Canada

La Tour, in the year 1648, visited Quebec, where he was received with the most gratifying demonstrations of respect by his countrymen, who admired his conduct in the Acadian struggle. Then D'Aunay died and La Tour immediately went to France, where the government acknowledged the injustice with which it had treated him in the past, and appointed him governor of Acadia, with enlarged privileges and powers. In 1653 he married D'Aunay's widow, Jeanne de Motin, in the hope—to quote the contract—"to secure the peace and tranquillity of the country, and concord and union between the two families." Peace then reigned for some months in Acadia; many new settlers came into the country, the forts were strengthened, and the people were hoping for an era of prosperity. But there was to be no peace or rest for the French in Acadia.

One of D'Aunay's creditors in France, named Le Borgne, came to America in 1654 at the head of a large force, with the object of obtaining possession of D'Aunay's property, and possibly of his position in Acadia. He made a prisoner of Denys, who was at that time engaged in trade in Cape Breton, and treated him with great harshness. After a short imprisonment at Port Royal, which was occupied by Le Borgne, Denys was allowed to go to France, where he succeeded eventually in obtaining a redress of his grievances, and an appointment as governor of Cape Breton.

Whilst Le Borgne was preparing to attack La Tour, the English appeared on the scene of action. By this time the civil war had been fought in England, the King beheaded, and Cromwell proclaimed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth. In 1653 very strong representations were made to the latter by the colonists of New England with respect to the movements of the French in Acadia, and the necessity of reducing the country to the dominion of England. Peace then nominally prevailed between France and Great Britain, but we have seen, as the case of Argall proved, that matters in America were often arranged without much reference to international obligations. A fleet, which had been sent out by Cromwell to operate against the Dutch colony at Manhattan, arrived at Boston in June, 1654, and the news came a few days later that peace had been proclaimed between the English and Dutch. Thereupon an expedition was organised against the French under the command of Major Robert Sedgewick of Massachusetts. Le Borgne at Port Royal and La Tour on the St. John immediately surrendered to this force, and in a few days all Acadia was once more in the hands of the English. Denys was almost ruined by these events and obliged to retire for a time from the country. La Tour was now far advanced in years, and did not attempt to resist the evil destiny that seemed to follow all the efforts of France to establish herself in Nova Scotia. No doubt the injuries he had received from his own countrymen, together with the apathy which the French Government always displayed in the affairs of Acadia, were strong arguments, if any were needed, to induce him to place himself under the protection of the English. The representations he made to the Protector met with a favourable response, and obtained for him letters patent, dated August 9, 1656, granting to him, Sir Charles La Tour, in conjunction with Sir Thomas Temple and William Crowne, the whole territory of Acadia, the mines and minerals alone being reserved for the government. Sir Thomas Temple, a man of generous disposition and remarkably free from religious prejudices, subsequently purchased La Tour's rights, and carried on a large trade in Acadia with much energy. La Tour now disappears from the scene, and is understood to have died in the country he loved in the year 1666, at the ripe age of seventy-four. He left several descendants, none of whom played a prominent part in Acadian history, though there are persons still in the maritime provinces of Canada who claim a connection with his family. His name clings to the little harbour near Cape Sable, where he built his post of Lomeron, and antiquaries now alone fight over the site of the more famous fort at the mouth of the St. John, where a large and enterprising city has grown up since the English occupation. About the figure of this bold gentleman-adventurer the romance of history has cast a veil of interest and generous appreciation on account of the devotion of his wife and of the obstinate fight he waged under tremendous disadvantages against a wealthy rival, supported by the authority of France. He was made of the same material as those brave men of the west coast of England who fought and robbed the Spaniard in the Spanish Main, but as he plundered only Puritans by giving them worthier mortgages, and fought only in the Acadian wilds, history has given him a relatively small space in its pages.

Acadia remained in possession of England until the Treaty of Breda, which was concluded in July of 1667, between Charles II. and Louis XIV. Temple, who had invested his fortune in the country, was nearly ruined, and never received any compensation for his efforts to develop Acadia. In a later chapter, when we continue the chequered history of Acadia, we shall see that her fortunes from this time become more closely connected with those of the greater and more favoured colony of France in the valley of the St. Lawrence.

[1] See Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada, vol. x., sec. 2, p. 93.

