Dame de la Foye. St. Franrii d'Assisi, character of, 112; death of, 113. See also Franciscans, Recollets. 8t. Francis Xavier, instructions to missionaries cited, 314 note; images of, 319; founds Hindustan mission, 473. See also Jesuits. Bt. Oermain-en-Laye. France, treaty of, 212 note, 219. 221-222. Bte. Helen, Island of, origin of name of name, 110. " Ste. HiUne," vessel to be returned by English. 222 St. Tpnace, Marie (Guenet) de, Hospital nun, character of, 258 ; arrival In Canada, 261-262. St. Ignace, Huron mission, destroyed by Iroquois, 300. Bt. Ignatius, images of, 319. Bt. Jean, Huron mission, destroyed by Iroquois, 301. " Bt. Jean," vessel«of Champlain's fleet, 228. Bt. Jean Ftnm^ois, Que., population of, 379. Baint Joachim, technical school at, 486, 486 note; Laval at, 481, 486; scholarship founded. 480. St. John of Malta (earlier St. John of Jerusalem), Montmagny knight of order of, 244. 50i» ; Noel de Sillery, knight of, 253 : cross of, 500. St. John the BaptUtt. bonfires at festival of, 328. Bt. John's. N. F., Roberval's fleet at, 45 ; Iberville's capture of, 391. Bt. Joseph (patron saint of Canada), festival of. 248-249, 253. Bt. Joseph, mission of. See Sillery. "St. Joseph." vessel, sails from Dieppe, 260-261; compared to "Mayflower," 261. Bt. Lairrcnce, Gulf of (Coif des Chateaux), not discerned by Cabots or Cortereals, 15; entered hy fishermen. 19 : supposed to be the Man: Indicum, 20-21. 22; Indians of. 52, 54 ; Klrke and De Roquemont in, 209 ; poachers In, 268 ; Deny's map, 19. Bt. Laurence River (Great River, River of Canada), supposed route to Asia, 9, 105; Cartler on, 9, 20, 23, 30-31, 34-35, 37, 40-41, 51 ; topography of. 30-31, 35 • Indians of, harass colonists, 46 ; Roberval on, 46. 51 ; Indian annals of, 51-62 (see also Hochelaga, Hurons, Iroquois, Stadacona) ; French traders on, 68. 82. 83, 95 ; described by Champlain. 72-73 ; De Monts' monopoly on. 82. 83, 95, infj; boundary between English and French, 91; abandoned by French. 92: free trade on. 95, 98-99. Iu2-103, 104. 105. 121. 127. 140-141. 177. 305; Recollets in villages on, 116-117; Indians of. war on Iroquois. 179; region of. granted to Company of H)indr0 ; Huron hatred of. .59; attack Huron town. 285; fighting strength of, 361 ; hostility to Illinois, 305. Btntchausst, rmplaremmt ilr la, granted for Rorollet church, 442. Sennetain , , dr, commandant at Fort Richelieu, absent from post, 315. Bcvtn Islands. Cartler at. 23. Sctcatrt, Charlis, daughter married, 324. Sczart, Jean, dit Gardelet. roureur de bois, text of contract, 536-538. Shnfti Hhury, Anthony AnhUy Cooper, Earl of, ability, 363. Shipbuilding at Cap Rouge, 48; at Quebec, 103; encouraged by Talon, 385. Short, Robert, drawing of, 407 note. 592 INDEX. Sillery, Noel Brulard, Chevalier de, founds mission of Sillery, 253-254. Sillery (St. Joseph), Jesuit mission, first settlement for sedentary Indians, 253, 254; sketch of, 253-254; nuns visit, 261-262; Indians pursue Iroquois, 267; hospital established at, 269 ; growth of, 269 ; terrorized by Iroquois, 275. 