Canada: the Empire of the North / Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom

Peltry traffic was the life of New France. Without it the colony would have perished, and now the rupture of peace with the Iroquois cut off that traffic. To the Iroquois land south of the St. Lawrence the French dared not go, and the land of the Hurons was a devastated wilderness. The boats that came out to New France were compelled to return without a single peltry, but there still remained the unknown land of the Algonquin northwest and beyond the Great Lakes. Year after year young French adventurers essayed the exploration of that land. In 1634 Jean Nicolet, one of Champlain's wood runners, had gone westward as far as Green Bay and coasted the shores of Lake Michigan. Jesuits, where they preached on Lake Superior, had been told of a vast land beyond the Sweet Water Seas,—Great Lakes,—a land where wandered tribes of warriors powerful as the Iroquois.

Yearly, when the Algonquins came down the Ottawa to trade, Jesuits and young French adventurers accompanied the canoes back up the Ottawa, hoping to reach the Unknown Land, which rumor said was bounded only by the Western Sea. However, the priests went no farther than Lake Nipissing; but two nameless French wood runners came back from Green Bay in August of 1656 with marvelous tales of wandering hunters to the north called "Christines" (Crees), who passed the winter hunting buffalo on a land bare of trees (the prairie) and the summer fishing on the shores of the North Sea (Hudson's Bay). They told also of fierce tribes south of the Christines (the Sioux), who traded with the Indians of the Spanish settlements in Mexico.

All New France became fired by these reports. When Radisson returned from Onondaga in April of 1659, he found his brother-in-law, Chouart Groseillers, just back from Nipissing, where he had been serving the Jesuits, with more tales of this marvelous undiscovered land. The two kinsmen decided to go back with the Algonquins that very year; for, confessed Radisson in his journal, "I longed to see myself again in a boat."

Thirty other Frenchmen and two Jesuits had assembled in Montreal to join the Algonquins. More than sixty canoes set out from Montreal in June, the one hundred and forty Algonquins well supplied with firearms to defend themselves from marauding Iroquois. Numbers begot courage, courage carelessness; and before the fleet had reached the Chaudière Falls, at the modern city of Ottawa, the canoes had spread far apart in utter forgetfulness of danger. Not twenty were within calling distance when an Indian prophet, or wandering medicine man, ran down to the shore, throwing his blanket and hatchet aside as signal of peace, and shouting out warning of Iroquois warriors ambushed farther up the river.

Drunk with the new sense of power from the possession of French firearms, perhaps drunk too with French brandy obtained at Montreal, the Algonquins paused to take the strange captive on board, and returned thanks for the friendly warning by calling their benefactor a "coward and a dog and a hen." At the same time they took the precaution of sleeping in mid-stream with their canoes abreast tied to water-logged trees. A dull roar through the night mist foretold they were nearing the great Chaudière Falls; and at first streak of day dawn there was a rush to land and cross the long portage before the mist lifted and exposed them to the hostiles.

To any one who knows the region of Canada's capital the scene can easily be recalled: the long string of canoes gliding through the gray morning like phantoms; Rideau Falls shimmering on the left like a snowy curtain; the dense green of Gatineau Point as the birch craft swerved across the river inshore to the right; the wooded heights, now known as Parliament Hill, jutting above the river mist, the new foliage of the topmost trees just tipped with the first primrose shafts of sunrise; then the vague stir and unrest in the air as the sun came up till the gray fog became rose mist shot with gold, and rose like a curtain to the upper airs, revealing the angry, tempest-tossed cataract straight ahead, hurtling over the rocks of the Chaudière in walls of living waters. Where the lumber piles of Hull on the right to-day jut out as if to span Ottawa River to Parliament Hill, the voyageurs would land to portage across to Lake Du Chêne.

Just as they sheered inshore the morning air was split by a hideous din of guns and war whoops. The Iroquois had been lying in ambush at the portage. The Algonquins' bravado now became a panic. They abandoned canoes and baggage, threw themselves behind a windfall of trees, and poured a steady rain of bullets across the portage in order to permit the other canoes to come ashore. When the fog lifted, baggage and canoes lay scattered on the shore. Behind one barricade of logs lay the French and Algonquins; behind another, the Iroquois; and woe betide the warrior who showed his head or dared to cross the open. All day the warriors kept up their cross fire. Thirteen Algonquins had perished, and the French were only waiting a chance to abandon the voyage. Luckily, that night was pitch-dark. The Algonquin leader blew a long low call through his birch trumpet. All hands rallied and rushed for the boats to cross the river. All the Frenchmen's baggage had been lost. Of the white adventurers every soul turned back but Groseillers and Radisson.

