Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1607 to 1635, part 1

Argall of Virginia attacks the French--Champlain on the St. Lawrence--Champlain and the Iroquois--Champlain explores the Ottawa--Champlain with the Indians--Discovery of the Great Lakes--War with the Iroquois--Conflicting interests in New France--The English take Quebec Though the monopoly had been rescinded, Poutrincourt set himself to interesting merchants in the fur trade of Acadia, and the French king confirmed to him the grant of Port Royal.

Yet it was 1610 before Baron Poutrincourt had gathered supplies to reëstablish the colony, and an ominous cloud rose on the horizon, threatening his supremacy in the New World.

Nearly all the merchants supporting him were either Huguenots or moderate Catholics.

The Jesuits were all powerful at court, and were pressing for a part in his scheme.

The Jesuit, Father Biard, was waiting at Bordeaux to join the ship.

Poutrincourt evaded issues with such powerful opponents.

He took on board Father La Fléché, a moderate, and gave the Jesuit the slip by sailing from Dieppe in February.

To this quarrel there are two sides, as to all quarrels.

The colony must now be supported by the fur trade; and fur traders, world over, easily add to their profits by deeds which will not bear the censure of missionaries.

On the other hand, to Poutrincourt, the Jesuits meant divided authority; and the most lawless scoundrel that ever perpetrated crimes in the fur trade could win over the favor of the priests by a hypocritical semblance of contrition at the confessional.

Contrition never yet undid a crime; and civil courts can take no cognizance of repentance.

When the ships sailed in to Port Royal the little fort was found precisely as it had been left.

Not even the furniture had been disturbed, and old Membertou, the Indian chief, welcomed the white men back with taciturn joy.

Père La Fléché assembles the savages, tells them the story of the Christian faith, then to the beat of drum and chant of "Te Deum" receives, one {42} afternoon, twenty naked converts into the folds of the church.

Membertou is baptized Henry, after the King, and all his frowsy squaws renamed after ladies of the most dissolute court in Christendom.

Young Biencourt is to convey the ship back to France.

He finds that the Queen Dowager has taken the Jesuits under her especial protection.

Money enough to buy out the interests of the Huguenot merchants for the Jesuits has been advanced.

Fathers Biard and Massé embark on _The Grace of God_ with young Biencourt in January, 1611, for Port Royal.

Almost at once the divided authority results in trouble.

Coasting the Bay of Fundy, Biencourt discovers that Pontgravé's son has roused the hostility of the Indians by some shameless act.

Young Biencourt is for hanging the miscreant to the yardarm, but the sinner gains the ear of the saints by woeful tale of penitence, and Father Biard sides with young Pontgravé.

Instead of the gayety that reigned at Port Royal in L'Escarbot's day, now is sullen mistrust.

The Jesuits threaten young Biencourt with excommunication.

Biencourt retaliates by threatening _them_ with expulsion.

For three months no religious services are held.

The boat of 1612 brings out another Jesuit, Gilbert du Thet; and the _Jonas_, which comes in 1613 with fifty more men,--La Saussaye, commander, Fleury, captain,--has been entirely outfitted by friends of the Jesuits.

By this time Baron de Poutrincourt, in France, was involved in debt beyond hope; but his right to Port Royal was unshaken, and the Jesuits decided to steer south to seek a new site for their colony.

[Illustration: PORT ROYAL (From Champlain's diagram)] Zigzagging along the coast of Maine, Captain Fleury cast anchor off Mount Desert at Frenchman's Bay.

A cross was erected, mass celebrated, and four white tents pitched to house the people; but the clash between civil and religious authority broke out again.

The sailors would not obey the priests.

Fleury feared mutiny.

Saussaye, the commander, lost his head, and disorder was ripening to disaster when there appeared over the sea the peak of a sail,--a sail topped by a little red ensign, the {43} flag of the English, who claimed all this coast.

And the sail was succeeded by decks with sixty mariners, and hulls through whose ports bristled fourteen cannon.

The newcomer was Samuel Argall of Virginia, whom the Indians had told of the French, now bearing down full sail, cannon leveled, to expel these aliens from the domain of England's King.

Drums were beating, trumpets blowing, fifes shrieking--there was no mistaking the purpose of the English ship.

Saussaye, the French commander, dashed for hiding in the woods.

Captain Fleury screamed for some one, every one, any one, "to fire--fire"; but the French sailors had imitated their commander and fled to the woods, while the poor Jesuit, Gilbert du Thet, fell weltering in blood from an English cannonade that swept the French decks bare and set all sails in flame.

In the twinkling of an eye, Argall had captured men and craft.

Fifteen of the French prisoners he set adrift in open boat, on the chance of their joining the French fishing fleet off Cape Breton.

They were ultimately carried to St. Malo.

{44} The rest of the prisoners, including Father Biard, he took back to Virginia, where the commission held from the French King assured them honorable treatment in time of peace; but Argall was promptly sent north again with his prisoners, and three frigates to lay waste every vestige of French settlement from Maine to St. John.

Mount Desert, the ruins of Ste.