292 ; hospita? nuns retreat from, 282 ; Indians of, killed, 285 ; fur trade ethics at, 290, 326 ; road to, 291 ; inefficiency of defenders of, 293 ; Jesuits at, 315 ; Indians of, at church f§te, 317 ; site of old chapel at, 320 note; conditions of grant to, 323 ; fortifications begun, 330 ; defenseless state of, 336 ; population of, 357 note, 379. Silvy, Antoine, instructor at Jesuit college, 469. Sisters of the Congregation, work of, in Canada, 408. Six nations. See Iroquois. Skandahietsi, Louis, Iroquois spy, punishment of, 381. Smith, John, saves Jamestown colony, 157. Smith, William, History of Canada, 315. Smithsonian Institution, Bulletin, 53. Soissons, Charles de Bourhon, Comte de, death of, 103 ; governori^ip of New France transferred to Conde, 103, 104 ; powers conferred on Champlain by, 104-105, 137 ; political status of, 107 ; religion of. 111. Sokoquiois (Sokokis), Algonquin tribe, kill Christian Indians, 285. Soldiers, in Huron country, 284 ; revenue for maintenance of, 289, 294 ; duel be- tween, 320-321 ; salute Jesuits, 322 ; social status of, 328 ; punished for sac- rilege, 374 note; number sent to Canada, 392. See also Carignan-Salieres regiment. Militia. Soliman II. ("the Magnificent"), sultan of Turkey, alliance with Francis I., 16. Solomon's Seal, properties of, 191. Sorhonne, pronounces against liquor traffic, 452. Sorel, Pierre de, captain in Carignan regiment, arrives in Canada, 378. Souart, Oahriel, Sulpician, cure of parish of Quebec, 422 ; assists at Recollet cere- mony, 442. Soumande, , seminarist, founds scholarship and endows Farm school, 486, 487. Soumande, Pierre, Sieur Delorme, sent to represent the Compagnie de la Baye d'Hudson in France, 519, 530 ; in suit against Gitton, 531. South America, commerce of, secured by Portugal, 67 ; Recollets in, 116. Spain, rival of Portugal, 7, 8 ; effect of aggrandizement of, 8, 10 ; first colonizer of America, 13-14 ; lands alloted to, by papal Bull, 14, 68 ; rebellious colonies of, aided by English, 17 ; voyages of fishermen of, 19 ; growth and commerce of, feared by France, 39-40 ; effect of Reformation in, 62 ; absolutism of, 62- 63 ; early commercial companies of, 66-67 ; English hatred of. a factor in colonizing, 156, 159 ; traders of, in French waters, 162 ; opposed by Riche- lieu, 220; feared in Canada, 244; limits of war of reprisal, 310. See also New Spain. Spirituals, sub-order of Franciscans, 113. Stadacona, Indian town (later Quebec), located by Cartier's captives, 23; first seen by Europeans, 24 ; Cartier at, 32, 42 ; described, 34, 52 ; disease in, 36 ; hostile gathering at, 45 ; in alliance against French, 52 ; Champlain at, 55 ; known as Quebec, 55, 55 note; site of, 87. See also Quebec. Stadacona Indians, cultivate European plants, 20 ; oppose Cartier, 28, 37, 46, 56- 57 ; manners and customs of, 32-33 ; Cartier's professions to, 38 ; sedentary and wandering, 52; relations with Iroquois, 54, 56, 58, 60; relations with Hurons, 57, 58, 60. See also Hurons, Iroquois, Quebec. Sternatas, Indian tribe, village of, 34. Stuart, Sir James, capture of, 221. INDEX. 593 SuUy, Maximilian de Bcthune, Due de, disapproves of the colonization ot Canada, 154. SulpicianSj religious order, acquire rights of Montreal Company, 272, 410 ; acquire Island of Montreal, 272. 410, 455. 520 ; to be used against Jesuits, 385 ; Jesuits jealous of, 388 ; austerity of, 400-401 ; arrival in Canada, 408 ; wealth of, 410 ; survival of, 410 ; opposed by De Mezy, 453 ; Seminary of, at Mont- real, 468. See also St. Sulpice. Suite, Benjamin, cited, 297, 342, 410, 413. Suze, treaty of, 212, 212 note. Swedes, French alliance with, 244. Syndic, length of term of office of, 289 ; privileges of, 289. 