NOTE.—For Canadian history down to the death of Champlain, see, among modern books, more especiallyPARKMAN'SPioneers of France in the New World,andKINGSFORD'SHistory of Canada,vol. i.
THESETTLEMENT OFCANADA AND THEFIVENATIONINDIANS
THESETTLEMENT OFCANADA AND THEFIVENATIONINDIANS
To trade and to colonize through the medium of Chartered Companies has been characteristic of the nations of Northern Europe. Chartered Companies have not been peculiar to England. The Dutch worked entirely through two great companies; the Danes adopted the same system; and various companies played their part in the early history of French colonization. Herein lay the main difference, in the field of colonial enterprise, between the northern peoples and the southerners who had preceded them. In the case of Spain and Portugal all was done under the immediate control of the Crown. These two nations were concerned with conquest rather than with settlement; and, if the Portuguese were traders, their commerce was not the result of private venture, but was created and supported by the Government. The Spaniards and Portuguese were first in the field. East and West lay before them, and they divided the world in secure monopoly. The northerners came in—they came in tentatively; policy kept the Governments in the background for fear of incurring war, and freedom of individual action was more ingrained in these races than in the Latin peoples of the south. So freebooters sailed here and there, at one time honoured, at another in disgrace; merchants took shares in this or that venture, and Chartered Companies came into being.
In the case of Holland, the Netherlands East India Company and the Netherlands West India Company practicallyincluded the whole nation: the state and the companies were co-extensive. In England, the companies were really private concerns, licensed by the Government, often thwarted by the Government, but, in the main, working out their own salvation or their own ruin, as the case might be. In France there was a mixture of the northern and the southern systems, as of the northern and the southern blood. There, as in England, the companies were private associations, but Court favour was to them the breath of life. Kings and ministers constantly interfered, created and undid, conferred licences and revoked them, until in no long time the Chartered Company system lost all that makes it valuable, and Frenchmen learnt to look to the Crown alone.
Trade jealousies hampered the beginnings of Canadian settlement; there was neither free trade in Canada nor unquestioned monopoly. To cure this evil Richelieu, in 1627, brought into being the company of the One Hundred Associates, nominally a private association, really the offspring of the Government. Its sphere extended from Florida to the North Sea, and from east to west as far as discovery should extend along the rivers of Canada. It controlled all trade except the fisheries, and it enjoyed sovereign rights in so far that it was entitled to confer titles and tenures, subject to the approval of the Crown. The chief officers were to be nominated by the King, but under the Sovereign the company was feudal lord of New France; of its soil and its inland waters, with all that they produced. A statesman projected the company, and, with keen insight into the wants of New France, Richelieu laid down as one of the terms of its charter that settlers were to be introduced in specified numbers, especially and immediately settlers of the artisan class; but these provisions were made to a large extent barren by excluding the Huguenots. At the outset the new French company, with all its backing, was foiled in its efforts by the English Merchant Adventurers. The first transportssent out, bearing settlers and supplies, were captured by Kirke. Quebec fell and New France was lost. The Convention of Susa and the Treaty of St. Germain-en-Laye were signed and executed, and the One Hundred Associates resumed their charge of Canada. Under them Champlain held the government of New France till he died, being succeeded by a soldier, M. de Montmagny, who reached Quebec in June, 1636.
In 1634, while Champlain was still alive, a fort was begun at Three Rivers. The first permanent settlement at Montreal dates from the spring of 1642, and in the same year Fort Richelieu was founded on the site of the present town of Sorel,1where the Richelieu—the river of the Iroquois—joins the St. Lawrence. For many years Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal practically comprised New France. Outside them were fur-traders and Jesuit missionaries, carrying their lives in their hands. A few farms were taken up along the river above and below Quebec, but colonization was almost non-existent, and small groups of priests and soldiers at two or three points on the St. Lawrence feebly upheld the power of France in North America.
1'So called from M. de Saurel, who reconstructed the fort in 1665' (Kingsford'sHistory of Canada,vol. i, p. 185).
The company of the One Hundred Associates lasted till 1663, and little they did for the land or for themselves. At the end of their tenure, the whole French population of Canada hardly reached 2,500 souls. It had been an integral part of the company's programme to people Canada with French men and French women, but, inasmuch as Huguenots were rigidly excluded, the motive for emigration was wanting. The Catholic citizens of France were comfortable at home. They might wish to trade with Canada, but they did not wish to spend their lives there. The soldiers of France went out only under orders; they looked for brighter battlefields than the North American backwoods. Priests and nunsalone felt a call to cross the Atlantic, to face the most rigorous winters and the most savage foes. The French religion was firmly planted in North America during these early years, but the French people were left behind.
