Canada

In 1645 the Mohawks made peace with the French, but the other members of the Five Nations refused to be bound by the treaty. Father Isaac Jogues ventured into their country in 1646, and after a successful negotiation returned to consult the governor at Quebec; but unhappily for him he left behind a small box, filled with some necessaries of his simple life, with which he did not wish to encumber himself on this flying visit. The medicine-men or sorcerers, who always hated the missionaries as the enemies of their vile superstitious practices, made the Indians believe that this box contained an evil spirit which was the origin of disease, misfortune, and death. When Father Jogues came back, he found the village divided into two parties—one wishing his death, the other inclined to show him mercy, and after infinite wrangling between the factions, he was suddenly killed by a blow from a tomahawk as he was entering a long-house, to attend a feast to which he had been invited. His body was treated with contumely, and his head affixed to a post of the palisades of the village. He was the first martyr who suffered death at the hands of the Iroquois.

The "black robe" was now to be seen in every Indian community of Canada; among the Hurons and Algonquins as far as Lake Huron, among the White Fish tribe at the head-waters of the Saguenay, and even among the Abenakis of the Kennebec. Father Gabriel Druillétes, who had served an apprenticeship among the Montagnais, was in charge of this Abenaki mission, and in the course of years visited Boston, Plymouth, and Salem, in the interests of the Canadian French, who wished to enter into commercial relations with New England, and also induce its governments to enter into an alliance against the Iroquois. The authorities of the New England confederacy eventually refused to evoke the hostility of the dangerous Five Nations. Father Druillétes, however, won for Canada the enduring friendship of the Abenakis, as Acadian history shows.

It is impossible within the limited space of this chapter to give any accurate idea of the spirit of patience, zeal, and self-sacrifice which the Jesuit Fathers exhibited in their missions among the hapless Hurons. For years they found these Indians very suspicious of their efforts to teach the lessons of their faith. It was only with difficulty the missionaries could baptise little children. They would give sugared water to a child, and, apparently by accident, drop some on its head, and at the same time pronounce the sacramental words. Some Indians believed for a long time that the books and strings of beads were the embodiment of witchcraft. But the persistency of the priests was at last rewarded by the conversion, or at all events the semblance of conversion, of large numbers of Hurons. It would seem, according as their fears of the Iroquois increased, the Hurons gave greater confidence to the French, and became more dependent on their counsel. In fact, in some respects, they lost their spirit of self-reliance. In some villages the converts at last exceeded the number of unbelievers. By 1647 there were eighteen priests engaged in the work of eleven missions, chiefly in the Huron country, but also among the Algonquin tribes on the east and northeast of Lake Huron or at the outlet of Lake Superior. Each mission had its little chapel, and a bell, generally hanging on a tree. One central mission house had been built at Ste. Marie close to a little river, now known as the Wye, which falls into Thunder Bay, an inlet of Matchedash Bay. This was a fortified station in the form of a parallelogram, constructed partly of masonry, and partly of wooden palisades, strengthened by two bastions containing magazines. The chapel and its pictures attracted the special admiration of the Indians, whose imagination was at last reached by the embellished ceremonies of the Jesuits' church. The priests, thoroughly understanding the superstitious character of the Indians, made a lavish use of pictorial representations of pain and sufferings and rewards, allotted to bad and good. Father Le Jeune tells us that "such holy pictures are most useful object-lessons for the Indians." On one occasion he made a special request for "three, four, or five devils, tormenting a soul with a variety of punishments—one using fire, another serpents, and another pincers." The mission house was also constantly full of Indians, not simply enjoying these pictures, but participating also in the generous hospitality of the Fathers.

It was in 1648 that the first blow descended on this unhappy people who were in three years' time to be blotted out as a warlike, united nation in America. In that year the Iroquois attacked the mission of St. Joseph (Teanaustayé), fifteen miles from Ste. Marie, where in 1638 a famous Iroquois, Ononkwaya, had been tortured. All the people had been massacred or taken prisoners in the absence of the warriors who were mostly in pursuit of a band of Iroquois. Father Daniel, arrayed in the vestments of his vocation, was among the first to fall a victim to the furious savages, who instantly cast his body into the flames of his burning chapel,—a fitting pyre for the brave soldier of the Cross. St. Ignace, St. Louis, and other missions were attacked early in the following year. Fathers Jean de Brebeuf and Gabriel Lalemant were tortured and murdered at St. Ignace. From village after village the shrieks of helpless women and men and children, tied to stakes in burning houses, ascended to a seemingly pitiless Heaven. Many persons were tortured on the spot, but as many or more reserved for the sport of the Iroquois villages. Father Brebeuf was bound to a stake, and around his neck was thrown a necklace of red-hot tomahawks. They cut off his lower lip, and thrust a heated iron rod down his throat. It was doubtless their delight to force a groan or complaint from this stalwart priest, whose towering and noble figure had always been the admiration of the Canadian Indians, but both he and Lalemant, a relatively feeble man, showed themselves as brave as the most courageous Indian warriors under similar conditions.

