Canada: The Empire of the North — From 1635 to 1650, part 1

Mystics come to Canada--A city built of dreams--First night at Montreal--Maisonneuve fights raiders--Le Jeune joins the hunters--Brébeuf goes to Lake Huron--Life at the Huron mission--The scourge of the Iroquois--The fight at St. Louis--Rageneau's converts resist--Flight of the Hurons While Charles de La Tour and Charnisay scoured the Bay of Fundy in border warfare like buccaneers of the Spanish Main, what was Quebec doing?

The Hundred Associates were to colonize the country; but fur trading and farming never go together.

One means the end of the other; and the Hundred Associates shifted the obligation of settling the country by granting vast estates called seigniories along the St. Lawrence and leaving to these new lords of the soil the duty of bringing out habitants.

Later they deeded over for an annual rental of beaver skins the entire fur monopoly to the Habitant Company, made up of the leading people of New France.

So ended all the fine promises of four thousand colonists.

Years ago Pontgravé had learned that the Indians of the Up-Country did not care to come down the St. Lawrence farther than Lake St. Peter's, where Iroquois foe lay in ambush; and the year before Champlain died a double expedition had set out from Quebec in July: one to build a fort north of Lake St. Peter's at the entrance to the river with three mouths,--in other words, to found Three Rivers; the other, under Father Brébeuf, the Jesuit, and Jean Nicolet, the wood runner, to establish a mission in the country of the Hurons and to explore the Great Lakes.

In fact, it must never be forgotten that Champlain's ambitions in laying the foundations of a new nation aimed just as much to establish a kingdom of heaven on earth as to win a new kingdom for France.

Always, in the minds of the fathers of New France, Church was to be first; State, second.

When Charles de Montmagny, Knight of Malta, landed in Quebec one June morning in 1636, to succeed Champlain as governor of New France, he noticed a crucifix planted by the path side where {72} viceroy and officers clambered up the steep hill to Castle St. Louis.

Instantly Montmagny fell to his knees before the cross in silent adoration, and his example was followed by all the gay train of beplumed officers.

The Jesuits regarded the episode as a splendid omen for New France, and set their chapel organ rolling a _Te Deum_ of praise, while Governor and retinue filed before the altars with bared heads.

It was in the same spirit that Montreal was founded.

The Jesuits' letters on the Canadian missions were now being read in France.

Religious orders were on fire with missionary ardor.

The Canadian missions became the fashion of the court.

Ladies of noble blood asked no greater privilege than to contribute their fortunes for missions in Canada.

Nuns lay prostrate before altars praying night and day for the advancement of the heavenly kingdom on the St. Lawrence.

The Jesuits had begun their college in Quebec.

The very year that Champlain had first come to the St. Lawrence there had been born in Normandy, of noble parentage, a little girl who became a passionate devotee of Canadian missions.

To divert her mind from the calling of a nun, her father had thrown her into a whirl of gayety from which she emerged married; but her husband died in a few years, and Madame de la Peltrie, left a widow at twenty-two, turned again heart and soul to the scheme of endowing a Canadian mission.

Again her father tried to divert her mind, threatening to cut off her fortune if she did not marry.

An engagement to a young noble, who was as keen a devotee as herself, quieted her father and averted the loss of her fortune.

On the death of her father the formal union was dissolved, and Madame de la Peltrie proceeded to the Ursuline Convent of Tours, where the Jesuits had already chosen a mother superior for the new institution to be founded at Quebec--Marie of the Incarnation, a woman of some fifty years, a widow like Madame de la Peltrie, and, like Madame de la Peltrie, a mystic dreamer of celestial visions and divine communings and heroic sacrifices.

How much of truth, how much of self-delusion, {73} lay in these dreams of heavenly revelation is not for the outsider to say.

It is as impossible for the practical mind to pronounce judgment on the mystic as for the mystic to pronounce sentence on the scientist.

Both have their truths, both have their errors; and by their fruits are they known.

[Illustration: MADAME DE LA PELTRIE (After a picture in the Ursuline Convent, Quebec)] May 4th, 1639, Madame de la Peltrie and Marie of the Incarnation embarked from Dieppe for Canada.

In the ship were also another Ursuline nun, three hospital sisters to found the Hôtel Dieu at Quebec, Father Vimont, superior of Quebec Jesuits, and two other priests.

The boat was like a chapel.

Ship's bell tolled services.

Morning prayer and evensong were chanted from the decks, and the pilgrims firmly believed that their vows allayed a storm.