De Montmagny was Governor for twelve years, till 1648. His successors under the company's régime were D'Ailleboust, De Lauzon, the Vicomte d'Argenson, and Baron d'Avaugour. Under the Governors there were commandants of the garrisons at Three Rivers and Montreal; and from 1636 onwards there was some kind of Council for framing ordinances and regulating the administration of justice, the Governor and the leading ecclesiastics being always members, and representatives of the settlers being from time to time admitted. In 1645, moreover, the company was reorganized, and the fur trade, which had been vested in the Associates, was handed over to the colonists. Notwithstanding, there was little increase of strength and little growth of population till the year 1663, and up to that date the history of Canada is no more than a record of savage warfare and missionary enterprise.
Religious enthusiasts founded Montreal, and the foundation of Montreal was a challenge to the Iroquois. Always the enemies of the French, the Five Nations saw in the settlement a new menace to their power. Above the Richelieu river, they looked on the St. Lawrence as more especially within their own domain; and when Frenchmen took up ground on the island of Montreal, the Indians resented the intrusion with savage bitterness and with more than savage foresight. On the part of the French, state policy had nothing to say to the new undertaking, nor was it a commercial venture. It was simply and solely the outcome of religious zeal untempered by discretion.
The Jesuits had abundantly advertised in France the spiritual needs of Canada. They had much to tell, and they told it well, skilful in narrative as they were bold in action.They attracted money to the missionary cause, they enlisted brave men, and, still more, brave and beautiful women. Convents were founded in America, and hospitals; priests and nuns led and lost heroic lives, to widen the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, and to convert the heathen. The deeds done, and the sufferings endured, commanded, and still command admiration, yet withal there was an element of barrenness in the work; it was magnificent, but it was not colonization. It was unsound in two main essentials. First and foremost, liberty was wanting. The white men and the red were to be dominated alike: North America and its peoples were to be in perpetual leading strings, prepared for freedom in the world to come by unquestioning obedience on this side the grave. The Protestant, however narrow and prejudiced in his dealings and mode of life, in theory held and preached a religion which set free, a gospel of glorious liberty. The Roman Catholic missionary preached and acted self-sacrifice so complete, that all freedom of action was eliminated. There was a second and a very practical defect in the system. What Canada wanted was a white population, married settlers, men with wives and children. What the Jesuits asked for, and what they secured, was a following of celibates, men and women sworn to childlessness. The Protestant pastor in New England lived among his flock as one of themselves; he made a human home, and gave hostages to fortune; a line of children perpetuated his name, and family ties gave the land where he settled another aspect than that of a mission field. The Roman Catholic priest was tied to his church, but to nothing else. At her call he was here to-day, and, it might be, gone to-morrow. He more than shared the sufferings and the sorrows of those to whom he ministered, but his life was apart from theirs, and he left no children behind him. Martyrs and virgins the Roman Catholic Church sent out to Canada, but it did not send out men and women. In comparingEnglish and French colonization in America, two points of contrast stand out above all others—the much larger numbers of English settlers, and the much greater activity of French missionaries. Both facts were in great measure due to the influence of the Roman Catholic religion, and notably to the celibacy of its ministers.
Histories of Canada give full space to the names, the characters, and the careers of the bishops, priests, and nuns who moulded the childhood of New France, and to the struggle for supremacy between the Jesuits and rival sects. We have portraits of the Jesuit heroes Breboeuf, Lalemant, Garnier, Isaac Jogues, and many others; of the ladies whose wealth or whose personal efforts founded the Hôtel Dieu at Quebec and at Montreal; of Madame de la Peltrie, Marie Guyard the Mère de l'Incarnation, Jeanne Mance, and Marguerite Bourgeoys; of Laval the first of Canadian bishops; but the record of their devoted lives has only an indirect bearing on the history of colonization. It will be enough to notice very shortly the founding of Montreal, and the episode of the Huron missions, as being landmarks in Canadian story.