The Algonquins now made up in caution what they had at first lacked. They voyaged only by night and hid by day. No camp fires were kindled. No muskets were fired even for game; and the paddlers were presently reduced to food of tripe de roche—green moss scraped from rocks. Birch canoes could not cross Lake Huron in storm; so the Indians kept close to the south shore of Georgian Bay, winding among the pink granite islands, past the ruined Jesuit missions across to the Straits of Mackinac and on down Lake Michigan to Green Bay.

"But our mind was not to stay here," relates Radisson, "but to know the remotest people." Sometime between April and July of 1659 the two white men had followed the Indian hunters across what is now the state of Wisconsin to "a mighty river like the St. Lawrence." They had found the Mississippi, first of white men to view the waters since the treasure-seeking Spaniards of the south crossed the river. They had penetrated the Unknown. They had discovered the Great Northwest—a world boundlessly vast; so vast no man forever after in the history of the human race need be dispossessed of his share of the earth. Something of the importance of the discovery seems to have impressed Radisson; for he speaks of the folly of the European nations fighting for sterile, rocky provinces when here is land enough for all—land enough to banish poverty.

The two Frenchmen's wanderings with the tribes of the prairie—whether those tribes were Omahas or Iowas or Mandanes or Mascoutins or Sioux—cannot be told here. It would fill volumes. I have told the story fully elsewhere. By spring of 1660 Radisson and Groseillers are back at Sault Ste. Marie, having gathered wealth of beaver peltries beyond the dreams of avarice; but scouts have come to the Sault with ominous news—news of one thousand Iroquois braves on the warpath to destroy every settlement in New France. Hourly, daily, weekly, have Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal been awaiting the blow.

The Algonquins refuse to go down to Quebec with Radisson and Groseillers. "Fools," shouts Radisson in full assembly of their chiefs squatting round a council fire, "are you going to allow the Iroquois to destroy you as they destroyed the Hurons? How are you going to fight the Iroquois unless you come down to Quebec for guns? Do you want to see your wives and children slaves? For my part, I prefer to die like a man rather than live a slave."

The chiefs were shamed out of their cowardice. Five hundred young warriors undertook to conduct the two white men down to Quebec. They embarked at once, scouts to the fore reconnoitering all portages, and guards on duty wherever the boats landed. A few Iroquois braves were seen near the Long Sault Rapids, but they took to their heels in such evident fright that Radisson was puzzled to know what had become of the one thousand braves on the warpath. Carrying the beaver pelts along the portage so they could be used as shields in case of attack, the Algonquins came to the foot of the Long Sault Rapids near Montreal, and saw plainly what had happened to the invading warriors. A barricade of logs the shape of a square fort stood on the shore. From the pickets hung the scalps of dead Indians and on the sands lay the charred remains of white men. Every tree for yards round was peppered with bullet holes. Here was a charred stake where some victim had been tortured; there the smashed remnants of half-burnt canoes; and at another point empty powder barrels. A terrible battle had been waged but a week before. Radisson could trace, inside the barricade of logs, holes scooped in the sand where the besieged, desperate with thirst, had drunk the muddy water. At intervals in the palisades openings had been hacked, and these were blood stained, as if the scene of the fiercest fighting. Bark had been burnt from the logs in places, where the assailants had set fire to the fort.

From Indian refugees at Montreal, Radisson learned details of the fight. It was the battle most famous in early Canadian annals—the Long Sault. All winter Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal had cowered in terror of the coming Iroquois. In imagination the beleaguered garrisons foresaw themselves martyrs of Mohawk ferocity. It was learned that seven hundred of the Iroquois warriors were hovering round the Richelieu opposite Three Rivers. The rest of the braves had passed the winter man-hunting in the Huron country, and were in spring descending the Ottawa to unite with the lower band.

Week after week Quebec awaited the blow; but the blow never fell, for at Montreal was a little band of seventeen heroes, led by a youth of twenty-five,—Adam Dollard,—who longed to wipe out the stain of a misspent boyhood by some glorious exploit in the service of the Holy Cross.