When a party from Ste. Marie came a few days later to the ruins of St. Ignace, they found the tortured bodies of the dead missionaries on the ground, and carried them to the mission house, where they were buried in sacred earth. The skull of the generous, whole-souled Brebeuf is still to be seen within a silver bust in the Hotel Dieu of Quebec. Father Gamier was killed at the mission of St. Jean (Etarita), in the raids which the Iroquois made at a later time on the Tobacco Nation, the kindred of the Hurons. Father Chabanel, who was on his way from St. Jean to Ste. Marie, was never heard of, and it is generally believed that he was treacherously killed and robbed by a Huron.

The Hurons were still numerous despite the losses they had suffered—counting even then more families than the Five Nations—but as they looked on the smoking ruins of their villages and thought of the undying hatred which had followed them for so many years they lost all courage and decided to scatter and seek new homes elsewhere. Father Ragueneau, the superior of the Jesuits, after consultation with the Fathers and Frenchmen at Ste. Marie, some fifty persons altogether, felt they could no longer safely remain in their isolated position when the Hurons had left the country. They removed all their goods to the Isle of St. Joseph, now one of the Christian Islands, near the entrance of Matchedash Bay, where they erected a fortified post for the protection of several thousand Hurons who had sought refuge here. Before many months passed, the Hurons believed that their position would be untenable when the Iroquois renewed their attacks, and determined to leave the island. Some ventured even among the Iroquois and were formally received into the Senecas and other tribes. A remnant remained a few months longer on the island, but they soon left for Quebec after killing some thirty of the bravest Iroquois warriors, who had attempted to obtain possession of the fort by a base act of treachery. A number belonging to the Tobacco Nation eventually reached the upper waters of the Mississippi where they met the Sioux, or Dacotahs, a fierce nation belonging to a family quite distinct from the Algonquins and Iroquois, and generally found wandering between the head-waters of Lake Superior and the Falls of St. Anthony. After various vicissitudes these Hurons scattered, but some found their rest by the side of the Detroit River, where they have been always known as Wyandots. Some three hundred Hurons, old and young, left St. Joseph for Quebec, where they were most kindly received and given homes on the western end of the Isle of Orleans, where the Jesuits built a fort for their security; but even here, as we shall see, the Iroquois followed them, and they were eventually forced to hide themselves under the guns of Quebec. War and disease soon thinned them out, while not a few cast in their lot with the Iroquois who were at last themselves seeking recruits. The Huron remnant finally found a resting-place at Lorette on the banks of the St. Charles, a few miles from the heights of the Capital.

The only memorials now in Canada of a once powerful people, that numbered at least twenty thousand souls before the time of their ruin and dispersion, are a remnant still retaining the language of their tribe on the banks of the Detroit; a larger settlement on the banks of the St. Charles, but without the distinguishing characteristics of their ancestors who came there from Isle St. Joseph; the foundations of the old mission house of Ste. Marie, and the remarkable graves and ossuaries which interest the student and antiquary as they wander in the summer-time through the picturesque country where the nation was once supreme.

[1] It was so called in 1753, after the reigning sovereign of England by an ambitions and politic Irishman, Sir William Johnson, whose name is constantly occurring in the history of the wars between England and France.

X.

YEARS OF GLOOM—THE KING COMES TO THE RESCUE OF
CANADA—THE IROQUOIS HUMBLED.

(1652-1667.)

It was noon on the 20th May, 1656, when the residents of Quebec were startled by the remarkable spectacle of a long line of bark canoes drawn up on the river immediately in front of the town. They could hear the shouts of the Mohawk warriors making boast of the murder and capture of unhappy Hurons, whom they had surprised on the Isle of Orleans close by. The voices of Huron girls—"the very flower of the tribe," says the Jesuit narrator—were raised in plaintive chants at the rude command of their savage captors, who even forced them to dance in sight of the French, on whose protection they had relied. The governor, M. de Lauzon, a weak, incapable man, only noted for his greed, was perfectly paralysed at a scene without example, even in those days of terror, when the Iroquois were virtually masters of the St. Lawrence valley from Huron to Gaspé.