Montreal, it will be remembered, had been in Cartier's time the site of an Indian town, which afterwards disappeared. Champlain had marked it out as a place for a future settlement, and the keen eyes of the Jesuits looked to the island as a mission centre. It had become the property of De Lauzon, one of the One Hundred Associates and afterwards Governor of Canada, and he transferred his grant to a company, the Company of Montreal, formed exclusively for the service of religion, and especially connected with the priests of St. Sulpice. The first settlers numbered about sixty in all, in charge of a chivalrous soldier, De Maisonneuve, and including one of the religious heroines of the time, Mdlle. Jeanne Mance, who was entrusted with funds by a rich French lady to found a hospital. They arrived in Canada in 1641,and in spite of the warnings of the Governor, who urged that they should settle within reach of Quebec on the Island of Orleans, they chose their site at Montreal in the same autumn, and in the following spring began to build a settlement. Ville Marie was the name given to it at the time, the enterprise being dedicated to the Virgin. At the first ceremony, on landing, a Jesuit priest bade the little band of worshippers be of good courage, for they were as the grain of mustard seed; and now the distant, dangerous outpost of France in North America, which a few whole-hearted zealots founded, has become the great city of Montreal.
Religion has been a potent force in colonial history. On the one hand it has promoted emigration. It carried the Huguenots from France to other lands. It peopled New England with Puritans. On the other hand, it has sent forerunners of the coming white men among the coloured races, bearers of a message of peace, but too often bringing in their train the sword. As explorers and as pioneers, missionaries have done much for colonization; but from another point of view they have endangered the cause by going too fast and too far. In South Africa, a hundred years ago, the work, the speeches, and the writings of Protestant missionaries led indirectly to the dispersion of colonists, to race feuds, and to political complications which, but for this agency, would certainly have been postponed, and might possibly never have arisen. Similarly in Canada, Jesuit activity and forwardness added to the difficulties and dangers with which the French settlers and their rulers had to contend.
The Governor, who vainly attempted to dissuade the founders of Montreal from going so far afield, was right in his warnings. Very few were the French in North America, their struggle for existence was hard, their enemies were watchful and unrelenting. Safety lay in concentration, in making Quebec a strong and comparatively populous centre, in keeping aloof from the Iroquois, instead of straying withintheir range. To form a weak settlement 160 miles higher up the river than Quebec, within striking distance of the Five Nations, was to provoke the Indians and to offer them a prey. This was the immediate result of the foundation of Montreal. Year after year went by, and there was the same tale to tell: a tale of a hand to mouth existence, of settlers cooped up within their palisades, ploughing the fields at the risk of their lives, cut off by twos and threes, murdered or carried into captivity. Moreover, between Montreal in its weakness and the older and stronger settlement at Quebec, there was an element of jealousy. What with rival commandants and rival ecclesiastics, controversy within and ravening Iroquois without, the early days of the French in Canada were days of sorrow.
Far away from civilization in the seventeenth century was Montreal, but further still was the Huron country. The first white man to visit the Hurons was the Recollet friar, Le Caron, in the year 1615, and from that date onward, till Kirke took Quebec, a very few Franciscan and Jesuit priests preached their faith by the shores of Georgian Bay. Suspended for a short time, while the English held Canada, the missions were resumed by the Jesuits in 1634, foremost among the missionaries being Father de Breboeuf, who had already worked among the Hurons, and came back to work and die.
Few stories are so dramatic, few have been so well told2as the tale of the Huron missions. No element of tragedy is wanting. The background of the scene gives a sense of distance and immensity. The action is comprised in very few years, years of bright promise, speedily followed by absolute desolation. The contrast between the actors on either side is as great as can be found in the range of human life, between savages almost superhuman in savagery, and Christian preachers almost superhuman in endurance andself-sacrifice; and all through there runs the pity of it, the pathos of a religion of love bearing as its first-fruits barren martyrdom and wholesale extermination.
2By Francis Parkman inThe Jesuits in North America.
Between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay the Hurons dwelt, accessible to the Frenchmen only by the Ottawa river and Lake Nipissing, for the Iroquois barred the alternative route up the St. Lawrence and by Lake Ontario. Montreal was left far behind, and many miles of a toilsome, dangerous route were traversed, until by the shores of the great freshwater sea were found the homes of a savage but a settled people. To men inspired by religion and by Imperial views of religion, who looked to be the ministers of a world-wide power, including and dominating all the kingdoms of the earth, the greatness of the distances, the remoteness of the land, the unbounded area of unknown waters stretching far off to the west, were but calls to the imagination and incentives to redoubled effort.