[2] This story of the capture of Fort La Tour rests on the authority of Denys (Description Géographique et Historique de l'Amérique Septentrionale, Paris, 1672), who was in Acadia at the time and must have had an account from eyewitnesses of the tragedy. The details which make D'Aunay so cruel and relentless are denied by a Mr. Moreau in his Histoire de l'Acadie Française (Paris, 1873). This book is confessedly written at the dictation of living members of the D'Aunay family, and is, from the beginning to the end, an undiscriminating eulogy of D'Aunay and an uncompromising attack on the memory of La Tour and his wife. He attempts to deny that the fort was seized by treachery, when on another page he has gone so far as to accuse some Recollets of having made, at the instigation of D'Aunay himself, an attempt to win the garrison from Madame La Tour who was a Protestant and disliked by the priests. He also admits that a number of the defenders of the fort were executed, while others, probably the traitors, had their lives spared. The attacks on Madame La Tour's character are not warranted by impartial history, and clearly show the bias of the book.

VIII.

THE CANADIAN INDIANS AND THE IROQUOIS:
THEIR ORGANISATION, CHARACTER, AND CUSTOMS.

At the time of Champlain's death we see gathering in America the forces that were to influence the fortunes of French Canada—the English colonies growing up by the side of the Atlantic and the Iroquois, those dangerous foes, already irritated by the founder of Quebec. These Indians were able to buy firearms and ammunition from the Dutch traders at Fort Orange, now Albany, on the beautiful river which had been discovered by Hudson in 1609. From their warlike qualities and their strong natural position between the Hudson and Niagara rivers, they had now become most important factors in the early development of the French and English colonies, and it is consequently important to give some particulars of their character and organisation. In the first place, however, I shall refer to those Indian tribes who lived in Canada, and were closely identified with the interests of the French settlements. These Indians also became possessed of firearms, sold to them from time to time by greedy traders, despite the interdict of the French authorities in the early days of the colonies.

The Indians have never had any written records, in the European sense, to perpetuate the doings of their nations or tribes. From generation to generation, from century to century, however, tradition has told of the deeds of ancestors, and given us vague stories of the origin and history of the tribes. It is only in this folk-lore—proved often on patient investigation to be of historic value—that we can find some threads to guide us through the labyrinth of mystery to which we come in the prehistoric times of Canada. Popular tradition tells us that the Hurons and Iroquois, branches of the same family, speaking dialects of one common language, were living at one time in villages not far from each other—the Hurons probably at Hochelaga and the Senecas on the opposite side of the mountain. It was against the law of the two communities for their men and women to intermarry, but the potent influence of true love, so rare in an Indian's bosom, soon broke this command. A Huron girl entered the cabin of an Iroquois chief as his wife. It was an unhappy marriage, the husband killed the wife in an angry moment. This was a serious matter, requiring a council meeting of the two tribes. Murder must be avenged, or liberal compensation given to the friends of the dead. The council decided that the woman deserved death, but the verdict did not please all her relatives, one of whom went off secretly and killed an Iroquois warrior. Then both tribes took up the hatchet and went on the warpath against each other, with the result that the village of Hochelaga, with all the women and children, was destroyed, and the Hurons, who were probably beaten, left the St. Lawrence, and eventually found a new home on Lake Huron.[1]

Leaving this realm of tradition, which has probably a basis of fact, we come to historic times. In Champlain's interesting narrative, and in the Jesuit Relations, we find very few facts relating to Indian history, though we have very full information respecting their customs, superstitions, and methods of living. The reports of the missionaries, in fact, form the basis of all the knowledge we have of the Canadian tribes as well as of the Five Nations themselves.

It is only necessary that we should here take account of the Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois, two great families separated from one another by radical differences of language, and not by special racial or physical characteristics. The Eskimo, Dacotah, Mandan, Pawnee, and Muskoki groups have no immediate connection with this Canadian story, although we shall meet representatives of these natural divisions in later chapters when we find the French in the Northwest, and on the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi. The Algonquins and Huron-Iroquois occupied the country extending, roughly speaking, from Virginia to Hudson's Bay, and from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. The Algonquins were by far the most numerous and widely distributed. Dialects of their common language were heard on the Atlantic coast all the way from Cape Fear to the Arctic region where the Eskimo hunted the seal or the walrus in his skin kayak. On the banks of the Kennebec and Penobscot in Acadia we find the Abenakis, who were firm friends of the French. They were hunters in the great forests of Maine, where even yet roam the deer and moose. The Etchemins or Canoemen, inhabited the country west and east of the St. Croix River, which had been named by De Monts. In Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, and Prince Edward Island, we see the Micmacs or Souriquois, a fierce, cruel race in early times, whose chief, Membertou, was the first convert of the Acadian missionaries. They were hunters and fishermen, and did not till the soil even in the lazy fashion of their Algonquin kindred in New England. The climate of Nova Scotia was not so congenial to the production of maize as that of the more southern countries. It was the culture of this very prolific plant, so easily sown, gathered, and dried, that largely modified and improved the savage conditions of Indian life elsewhere on the continent. It is where the maize was most abundant, in the valley of the Ohio, that we find relics of Indian arts—such as we never find in Acadia or Canada.

