Hero Tales from History — Champlain, The Father of New France
CHAMPLAIN, THE FATHER OF NEW FRANCE
In Samuel de Champlain’s earlier life he was both a soldier and a sailor of France.
He was a great adventurer, who came to visit the new country in America claimed for France by Jacques Cartier about seventy-five years before.
He was a personal friend of Henry of Navarre, who became Henry the Fourth, king of France.
Champlain was a great lover of king and country.
He said to the high officials at court: “Spain has her ‘New Spain,’ and England her ‘New England’; why should not we have our ‘New France’ in America?
” The king and the rich nobles thought it was a good idea, and one leading man at the French court sent Champlain to carry out his own project.
The brave explorer started a settlement on the coast near the wide mouth of the St. Lawrence, but on account of the wars France was engaged in, this wealthy Frenchman found that he could no longer spare money to carry on the enterprise, and Champlain had to give up the settlement he had so nicely started and go back to France.
But Samuel de Champlain was a plucky soul whom nothing could frighten or discourage.
He had a romantic nature, to which the wild life in America appealed.
It was not long before he was back in the New World, sailing up the St. Lawrence.
There he saw a high, steep cliff at a narrow point in the wide river, and decided that it would be a good place to build a fort and make a settlement.
He started both at once--placing the fort on the head of the cliff and building several houses at its foot.
Champlain, who was quite an artist, made a drawing of this small group of houses and named the little settlement Quebec.
On account of its high cliff above a narrow place in the river, Quebec is called “the Gibraltar of America.
” Gibraltar is the name of a high rock on the coast of Spain guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean.
In this narrow settlement Champlain planted a garden with as many roses and other flowers as he could.
He had a kind heart and a pleasant face, and soon became as great a friend to the Indians as William Penn in Philadelphia.
Champlain encouraged his French friends to treat the men of the forest as their brothers.
As he was a devout Catholic, he did everything he could to make the savages Christians, sending good men to live among them and teach the natives how to live right.
He not only tried to help pious men to convert the Indians, but he went himself to trade and hunt with the neighboring tribes and make them his friends.
More than this, he sent young Frenchmen to live among the different tribes and learn the language and the ways of the Indians.
These hardy young heroes were called “wood runners,” and became the first white guides and scouts in the wilds of America.
It was necessary for Champlain to make several voyages home to Old France.
On one of these visits “the Father of New France,” now forty years of age, married Hélène, the young daughter of a wealthy citizen of Paris.
But, instead of taking her to share his rough life in the wilds of the St. Lawrence, he sent her back to school to fit herself better to aid him in teaching the Indians when she was old enough to come with him to the New World.
When he went back to Quebec he went farther up the St. Lawrence to an island which Cartier had called Mount Royal, and started another little settlement, which he named Montreal.
Here he made everything as beautiful as he could, planting roses and other flowers, as he had done at Quebec.
The island in the river opposite this new settlement he named Sainte Hélène, for the child wife he had left behind in Old France.
This island, now known by the English name, St. Helen’s, is a park and pleasure ground for the people of Montreal.
“The White Governor” found before long that the Indians around Quebec were not satisfied with a friendship which showed itself in teaching them to be Christians and in trading beads for the furs the savages had gathered by shooting and trapping in the forests.
It seems strange that tall, stern red men should be so childish as to care much for beads, but it must be remembered that the Indians used beads of special colors in weaving bands and strings of wampum which they used for money.
Their own beads were very hard to make from shells; so they were as eager for glass beads of certain colors as white men are for the smallest grains of gold.
The Indians were less trouble to Champlain and his friends than the English--and other Frenchmen, too--who tried to turn the Indians against him and his settlers.
Other ships than those of Champlain’s company landed every now and then at points along the St. Lawrence to trade with the Indians.
These white men would try to make the savages unfriendly to Champlain, so that they would trade only with the newcomers, somewhat as a business house to-day tries to take customers away from other dealers.
The simple men of the forest could not understand these tricks of trade of the wily white men.