But, ambitious as they were, the Jesuits were not mere enthusiasts: they were practical and politic men, diplomatists in the American backwoods as at the Court of France. Not wandering outcasts, like the Algonquins of the lower St. Lawrence; not, like the Iroquois, wholly given to perpetual murder; with some peaceful impulses, traders to a small extent, and tillers of the ground, and above all, since Champlain first came among them, sworn allies of the French—the Hurons seemed such a people as might be moulded to a new faith, and become a beacon attracting other North American natives to the light of Christianity. So the Jesuit fathers went among them in 1634, and in 1640 built and fortified a central mission station—St. Marie—a mile from where a little river—the Wye—flows into an inlet of Lake Huron.
To convert a race of suspicious savages is no easy task. The priests carried their lives in their hands. They were pitted against native sorcerers, they were called upon to giverain, they were held responsible for small-pox. Yet year by year, by genuine goodness and by pious fraud, they made headway, until some eleven mission posts were in existence among the Hurons and the neighbouring tribes, the most remote station being at the outlet of Lake Superior. The promise was good. Money was forthcoming from France. There were eighteen priests at work, there were lay assistants, there was a handful of French soldiers. Earthly as well as spiritual wants were supplied at St. Marie, and far off in safety at Quebec was a seminary for Huron children. It seemed as though on the far western horizon of discovery and colonization, the Roman Catholic Church was achieving a signal triumph, its agents being Frenchmen, and its political work being credited to France. Yet after fifteen years all was over, and the land was left desolate without inhabitants. The heathen learnt from their Christian teachers to obey and to suffer, but in learning they lost the spirit of resistance and of savage manhood. As in Paraguay, a more submissive race, under Jesuit influence, dwindled in numbers, so even the Hurons, after the French priests came among them, seem to have become an easier prey than before to their hereditary foes.
In July, 1648, the mission station of St. Joseph, fifteen miles from St. Marie, was utterly destroyed, the priest in charge was shot dead, and 700 prisoners were carried off. In the following year 1,200 warriors of the Five Nations swept like a torrent through the Huron cantons, fifteen native towns were attacked, ravaged, and burnt, and the brave priest, De Breboeuf, was tortured and slain. Other devoted missionaries shared his fate; the shepherds were slaughtered, and the survivors of the flock were scattered abroad. For the Hurons made little or no attempt to defend themselves; fear came upon them and trouble; they fell down, and there was none to help them. The fort at St. Marie stood, for even the Iroquois hesitated to attack armed walls; but its purposewas gone with the slaughter and dispersion of the Huron clans. The priests who still lived abandoned it, and spent a miserable winter with a crowd of Indian fugitives on a neighbouring island in Lake Huron. There too they built a fort; but famine and the Iroquois followed them, and in 1650 they left the country, taking with them to Quebec some 300 Huron converts. The refugees were settled on the Isle of Orleans; yet even there, five or six years later, they were attacked by the Iroquois, and at length they found a secure abiding-place at Lorette, near the banks of the river St. Charles. The rest of their kinsfolk were scattered abroad. Some were incorporated in the Five Nations. Others, driven from point to point, were found in after years at the northern end of Lake Michigan or at Detroit, and, under the new name of Wyandots, played some part in later Canadian history; but the Huron nation was blotted out, the Huron country became a desert, and the light which had shone brightly for a few years in the far-off land was put out for ever.
Most readers of the story of the Huron missions will study it mainly as an episode in religious enterprise. They will note the heroism of the Jesuit priests—their faithfulness unto death, their constancy under torture and suffering not surpassed by the stoicism of the North American Indians themselves. They will mourn the failure of their efforts, the butchery, the martyrdom, but will record that all was not absolutely thrown away; for even in the lodges of the Five Nations we read that some of the nameless Hurons held to the faith which their French teachers loved and served so well. But this is not the true moral of the story. The significance of the events lay in proving the French to be weak and the Iroquois to be strong, in demonstrating with horrible thoroughness that the white men in Canada were powerless to protect their friends, in thus making more difficult what was difficult enough already, in retarding the progress ofEuropean colonization in Canada. The want of concentration, the attempt to do too much, the somewhat paralysing influence of the particular form of the Christian religion which the French brought with them—all these elements of weakness came out in connexion with the Huron missions; and meanwhile precious years were lost to France which could not be afterwards made good; for in these same years the English, not producing martyrs and heroes, so much as fathers of families, were taking firm root in North American soil, plodding slowly but surely along the road to colonization.