On the St. Lawrence, between the Gulf and Quebec, there were wandering Algonquin tribes, generally known as Montagnais or Mountaineers, living in rude camps covered with bark or brush, eking a precarious existence from the rivers and woods, and at times on the verge of starvation, when they did not hesitate at cannibalism. Between Quebec and the Upper Ottawa there were no village communities of any importance; for the Petite Nation of the river of that name was only a small band of Algonquins, living some distance from the Ottawa. On the Upper Ottawa we meet with the nation of the Isle (Allumette) and the Nipissings, both Algonquin tribes, mentioned in a previous chapter. They were chiefly hunters and fishermen, although the former cultivated some patches of ground. On Georgian Bay we come to a nation speaking one of the dialects of a language quite distinct from that of the Algonquins. These were Hurons, numbering in all some twenty thousand souls, of whom ten thousand or more were adults, living in thirty-two villages, comprising seven hundred dwellings of the same style as Cartier saw at Hochelaga. These villages were protected by stockades or palisades, and by some natural features of their situation—a river, a lake, or a hill. Neither the long houses nor the fortifications were as strongly or as cleverly constructed as those of the Iroquois. Maize, pumpkins, and tobacco were the principal plants cultivated. Sunflowers were also raised, chiefly for the oil with which they greased their hair and bodies. Their very name meant "Shock-heads"—a nickname originating from the exclamation of some Frenchmen, when they first saw their grotesque way of wearing their hair, "Quelles hures!" (What a head of hair!) Champlain speaks of a tribe whom he met after leaving Lake Nipissing, in 1615, and called the Cheveux Relevés, or people with the stiff hair, but they were wandering Algonquins. Champlain called the Hurons, Attigouantans, though their true name was Ouendat, afterwards corrupted to Wyandot, which still clings to a remnant of the race in America.

They were brave and warlike, with perhaps more amiable qualities than the more ferocious, robust Iroquois. The nation appears to have been a confederacy of tribes, each of which was divided into clans or gentes on the Iroquois principle, which I shall shortly explain. Two chiefs, one for peace and one for war, assisted by a council of tribal chiefs, constituted the general government. Each tribe had a system of local or self-government—to use a phrase applicable to modern federal conditions—consisting of chiefs and council. The federal organisation was not, however, so carefully framed and adjusted as that of their kin, the Iroquois. At council meetings all the principal men attended and votes were taken with the aid of reeds or sticks, the majority prevailing in all cases. The whole organisation was essentially a democracy, as the chiefs, although an oligarchy in appearance, were controlled by the voices and results of the councils. In this as in other American savage nations, the rule governing the transmission of hereditary honours and possessions was through the female line.

Beyond the Huron villages, south of Nottawasaga Bay—so named probably from the Nottaways, a branch of the same family, driven by war to the south—we come to the Tionotates or Tobacco tribe, who were kin in language and customs to their neighbours and afterwards joined their confederacy. The Neutral Nation, or Attiwandaronks of Iroquois stock, had their homes on the north shore of Lake Erie, and reached even as far as the Niagara. They were extremely cruel, and kept for a long while their position of neutrality between the Hurons and Five Nations. To the south of Lake Erie rose the smoke of the fires of the Eries, generally translated "Cats," but, properly speaking, the "Raccoons." Like the Andastes, near the Susquehanna, mentioned in a previous chapter, they were famous warriors, and for years held their own against the Iroquois, but eventually both these nations yielded to the fury of the relentless confederacy.