Champlain, in one of the stories of his adventures, relates that the Indians came to tell him about some fur traders from other parts of France.
“They tell us that they would come and fight for us against our enemies if we liked.
What do you think of it?
Are they telling the truth?
” “No, they are not,” said Governor Champlain earnestly.
“I know well enough what they want.
They tell you this only to get your trade.
” “The white governor is right!
” shouted the Indians.
“Those men are women; they only want to make war on our beavers!
” By this they meant that the other Frenchmen were willing to promise anything in order to get all the beaver and other fur skins the Indians might have to sell.
As the Indian squaws were not allowed to go into battle, the savages showed their contempt for white men by calling them “women”!
Champlain knew that the Indians would not accept him as a real friend unless he would fight for them against their enemies--the cruel and powerful Iroquois, who lived south of the St. Lawrence.
The tribes of the Iroquois were the most daring and warlike of the red men and were feared by all their neighbors.
The Indians looked upon “the White Governor” and his men as workers of miracles with their “fire-sticks,” as they called the rude guns which the French called arquebuses.
In one of his accounts Champlain describes the first of a number of battles he helped the Indians to fight against the Iroquois.
After describing how his red friends met the enemy at night and agreed to fight next morning, he continued: “Meanwhile the whole night was spent in dancing and singing on both sides, with many insults and other taunts, such as how little courage _we_ had, how great _their_ power against our arms, and when day broke we would find this out to our ruin.
Our Indians did not fail in talking back, telling them they would witness the effect of arms they had never seen before.
“After each side had sung and danced and threatened enough, day broke.
My [white] companions and I were always concealed for fear the enemy would see us preparing our arms the best we could, being separated, each in one of the canoes belonging to the St. Lawrence savages.
“After being equipped with light armor, we took each an arquebus and went ashore.
I saw the enemy leave their barricade.
They were about two hundred men, of strong and robust appearance, who were coming slowly toward us with a gravity and assurance which greatly pleased me, led on by three chiefs.
Ours were marching in similar order, and told me that those who wore three tall feathers were the chiefs, and that I must do all I could to kill them.
“The moment we landed, our Indians began calling me with a loud voice, and making way, placed me marching at their head--about twenty paces in advance--until I was within thirty paces of the enemy.
The moment they [the Iroquois] saw me, they halted, gazing at me and I at them.
When I saw them preparing to shoot at us I raised my arquebus, and aiming directly at one of the three chiefs, two of them fell to the ground by this shot, and one of their companions received a wound of which he died afterwards.
I had put four balls in my arquebus.
Our Indians, on witnessing a shot so favorable for them, set up such tremendous shouts that thunder could not have been heard, and yet there was no lack of arrows on either side.
“The Iroquois were greatly astonished, seeing two men killed at once, though they were protected by arrow-proof armor, woven of cotton thread and wood, this frightened them very much.
While I was reloading one of my [white] men in the bush fired a shot which so astonished them anew that they lost courage, took to flight, and abandoned the field and their fort, hiding in the depths of the forest where I followed them and killed some others.
Our savages also killed several of them, and took ten or twelve prisoners.
The rest carried off the wounded.
Fifteen or sixteen of ours were wounded by arrows; they were promptly cured.
“After gaining the victory, they amused themselves plundering Indian corn and meal from the enemy, also the arms which the Iroquois had thrown away in order to run faster.
After feasting, dancing and singing, we returned three hours later with the prisoners.
“I named the place where this battle was fought _Lake Champlain.
_” “The White Governor” went on to tell about the devilish delight his friends, the St. Lawrence Indians, took in torturing their Iroquois prisoners.
The braves, and even the squaws, would try to think of something to do that would make the dying Indians’ sufferings still more terrible.
If the victim cried out or uttered the least sound, the torturing Indians would laugh and dance about for joy.
Champlain begged his friends to stop this fiendish sport, but they could not understand why.
The Iroquois would have tortured them just as wickedly if they had won.
So “the White Governor” shot several of the suffering victims to put them out of their agonies.