The Iroquois were like man-eating tigers. The taste of human blood whetted their appetite for more. Fresh from the slaughter of the Hurons, in 1650-1 they fell upon the Neutral Nation, whose home was on the northern shore of Lake Erie, stretching to the east across the Niagara river. The Neutrals had held aloof from Iroquois and Huron alike, whence their name; but their neutrality did not protect them from utter extermination at the hands of the Five Nations. Over against them on the southern side of the lake were the Eries, second to none as ferocious savages, and known to the French as the 'Nation of the Cats.' Their turn came next, in 1654-5. They fought hard, behind palisades and with poisoned arrows; but they too were blotted out, and only on the south were left native warriors to cope with the conquering Iroquois. These were the Andastes, on the line of the Susquehanna river, who year after year gave blow for blow, until they too succumbed to superior numbers.
Nothing withstood the Five Nations; yet their fighting men were few, and their losses great. For the time they nearly ruined the French cause in Canada, but in the end their work of destruction rendered the triumph of the white man more inevitable and more complete. They broke up and killed out tribes, whose forces, if united to their own, might have overwhelmed the Europeans; and in doing sothey sapped their own strength. They kept up their numbers only by the incorporation of natives who had learned to look to Europeans for guidance and support; and in course of time, fallen from their high estate, they found salvation not as leaders of red men but as allies of white.
It seems marvellous that the confederation held together, and there were, it is true, occasional outbursts of inter-tribal jealousy and suspicion. Difference of geographical position tended to difference of policy. The most determined foes of the French were the Mohawks—the easternmost nation, supplied with firearms by the Dutchmen at Albany, and having easy access to the St. Lawrence. At the other end of the line the Senecas had their hands full in the Erie war, and were little disposed, while it lasted, to molest the Europeans. In the centre, the Onondagas, always few in numbers and already recruited by captive Hurons, were minded to attract to their ranks the Huron refugees at Quebec. So about the autumn of 1653, overtures of peace were made to the French, even the Mohawks for the moment dissembling their enmity; and in the following year a Jesuit priest, Le Moyne, was sent as an envoy to the Iroquois country.
The mission was notable in more ways than one. Le Moyne was the first white man to follow up the St. Lawrence from Montreal to Lake Ontario, and his journey marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between the French and the Iroquois. Thenceforward there was always the nucleus of a French party among the Five Nations, the elements of a divided policy in lieu of solid hostility to the French. Here was an illustration too of the value of the Jesuit priests to the French cause, as well as of the danger of employing them. None equalled these priests in the statecraft necessary for dealing with savages, but none were at the time in question so ready in season or out of season to promote a forward policy, involving future complications and dispersion of strength.
Le Moyne's mission was to the Onondagas, and its result was an application from that tribe that a French settlement should be established among them. The invitation was accepted; and in the summer of 1656 between forty and fifty Frenchmen established themselves on Lake Onondaga, in the very heart of the Iroquois country. It was a desperate enterprise. The men could ill be spared from Quebec, and they were but hostages among the Five Nations. The Indians pretended peace, but even while the Onondagas were escorting the Frenchmen up the river, the Mohawks attacked the expedition, and subsequently under the very guns of Quebec carried off Huron captives from the Isle of Orleans. For a little less than two years, the small band of French colonists remained amid the Onondagas, in hourly peril of their lives; and finally, towards the end of 1658, at dead of night, while the Indians were overcome by gluttony and debauch, they launched their boats and canoes on the Oswego river, reached Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence, and found themselves once more at Montreal.
It was a fit ending to the first stage of Canadian history—a hopeless venture, a confession of weakness, a hairsbreadth escape. So far there had been no colonization of Canada. There had been one wise, far-seeing man—Champlain. Brave soldiers had come from France, and still braver priests. There had been going in and out among the natives, toil and hardship, adventure and loss of life. But the French had as yet no real hold on Canada. Between Quebec and the Three Rivers—between the Three Rivers and Montreal, not they but the Iroquois were masters of the St. Lawrence. A trading company claimed to rule: its rule was nothingness. Within Quebec bishops and Governors quarrelled for precedence: under its walls the Mohawks yelled defiance. Montreal, the story goes, was only saved by a band of Frenchmen, who, in a log hut on the Ottawa, sold their lives as dearly as the heroes of Greek or Roman legend; and to crown it all,at the beginning of 1663, the shock of a mighty earthquake was felt throughout the land, making the forts and convents tremble, sending, as it were, a shiver through the feeble frame of New France.