At this very time a number of Frenchmen—probably fifty in all—were in the power of the Iroquois, and the governor had no nerve to make even an effort to save the Hurons from their fate. To understand the situation of affairs, it is necessary to go back for a few years. After the dispersion of the Hurons, the Iroquois, principally the Mohawks, became bolder than ever on the St. Lawrence. M. du Plessis-Bochat, the governor of Three Rivers, lost his life in a courageous but ill-advised attempt to chastise a band of warriors that were in ambush not far from the fort. Father Buteux was killed on his way to his mission of the Attikamegs or White Fish tribe, at the headwaters of the St. Maurice. In 1653, Father Poucet was carried off to a Mohawk village, where he was tortured in the usual fashion, and then sent back to Canada with offers of peace. The Senecas and Cayugas were then busily engaged in exterminating the Eries, who had burned one of their most famous chiefs, whose last words at the stake were prophetic: "Eries, you burn in me an entire nation!"

A peace, or rather a truce, was declared formally in the fall of 1653. Then, at the request of the Onondagas, Father Simon le Moyne, a missionary of great tact and courage, who was the first Frenchman to ascend the St. Lawrence as far as the Thousand Isles, ventured into the Iroquois country, where he soon became a favourite. As a result of the negotiations which followed this mission, Governor de Lauzon was persuaded to send a colony to the villages of the Onondagas. This colony was composed of Captain Dupuy, an officer of the garrison, ten soldiers, and between thirty and forty volunteers. Father Dablon, who had previously gone with Father Chaumonot among the Onondagas, and had brought back the request for a colony, accompanied the expedition, which left Quebec in the month of June, 1656. On the way up the river the Onondagas were attacked by a band of Mohawks, when the boats carrying the French had gone ahead and were not within sight. Some of the Onondagas were killed and wounded, and then the Mohawks found out that they had surprised and injured warriors belonging to a tribe of their own confederacy. They endeavoured to explain this very serious act of hostility against their own friends and allies by the excuse that they had mistaken them for Hurons, whom they were on the way to attack. There is little doubt that they well understood the character of the expedition, and attacked it through envy of the success of the Onondagas in obtaining the settlement of Frenchmen in their villages.

When the Mohawks had made their explanations, they allowed the angry Onondagas to proceed on their journey, while they themselves went on to Quebec where, as we have already seen, they showed their contempt of the French by assailing the Hurons under the very guns of the fort of St. Louis. As soon as the French colony arrived at the Onondaga villages, they took possession of the country in the name of Jesus. On an eminence overlooking the lake they erected the mission of St. Mary of Gannentaha, the correct Iroquois name for Onondaga, in the vicinity of the present city of Syracuse. The Onondagas generally appeared delighted at the presence of the French, though at this very time the Mohawks continued to paddle up and down the St. Lawrence to the consternation of the French and Canadian Indians alike. The Jesuit priest Garreau was killed in one of these excursions while accompanying a party of Ottawas to Lake Superior.

The colonists at Gannentaha at last found that their own lives were threatened by a conspiracy to destroy them, but they succeeded in deceiving the Indians and in escaping to Canada in the month of March, after living only two years among the Onondagas. Whilst the Indians were sleeping away the effects of one of those mystic feasts, at which they invariably stuffed themselves to repletion, the Frenchmen escaped at night and reached the Oswego River, which they successfully descended by the aid of flat-boats which they had secretly constructed after the discovery of the plot. The party reached the French settlement with the loss of three men, drowned in the descent of the rapids of the St. Lawrence, probably the Cedars. The enterprise was most hazardous at this season when the ice had to be broken on the rivers before the boats could be used. But this very fact had its advantage, since the bark canoes of the Indians would have been useless had they followed the party. This exploit is one of the most remarkable ever performed by the French in those early days, and shows of what excellent material those pioneers of French colonisation were made.