294, 299 ; election of, 291 ; appointment of, known at Quebec, 326 ; Louis XIV. desires suppression of, 375 ; suppressed by D'Avangour, 428. Tadousac, center of Indian trade. 51, 105 ; trading post established, 70 ; Pont- grave at, 70, 90. 101: excessive cold of, 71; fur trade of, 72, 73, 100, 175, 229. 328; Champlain at, 77, 90. 94, 90 99, 101, 109, 110, 128, 140, 150; poachers at. 77-78, 96, 99; monopoly of trade of, granted to De Monts, 82; criminals taken to, 87 ; expense of port at, 101 ; free trade at, 105 ; L'Ange at, 110 , arrival of Recollets at, 112 ; better supplied than Quebec, 112 ; ar- rival of Morrel's ship at, 125; Pontgravt- seeks supplies at. 132, 146; prin- cipal port of New France, 140 ; Pontgravt leaves ship at, 149. 150, 151 ; De Caen at. 150, 152; religious (juarrels at, 162, 177; trading company's em- ployees at, 175; Kirke's fleet at, 183, 185, 195; Kirkes remove from, 218; arrival of ship "St. Joseph" at, 261; English explorer at, 270; present of fish from, 324 ; Iroquois descend on, 357 ; post abandoned, 357 ; Le Caron opens school at, 402 ; Albanel starts for Hudson Bay from, 516. See also Commercial Companies, Fur trade. TGffo.ncl. Sec La JonquiC-re. Taifjnoagny. name of Indian lad captured by Cartier, 23; guides Cartier, 27; sketch of, 27-28 ; warn Indians against Cartier, 28 ; refuses to accompany Cartier, 29 ; visits Cartier, 32 ; negotiates with Cartier, 38 ; seized by Cartier, 38-39 ; fate of, 40. See also Domagaya. Tailla, Indian tribe, village of, 34. Talon, Jean Baptiste, Intendant of New France (1665-1668), prudence of. 375; appointed intendant, 378; arrives at Quebec, 378-379; tariff published by, 383 ; ability of, 384 ; policy inspired by, 384 ; instructed to circumvent Jesuits, 384-385 ; manufactures encouraged by, 385 ; sends prospectors to Lake Superior, 386; encourages expansion, 390; returns to France, (1668) 394. 440, (lt;72) 436, 454; to investigate charges against De Mezy, 432; opposed to Laval, 433, 435; holds Jesuits responsible for action of converts, 433 ; secures return of Uccollets, 440 ; susjx uds prohibitive acts on sale of brandy. 454; advis'^s study of navigation, 469; at Jesuit college, 471 ; builds first brewery, 500, 510; characteristics of, 506; deputes Jesuits to watch Kngllfili, 516; Jean Talon cited, 512 note. Tnmjuay, .\bh6 Cyprien, Diet. (}(n(alo<)ique, cited, 219. Tajcs, severity of, In France, 478 ; not levied in Canada, 478, 522 note. See also Tithes. Teniiscamtngue, Que.. Indian population, 370. note. Tcaacrii, , examines or* .s, ."'.so. Theatricals, at Quebec, 325. 401-403, 4H9. See also Rallet. Theft, Instances of, 47, 321, 329. Src also Punishments. Thtminis t'ardaillac, Pons de Law^i/re, Man'chal de, acts for CondO, 124, 139; demands salary due Condr-, 127, 139. "The Tree," 3l!l ; sketch of. 322 notr. Thirty Years' ^Var, effect of, in Canada, 244, 276. 