After that, when the St. Lawrence Indians gained a victory, Champlain would demand as many prisoners as he could for his share.
These he would not allow to be tortured, and, in time, would contrive to let them escape.
By being friends with the neighboring tribes in war, Champlain made bitter enemies of the Iroquois who lived in New York, so that in the later wars between France and England those powerful tribes fought with the English against the French, and in the end helped to place New France in the hands of the British.
Champlain’s sympathetic and romantic nature made him a welcome visitor, whether in the wigwams of the savages or in the palaces of the kings and noblemen of France.
He did all he could to help the people of Old France and New to understand one another.
He sent a young Frenchman up into the country some distance north of Montreal to live among the savages.
After this youth had spent the winter in the north, he came back to the St. Lawrence with glowing stories about the finding of a “salt sea” much farther north.
He was taken to France and became the lion of the day there, for explorers from all lands were still looking for a northwest passage across America to “the South Sea” and China.
Just about this time Henry Hudson had discovered the Hudson River and was lost in Hudson Bay in his search for this passage; but this was not yet known in Europe.
So Champlain, with his strong desire to explore and to prove a great benefit to mankind, arranged to command an expedition into the far northern wilds and make his young friend’s boasted discovery of actual use to Old and New France.
With the young explorer and an Indian guide, the Governor and a company of men reached the lake and island belonging to the tribe with which the young Frenchman had stayed.
In talking with those Indians about the great discovery, Champlain spoke with pride of his young friend’s energy and success.
They laughed and told him he had been fooled, for that young man had never gone farther north than the island on which they were standing!
This was a bitter experience for the good “White Governor.
” The Indians, who had told him before that there was no salt sea anywhere near that region, taunted Champlain with, “Now who were your friends?
Don’t you see that he wanted to cause your death?
Give him to us and we promise you he shall never lie again.
” Champlain knew too well that with the savages’ hatred of a liar and their cruel modes of punishment they would have tortured that young Frenchman to death.
Of course, the kind-hearted governor could not permit this.
But he did make the fellow stand before all the Frenchmen at Montreal and confess that he had been guilty of lying and committing [Illustration: WHEN BRAVE AND COURTEOUS CHAMPLAIN SURRENDERED QUEBEC, THE ENGLISH OBTAINED THEIR FIRST FOOTHOLD IN CANADA.
] a great fraud.
After that, as Champlain himself expressed it, “We left him to the mercy of God.
” At last, Sieur de Champlain brought his young wife to Canada.
Her brother, who had been a settler on the St. Lawrence for years, exclaimed when he met her, “You are a brave girl to come here!
” The Indians, always glad to welcome the great white chief, were now doubly glad to see his young “squaw”!
They greatly admired “the little white witch,” as they called her, and would have worshiped her if she had let them.
She wore a small mirror--the fashion in Paris then--as a sort of charm.
When she allowed the Indians to see their painted faces in this, they said, “She carries each one of us in her heart!
” She used her good influence over her dusky admirers to persuade them to be baptized.
Of a very devout spirit, Madame de Champlain returned to France after a short stay in the western wilds, and entered a convent in Paris.
Once more England and France were at war, and King Charles the First looked with jealous eyes upon the fair islands and settlements of the St. Lawrence.
English warships appeared before Quebec, claimed possession, and threatened to take that place.
“The White Governor” wrote back, with French courtesy, to the impudent enemy: “We will await you from hour to hour and shall endeavor if possible to dispute the claim which you have made over these places.
Upon which I remain, Sir, your affectionate servant,” The English commander did not dare dispute the claim then, but he came again with a powerful force and “the White Governor” was forced to yield and go back to France.
But at the end of the war, England returned Canada to France, and the Father of New France came again to Quebec, his capital, amid the rejoicings of all the people, both French and Indians, and even of “our friends our enemies,” the English.
Here he lived like another French knight, “without fear and without reproach,” until he received the call of the King of kings in the Far Country, on Christmas Day, 1635.