In the spring of 1660 it was discovered that an organised attack was to be made on all the settlements by a large force of over a thousand Iroquois, who were to assemble at the junction of the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers. It is stated on credible authority that Montreal—Canada in fact—was saved at this critical juncture by the heroism of a few devoted Frenchmen. Among the officers of the little garrison that then protected Montreal, was Adam Daulac or Dollard, Sieur des Ormeaux, who obtained leave from Maisonneuve, the governor, to lead a party of volunteers against the Iroquois, who were wintering in large numbers on the upper Ottawa. Sixteen brave fellows, whose names are all recorded in the early records of Montreal, took a solemn oath to accept and give no quarter, and after settling their private affairs and receiving the sacrament, they set out on their mission of inevitable death. Dollard and his band soon reached the impetuous rapids of the Long Sault of the Ottawa, destined to be their Thermopylae. There, among the woods, they found an old circular inclosure of logs, which had been built by some Indians for defensive purposes. This was only a wretched bulwark, but the Frenchmen were in a state of exalted enthusiasm, and proceeded to strengthen it. Only two or three days after their arrival, they heard that the Iroquois were descending the river. The first attacks of the Iroquois were repulsed, and then they sent out scouts to bring up a large force of five hundred warriors who were at the mouth of the Richelieu. In the meantime they continued harassing the inmates of the fort, who were suffering for food and water. A band of Hurons who had joined the French just before the arrival of the Iroquois, now deserted them, with the exception of their chief, who as well as four Algonquins, remained faithful to the end. The forests soon resounded with the yells of the Iroquois, when reinforced. Still Dollard and his brave companions never faltered, but day after day beat back the astonished assailants, who knew the weakness of the defenders, and had anticipated an easy victory. At last a general assault was made, and in the struggle Dollard was killed. Even then the survivors kept up the fight, and when the Iroquois stood within the inclosure there was no one to meet them. Four Frenchmen, still alive, were picked up from the pile of corpses. Three of these were instantly burned, while the fourth was reserved for continuous torture a day or so later. The faithless Hurons gained nothing by their desertion, for they were put to death, with the exception of five who eluded their captors, and took an account of this remarkable episode to the French at Montreal. The Iroquois were obviously amazed at the courage of a few Frenchmen, and decided to give up, for the present, their project of attacking settlements defended by men so dauntless.

Even the forces of nature seemed at this time to conspire against the unfortunate colony. A remarkable earthquake, the effects of which can still be seen on the St. Lawrence,—at picturesque Les Eboulements, which means "earth slips," for instance,—commenced in the month of February, 1663, and did not cease entirely until the following summer.

Fervent appeals for assistance were made to the King by Pierre Boucher, the governor of Three Rivers, by Monseigneur Laval, the first bishop, by the Jesuit Fathers, and by the governors of New France, especially by M. d'Avaugour, who recommended that three thousand soldiers be sent to the colony, and allowed to become settlers after a certain term of service. By 1663, the total population of Canada did not exceed two thousand souls, the large majority of whom were at Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. It was at the risk of their lives that men ventured beyond the guns of Montreal. The fur-trade was in the hands of monopolists. The people could not raise enough food to feed themselves, but had to depend on the French ships to a large extent. The Company of the Hundred Associates had been found quite unequal to the work of settling and developing the country, or providing adequate means of defence. Under the advice of the great Colbert, the King, young Louis Quatorze, decided to assume the control of New France and make it a royal province. The immediate result of the new policy was the coming of the Marquis de Tracy, a veteran soldier, as lieutenant-general, with full powers to inquire into the state of Canada. He arrived at Quebec on the 30th June, 1665, attended by a brilliant retinue. The Carignan-Salières Regiment, which had distinguished itself against the Turks, was also sent as a proof of the intention of the King to defend his long-neglected colony. In a few weeks, more than two thousand persons, soldiers and settlers, had come to Canada. Among the number were M. de Courcelles, the first governor, and M. Talon, the first intendant, under the new régime. Both were fond of state and ceremony, and the French taste of the Canadians was now gratified by a plentiful display of gold lace, ribbons, wigs, ornamented swords, and slouched hats. Probably the most interesting feature of the immigration was the number of young women as wives for the bachelors—as the future mothers of a Canadian people.