When word came that the upper foragers were descending from the country of the Hurons to unite with the lower Iroquois against Montreal, Dollard proposed to go up the Ottawa with a picked party of chosen fighters, waylay the Iroquois at the foot of the Long Sault Rapids, and so prevent the attack on Montreal. Sixteen young men volunteered to join him. Charles Le Moyne, now acting as interpreter at Montreal, begged the young heroes to delay till reënforcements could be obtained: seventeen Frenchmen against five hundred Mohawks meant certain death; but delay meant risk, and Dollard coveted nothing more than a death of glory. At the chapel of the Hôtel Dieu the young heroes made what they knew would certainly be their last confession, bade eternal farewell to friends, and with crushed corn for provisions set out in canoes for the upper Ottawa. May 1, they came to the foot of the Long Sault. Here a barricade of logs had been erected in some skirmish the year before, and here, too, was the usual camping place of the Iroquois as their canoes came bounding down the swift waters of the Ottawa. Dollard and his brave boys landed, slung their kettles for the night meal, and sent scouts upstream to forewarn when the Iroquois came. The night was passed in prayer. Next day arrived unexpected reënforcements. Two bands of forty Hurons and four Algonquins, under a brave Huron convert of the Christian Islands, had asked Maisonneuve's permission to join Dollard and wreak their pent vengeance on the Mohawks. Early one morning the scouts reported five Iroquois canoes coming slowly downstream, and two hundred more warriors behind. There was not even care to bring a supply of water inside the barricade or remove kettles from the sticks. Posted in ambush, the young soldiers fired as soon as the first canoes came within range. This put the rest of the Iroquois on guard. The whites rushed for the shelter of their barricade. The Indians dashed to erect a fort of their own. Inside Dollard's palisades all was activity. Cracks were plastered up with mud between logs, four marksmen with double stands of arms posted at each loophole, and a big musketoon leveled straight for the Iroquois redoubt. The Iroquois rushed out yelling like fiends, and jumping sideways as they advanced, to avoid becoming targets; but the scattering fire of the musketoon caught them full abreast and a Seneca chief fell dead. The Iroquois then broke up Dollard's canoes and tried to set fire to the logs; but again the musketoon's scattering bullets mowed a swath of death in the advancing ranks, and for a second time the red warriors sought shelter behind the logs. Probably to obtain truce till they could send word to the other warriors on the Richelieu, the Iroquois then hung out a flag of parley; but the Huron chief knew what peace with an Iroquois meant. He it was, on the Christian Islands, who, when the Iroquois had proposed a similar parley for the purpose of massacring the Hurons, invited their chiefs into the Huron camp and brained them for their treachery. Dollard's band made answer to the flag hoisted above the Iroquois pickets by rushing out, securing the head of the Seneca chief, and elevating it on a pike above their fort.

But as the fight went on, the whites had to have water, and a few rushed for the river to fill kettles. This rejoiced the hearts of the Iroquois. They could guess if the whites were short of water, it only required more warriors to surround the barricade completely and compel surrender. Scouts had meanwhile gone for the Iroquois at Richelieu; and on the fifth day of the siege a roar, gathering volume as it approached, told Dollard that the seven hundred warriors were coming through the forest. Among the newcomers were Huron renegades, who approached within speaking distance of the fort and called out for the Hurons to save themselves from death by surrender. Death was plainly inevitable, and all the Hurons but the chief deserted. This reduced Dollard's band, from sixty to twenty. The whites were now weak from lack of food and sleep; but for three more days and nights the marksmen and musketoon plied such deadly aim at the assailants that the Iroquois actually held a council whether they should retire. The Iroquois chiefs argued that it would disgrace the nation forever if one thousand of their warriors were to retire before a handful of beardless white boys. Solemnly the bundle of war sticks was thrown on the ground. Then each warrior willing to go on with the siege picked up a stick. The chiefs chose first and the rest were shamed into doing likewise. Inside the fort, Dollard's men were at the last extremities. Blistered and blackened with powder smoke, the fevered men were half delirious from lack of sleep and water. Some fell to their knees and prayed. Others staggered with sleep where they stood. Others had not strength to stand and sank, muttering prayers, to their knees. The Iroquois were adopting new tactics. They could not reach the palisades in the face of the withering fire from the musketoon, so they constructed a movable palisade of trees, behind which marched the entire band of warriors. In vain Dollard's marksmen aimed their bullets at the front carriers. Where one fell another stepped in his place. Desperate, Dollard resolved on a last expedient. Some accounts say he took a barrel of powder; others, that he wrapped powder in a huge bole of birch bark. Putting a light to this, he threw it with all his might; but his strength had failed; the dangerous projectile fell back inside the barricade, exploding; marksmen were driven from their places. A moment later the Iroquois were inside the barricade screeching like demons. They found only three Frenchmen alive; and so great was the Mohawk rage to be foiled of victims that they fell on the Huron renegades in their own ranks and put them to death on the spot.

