Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1672 to 1688, part 1
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 {118} 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, {119} 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.
[Illustration: PLAN OF MONTREAL IN 1672] 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 {120} 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.
[Illustration: LA SALLE'S HOUSE NEAR MONTREAL] In the early days a beaver skin could be bought for a needle or a bell or a tin mirror; and in spite of all the priests could do to prevent it, brandy played a shameful part in the trade.
In vain the priests preached against it, and the bishop thundered anathemas.
The evils of the brandy traffic were apparent to all--the Fur Fairs became a bedlam of crime; but when the Governor called in all the traders to confer on the subject, it was plain that if the Indians did _not_ obtain liquor from the French, they would go on down with their furs to the English of New York, and the French Governor was afraid to forbid the evil.
[Illustration: KITCHEN, CHÂTEAU DE RAMEZAY, MONTREAL] 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 .
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ringing .
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ringing .
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morning .
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noon .
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and night .
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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 {121} 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 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 {122} 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."
[Illustration: LAVAL (After the portrait in Laval University, Quebec)] 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.
{123} 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 {124} 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.