It was the prelude of a better time. In March, 1663, the One Hundred Associates surrendered their charter to the Crown. A century later, by the Peace of Paris in 1763, France lost Canada. In those hundred years a fair trial was given to French colonization. How much was done to leave the impress of a great nation on Canada, the province of Quebec to-day will testify. Wherein the work was found wanting is told in history.
In 1663, we read, Canada became a Royal Province. It passed out of the keeping of a company and came under the direct control of the French King and his ministers. The statement requires some modification, for in 1664 Colbert created a new Chartered Company, the Company of the West, whose sphere, like that of the Netherlands West India Company, included the whole of the western half of the world, so far as it was or might be French—America North and South, the West Indies, and West Africa. Canada was within the terms of its charter, which included a monopoly of trade for forty years and, on paper, sovereign rights within the wide limits to which the charter extended. Thus the members of the company claimed to be feudal Seigniors of the soil of New France and to nominate the Council of Government, with the exception of the Governor and Intendant; while from the dues which they levied the cost of government was to be defrayed.
Such was the outline and the intention of the scheme: the actual result was that the carrying trade was monopolized by the company, together with one-fourth of the beaver skins of all Canada, and the whole of the traffic of the lower St. Lawrence, which centred at Tadoussac. Out of their monopoly they paid all or part of the expenses of government,but the administration practically remained in the hands of the Crown. Like its predecessor, this company was a miserable failure. It lasted for ten years only, and during those years it was an incubus on Canada.
The truth was that Chartered Companies were alien to the genius of France, or at any rate of Roman Catholic France—the France of the Bourbons. Her greatest ministers, Richelieu and Colbert, were, it is true, loth to discard the system. They wished to give French merchants a direct interest in building up a colonial empire. They saw the English working by means of companies. They saw the Dutch giving to the state the outward semblance of private enterprise. Companies, they argued, would promote French trade and colonization, as they had promoted the trade and colonization of rival nations. But Richelieu and Colbert were despotic ministers of arbitrary Kings; the companies which they created were as lifeless and as helpless as their titles were high-sounding and pretentious. They lasted as long, and only as long, as they were backed by the Crown. They were swept away as easily as they were formed; and they left no lasting impress on French colonial history.
We may take it then that, in 1663, Canada in effect passed to the French King and became what would now be styled a Crown Colony. Strong hands ministered to it, and it grew in strength. New France was fostered, was ruled and organized, was supplied, though sometimes sparingly, with means of defence and offence. It was developed on rigidly prescribed lines. It was given a social and political system. Capable and enterprising men were concerned in making its history, and its history was made on a distinct type imported from the Old World, and little modified by the New. What this system was, and how far under it the colonists were able to cope with their coloured foes, will be told in the remaining pages of this chapter.
The Government of Canada was a despotism. Under theKing of France, whose word was law, the whole power was centred in the Governor, the Intendant, and the Council, known at first as the Supreme Council, afterwards as the Superior or the Sovereign Council. This Council was created by royal edict in April, 1663. It was at once a legislative body, and a High Court of Justice. It consisted of the Governor, the Intendant, the bishop, and five other councillors, afterwards increased to seven, and again to twelve. The councillors were appointed by the King, and held office usually for life. They deliberated, they legislated, they judged, they wrangled among themselves; they followed the lead of Governor, Intendant, or bishop, according as one or the other was strongest for the time being, and the strongest for the time being was the man who had the ear of the King and his minister.
The law of the land was the Customary Law of Paris, supplemented by three kinds of ordinances. There were the royal edicts sent out from France and registered by the Council in Canada; there were the decrees made by the Council; and in the third place, there were the ordinances of the Intendant, who was invested with legislative authority by the King. The Council, as has been stated, was a judicial as well as a legislative body. It was the court of appeal for the colony, and in early days it was also a court of first instance. There were minor courts of justice, too, established by the Council, and three judges of the three districts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal respectively, appointed by the King. In addition, the feudal Seigniors3of Canada exercised a petty, and usually little more than nominal, jurisdiction among their vassals, while the Intendant enjoyedextensive judicial powers, emanating from and subordinate to the King alone.
3The judicial powers of the Seignior varied. In a very few cases the Seignior could administerhaute justice,i.e. try crimes on the Seigniory which were punishable with death. For all important cases there was right of appeal. See Kingsford'sHistory of Canada,vol. i, p. 365, and Parkman'sOld Régime in Canada(14th ed.), pp. 252, 269.