July 1st they were among the rocking dories of the Newfoundland fishermen, and then on the 15th the little sailboat washed and rolled to anchor inshore among the fur traders under the heights of Tadoussac.

At sight of the somber Saguenay, the silver-flooded St. Lawrence, the frowning mountains, the far purple hills, the primeval forests through which the wind rushed with the sound of the sea, the fishing craft dancing on the tide like cockle boats, the grizzled fur traders bronzed as the crinkled oak forests where they passed their lives, the tawny, naked savages agape at these white-skinned women come from afar, the hearts of the {74} housed-up nuns swelled with emotions strange and sweet,--the emotions of a new life in a new world.

And when they scrambled over the rope coils aboard a fishing schooner to go on up to Quebec, and heard the deep-voiced shoutings of the men, and witnessed the toilers of the deep fighting wind and wave for the harvest of the sea, did it dawn on the fair sisterhood that God must have workers _out_ in the strife of the world, as well as workers _shut up_ from the world inside convent walls?

Who knows?

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Who knows?

At Tadoussac, that morning, to both Madame de la Peltrie and Marie of the Incarnation it must have seemed as if their visions had become real.

And then the cannon of Quebec began to thunder till the echoes rolled from hill to hill and shook--as the mystics thought--the very strongholds of hell.

Tears streamed down their cheeks at such welcome.

The whole Quebec populace had rallied to the water front, and there stood Governor Montmagny in velvet cloak with sword at belt waving hat in welcome.

Soldiers and priests cheered till the ramparts rang.

As the nuns put foot to earth once more they fell on their knees and kissed the soil of Canada.

August 1st was fête day in Quebec.

The chapel chimes rang .

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and rang again their gladness.

The organ rolled out its floods of soul-shattering music, and deep-throated chant of priests invoked God's blessing on the coming of the women to the mission.

So began the Ursuline Convent of Quebec and the Hôtel Dieu of the hospital sisters; but Montreal was still a howling wilderness untenanted by man save in midsummer, when the fur traders came to Champlain's factory and the canoes of the Indians from the Up-Country danced down the swirling rapids like sea birds on waves.

The letters from the Jesuit missions touched more hearts than those of the mystic nuns.

In Anjou dwelt a receiver of taxes--Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière, a stout, practical, God-fearing man with a family, about as far removed in temperament from the founders of the Ursulines as a character could well be.

Yet he, too, had mystic {75} dreams and heard voices bidding him found a mission in the tenantless wilderness of Montreal.

To the practical man the thing seems sheer moon-stark madness.

If Dauversière had lived in modern days he would have been committed to an asylum.

Here was a man with a family, without a fortune, commanded by what he thought was the voice of Heaven to found a hospital in a wilderness where there were no people.

Also in Paris dwelt a young priest, Jean Jacques Olier, who heard the self-same voices uttering the self-same command.

These two men were unknown to each other; yet when they met by chance in the picture gallery of an old castle, there fell from their eyes, as it were, scales, and they beheld as in a vision each the other's soul, and recognized in each fellow-helper and comrade of the spirit.

To all this the practical man cries out "Bosh"!

Yet Montreal is no bosh, but a stately city, and it sprang from the dreams--"fool dreams," enemies would call them--of these two men, the Sulpician priest and the Anjou tax collector.

Hour after hour, arm in arm, they walked and talked, the man of prayers and the man of taxes.

People or no people at Montreal, money or no money, they decided that the inner voice must be obeyed.

A Montreal Society was formed.

Six friends joined.

What would be equal to ,000 was collected.

There were to be no profits on this capital.

It was all to be invested to the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Unselfish if you like, foolish they may have been, but not hypocrites.

First of all, they must become Seigneurs of Montreal; but the island of Montreal had already been granted by the Hundred Associates to one Lauson.

To render the title doubly secure, Dauversière and Olier obtained deeds to the island from Lauson and from the Hundred Associates.

Forty-five colonists, part soldiers, part devotees, were then gained as volunteers; but a veritable soldier of Heaven was desired as commander.

Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, was noted for his heroism in war and zeal in religion.

When other officers returned from battle for wild revels, Maisonneuve withdrew to play the flute or pass hours in religious {76} contemplation.

His name occurred to both Dauversière and Olier as fittest for command; but to make doubly sure, they took lodgings near him, studied his disposition, and then casually told him of their plans and asked his coöperation.

Maisonneuve was in the prime of life, on the way to high service in the army.