Such was the Battle of the Long Sault of which Radisson saw the scars on his way down the Ottawa. It saved New France. If seventeen boys could fight in this fashion, how—the Iroquois asked—would a fort full of men fight? A few days later Radisson was conducted in triumph through the streets of Quebec and personally welcomed by the new governor, d'Argenson.

It can well be imagined that Radisson's account of the vast new lands discovered by him aroused enthusiasm at Quebec. Among the Crees, Radisson and Groseillers had heard of that Sea of the North—Hudson Bay—to which Champlain had tried to go by way of the Ottawa. The Indians had promised to conduct the two Frenchmen overland to the North Sea; but Radisson deemed it wise not to reveal this fact lest other voyageurs should forestall them. Somehow the secret leaked out. Either Groseillers told it or his wife dropped some hint of it to her father confessor; but the two explorers were amazed to receive official orders to conduct the Jesuits to the North Sea by way of the Saguenay. They refused point-blank to go as subordinates on any expedition. The fur trade was at this time regulated by license. Any one who proceeded to the woods without license was liable to imprisonment, the galleys for life, death if the offense were repeated. Radisson and Groseillers asked for a license to go north in 1661. D'Avaugour, a bluff soldier who had become governor, would grant it only on condition of receiving half the profits. Groseillers and Radisson set off by night without a license.

This time the Indian canoes struck off into Lake Superior instead of Lake Michigan, and coasted that billowy inland sea with its iron shore and shadowy forests. On the northwest side of the lake, somewhere between Duluth and Fort William, the explorers joined the Crees, and proceeded northwestward with them, hunting along that Indian trail to become famous as the fur traders' highway—from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. The first white man's fort built west of the Great Lakes, the terrible famine that winter, and the visits of the Sioux—are all a story in themselves. Spring found the explorers following the Crees over the height of land from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. As soon as the ice loosened, dugouts were launched, and the voyageurs began that hardest of all canoe trips in America, through the forest hinterland of Ontario. Here the rivers were a stagnant marsh, with outlet hidden by dankest forest growth where the light of the sun never penetrated. There the waters swollen by spring thaw and broken by the ice jam whirled the boats into rapids before the paddlers realized. There was wading to mid-waist in ice water. There were nights when camp was made on water-soaked moss. There were days when the windfall compelled the canoemen to take the canoes out of the water and carry them half the time. "At last," writes Radisson, "we came to the sea, where we found an old house all demolished and battered with bullets. The Crees told us about Europeans being here; and we went from isle to isle all that summer." At this time the canoes must have been coasting the south shore of James Bay, headed east; for Radisson presently explains that they came to a river, which rose in a lake near the source of the Saguenay—namely Rupert River. What was the old house battered with bullets? Was it Hudson's winter fort of 1610-1611? The Indians of Rupert River to this day have legends of Hudson having come back to his fort when cast away by the mutineers.

The furs that Radisson and Groseillers brought back from the north this time were worth fabulous wealth. The cargo saved New France from bankruptcy; but the explorers had defied both Church and Governor, and all the greedy monopolists of Quebec fell on Radisson and Groseillers with jealous fury. They were fined $20,000 to build a fort at Three Rivers, though given permission to inscribe their coats of arms on the gate. A $30,000 fine went to the public treasury of New France, and a tax of $70,000 was imposed by the Farmers of the Revenue. Of the total cargo there was left to Radisson and Groseillers only $20,000.

Disgusted, the two explorers personally appealed to the Court of France; but there the monopolists were all-powerful, and justice was denied. They tried to induce some of the fishing fleet off Cape Breton to venture to the North Sea; but there the monopolists' malign influence was again felt. They were accused of having broken the laws of Quebec. Zechariah Gillam, a sea captain of Boston, who chanced to be at Port Royal, offered them his vessel for a voyage to Hudson Bay; but when the doughty captain came to the ice-locked straits, his courage failed and he refused to enter. Finally, at Port Royal, with the last of their meager and dwindling capital, they hired two ships for a voyage; but one was wrecked on Sable Island while fishing for supplies, and instead of sailing for Hudson Bay in 1665, Radisson and Groseillers were summoned to Boston in a lawsuit over the lost vessel.

In Boston they met commissioners of the English government and were invited to lay their plans before Charles II, King of England. At last the tide of fortune seemed to be turning. Sailing with Sir George Carterett, after pirate raid and shipwreck, they reached London to find the plague raging, and were ordered to Windsor, where Charles received them, recommended their venture to Prince Rupert, and provided 2 pounds a week each for their living expenses.