The new authorities went energetically to work. The fortifications at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal were strengthened, and four new forts erected from the mouth of the Richelieu to Isle La Mothe on Lake Champlain. The Iroquois saw the significance of this new condition of things. The Onondagas, led by Garacontié, a friend of the Jesuits, made overtures of peace, which were favourably heard by "Onontio," as the governor of Canada had been called ever since the days of Montmagny, whose name, "Great Mountain," the Iroquois so translated. The Mohawks, the most dangerous tribe, sent no envoys, and Courcelles, in the inclement month of January, went into their country with a large force of regular soldiers and fur hunters, but missed the trail to their villages, and found himself at the Dutch settlements, where he learned, to his dismay, that the English had become the possessors of the New Netherlands. On its return, the expedition suffered terribly from the severe cold, and lost a number of persons who were killed by the Indians, always hovering in the rear. The Mohawks then thought it prudent to send a deputation to treat for peace, but the Marquis de Tracy and Governor de Courcelles were suspicious of their good faith, and sent a Jesuit priest to their country to ascertain the real sentiment of the tribe. He was recalled, while on the way, on account of the news that several French officers—one of them a relative of the lieutenant-general—had been murdered by the Mohawks. The lieutenant-general and governor at once organised a powerful expedition of the regular forces and Canadian inhabitants—some thirteen hundred in all—who left Quebec, with those two distinguished officers in command, on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross, the 14th September, 1666, as every effort was made to give a religious aspect to an army, intended to avenge the death of martyred missionaries, as well as to afford Canada some guarantees of peace. It took the expedition nearly a month to reach the first village of the Mo hawks, but only to find it deserted. It was the same result in three other villages visited by the French. The Mohawks had made preparations for defence, but their courage failed them as they heard of the formidable character of the force that had come into the country. They deserted their homes and great stores of provisions. Villages and provisions were burned, and the Iroquois saw only ashes when they returned after the departure of the French. It was a great blow to these formidable foes of the French. Peace was soon made between the Five Nations and the French. The Marquis de Tracy then returned to France, and for twenty years Canada had a respite from the raids which had so seriously disturbed her tranquillity, and was enabled at last to organise her new government, extend her settlements, and develop her strength for days of future trial.

XI.

CANADA AS A ROYAL PROVINCE—CHURCH AND STATE.

(1663-1759.)

We have now come to that period of Canadian history when the political and social conditions of the people assumed those forms which they retained, with a few modifications from time to time, during the whole of the French régime. Four men now made a permanent impress on the struggling colony so long neglected by the French Government. First, was the King, Louis Quatorze, then full of the arrogance and confidence of a youthful prince, imbued with the most extravagant idea of his kingly attributes. By his side was the great successor of Mazarin, Jean Baptiste Colbert, whose knowledge of finance, earnest desire to foster the best resources of the kingdom, acknowledged rectitude, as well as admirable tact, gave him not only great influence in France, but enabled him to sway the mind of the autocratic king at most critical junctures. Happily for Colbert and Canada, Louis was a most industrious as well as pleasure-seeking sovereign, and studied the documents, which his various servants, from Colbert to the intendants in the colonies, sent him from time to time respecting their affairs.

In Canada itself the great minister had the aid of the ablest intendant ever sent by the King to Canada. This was Jean Baptiste Talon, who was not inferior to Colbert for his knowledge of commerce and finance, and clearness of intellect.

We see also in the picture of those times the piercing eyes and prominent nose of the ascetic face of the eminent divine who, even more than Colbert and Talon, has moulded the opinions of the Canadian people in certain important respects down to the present time. Monseigneur Laval was known in France as the Abbé de Montigny, and when the Jesuits induced him to come to Canada he was appointed grand vicar by the Pope, with the title of Bishop of Petrosa.

Before the Canadian bishops and their agents in France decided on the Abbé de Montigny as a bishop they had made an experiment with the Abbé Queylus, one of the four Sulpician priests who came to Montreal in 1657, to look after the spiritual, and subsequently its temporal, interests. The Abbé had been appointed vicar-general of Canada by the Archbishop of Rouen, who claimed a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the country, and the Jesuits at Quebec were at first disposed to make him bishop had they found him sufficiently ductile. After some experience of his opinions and character, they came to the conclusion that he was not a friend of their order, and used all their influence thenceforth to drive him from Canada. Then they chose the Abbé de Montigny, between whom and the Abbé Queylus there ensued a conflict of authority, which ended eventually in the defeat of the latter, as well as of the Archbishop of Rouen. The Abbé, divested of his former dignity and pretensions, returned in later years to the island of Montreal, of which the Sulpicians had become the seigniorial proprietors, when the original company were too weak to carry out the objects of their formation. The same order remains in possession of their most valuable lands in the city and island, where their seminary for the education of priests and youth generally occupies a high position among the educational institutions of the province.

Bishop Laval was endowed with an inflexible will, and eminently fitted to assert those ultramontane principles which would make all temporal power subordinate to the Pope and his vicegerents on earth. His claim to take precedence even of the governor on certain public occasions indicates the extremes to which this resolute dignitary of the Church was prepared to go on behalf of its supremacy.