His zeal took fire at thought of founding a Kingdom of God at Montreal; but his father furiously opposed what must have seemed a mad scheme.

Maisonneuve's answer was the famous promise of Christ: "No man hath left house or brethren or sister for my sake but he shall receive a hundredfold."

Maisonneuve was warned there would be no earthly reward--no pay--for his arduous task; but he answered, "I devote my life and future; and I expect no recompense."

Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance, thirty-four years old, who had given herself to good works from childhood, though she had not yet joined the cloister, now felt the call to labor in the wilderness.

Later, in 1653, came Marguerite Bourgeoys to the little colony beneath the mountain.

She too, like Jeanne Mance, distrusted dreams and visions and mystic communings, cherishing a religion of good works rather than introspection of the soul.

Dauversière and Olier remained in France.

Fortunately for Montreal, practical Christians, fighting soldiers of the cross, carried the heavenly standard to the wilderness.

It was too late to ascend the St. Lawrence when the ship brought the crusaders to Quebec in August, 1641; and difficulties harried them from the outset.

Was Montmagny, the Governor, jealous of Maisonneuve; or did he simply realize the fearful dangers Maisonneuve's people would run going beyond the protection of Quebec?

At all events, he disapproved this building of a second colony at Montreal, when the first colony at Quebec could barely gain subsistence.

He offered them the Island of Orleans in exchange for the Island of Montreal, and warned them of Iroquois raid.

"I have not come to argue," answered Maisonneuve, "but to act.

It is my duty to found a colony at Montreal, and thither I go though every tree be an Iroquois."

{77} Maisonneuve passed the winter building boats to ascend the St. Lawrence next spring; and Madame de la Peltrie, having established the Ursulines at Quebec, now cast in her lot with the Montrealers for two years.

May 8, 1642, the little flotilla set out from Quebec--a pinnace with the passengers, a barge with provisions, two long boats propelled by oars and a sweep.

Montmagny and Father Vimont accompanied the crusaders; and as the boats came within sight of the wooded mountain on May 17, hymns of praise rose from the pilgrims that must have mingled strangely on Indian ears with the roar of the angry rapids.

One can easily call up the scene--the mountain, misty with the gathering shadows of sunset, misty as a veiled bride with the color and bloom of spring; the boats, moored for the night below St. Helen's Island, where the sun, blazing behind the half-foliaged trees, paints a path of fire on the river; the white bark wigwams along shore with the red gleam of camp fire here and there through the forest; the wilderness world bathed in a peace as of heaven, as the vesper hymn floats over the evening air!

It is a scene that will never again be enacted in the history of the world--dreamers dreaming greatly, building a castle of dreams, a fortress of holiness in the very center of wilderness barbarity and cruelty unspeakable.

The multitudinous voices of traffic shriek where the crusaders' hymn rose that May night.

A great city has risen on the foundations which these dreamers laid.

Let us not scoff too loudly at their mystic visions and religious rhapsodies!

Another generation may scoff at our too-much-worldliness, with our dreamless grind and visionless toil and harder creeds that reject everything which cannot be computed in the terms of traffic's dollar!

Well for us if the fruit of our creeds remain to attest as much worth as the deeds of these crusaders!

Early next morning the boats pulled in ashore where Cartier had landed one hundred years before and Champlain had built his factory thirty years ago.

Maisonneuve was first to spring on land.

He dropped to his knees in prayer.

The others as {78} they landed did likewise.

Their hymns floated out on the forest.

Madame de la Peltrie, Jeanne Mance, and the servant, Charlotte Barré, quickly decorated a wildwood altar with evergreens.

Then, with Montmagny the Governor, and Maisonneuve the soldier, standing on either side, Madame de la Peltrie and Jeanne Mance and Charlotte Barré, bowed in reverence, with soldiers and sailors standing at rest unhooded, Father Vimont held the first religious services at Mont Royal.

"You are a grain of mustard seed," he said, "and you shall grow till your branches overshadow the earth."

Maisonneuve cut the first tree for the fort; and a hundred legends might be told of the little colony's pioneer trials.

Once a flood threatened the existence of the fort.

A cross was erected to stay the waters and a vow made if Heaven would save the fort a cross should be carried and placed on the summit of the mountain.

The river abated, and Maisonneuve climbed the steep mountain, staggering under the weight of an enormous cross, and planted it at the highest point.

Here, in the presence of all, mass was held, and it became a regular pilgrimage from the fort up the mountain to the cross.