The highest executive officer was the Governor. He had control of the armed forces, and was responsible for the peace and safety of New France. He called out the militia when he thought fit; foreign policy and native policy were in his charge. In old and troubled times distance gave to the Governors of colonies and provinces actual power far exceeding the terms or the intent of their commission. They were the men on the spot. They held the sword; and, when a serious crisis arose, their word was obeyed. Especially was this the case in Canada, cut off for half the year from communication with France, and girt with foreign and with savage foes. Few years passed without wars or rumours of wars. Each Canadian settlement was a garrison; and strength, if not full authority, tended to centre in the hands of the commander of the forces, the trained soldier who held for the time the Governorship of Canada.
Yet, unless he had, like Count Frontenac, great force of character, or was in favour at the Court of Versailles, and when war was not imminent, his influence was hardly more, it was often less, than that of the Intendant. The Governor was the representative of the Crown. The Intendant was the King's agent, the steward of his province, his own man. He was a civilian, usually a lawyer, and therefore, in most cases, of greater business capacity, and more skilled in penmanship, than the Governor with his military training. His intimate relations with King and minister, coupled with experience of legal advocacy, tended to give more weight to his representations than to those of the Governor at the Court of France. The Intendant, not the Governor, presided at the Council; and as legislator or judge, he was responsible to the King alone. In time of peace, and in matters of internal administration, he had perhaps more real power than the Governor, and even when fighting times called thesoldier to the front, the Intendant, dealing with supplies and accounts, controlled in great measure the sinews of war.
By the side of the Governor and the Intendant at the council sat the bishop, spiritually supreme, and with power by no means confined to spiritual matters. How strong, politically, was the Church in France before the Revolution, the cardinal prime ministers bear witness, and the priest-ridden wives and mistresses of the Bourbon Kings. It was stronger still in Canada. Priests formed no small part of the scanty population of New France; they made a large part of its history. The schools and hospitals were built by the Church, and the Church owned much of the land. Well organized and disciplined, with clear and definite aims, the ministers of the Church made their power felt in council chamber and in palace; too often they ruled the rulers; and the first and greatest bishop of Canada, Bishop Laval, made or unmade the Governors of New France.
Such was the political system of Canada, while Canada was a province of France. Power was centralized, and the ordinary safeguards of freedom were wholly wanting. Executive, legislative, and judicial functions were placed in the same hands. There was not a shred of popular representation, there was not even a vestige of municipal rights.4Canada was good for priests and, to some extent, for soldiers; there was room in it and a living for an agricultural peasantry, and for the trapper and backwoodsman, who was a law to himself. Where the St. Lawrence flowed by the island of Montreal, or under the rock of Quebec, there were the beginnings of cities with dwellers in them, but there were no citizens in Canada.
4Count Frontenac on first arriving in Canada attempted to give the Canadians some voice in the government by calling together the three estates, and by allowing the citizens of Quebec to elect three aldermen. He incurred the royal displeasure by his proceedings, and his measures came to nothing. See Parkman'sCount Frontenac and New France(14th ed.), pp. 16, &c., and seebelow.
Though power was centralized, it was not entrusted locally to one man alone. The maxim of despotism isDivide et impera;and on this principle the Kings of France ruled Canada. The Governor and the Intendant each corresponded directly with the King and his minister. Each was wholly independent of the other, and yet their respective functions were not clearly enough defined to prevent friction and deadlock. The other members of the Council were subordinate neither to the Governor nor to the Intendant, in so far that they were appointed, and could be removed, by the King alone. For this division of authority there was some excuse. On the assumption that both the Governor and the Intendant might be thieves, it was prudent to set a thief to catch a thief. The system minimized the possibility of tyranny in a distant dependency, where the colonists had no voice in making the laws, and no control over the administration. One all-powerful officer might have become a tyrant; but two or more, if evilly disposed, might be trusted to expose each other's misdoings with a view to securing favour at home. Chartered Companies took the same line in this respect as the French Kings. The British East India Company held their Governor-General in check through his Council; the Dutch East India Company created in their dependencies the office of Independent Fiscal, which corresponded in great measure to that of Intendant.5But the plan devised by Louis XIV and Colbert for the government of Canada had grave defects. Division of authority meant weakness, where strength was urgently needed; it led to personal jealousy, to party feeling, to corruption, and to intrigue; it lessened the sense of responsibility, for each officer could throw the blame on another; and it left the fortunes of Canada in the hands of the man who, for the time being, had, irrespective of any office he held, thestrongest character, or the least scruple, or the largest share of Court favour.