594 INDEX. Thomas, , a Huguenot, abjures heresy, 321. Three Bourgs, purpose of, 373 note. Three Rivers, original country of Iroquois, 54-55 ; Montagnais join Champlain at, 96, 97 ; Indian fair at, 120, 131, 148-149, 162 ; Le Caron and D'Olbeau at, 120; Champlain at, 120, 121; Pontgrave at, 120, 149, 150; hostile Indians at, 128; Jesuit mission at, 130, 240, 287, 315, 331, 336, 462; Boule, 131; Guers sent to, to watch rival traders, 145 ; Indian council at, 179, 283-284 ; Jesuit lands, 230, 323; Brebeuf and Daniel at, 232; firearms found with Indians of, 245; Montmagny at, 245, 247, 283; arrival of Hurons at, 247; seigneurial grants near, 264 ; Iroquois near, 265, 266, 275 ; dissatisfaction at, 279, 280; syndics of, 281, 289, 299, 326; fur trade at, 281, 284, 287, 300; salary of Governor of, 294. 299; troops for, 294, 336, 337; weakness of, 298, 315; Iroquois defeated at, 300, 349; Lallemant at, 320, 324; duel at, 320, 321; Duplessis-Bochart killed at, 336; attempt to fortify, 336; at- tacked by Iroquois, 336, 337, 349 ; Buteux starts from, 336 ; Lambert at, 337 ; protected by Montreal, 364 ; earthquake at, 367 ; courts established, 374 ; population (1666), 379; first school in Canada at, 462; Ursulines at, 466. See also Commercial Companies. Thxvaites, Reuben Gold, edition of Jesuit Relations cited, 307 note, 312, 367. Tibaut, , French sea captain, Champlain with, 101, 104. Tilly, , Delisle de. Commandant at Fort Bourbon, 537. Tin, use of, for roofs, 512. Tiontates. See Petuns. Tithes, popular view of, 440 ; for support of seminary, 444-445, 478-479 ; ordi- nance of 1663, 445; before the Council, 445, 447, 448, 448 note; text of ordi- nance, 445 ; opposed by habitants, 445-446, 447 ; ordinance of De Tracy, 447 ; manner of payment, 447 ; decree of the king, 447 ; ordinance of 1707, 448, 449, 509. See also Laval. Tobacco, cultivated at Quebec, 35. Torcapel, Jean, priest, arrives in Canada, 408 ; appointed cur6 of parish of Quebec, 421-422. Tordesillas, treaty of, 14. Toscanelli, Palo del Pozzo dei, Florentine astronomer, advises Columbus, 8, 13. Tosles, Pierre de, remains in Quebec, 198. Toudamans (Tsonnontouans) , Indian tribe, location of, 32, 59 note. Toulouse, France, 41, 42 : inquisition at, 113. Tours, France, Champlain secures edict at, 139 ; value of its livre, 175 note; Marie de I'lncarnation in convent at, 259 ; nuns of, chosen for Canada mis- sion, 260. Tracy, Alexandre de Proiiville, Marquis de, peace made by, with Iroquois, 352, 383 ; to command the royal troops in Canada, 378, 383 ; visits West Indies, 378 ; arrives in Canada^ 378 ; registers edict establishing West India Com- pany, 378 ; campaign against Iroquois, 383 ; returns to France. 383 ; to recon- cile civil and ecclesiastical powers, 383, 435 ; to investigate charges against De Mezy, 432 ; ordinance on tithes, 447. Trade, effect of monopolies in, on colonists, 18, 279, 294; titles offered to traders, 66, 208-209 ; policy of Henry IV.. 95 ; reciprocity treaty between New Eng- land and New Prance, 303, 304-305, 310, 311, 312; treaty of Becancour, 356 ; opportunities of New England, 382-383 ; fostered by Talon, 385 ; forbidden with New England, 492; tariff rates, 511-512; Quebec exports, 522. See also Commercial Companies, Fur trade. Liquor traffic. Trefort, , Rochelle trader, desires to accompany Champlain, 100. Tronquet, , delegate to France, 287 ; in church procession, 326. Tronson, , Sulpician, recommends Saint Vallier, 488 note. Troyes, Chevalier de, expedition against English at Hudson Bay, 520, 523. INDEX. 595 Turgeon, , Bishop, property bought by, 498. Turnips, remedy for scurvy, 37, 46. Tuscaroras, Iroquois tribe, sixth nation of league, 361. Ursuline Convent, Quelcc. site of garden of, 87; Bemi^res. administrator of, 259; site chosen, 261; picture of. 282; destroyed by fire (1050), 282. 