We have now come to the western door of the "long house" (Ho-dé-no-sote) of the Iroquois, who called themselves "the people of the long house" (Ho-dé-no-sau-nee), because they dwelt in a line of villages of "long houses," reaching from the Genesee to the Mohawk, where the eastern door looked toward the Hudson and Lake Champlain. The name by which they have been best known is considered by Charlevoix and other writers to be originally French; derived from "Hiro" (I have spoken)—the conclusion of all their harangues—and Koué, an exclamation of sorrow when it was prolonged, and of joy when pronounced shortly. They comprised five nations, living by the lakes, that still bear their names in the State of New York, in the following order as we go east from Niagara:

Each tribe lived in a separate village of long houses, large enough to hold from five to twenty families. Each family was a clan or kin—resembling the gens of the Roman, the genos of the Greek—a group of males and females, whose kinship was reckoned only through females—the universal custom in archaic times in America. As among these people the marriage tie was easily sundered and chastity was the exception,—remarkably so among the Hurons, their kindred—it is not strange that all rank, titles, and property should be based on the rights of the woman alone. The child belonged consequently to the clan, not of the father, but of the mother. Each of these tenement houses, as they may well be called, was occupied by related families, the mothers and their children belonging to the same clan, while the husbands and the fathers of these children belonged to other clans; consequently, the clan or kin of the mother easily predominated in the household.[2] Every clan had a name derived from the animal world, as a rule, and a rude picture of the same was the "totem" or coat-of-arms of the kin or gens, found over the door of a long house or tattooed on the arms or bodies of its members. The Tortoise, Bear, and Wolf, were for a long time the most conspicuous totems of the Iroquois. These people were originally a nation of one stock of eight clans, and when they separated into five tribes or sections, each contained parts of the original clans. Consequently, "all the members of the same clan, whatever tribe they belonged to, were brothers or sisters to each other in virtue of their descent from the same common female ancestor, and they recognised each other as such with the fullest cordiality."

Whatever was taken in the hunt, or raised in cultivation, by any member of the household—and the Iroquois were good cultivators of maize, beans, and squash—was used as a common stock for that particular household. No woman could marry a member of her own clan or kin. The marriage might be severed at the will of either party. Yet, while the Iroquois women had so much importance in the household and in the regulation of inheritance, she was almost as much a drudge as the squaw of the savage Micmacs of Acadia and the Gulf.

The tribe was simply a community of Indians of a particular family or stock, speaking one of the dialects of its language. For instance, the Five Nations or Tribes spoke different dialects of the Iroquoian stock language, but each could understand the other sufficiently for all purposes of deliberation and discussion. Each tribe was governed by its own council of sachems and chiefs—the latter inferior in rank—elected by their respective clans, but invested with office by the whole tribe. For all purposes of tribal government the tribes had separate territories and jurisdiction. For common purposes they united in a confederation in which each tribe occupied a position of complete equality—the exception being the Tuscaroras—Dusgaóweh or "shirt-wearing people"—who came from the south at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and made up the "Six Nations." If a tribe made peace it would not bind the other tribes unless they had given their consent in formal council, or by the presence of their representatives. A general council of fifty sachems, equal in rank and authority, administered the affairs of the confederation. These sachems were created in perpetuity in certain clans of the several tribes and invested with office by the general council. They were also sachems in their respective tribes, and with other clan-chiefs formed the council which was supreme over all matters appertaining to the tribe exclusively. Women, too, had their clan and other councils, and could make their wishes known through the delegates they appointed to the council of the league. In the federal council the sachems voted by tribes, and unanimity was essential before action was taken or a conclusion arrived at. The general council was open to the whole community for the discussion of public questions, but the council alone decided. The council of each tribe had power to convene the general council, but the latter could not convene itself. With the object of preventing the concentration of too much power in one man's hands, the federal council appointed two war chiefs, equal in authority. The council fire or brand was always burning in the valley of the Onondagas, where the central council met as a rule in the autumn, or whenever a tribe might consider a special meeting necessary. The Onondagas had also the custody of the "Wampum," or mnemonic record of their structure of government, and the Tadodä'ho, or most noble sachem of the league, was among the same tribe. The origin of the confederacy is attributed in legendary lore to Hä-yo-went'-hä, the Hiawatha of Longfellow's poem.