With a man like Laval at the head of the Church in Canada at this early period, it necessarily exercised a powerful influence at the council board, and in the affairs of the country generally. If he was sometimes too arbitrary, too arrogant in the assertion of his ecclesiastical dignity, yet he was also animated by very conscientious motives with respect to temporal questions. In the quarrel he had with the governor, Baron Dubois d'Avaugour, an old soldier, as to the sale of brandy to the Indians, he showed that his zeal in the discharge of what he believed to be a Christian and patriotic duty predominated above all such mercenary and commercial considerations as animated the governor and officials, who believed that the trading interests of the country were injured by prohibition. Laval saw that the very life-blood of the Indians was being poisoned by this traffic, and succeeded in obtaining the removal of D'Avaugour. But all the efforts of himself and his successor, Saint-Vallier, could not practically restrain the sale of spirituous liquors, as long as the fur-trade so largely depended on their consumption.

At this time, and for a long time afterwards, Protestantism was unknown in Canada, for the King and Jesuits had decided to keep the colony entirely free from heresy. The French Protestants, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, gave to England and the Netherlands the benefit of their great industry and manufacturing knowledge. Some of them even found their way to America, and stimulated the gathering strength of the southern colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas.

The new régime under Colbert was essentially parental. All emigration was under the direction of the French authorities. Wives were sent by shiploads for the settlers, newly-wedded couples received liberal presents suitable to their condition in a new country; early marriages and large families were encouraged by bounties. Every possible care was taken by the officials and religious communities who had charge of such matters, that the women were of good morals, and suitable for the struggles of a colonial existence.

While State and Church were providing a population for the country, Colbert and Talon were devoting themselves to the encouragement of manufactures and commerce. When the Company of the Hundred Associates, who appear to have been robbed by their agents in the colony, fell to pieces, they were replaced by a large organisation, known as the Company of the West, to which was given very important privileges throughout all the French colonies and dependencies. The company, however, never prospered, and came to an end in 1674, after ten years' existence, during which it inflicted much injury on the countries where it was given so many privileges. The government hereafter controlled all commerce and finance. Various manufactures, like shipbuilding, leather, hemp, and beer, were encouraged, but at no time did Canada show any manufacturing or commercial enterprise. Under the system of monopolies and bounties fostered by Colbert and his successors, a spirit of self-reliance was never stimulated. The whole system of government tended to peculation and jobbery—to the enrichment of worthless officials. The people were always extremely poor. Money was rarely seen in the shape of specie. The few coins that came to the colony soon found their way back to France. From 1685 down to 1759 the government issued a paper currency, known as "card money," because common playing cards were used. This currency bore the crown and fleur-de-lis and signatures of officials, and gradually became depreciated and worthless.

While the townsfolk of Massachusetts were discussing affairs in town-meetings, the French inhabitants of Canada were never allowed to take part in public assemblies but were taught to depend in the most trivial matters on a paternal government. Canada was governed as far as possible like a province of France. In the early days of the colony, when it was under the rule of the Company of the Hundred Associates, the governors practically exercised arbitrary power, with the assistance of a nominal council chosen by themselves. When, however, the King took the government of the colony into his own hands, he appointed a governor, an intendant, and a supreme or—as it was subsequently called—a sovereign council, of which the bishop was a member, to administer under his own direction the affairs of the country. The governor, who was generally a soldier, was nominally at the head of affairs, and had the direction of the defences of the colony, but to all intents and purposes the intendant, who was a man of legal attainments, had the greater influence. He was the finance minister, and made special reports to the King on all Canadian matters. He had the power of issuing ordinances which had the effect of law, and showed the arbitrary nature of the government to which the people were subject. Every effort to assemble the people for public purposes was systematically crushed by the orders of the government. A public meeting of the parishioners to consider the cost of a new church could not be held without the special permission of the intendant. Count Frontenac, immediately after his arrival, in 1672, attempted to assemble the different orders of the colony, the clergy, the noblesse or seigneurs, the judiciary, and the third estate, in imitation of the old institutions of France. The French king promptly rebuked the haughty governor for this attempt to establish a semblance of popular government.

The administration of local affairs throughout the province was exclusively under the control of the King's officers at Quebec. The ordinances of the intendant and of the council were the law. The country was eventually subdivided into the following divisions for purposes of government, settlement, and justice: 1. Districts. 2. Seigniories. 3. Parishes. The districts were simply established for judicial and legal purposes, and each of them bore the name of the principal town within its limits—viz., Quebec, also called the Prévoté de Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. In each of these districts there was a judge, appointed by the king, to adjudicate on all civil and criminal matters. An appeal was allowed in the most trivial cases to the supreme or superior council, which also exercised original jurisdiction. The customary law of Paris, which is based on the civil law of Rome, was the fundamental law of Canada, and still governs the civil rights of the people.