Croix, the fortress beloved by Poutrincourt at Port Royal, the ripening wheat of Annapolis Basin--all fed the flames of Argall's zeal; and young Biencourt's wood runners, watching from the forests the destruction of all their hopes, the ruin of all their plans, ardently begged their young commander to parley with Argall that they might obtain the Jesuit Biard and hang him to the highest tree.

To _his_ coming they attributed all the woes.

It was as easy for them to believe that the Jesuit had piloted the English destroyer to Port Royal, as it had been ten years before for the Catholics to accuse the Huguenots of murdering the lost priest Aubry;

and there was probably as much truth in one charge as the other.

So fell Port Royal; but out round the ruins of Port Royal, where the little river runs down to the sea past Goat Island, young Biencourt and his followers took to the woods--the first of that race of bush lopers, half savages, half noblemen, to render France such glorious service in the New World.

When De Monts lost the monopoly of furs in Acadia, Champlain, the court geographer, had gone home from Port Royal to France.

De Monts now succeeds in obtaining a fresh monopoly for one year on the St. Lawrence, and sends out two ships in 1608 under his old friends, Pontgravé, who is to attend to the bartering, Champlain, who is to explore.

With them come some of the colonists from Port Royal, among others Louis Hebert, the chemist, first colonist to become farmer at Quebec, and Abraham Martin, whose name was given to the famous plains where Wolfe and Montcalm later fought.

Pontgravé arrived at the rendezvous of Tadoussac early in June.

Here he found Basque fishermen engaged in the peltry {45} traffic with Indians from Labrador.

When Pontgravé read his commission interdicting all ships but those of De Monts from trade, the Basques poured a fusillade of musketry across his decks, killed one man, wounded two, then boarded his vessel and trundled his cannon ashore.

So much for royal commissions and monopoly!

[Illustration: TADOUSSAC (From Champlain's map)] At this stage came Champlain on the second boat.

Two vessels were overstrong for the Basques.

They quickly came to terms and decamped.

Champlain steered his tiny craft on up the silver flood of the St. Lawrence to that Cape Diamond where Cartier's men had gathered worthless stones.

Between the high cliff and the river front, not far from the market place of Quebec City to-day, workmen began clearing the woods for the site of the French habitation.

The little fort was palisaded, of course, with a moat outside and cannon commanding the river.

The walls were loopholed for musketry; and inside ran a gallery to serve as lookout and defense.

Houses, barracks, garden, and fresh-water supply completed the fort.

One day, as Champlain {46} worked in his garden, a colonist begged to speak with him.

Champlain stepped into the woods.

The man then blurted out how a conspiracy was on foot, instigated by the Basques, to assassinate Champlain, seize the fort, and stab any man who dared to resist.

One of Pontgravé's small boats lay at anchor.

Champlain sent for the pilot, told him the story of the plot, gave him two bottles of wine, and bade him invite the ringleaders on board that night to drink.

The ruse worked.

The ringleaders were handcuffed, the other colonists awakened in the fort and told that the plot had been crushed.

The body of Duval, the chief plotter, in pay of the Basques, swung as warning from a gibbet; and his head was exposed on a pike to the birds of the air.

Though Pontgravé left a garrison of twenty-eight when he sailed for France, less than a dozen men had survived the plague of scurvy when the ships came back to Champlain in 1609. Champlain's part had been to explore.

Now that his fort was built, he planned to do this by allying himself with the Indians, who came down to trade at Quebec.

These were the Hurons and Montaignais, the former from the Ottawa, the latter from Labrador.

Both waged ceaseless war on the Iroquois south of the St. Lawrence.

After bartering their furs for weapons from the traders, the allied tribes would set out on the warpath against the Iroquois.

In June, Champlain and eleven white men accompanied the roving warriors.

The way led from the St. Lawrence south, up the River Richelieu.

Champlain's boat was a ponderous craft; and when the shiver of the sparkling rapids came with a roar through the dank forest, the heavy boat had to be sent back to Quebec.

Adopting the light birch canoe of the Indian, Champlain went on, accompanied by only two white men.

Of Indians, there were twenty-four canoes with sixty warriors.

For the first part of the voyage night was made hideous by the grotesque war dances of the braves lashing themselves to fury by scalp raids in pantomime, or by the medicine men holding solemn converse with the demons of earth; the tent poles of the medicine lodge rocked as if by wind, while eldritch howls predicted victory.

{47} Then the long line of silent canoes had spread out on that upland lake named after Champlain, the heavily forested Adirondacks breaking the sky line on one side, the Green Mountains rolling away on the other.

Caution now marked all advance.

The Indians paddled only at night, withdrawing to the wooded shore through the morning mist to hide in the undergrowth for the day.

This was the land of the Iroquois.

[Illustration: DEFEAT OF THE IROQUOIS (From Champlain's drawing)] On July 29, as the invaders were stealing silently along the west shore near Crown Point at night about ten o'clock, there were seen by the starlight, coming over the water with that peculiar galloping motion of paddlers dipping together, the Iroquois war canoes.

Each side recognized the other, and the woods rang with shouts; but gathering clouds and the mist rising from the river screened the foes from mutual attack, though the night echoed to shout and countershout and challenge and abuse.