These are the main features of that famous polity of the Iroquois which gave them so remarkable a power of concentration in war, and was one reason of their decided superiority over all the other nations of America. In council, where all common and tribal affairs were decided, the Iroquois showed great capacity for calm deliberation, and became quite eloquent at times. Their language was extremely figurative, though incapable of the expression of abstract thought, as is the case with Indian tongues generally. The Indian—essentially a materialist—could only find his similes, metaphors, and illustrations in the objects of nature, but these he used with great skill. The Iroquois had a very keen appreciation of their interests, and were well able to protect them in their bargains or contracts with the white men. In war they were a terrible foe, and a whisper of their neighbourhood brought consternation to Indian camps and cabins, from the Kennebec to the Delaware, from the Susquehanna to the Illinois. They have been well described as "the scourge of God upon the aborigines of the continent." In their political organisation, their village life, their culture of the soil, their power of eloquence, their skill as politicians as well as warriors, they were superior to all the tribes in America as far as New Mexico, although in the making of pottery and other arts they were inferior to the mound-builders of the Ohio and the Mississippi—probably the Allegewi who gave their names to the Alleghanies and are believed by some writers to have been either exterminated by a combination of Algonquin and Iroquois or driven southward where they were absorbed in other nations. At no time could the Iroquois muster more than 3000 warriors; and yet they were the scourge and dread of all the scattered tribes of Algonquins, numbering in the aggregate probably 90,000 souls, and eventually crushed the Hurons and those other tribes of their own nationality, who did not belong to their confederacy and had evoked their wrath.

The Algonquin and Huron-Iroquois nations had many institutions and customs in common. Every clan had some such totem as I have described in the case of the Iroquois. Every tribe had its chiefs as military leaders and its councils for deliberation and decision. Consequently the democratic principle dominated the whole organisation. Eloquence was always prized and cultivated as a necessity of the system of government. Some tribes had their special orators among the chiefs. Though a general war was dependent on the action of the council, yet any number of warriors might go on the warpath at any time against the enemies of the tribe. They had no written records, but their memories were aided in council or otherwise by reeds or sticks and rude pictures; strings of wampum—cleverly manufactured from shells—served as annals, which the skilled men of a tribe could decipher and explain. The wampum belts performed an important part in the declaration of war or peace, and the pipe was equally effective in the deliberations of council and in the profession of amity. Murder might be expiated by presents to the family or relatives of the dead, and crime was rarely followed by death except there was a question of other nations, who would not be content unless the blood of their kinsman was washed away by blood. Charity and hospitality were among the virtues of the Indian race, especially among the Iroquois, and while there was food in a village no one need starve. The purity of love was unknown to a savage nature, chiefly animated by animal passion. Prisoners were treated with great ferocity, but the Iroquois exceeded all nations in the ingenuity of torture. Stoicism and endurance, even heroic, were characteristics of Indians generally, when in the hands of their enemies, and the cruellest insult that a warrior could receive was to be called a woman. Sometimes prisoners were spared and adopted into the tribe, and among most nations the wife or mother or sister of a dead chief might demand that he be replaced by a prisoner to whom they may have taken a fancy. After torture parts of the bodies of the victim would be eaten as a sort of mystic ceremony, but this custom was peculiar to the Hurons and Iroquois only. In their warlike expeditions they had no special discipline, and might be successfully met on the open field or under the protection of fortified works. Their favourite system was a surprise or furious onslaught. A siege soon exhausted their patience and resources. They were as treacherous as they were brave. In the shades of the forest, whose intricacies and secrets they understood so well, they were most to be feared. Behind every tree might lurk a warrior, when once a party was known to be on the warpath. To steal stealthily at night through the mazes of the woods, tomahawk their sleeping foes, and take many scalps, was the height of an Indian's bliss. Curious to say, the Indians took little precautions to guard against such surprises, but thought they were protected by their manitous or guardian spirits.