The greater part of Canada was divided into large estates or seigniories, with the view of creating a colonial noblesse, and of stimulating settlement in a wilderness. It was not necessary to be of noble birth to be a Canadian seigneur. Any trader with a few louis d'or and influence could obtain a patent for a Canadian lordship. The seignior on his accession to his estate was required to pay homage to the King, or to his feudal superior in case the lands were granted by another than the King. The seignior received his land gratuitously from the crown, and granted them to his vassals, who were generally known as habitants, or cultivators of the soil, on condition of their making small annual payments in money or produce known as cens et rente. The habitant was obliged to grind his corn at the seignior's mill (moulin banal), bake his bread in the seignior's oven, give his lord a tithe of the fish caught in his waters, and comply with other conditions at no time onerous or strictly enforced in the days of the French régime. This system had some advantages in a new country like Canada, where the government managed everything, and colonisation was not left to chance. The seignior was obliged to cultivate his estate at a risk of forfeiture, consequently it was absolutely necessary that he should exert himself to bring settlers upon his lands. The obligation of the habitant to grind his corn in the seignior's mill was clearly an advantage for the settlers. In the early days of the colony, however, the seigniors were generally too poor to fulfil this condition, and the habitants had to grind corn between stones, or in rude hand mills. The seigniors had the right of dispensing justice in certain cases, though it was one he very rarely exercised. As respects civil affairs, however, both lord and vassal were to all intents and purposes on the same footing, for they were equally ignored in matters of government.

In the days of the French régime, the only towns for many years were Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. In remote and exposed places—like those on the Richelieu, where officers and soldiers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment had been induced to settle—palisaded villages had been built. The principal settlements were, in course of time, established on the banks of the St. Lawrence, as affording in those days the easiest means of intercommunication. As the lots of a seigniorial grant were limited in area—four arpents in front by forty in depth—the farms in the course of time assumed the appearance of a continuous settlement on the river. These various settlements became known in local phraseology as Côtes, apparently from their natural situation on the banks of the river. This is the origin of Côte des Neiges, Côte St. Louis, Côte St. Paul, and of many picturesque villages in the neighbourhood of Montreal and Quebec. As the country became settled, parishes were established for ecclesiastical purposes and the administration of local affairs. Here the influential men were the curé, the seignior, and the captain of the militia. The seignior, from his social position, exercised a considerable weight in the community, but not to the degree that the representative of the Church enjoyed. The church in the parishes was kept up by tithes, regulated by ordinances, and first imposed by Bishop Laval for the support of the Quebec Seminary and the clergy. Next to the curé in importance was the captain of the militia. The whole province was formed into a militia district, so that, in times of war, the inhabitants might be obliged to perform military service under the French governor. In times of peace these militia officers in the parishes executed the orders of the governor and intendant in all matters affecting the King. In case it was considered necessary to build a church or presbytery, the intendant authorised the habitants to assemble for the purpose of choosing from among themselves four persons to make, with the curé, the seignior, and the captain of the militia, an estimate of the expense of the structure. It was the special care of the captain of the militia to look after the work, and see that each parishioner did his full share. It was only in church matters, in fact, that the people of a parish had a voice, and even in these, as we see, they did not take the initiative. The Quebec authorities must in all such cases first issue an ordinance.

Under these circumstances it is quite intelligible that the people of Canada were obliged to seek in the clearing of the forest, in the cultivation of the field, in the chase, and in adventure, the means of livelihood, and hardly ever busied themselves about public matters in which they were not allowed to take even a humble part.

XII.

THE PERIOD OF EXPLORATION AND DISCOVERY:
PRIESTS, FUR-TRADERS, AND COUREURS DE BOIS
IN THE WEST.

(1634-1687.)