From being penniless outcasts, Radisson and Groseillers suddenly wakened to find themselves famous. Groseillers seems to have kept in the background, but Radisson, the younger man, enjoyed the full blaze of glory, was seen in the King's box at the theater, and was presently paying furious court to Mistress Mary Kirke, daughter of Sir John Kirke, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. What with war and the plague, it was 1668 before the English Admiralty could loan the two ships Eaglet and Nonsuch for a voyage to Hudson Bay. The expense was to be defrayed by a band of friends known as the "Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson Bay," subscribing so much stock in cash, provision, and goods for trade. Radisson's ship, the Eaglet, was driven back, damaged by storm; but the other, under Groseillers, went on to Hudson Bay, where the marks set up on the overland voyage were found at Rupert River, and a small fort was built for trade. During the delay Radisson was not idle in London. He wrote the journals of his first four voyages. He married Mary Kirke—some accounts say, eloped with her. With the help of King Charles and Prince Rupert he organized what is now known as the Hudson's Bay Fur Company; for when Groseillers' ship returned in the fall of 1669, its success in trade had been so great that the Adventurers at once applied for a royal charter of exclusive monopoly in trade to all the regions, land and sea, rivers and territories, adjoining Hudson Bay. The monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Great Northwest was granted by King Charles in May, 1670.

Here, then, was the situation. England was intrenched south of the St. Lawrence. England was taking armed possession of all lands bordering on Hudson Bay and such other lands as the Adventurers might find. Wedged between was New France with a population of less than six thousand. If France could have foreseen what her injustice to two poor adventurers would cost the nation in blood and money, it would have paid her to pension Radisson like a prince of the blood royal.

NOTE TO CHAPTER VI. The viceroys of New France were shifted so frequently that little record remains of several but their names. The official list of the governors under the French régime stands as follows:

Samuel de Champlain, died at Quebec, Christmas, 1635.

Marc Antoine de Chasteaufort, pro tem.

Charles Huault de Montmagny, 1636.

Louis d'Ailleboust of the Montreal Crusaders, 1648.

Jean de Lauzon, 1651.

Charles de Lauzon-Charny (son), pro tem.

Louis d'Ailleboust, 1657.

Viscount d'Argenson, 1658, a young man who quarreled with Jesuits.

Viscount d'Avagour, 1661, a bluff soldier, who also quarreled with Jesuits.

De Mezy, 1663, appointed by Jesuits' influence, but quarreled with them.

Marquis de Tracy, 1663, who was viceroy of all French possessions in America, and really sent out to act as general.

De Courcelle, 1665, who acts as governor under De Tracy and succeeds him.

Frontenac, 1672, was recalled through influence of Jesuits, whose interference he would not tolerate in civil affairs.

De La Barre, 1682, an impotent, dishonest old man, who came to mend his fortunes.

De Brisay de Denonville, 1685.

Frontenac, 1689.

De Calliere, 1699.

Marquis de Vaudreuil, 1703.

Charles le Moyne, Baron de Longeuil, 1725, son of Le Moyne, the famous fighter and interpreter of Montreal; brother of Le Moyne d'Iberville, the commander.

Marquis de Beauharnois, 1726.

Count de la Galissoniere, 1747.

Marquis de la Jonquiere, 1749.

Charles le Moyne, Baron de Longeuil, 1752, son of former Governor.

Duquesne,1752.

Marquis de Vaudreuil, 1755, descendant of first Vaudreuil.

CHAPTER VII

FROM 1672 TO 1688

The fur fairs of Montreal—Customs of people—Shiploads of brides—The Iroquois and De Tracy—Who first found Ontario?—Through western Ontario—Up the Great Lakes—Marquette and Jolliet—Frontenac and La Salle—La Salle rouses enemies—La Salle descends the Mississippi—Death of La Salle

While Radisson and other coureurs of the woods were ranging the wilds from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to Hudson Bay, changes were almost revolutionizing the little colony of New France. No longer was everything subservient to missions. When Marguerite Bourgeoys and Jeanne Mance, of Ville-Marie Mission at Montreal, went home to France to bring out more colonists in 1659, they learned that the founder of their mission—Dauversière, the tax collector—had gone bankrupt. Montreal was penniless, though sixty more men and thirty-two girls were accompanying the nuns out this very year. The Sulpician priests had from the first been ardent friends of the Montrealers. The priests of St. Sulpice now assumed charge of Montreal. Though "God's Penny" was still collected at the fairs and market places of Old France for the conversion of Indians at Mont Royal, the fur trade was rapidly changing the character of the place.