A spirit of materialism prevailed in all their superstitions. They had no conception of one all-pervading, omniscient divine being, governing and watching over humanity, when the missionaries first came among them. It was only by making use of their belief in the existence of a supreme chief for every race of animals, that the priests could lead their converts to the idea of a Great Spirit who ruled all creation. In their original state of savagery or barbarism, any conception an Indian might have of a supernatural being superior to himself was frittered away by his imagining that the whole material world was under the influence of innumerable mysterious powers. In the stirring of the leaves, in the glint of the sunbeam amid the foliage, in the shadow on his path, in the flash of the lightning, in the crash of the thunder, in the roar of the cataract, in the colours of the rainbow, in the very beat of his pulse, in the leap of the fish, in the flight of the birds, he saw some supernatural power to be evoked. The Indian companions of Champlain, we remember, threw tobacco to the genius or Manitou of the great fall of the Ottawa. The Manitou of the Algonquins, and the Okies or Otkons of the Hurons and Iroquois were not always superior, mysterious beings endowed with supernatural powers, like the Algonquin Manabozho, the Great Hare, the king of all animals; or a deified hero, like Hiawatha, the founder of the Iroquois confederacy, and Glooscap, the favourite of Micmac legends. The Manitou or Oki might even be a stone, a fish-bone, a bird's feather, or a serpent's skin, or some other thing in the animate or inanimate world, revealed to a young man in his dreams as his fetich or guardian through life. Dreams were respected as revelations from the spirit world. As Champlain tells us, during his first expedition to Lake Champlain, the Indians always questioned him as to his dreams, and at last he was able to tell them that he had seen in a vision some Iroquois drowning in the lake, and wished to help them, but was not permitted to do so by the Indians of his own party. This dream, in their opinion, was a portent in their favour.

A fetich became at last even the object of an Indian's worship—to be thanked, flattered, expostulated with, according to the emergency. It can be easily seen that in this Indian land of mysterious agencies, of manitous and spirits, the medicine-man and conjuror exercised a great power among old and young, chiefs and women. He had to be consulted in illness, in peace, in war, at every moment of importance to individual or nation. Even in case of illness and disease he found more value in secret communications with the supernatural world, and in working on the credulity of his tribesmen, than in the use of medicines made from plants. The grossest superstition dominated every community. All sorts of mystic ceremonies, some most cruel and repugnant to every sense of decency, were usual on occasions when supernatural influences had to be called into action.

Every respect was paid to the dead, who were supposed to have gone on a journey to a spirit land. Every one had such a separate scaffold or grave, generally speaking, as Champlain saw among the Ottawas, but it was the strange custom of the Hurons to collect the bones of their dead every few years and immure them in great pits or ossuaries with weirdlike ceremonies very minutely described in the Relations. In a passage previously quoted Champlain gave credit to the Indians for believing in the immortality of the soul. The world to which the Indian's imagination accompanied the dead was not the Heaven or Hell of the Jew or Christian. Among some tribes there was an impression rather than a belief that a distinction was made in the land of the Ponemah or Hereafter between the great or useful, and the weak or useless; but generally it was thought that all alike passed to the Spirit Land, and carried on their vocations as in life. It was a Land of Shades where trees, flowers, animals, men, and all things were spirits.

"By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews
In vestments for the-chase arrayed
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer a shade."

[1] See Horatio Hale's "Fall of Hochelaga," in Journal of American Folklore, Cambridge, Mass., 1894.

[2] In this necessarily very imperfect description of the organisation and customs of the Five Nations I depend mainly on those valuable and now rare books, The League of the Iroquois, and Houses and Home Life of the Aborigines, by Lewis H. Morgan. The reader should also consult Horatio Hale's Iroquois Book of Rites.

IX.

CONVENTS AND HOSPITALS—VILLE-MARIE—MARTYRED
MISSIONARIES—VICTORIOUS IROQUOIS—HAPLESS HURONS.

(1635-1652.)

A scene that was witnessed on the heights of Quebec on a fine June morning, two hundred and eighty-three years ago, illustrated the spirit that animated the founders of Canada. At the foot of a cross knelt the Governor, Charles Hault de Montmagny, Knight of Malta, who had come to take the place of his great predecessor, Samuel Champlain, whose remains were buried close by, if indeed this very cross did not indicate the spot. Jesuits in their black robes, soldiers in their gay uniforms, officials and inhabitants from the little town below, all followed the example of Montmagny, whose first words were, according to Father Le Jeune, the historian of those days: "Behold the first cross that I have seen in this country, let us worship the crucified Saviour in his image." Then, this act of devotion accomplished, the procession entered the little church dedicated by Champlain to Notre Dame de la Recouvrance, where the priests solemnly chanted the Te Deum and offered up prayers for the King of France.

The Church was first, the State second. After the service the new governor entered the fort of St. Louis, only a few steps from the sacred building, received the keys amid salutes of cannon and musketry, and was officially installed as head of the civil and military government of Canada, at this time controlled by the Company of the Hundred Associates. Then he was called upon to act as god-father for a dying Indian who desired baptism. In the smoky cabin packed with Indians Montmagny stood by the earnest Jesuit and named the Algonquin Joseph. "I leave you to think," says Father Le Jeune, "how greatly astonished were these people to see so much crimson, so many handsomely dressed persons beneath their bark roofs."