351, (1686) 465, 408; opened to Huron refugees, 303, 351-352; fortified against Iroquois, 354-355; inmates of (1681), 464; nurses sent from, to Three Rivers, 466 ; site of, 408. Ursuline Convent, Meaux, France, founded by Mme. De Champlain, 167. Ursuline Convent, Tours, France, Marie de I'Incarnation in, 259-260; interest in Canada missions, 260. UrsuUnes, order of nuns, founding of, 114. 258; devotion, 250, 282, 408; founder, 258 ; object, 258 ; sketch of, 258 ; sail for Canada. 261 ; arrive in Canada, 261-262, 269, 407 ; open school in Quebec, 262 ; lack pupils, 263 ; change dwelling, 282 ; house built for, by Mme. de la Peltrie. 282 ; influence of, 282-283, 408 ; shelter Huron refugees, 303 ; lands of, 318, 323-324, 494, 495, 504 ; religious and social observances. 319, 320 ; servants of, fight duel, 320 ; chaplain of. trades in furs, 326; mistake of. 329; besieged by Iroquois, 354- 355 ; Vignal chaplain to, 407-408 ; educational work of, 465-466 ; protest against encroachment on property. 504: Chronique de I'Ordre des, 167. Utrecht, peace of, effect on Hudson Bay fur trade, 520 Valois, Louis do. .Jesuit, recommends St. "S'allier, 488 note. Vauban, Sebastian le Prrcstre, Marshal of France, military engineer, consulted on fortifications of Quebec, 502. Vauhoufjon. See Chauvigny. Vaudois. See Waldenses. Vaudreuil, Philippe de Rifjault, Marquis de, Governor of Canada (1703-1725), burial place of, 242, 356 ; cited, 385 ; social laxity under administration of, 405-406. Vaudreuil, Louise Elizabeth (n6e Joybert), Marquise de. sketch of, 406. Velasco, , Spanish captain, reputed first to ascend St. Lawrence, cited by Charlevoix, 19. Ventadour, Henri de Levis, due de. Viceroy of New France, authorizes Champlain to seize free traders, 141; succeeds Montmorenci, j 70 ; character of, 170; awards Huron l)oy to .Jesuits, 170; succeeded by Richelieu. 206. Verazzano, Giovanni da, Italian navigator, stimulus of expedition of, 16. Verazznno, Sra of, location, 20-21; sought by Cartier, 22; Canada and Hochelaga Islands in, 24. Vespucci. Ameriffo, in More's Utopia, 12; exponent of Italian influence in settle- ment of America. 13, 14-15. Vicotnti, a holding under feudal tenure, 80, 237. See also Feudal system. Vicar-apostolic, powers of, 419 note. Vitl. Nicolas. Rerollet. arrives in Canada, 164; with Hurons, 165-166; drowning of. 175-176; affection for Indian child. 176. Viennc, Marie, death of, 119; burial, 122. Vigcr, Louis, courcur dc bois, text of contract. 536-538. Viger-Temixcouata , Que, Indian population, 370 note. Vignnl (Vignnrd), Guillaume, Sulpician, slain by Iroquois, 358; chaplain of Ursu- lines. 407-408. Vignan. Nicolas dc, fal.se stories of discoveries, 109-110. Vignicr, , negotiates purchase of viceroyalty of New France, 139. Villars. , Mme. de, sponsor of Huron convert, 176. Villcbnn, , Robineau. Sleur de, sent to France to consult on fortifications of Quebec. 