Afraid of the Iroquois raiders, the tribes of the Up-Country now flocked to Montreal instead of Quebec, where the traders met them annually at the great Fur Fairs.

No more picturesque scene exists in Canada's past than these Fur Fairs. Down the rapids of the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence bounded the canoes of the Indian hunters, Hurons and Pottawatomies from Lake Michigan, Crees and Ojibways from Lake Superior, Iroquois and Eries and Neutrals from what is now the Province of Ontario, the northern Indians in long birch canoes light as paper, the Indians of Ontario in dugouts of oak and walnut. The Fur Fair usually took place between June and August; and the Viceroy, magnificent in red cloak faced with velvet and ornamented with gold braid, came up from Quebec for the occasion and occupied a chair of state under a marquee erected near the Indian tents. Wigwams then went up like mushrooms, the Huron and Iroquois tents of sewed bark hung in the shape of a square from four poles, the tepees of the Upper Indians made of birch and buffalo hides, hung on poles crisscrossed at the top to a peak, spreading in wide circle to the ground. Usually the Fur Fair occupied a great common between St. Paul Street and the river. Furs unpacked, there stalked among the tents great sachems glorious in robes of painted buckskin garnished with wampum, Indian children stark naked, young braves flaunting and boastful, wearing headdresses with strings of eagle quills reaching to the ground, each quill signifying an enemy taken. Then came "the peddlers,"—the fur merchants,—unpacking their goods to tempt the Indians, men of the colonial noblesse famous in history, the Fôrests and Le Chesnays and Le Bers. Here, too, gorgeous in finery, bristling with firearms, were the bushrovers, the interpreters, the French voyageurs, who had to come out of the wilds once every two years to renew their licenses to trade. There was Charles Le Moyne, son of an innkeeper of Dieppe, who had come to Montreal as interpreter and won such wealth as trader that his family became members of the French aristocracy. Two of his descendants became governors of Canada; and the history of his sons is the history of Canada's most heroic age. There was Louis Jolliet, who had studied for the Jesuit priesthood but turned fur trader among the tribes of Lake Michigan. There was Daniel Greysolon Duluth, a man of good birth, ample means, and with the finest house in Montreal, who had turned bushrover, gathered round him a band of three or four hundred lawless, dare-devil French hunters, and now roamed the woods from Detroit halfway to Hudson Bay, swaying the Indians in favor of France and ruling the wilds, sole lord of the wilderness. There were Groseillers and Radisson and a shy young man of twenty-five who had obtained a seigniory from the Sulpicians at Lachine—Robert Cavelier de La Salle. Sometimes, too, Father Marquette came down with his Indians from the missions on Lake Superior. Maisonneuve, too, was there, grieving, no doubt, to see this Kingdom of Heaven, which he had set up on earth, becoming more and more a kingdom of this world. Later, when the Hundred Associates lost their charter and Canada became a Royal Province governed directly by the Crown, Maisonneuve was deprived of the government of Montreal and retired to die in obscurity in Paris. Louis d'Ailleboust, Governor of Montreal when Maisonneuve is absent, Governor at Quebec when state necessities drag him from religious devotion, moves also in the gay throng of the Fur Fair. In later days is a famous character at the Fur Fairs—La Motte Cadillac of Detroit, bushrover and gentleman like Duluth, but prone to break heads when he comes to town where the wine is good.

Trade was regulated by royal license. Only twenty-five canoes a year were allowed to go to the woods with three men in each, and a license was good for only two years. Fines, branding, the galleys for life, death, were the penalties for those who traded without license; but that did not prevent more than one thousand young Frenchmen running off to the woods to live like Indians. In fact, there was no other way for the youth of New France to earn a living. Penniless young noblemen, criminals escaping the law, the sons of the poorest, all were on the same footing in the woods. He who could persuade a merchant to outfit him for trade disappeared in the wilds; and if he came back at all, came back with wealth of furs and bought off punishment, "wearing sword and lace and swaggering as if he were a gentleman," the annals of the day complain; and a long session in the confessional box relieved the prodigal's conscience from the sins of a life in the woods. If my young gentleman were rich enough, the past was forgotten, and he was now on the highroad to distinguished service and perhaps a title.