During the period of which I am now writing we see the beginnings of the most famous educational and religious institutions of the country. The Hotel Dieu was founded in 1639, by the Soeurs Hospitalières from the convent of St. Augustine, in Dieppe, through the benefactions of the Duchess d'Aiguillon, the niece of Cardinal Richelieu. Rich, fascinating, and beautiful women contributed not only their fortunes but their lives to the service of the Church. Marie Madeleine de Chauvigny, who belonged to a noble family in Normandy, married at a very early age a M. de la Peltrie, who left her a young widow of twenty-two years of age, without any children. Deeply attached to her religion from her youth, she decided to devote her life and her wealth to the establishment of an institution for the instruction of girls in Canada. Her father and friends threw all possible obstacles in the way of what they believed was utter folly for a gentle cultured woman, but she succeeded by female wiles and strategy in carrying out her plans. On the first of August, 1639, she arrived at Quebec, in company with Marie Guyard, the daughter of a silk manufacturer of Tours, best known to Canadians as Mère de l'Incarnation, the mother superior of the Ursulines, whose spacious convent and grounds now cover seven acres of land on Garden Street in the ancient capital. She had a vision of a companion who was to accompany her to a land of mists and mountains, to which the Virgin beckoned as the country of her future life-work. Canada was the land and Madame de la Peltrie the companion foreshadowed in that dream which gave Marie Guyard a vocation which she filled for thirty years with remarkable fidelity and ability.

Madame de la Peltrie and Marie Guyard were accompanied by Mdlle. de Savonnière de la Troche, who belonged to a distinguished family of Anjou, and was afterwards known in Canada as Mère de St. Joseph, and also by another nun, called Mère Cécile de Sainte-Croix. A Jesuit, Father Vimont, afterwards superior, and author of one of the Rélations, and the three Hospital sisters, arrived in the same ship.

The company landed and "threw themselves on their knees, blessed the God of Heaven, and kissed the earth of their near country, as they now called it." A Te Deum followed in the Jesuits' church which was now completed on the heights near their college, commenced as early as 1635—one year before the building of Harvard College—through the generosity of Réné Rohault, eldest son of the Marquis de Gamache. The first visit of the nuns was to Sillery, four miles to the west of Quebec, on the north bank of the river, where an institution had been established for the instruction of the Algonquin and other Indians, through the liberality of Noël Brulart de Sillery, a Knight of Malta, and a member of an influential French family, who had taken a deep interest in the settlement of Canada and proved it by his bounty. Madame de la Peltrie and her companions, the Jesuit historian tells us naïvely, embraced the little Indian girls "without taking heed whether they were clean or not."

It was during Montmagny's term of office that the city of Montreal was founded by a number of religious enthusiasts. Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière, receiver of taxes at La Flêche in Anjou, a noble and devotee, consulted with Jean Jacques Olier, then a priest of St. Sulpice in Paris, as to the best means of establishing a mission in Canada. Both declared they had visions which pointed to the island of Mont Royal as the future scene of their labours. They formed a company with large powers as seigniors as soon as they had obtained from M. de Lauzon, one of the members of the Company of Hundred Associates, a title to the island. They interested in the project Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a devout and brave soldier, an honest and chivalric gentleman, who was appointed the first governor by the new company. Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, daughter of the attorney-general of Nogent-le-Roi, among the vine-clad hills of Champagne, who had bound herself to perpetual chastity from a remarkably early age, gladly joined in this religious undertaking. The company had in view the establishment of communities of secular priests, and of nuns to nurse the sick, and teach the children—the French as well as the savages. Madame de Bullion, the rich widow of a superintendent of finance, contributed largely towards the enterprise, and may be justly considered the founder of Hotel Dieu of Montreal.

Maisonneuve and Mdlle. Mance, accompanied by forty men and four women, arrived at Quebec in August, 1641, when it was far too late to attempt an establishment on the island. Governor de Montmagny and others at Quebec disapproved of the undertaking which had certainly elements of danger. The governor might well think it wisest to strengthen the colony by an establishment on the island of Orleans or in the immediate vicinity of Quebec, instead of laying the foundations of a new town in the most exposed part of Canada. However, all these objections availed nothing against the enthusiasm of devotees. In the spring of 1642, Maisonneuve and his company left Quebec. He was accompanied by Governor de Montmagny, Father Vimont, superior of the Jesuits, and Madame de la Peltrie, who left the Ursulines very abruptly and inconsiderately under the conviction that she had a mission to fill at Mont Royal.