We have now come to that interesting period in the history of Canada, when the enterprise and courage of French adventurers gave France a claim to an immense domain, stretching from the Gulf of St. Lawrence indefinitely beyond the Great Lakes, and from the basin of those island seas as far as the Gulf of Mexico. The eminent intendant, Talon, appears to have immediately understood the importance of the discovery which had been made by the interpreter and trader, Jean Nicolet, of Three Rivers, who, before the death of Champlain, probably in 1634, ventured into the region of the lakes, and heard of "a great water"—no doubt the Mississippi—while among the Mascoutins, a branch of the Algonquin stock, whose villages were generally found in the valley of the Fox River. He is considered to have been the first European who reached Sault Ste. Marie—the strait between Superior and Huron—though there is no evidence that he ventured beyond the rapids, and saw the great expanse of lake which had been, in all probability, visited some years before by Etienne Brulé, after his escape from the Iroquois. Nicolet also was the first Frenchman who passed through the straits of Mackinac or Michillimackinac, though he did not realise the importance of its situation in relation to the lakes of the western country. It is told of him that he made his appearance among the Winnebagos in a robe of brilliant China damask, decorated with flowers and birds of varied colours, and holding a pistol in each hand. This theatrical display in the western forest is adduced as evidence of his belief in the story that he had heard among the Nipissings, at the head-waters of the Ottawa, that there were tribes in the west, without hair and beards, like the Chinese. No doubt, he thought he was coming to a country where, at last, he would find that short route to the Chinese seas which had been the dream of many Frenchmen since the days of Cartier. We have no answer to give to the question that naturally suggests itself, whether Champlain ever saw Nicolet on his return, and heard from him the interesting story of his adventures. It was not until 1641, or five years after Champlain's death, that Father Vimont gave to the world an account of Nicolet's journey, which, no doubt, stimulated the interest that was felt in the mysterious region of the west. From year to year the Jesuit and the trader added something to the geographical knowledge of the western lakes, where the secret was soon to be unlocked by means of the rivers which fed those remarkable reservoirs of the continent. In 1641 Fathers Raymbault and Jogues preached their Faith to a large concourse of Indians at the Sault between Huron and Superior, where, for the first time, they heard of the Sioux or Dacotah, those vagrants of the northwest, and where the former died without realising the hope he had cherished, of reaching China across the western wilderness. Then came those years of terror, when trade and enterprise were paralysed by those raids of the Iroquois, which culminated in the dispersion of the Hurons. For years the Ottawa valley was almost deserted, and very few traders or coureurs de bois ventured into the country around the western lakes. An enterprising trader of Three Rivers, Médard Chouart, Sieur de Grosseilliers, is believed to have reached the shores of Lake Superior in 1658, and also to have visited La Pointe, now Ashland, at its western extremity, in the summer of 1659, in company with Pierre d'Esprit, Sieur Radisson, whose sister he had married. Some critical historians do not altogether discredit the assumption that these two venturesome traders ascended the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, and even reached the Mississippi, twelve years before Jolliet and Marquette.

With the peace that followed the destruction of the Mohawk villages by Tracy and Courcelles, and the influx of a considerable population into Canada, the conditions became more favourable for exploration and the fur trade. The tame and steady life of the farm had little charm for many restless spirits, who had fought for France in the Carignan Regiment. Not a few of them followed the roving Canadian youth into the forest, where they had learned to love the free life of the Indians. The priest, the gentilhomme, and the coureur de bois, each in his way, became explorers of the western wilderness.

From the moment the French landed on the shores of Canada, they seemed to enter into the spirit of forest life. Men of noble birth and courtly associations adapted themselves immediately to the customs of the Indians, and found that charm in the forest and river which seemed wanting in the tamer life of the towns and settlements. The English colonisers of New England were never able to win the affections of the Indian tribes, and adapt themselves so readily to the habits of forest life as the French Canadian adventurer.

A very remarkable instance of the infatuation which led away so many young men into the forest, is to be found in the life of Baron de Saint-Castin, a native of the romantic Bernese country, who came to Canada with the Carignan Regiment during 1665, and established himself for a time on the Richelieu. But he soon became tired of his inactive life, and leaving his Canadian home, settled on a peninsula of Penobscot Bay (then Pentagoët), which still bears his name. Here he fraternised with the Abenaquis, and led the life of a forest chief, whose name was long the terror of the New England settlers. He married the daughter of Madocawando, the implacable enemy of the English, and so influential did he become that, at his summons, all the tribes on the frontier between Acadia and New England would proceed on the warpath. He amassed a fortune of three hundred thousand crowns in "good dry gold," but we are told he only used the greater part of it to buy presents for his Indian followers, who paid him back in beaver skins. His life at Pentagoët, for years, was very active and adventurous, as the annals of New England show. In 1781 he returned to France, where he had an estate, and thenceforth disappeared from history. His son, by his Abenaqui Baroness, then took command of his fort and savage retainers, and after assisting in the defence of Port Royal, and making more than one onslaught on the English settlers of Massachusetts, he returned to Europe on the death of his father. The poet Longfellow has made use of this romantic episode in the early life of the Acadian settlements:

"The warm winds blow on the hills of Spain,
The birds are building and the leaves are green,
The Baron Castine, of St. Castine,
Hath come at last to his own again."