The Fur Fair over, the Governor departed for Quebec; the Indians, for their own land; the bushrovers, for their far wanderings; and there settled over Montreal for another year drowsy quiet but for the chapel bells of St. Sulpice and Ville Marie and Bon Secours—the Chapel of Ste. Anne's Good Help—built close on the verge of the river, that the voyageurs coming and going might cross themselves as they passed her spire; drowsy peace but for the chapel chimes ringing … ringing … ringing … morning … noon … and night … lilting and singing and calling all New France to prayers. As the last canoe glided up the river, and sunset silence fell on Montreal, there knelt before the dimly lighted altars of the chapels, shadow figures—Maisonneuve praying for his mission; D'Ailleboust, asking Heaven's blessing on the new shrine down at St. Anne de Beaupré near Quebec, which he had built for the miraculous healing of physical ills; Dollier de Casson, priest of the wilds, manly and portly and strong, wilderness fighter for the Cross. Then the organ swells, and the chant rolls out, and till the next Fur Fair Montreal is again a mission.

When New France becomes a Crown Colony, the government consists solely and only of the Sovereign Council, to whom the King transmits his will. This council consists of the Governor, his administrative officer called the "Intendant," the bishop, and several of the inhabitants of New France nominated by the other members of the council. Of elections there are absolutely none. Popular meetings are forbidden. New France is a despotism, with the Sovereign Council representing the King. Domestic disputes, religious quarrels, civil cases, crimes,—all come before the Sovereign Council. Clients could plead their own cases without a fee, or hire a notary. Cases are tried by the Sovereign Council. Laws are passed by it. Fines are imposed and sentences pronounced; but as the Sovereign Council met only once a week, the management of affairs fell chiefly to the Intendant, whose palace became known as the Place of Justice. Of systematic taxation there was none. One fourth of all beaver went for public revenue. Part of Labrador was reserved as the King's Domain for trading, and sometimes a duty of ten per cent was charged on liquor brought into the colony. The stroke of the Sovereign Council's pen could create a law, and the stroke of the King's pen annul it. Laws are passed forbidding men, who are not nobles, assuming the title of Esquire or Sieur on penalty of what would be a $500 fine. "Wood is not to be piled on the streets." "Chimneys are to be built large enough to admit a chimney sweep." "Only shingles of oak and walnut may be used in towns where there is danger of fire." Swearing is punished by fines, by the disgrace of being led through the streets at the end of a rope and begging pardon on knees at the church steps, by branding if the offense be repeated. Murderers are punished by being shot, or exposed in an iron cage on the cliffs above the St. Lawrence till death comes. No detail is too small for the Sovereign Council's notice. In fact, a case is on record where a Mademoiselle André is expelled from the colony for flirting so outrageously with young officers that she demoralizes the garrison. Mademoiselle avoids the punishment by bribing one of the officers on the ship where she is placed, and escaping to land in man's clothing.

The people of New France were regulated in every detail of their lives by the Church as well as the Sovereign Council. For trading brandy to the Indians, Bishop Laval thunders excommunication at delinquents; and Bishop St. Vallière, his successor, publicly rebukes the dames of New France for wearing low-necked dresses, and curling their hair, and donning gay ribbons in place of bonnets. "The vanity of dress among women becomes a greater scandal than before," he complains. "They affect immodest headdress, with heads uncovered or only concealed under a collection of ribbons, laces, curls, and other vanities."

The laws came from the King and Sovereign Council. The enforcement of them depended on the Intendant. As long as he was a man of integrity, New France might live as happily as a family under a despotic but wise father. It was when the Intendant became corrupt that the system fell to pieces. Of all the intendants of New France, one name stands preeminent, that of Jean Talon, who came to Canada, aged forty, in 1665, at the time the country became a Crown Province. One of eleven children of Irish origin, Talon had been educated at the Jesuit College of Paris, and had served as an intendant in France before coming to Canada. Officially he was to stand between the King and the colony, to transmit the commands of one and the wants of the other. He was to stand between the Governor and the colony, to watch that the Governor did not overstep his authority and that the colony obeyed the laws. He was to stand between the Church and the colony, to see that the Church did not usurp the prerogatives of the Governor and that the people were kept in the path of right living without having their natural liberties curtailed. He was, in a word, to accept the thankless task of taking all the cuffs from the King and the kicks from the colony, all the blame of whatever went amiss and no credit for what went well.