Through the half light Champlain could see that the Iroquois were working like beavers erecting a barricade of logs.

The assailants kept to their canoes under cover of bull-hide shields till daylight, when Champlain buckled on his armor--breastplate, helmet, thigh pieces--and landing, advanced.

There were not less than two hundred Iroquois.

Outnumbering the Hurons three times over, they uttered a jubilant whoop and {48} came on at a rush.

Champlain and his two white men took aim.

The foremost chiefs dropped in their tracks.

Terrified by "the sticks that thundered and spat fire," the Iroquois fell back in amaze, halted, then fled.

The victory was complete; but it left as a legacy to New France the undying enmity of the Iroquois.

When Champlain came out from France in 1610, he would have repeated the raid; but a fight with invading Iroquois at the mouth of the Richelieu delayed him, and the expiration of De Monts' monopoly took him back to France.

In 1611 trade was free to all comers.

Fur traders flocked to the St. Lawrence like birds of passage.

The only way to secure furs for De Monts was to go higher up the river beyond Quebec; and ascending to Montreal, Champlain built a factory called Place Royale, with a wall of bricks to resist the ice jam.

This was the third French fort Champlain helped to found in Canada.

Presently, on his tracks to Montreal, came a flock of free traders.

When the Hurons come shooting down the foamy rapids--here, a pole-shove to avoid splitting canoes on a rock in mid-rush; there, a dexterous whirl from the trough of a back wash--the fur traders fire off their guns in welcome.

The Hurons are suspicious.

What means it, these white men, coming in such numbers, firing off their "sticks that thunder"?

At midnight they come stealthily to Champlain's lodge to complain.

Peltries and canoes, the Indians transfer themselves above the rapids, and later conduct Champlain down those same white whirlpools to the uneasy amaze of the explorer.

It is clear to Champlain he must obtain royal patronage to stem the boldness of these free traders.

In France he obtains the favor of the Bourbons; and he obtains it more generously because the world of Paris has gone agog about a fabulous tale that sets the court by the ears.

From the first Champlain has encouraged young Frenchmen to winter with the Indian hunters and learn the languages.

Brulé is with them now.

Nicholas Vignau has just come back from the Ottawa with a fairy story of a marvelous voyage he has made with the Indians through {49} the forests to the Sea of the North--the sea where Henry Hudson, the Englishman, had perished.

As the romance gains the ear of the public, the young man waxes eloquent in detail, and tells of the number of Englishmen living there.

Champlain is ordered to follow this exploration up.

May, 1613, he is back at Montreal, opposite that island named St. Helen, after the frail girl who became his wife, preparing to ascend the Ottawa with four white men--among them Vignau.

What Vignau's sensations were, one may guess.

The vain youth had not meant his love of notoriety to carry him so far; and he must have known that every foot of the way led him nearer detection; but the liar is always a gambler with chance.

Mishap, bad weather, Indian war--might drive Champlain back.

Vignau assumed bold face.

The path followed was that river trail up the Ottawa which was to become the highway of empire's westward march for two and a half centuries.

Mount Royal is left to the rear as the voyageurs traverse the Indian trail through the forests along the rapids to that launching place named after the patron saint of French voyageur--Ste.

Anne's. The river widens into the silver expanse of Two Mountains Lake, rimmed to the sky line by the vernal hills, with a silence and solitude over all, as when sunlight first fell on face of man.

Here the eagle utters a lonely scream from the top of some blasted pine; there a covey of ducks, catching sight of the coming canoes, dive to bottom, only to reappear a gunshot away.

Where the voyageurs land for their nooning, or camp at nightfall, or pause to gum the splits in their birch canoes, the forest in the full flush of spring verdure is a fairy woods.

Against the elms and the maples leafing out in airy tracery that reveals the branches bronze among the budding green, stand the silver birches, and the somber hemlocks, and the resinous pines.

Upbursting from the mold below is another miniature forest--a forest of ferns putting out the hairy fronds that in another month will be above the height of a man.

Overhead, like a flame of fire, flashes the scarlet tanager with his querulous call; or the oriole flits from branch to branch, {50} fluting his springtime notes; or the yellow warbler balances on topmost spray to sing his crisp love song on the long journey north to nest on Hudson Bay.

And over all and in all, intangible as light, intoxicating as wine, is the tang of the clear, unsullied, crystal air, setting the blood coursing with new life.

Little wonder that Brulé, and Vignau, and other young men whom Champlain sent to the woods to learn wood lore, became so enamored of the life that they never returned to civilization.

Presently the sibilant rush of waters forewarns rapids.

Indians and voyageurs debark, invert canoes on their shoulders, packs on back with straps across foreheads, and amble away over the portages at that voyageurs' dog-trot which is half walk, half run.

So the rapids of Carillon and Long Sault are ascended.

Night time is passed on some sandy shore on a bed under the stars, or under the canoes turned upside down.

Tents are erected only for the commander, Champlain; and at day dawn, while the tips of the trees are touched with light and the morning mist is smoking up from the river shot with gold, canoes are again on the water and paddle blades tossing the waves behind.