On the 17th May, Maisonneuve and his companions landed on the little triangle of land, the Place Royale of Champlain, formed by the junction of a stream with the St. Lawrence. They fell immediately on their knees and gave their thanks to the Most High. After singing some hymns, they raised an altar which was decorated by Madame de la Peltrie and Mdlle. Mance, and celebrated the first great mass on the island. Father Vimont, as he performed this holy rite of his Church, addressed the new colonists with words which foreshadowed the success of the Roman Catholic Church in the greatest Canadian city, which was first named Ville-Marie.

A picket enclosure, mounted with cannon, protected the humble buildings erected for the use of the first settlers on what is now the Custom-house Square. The little stream—not much more than a rivulet except in spring—which for many years rippled between green, mossy banks, now struggles beneath the paved street.

An obelisk of gray Canadian granite now stands on this historic ground. Madame de la Peltrie did not remain more than two years in Ville-Marie, but returned to the convent at Quebec which she had left in a moment of caprice. Mdlle. Mance, who was Madame de Bullion's friend, remained at the head of the Hotel Dieu. The Sulpicians eventually obtained control of the spiritual welfare, and in fact of the whole island, though from necessity and policy the Jesuits were at first in charge. It was not until 1653 that one of the most admirable figures in the religious and educational history of Canada, Margaret Bourgeoys, a maiden of Troyes, came to Ville-Marie, and established the parent house in Canada of the Congregation de Notre-Dame, whose schools have extended in the progress of centuries from Sydney, on the island of Cape Breton, to the Pacific coast.

Yet during these years, while convents and hospitals were founded, while brave gentlemen and cultured women gave up their lives to their country and their faith, while the bells were ever calling their congregations to mass and vespers, the country was defended by a mere handful of inhabitants, huddled together at Quebec, at Three Rivers, and at the little settlement of Ville-Marie. The canoes of the Iroquois were constantly passing on the lakes and rivers of Canada, from Georgian Bay to the Richelieu, and bands of those terrible foes of the French and their Indian allies were ever lurking in the woods that came so dangerously close to the white settlements and the Indian villages.

In 1642, Father Isaac Jogues was returning from the missions on Lake Huron, with Couture, an interpreter, and Goupil, a young medical attendant—both donnés or lay followers of the Jesuits. They were in the company of a number of Hurons who were bringing furs to the traders on the St. Lawrence, when the Iroquois surprised them at the western end of Lake St. Peter's. The prisoners were taken by the Richelieu to the Mohawk country and Father Jogues was the first Frenchman to pass through Lake George[1]—with its picturesque hills and islets—which in a subsequent journey he named Lac du Saint-Sacrament, because he reached it on the eve of Corpus Christi. The Frenchmen were carried from village to village of the Iroquois, and tortured with all the cruel ingenuity usual in such cases. Goupil's thumb was cut off with a clam shell, as one way of prolonging pain. At night the prisoners were stretched on their backs with their ankles and wrists bound to stakes. Couture was adopted into the tribe, and was found useful in later years as an intermediary between the French and Mohawks. Goupil was murdered and his body tossed into a stream rushing down a steep ravine. Despite his sufferings Father Jogues never desisted from his efforts to baptise children and administer the rites of his Church to the tortured prisoners. On one occasion he performed the sacred office for a dying Huron with some rain or dewdrops which were still clinging to an ear of green corn which had been thrown to him for food. After indescribable misery, he was taken to Fort Orange, where the Dutch helped him to escape to France, but he returned to Canada in the following year.

Bands of Iroquois continued to wage war with relentless fury on all the Algonquin tribes from the Chaudière Falls of the Ottawa to the upper waters of the Saguenay. Bressani, a highly cultured Italian priest, was taken prisoner on the St. Lawrence, while on his way to the Huron missions, and carried to the Mohawk villages, where he went through the customary ordeal of torture. He was eventually given to an old woman who had lost a member of her family, but when she saw his maimed hands—one split between the little finger and the ring-finger—she sent him to the Dutch, who ransomed and sent him to France, whence he came back like Jogues, a year later.