When Talon came to Canada there were less than two thousand people in the colony. He wrote frantically to His Royal Master for colonists. "We cannot depeople France to people Canada," wrote the King; but from his royal revenue he set aside money yearly to send men to Canada as soldiers, women as wives. In 1671 one hundred and sixty-five girls were sent out to be wedded to the French youth. A year later came one hundred and fifty more. Licenses would not be given to the wood rovers for the fur trade unless they married. Bachelors were fined unless they quickly chose a wife from among the King's girls. Promotion was withheld from the young ensigns and cadets in the army unless they found brides. Yearly the ships brought girls whom the curés of France had carefully selected in country parishes. Yearly Talon gave a bounty to the middle-aged duenna who had safely chaperoned her charges across seas to the convents of Quebec and Montreal, where the bashful suitors came to make choice. "We want country girls, who can work," wrote the Intendant; and girls who could work the King sent, instructing Talon to mate as many as he could to officers of the Carignan Regiment, so that the soldiers would be likely to turn settlers. Results: by 1674 Canada had a population of six thousand seven hundred; by 1684, of nearly twelve thousand, not counting the one thousand bush lopers who roamed the woods and married squaws.

Between Acadia and Quebec lay wilderness. Jean Talon opened a road connecting the two far-separated provinces. The Sovereign Council had practically outlawed the bush lopers. Talon pronounced trade free, and formed them into companies of bush fighters—defenders of the colony. Instead of being wild-wood bandits, men like Duluth at Lake Superior and La Motte Cadillac at Detroit became commanders, holding vast tribes loyal to France. For years there had been legends of mines. Talon opened mines at Gaspé and Three Rivers and Cape Breton. All clothing had formerly been imported from France. Talon had the inhabitants taught—and they badly needed it, for many of their children ran naked as Indians—to weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw for hats,—all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made. "The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young Frenchmen for deserting to the English, Talon asked the King to grant titles of nobility to those who were loyal, like the Godefrois and the Denis' and the Le Moynes and young Chouart Groseillers, son of Radisson's brother-in-law, so that there sprang up a Canadian noblesse which was as graceful with the frying pan of a night camp fire in the woods as with the steps of a stately dance in the governor's ballroom. Above all did Talon encourage the bush-rovers in their far wanderings to explore new lands for France.

New France had not forgotten the Iroquois treachery to the French colony at Onondaga. Iroquois raid and ambuscade kept the hostility of these sleepless foes fresh in French memory. When Jean Talon came to Canada as intendant, there had come as governor Courcelle, with the Marquis de Tracy as major general of all the French forces in America,—the West Indies as well as Canada. The Carignan Regiment of soldiers seasoned in European campaigns had been sent to protect the colonists from Indian raid; and it was determined to strike the Iroquois Confederacy a blow that would forever put the fear of the French in their hearts.

Richelieu River was still the trail of the Mohawk warrior; and De Tracy sent his soldiers to build forts on this stream at Sorel and Chambly—named after officers of the regiment. January, 1666, Courcelle, the Governor, set out on snowshoes to invade the Iroquois Country with five hundred men, half Canadian bushrovers, half regular soldiers. By some mistake the snow-covered trail to the Mohawks was missed, the wrong road followed, and the French Governor found himself among the Dutch at Schenectady. March rains had set in. Through the leafless forests in driving sleet and rain retreated the French. Sixty had perished from exposure and disease before Courcelle led his men back to the Richelieu. The Mohawk warriors showed their contempt for this kind of white-man warfare by raiding some French hunters on Lake Champlain and killing a young nephew of De Tracy.

Nevertheless, on second thought, twenty-four Indian deputies proceeded to Quebec with the surviving captives to sue for peace. De Tracy was ready for them. Solemnly the peace pipe had been puffed and solemnly the peace powwow held. The Mohawk chief was received in pompous state at the Governor's table. Heated with wine and mistaking French courtesy for fear, the warrior grew boastful at the white chief's table.

"This is the hand," he exclaimed, proudly stretching out his right arm, "this is the hand that split the head of your young man, O Onontio!"

"Then by the power of Heaven," thundered the Marquis de Tracy, springing to his feet ablaze with indignation, "it is the hand that shall never split another head!"

Forthwith the body of the great Mohawk chief dangled a scarecrow to the fowls of the air; and the other terrified deputies tore breathlessly back for the Iroquois land with such a story as one may guess.

With thirteen hundred men and three hundred boats the Marquis de Tracy and Courcelle set out from the St. Lawrence in October for the Iroquois cantons. Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal bushrover, led six hundred wild-wood followers in their buckskin coats and beaded moccasins, with hair flying to the wind like Indians; and one hundred Huron braves were also in line with the Canadians. The rest of the forces were of the Carignan Regiment. Dollier de Casson, the Sulpician priest, powerful of frame as De Tracy himself, marched as chaplain.