502. Villegagnon, Nicolas Durand de, Huguenot colonizer, 08. S96 INDEX. Ville-Marie, appellation of Montreal, Montmagny opposes settlement of, 272. See also Montreal. Villemenon, , Intendant to the Admiralty, letters to Champlain, 147, 149. VUleneuve, Mathieu Amyot, Sieur de, plan of Quebec, 481. Yilleray, Rouer de, dismissed from council, 429 ; in Compagnie du Nord, 533, 535, 536. Vimont, Barthelemp, Jesuit, sails for Canada, 261 ; superior of Canadian mission, 269 ; arrives at Montreal, 274 ; succeeded by Lalemant, 284 ; praises piety of soldiers, 284 ; deliberations on fur trade of Sillery, 290 ; grants lands to nuns, 318, 323; obtains patent appointing superior of Jesuits vicar-general, 413; Remion (1640), 241. Violette, , shot for selling brandy, 427. Virgin Mary, intercession asked for scurvy-stricken, 29-30 ; patroness of Quebec church, 249 ; celebration of the Assumption, 255-256, 263 ; chapel dedicated to, 398. Virginia, colony, theological and political contentions in, 17, 63 ; French captives taken to, 77 ; colonized by trading companies, 84, 106, 156 ; first Indian mas- sacre in, 93 ; republican tendencies obnoxious to France, 137 ; communistic constitution, 156-157 ; receive representative government, 157-158 ; progress compared to that of Canada, 158, 238, 265, 381 ; characteristics of colonists, 159 ; hatred of French Catholicism, 159 ; colonists lack enterprise. 247 ; trade injured by English wars, 310. See also Colonies, Commercial Companies. Voltaire (pseud, of Frangois-Marie Arouet), commends Jesuits, 474. Vvil (Will), Daniel, shot for heresy, 425. Wages. See Labor. Waldenses, persecution of, 113; organization of religious orders due to heresy of, 114. Walker, Sir Hovenden, loss of fleet celebrated in Quebec, 398 ; effect of attempt on French government, 504. Walloons, settled on the Hudson, 84. Walter, William. See Walton, William. Walton, William, New England minister, entertains Druillettes, 309. Wampum, Cartier crowned with, 43. Water system of Quebec, 493-494. Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, advises fortification of Quebec, 504. Welshmen, potential colonization of, 13. West India Islands, mark limits of Portuguese discovery, 14 ; trade of, 20'5, 310. See also Commercial Companies. Wheat, brought to Cap Rouge, 48 ; planted at Quebec, 89 ; samples taken to France, 120 ; sent from Quebec, 329 ; exported, 385, 522 ; corner in, 511. William III. of England, referred to by Frontenac, 397 ; effect of accession on Canada, 399 : apology of directors of Hudson's Bay Company to, 517 note. William and Mary College, founded, 462. William,s, Roger, victim of religious intolerance, 76. Wilson, Sir Daniel, cited. 53-54, 56. Windward Islands, Columbus at, 8. Winslow, Edward, London agent of Massachusetts colony, 306; urged to aid in resisting Iroquois, 308. Winslow, John, New England trader, welcomes Druillettes, 306 ; encourages Druil- lettes, 309. Winthrop, John, Sr., Governor of Massachusetts, negotiates with Montmagny, 288, 308 note. Winthrop, John, Jr., Governor of Connecticut, Druillettes appeals to, 308 ; lineage of, 308 note. Wisconsin River, Marquette and Joliet at, 390. INDEX. 597 Witchcraft, wise treatment of, in Canada, 425. Sec also Punishments. Wolfe, James, attempt cn Quebec. 397. WoUey (Wooley). Charles, Tico Years' Journal in New York, cited, 523. Wyandots, branch of Hurons, 53. Xaintongeais, Jean Alphonse, pilot, 46. Xaiier, St. Francis. See St. Francis Xavier. Yale University, founded. 4G2. Yan, , New England ship captain, Drui^ettes with, 309. ! . SEP 14 19Ci3 / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 017 372 700 8 %