5See vol. iv of this series, pt. 1, p. 75 and notes.
The King of France created the government of Canada. He created also the people. In less than ten years from the date when he took the colony in hand the population was more than doubled. Shiploads of male emigrants were sent out from France, and cargoes of future wives and mothers. Wedlock was prescribed, celibacy was proscribed, bounties were, in Roman fashion, given to early marriages and to large families. The privilege of remaining single was reserved for priests and nuns; the lay members of the community were bidden to be fruitful and multiply, and they obeyed the King's commands with much success. They were honest folk, the Canadian settlers, not convicted felons sent out from French prisons. No doubt there were among the emigrants men and women who were glad to leave France, and of whom France was glad to be rid; but there was no convict strain in the population, and thecoureurs de bois,unlicensed though they were, were not mere outlaws, like the Australian bushrangers.
When an emigrant came to Canada, he could not return to France without a passport, but he might possibly drift into the backwoods or to the Dutch or English colonies. Efforts were therefore made to attach him to the soil. For this purpose a kind of Feudal System was introduced, somewhat diluted to suit the place and the time. The essence of feudalism in bygone days had been military tenure and oligarchy. Time had been in France when the nobles were stronger than the King, but in the reign of Louis XIV they were little more than courtiers. They had become ornamental rather than useful; yet even under a Bourbon despotism, tradition, long descent, ownership of wide and well-cultivated lands, and rights over a considerable number of serfs or peasants, gave the French noblesse considerable social influence. In Canada feudalism had no militaryaspect. There was, it is true, a Canadian militia, but it had no connexion with the feudal tenure of land. Very few of the Canadian Seigniors were of noble birth, all were poor, their honours were brand new, their domains were backwoods with occasional clearings, their vassals were nearly as good men as themselves. The Feudal System in Canada was not born of the soil, it was simply a device of a benevolent despot for allotting and settling land, for artificially grading and classifying an artificially-formed people, and for giving to a new country some element of old-world respectability.
The Seignior held his land, in most cases, directly from the Crown. He held it as a free gift from the King by title of faith and homage. He held it on condition of bringing it into cultivation; and, if he sold his Seigniory, one-fifth of the price as a rule was paid to the Crown. There was no immemorial title to the land. The title was given by an arbitrary overlord, and by the same could be revoked. The condition of cultivation was annexed in order to promote settlement, and inasmuch as most Seigniors, owing to poverty and the size of the holdings, could not themselves fulfil the condition, they granted lands in turn to other settlers, who held of them as they held of the King. These other settlers were theHabitans,the cultivators of the soil, and their tenancy was the tenure ofcens et rente,whence they were known in legal phrase asCensitaires. In other words, they paid a small rent in money, or in kind, or in both. If they sold their holdings, the Seignior received one-twelfth of the purchase-money. They were required to grind their corn at the Seignior's mill, to pay for the privilege of fishing one fish in every eleven caught, and to comply with sundry other small demands, in addition to having justice meted out occasionally at the Seignior's hands.
These conditions may have been found in some instances petty and annoying, but to Frenchmen of the seventeenthand eighteenth century they can hardly have been onerous. They were limited and safeguarded, as they had been created, by the royal will; and it was not till the year 1854, after Canada had known British rule for nearly a hundred years, that they were swept away. That a purely artificial system should have lasted so long and caused apparently so little friction and discontent, argues no little skill in those who invented it, and proves that it was not ill suited to the wants, and harmonized with the traditions, of the colonists of Canada. It is impossible to imagine the Puritan settler in New England submitting to such minute regulations, taking his corn to a Seignior's mill, baking his bread at a Seignior's oven, paying homage to another settler set over him by a distant King. But Frenchmen could be drilled and organized. They understood being planted out in rows, like so many trees. Their religion and their training tended to unquestioning obedience, and they throve in quiet sort under restrictions which the grim and stubborn New Englander would have trodden under foot.
Though feudalism on the St. Lawrence had no military basis, military colonization played a great part in the early settlement of Canada. The Intendant, Talon, Colbert's right-hand man in his Canadian schemes, took in this matter the Romans for his model. As the Romans planted military colonies along the frontiers of their provinces, including Gaul itself, so Colbert and Talon determined to ensure the security of Canada by placing a barrier of soldier-colonists on the border. There was a famous French regiment known as the Carignan-Salières Regiment. It had been raised in Savoy by a Prince of Carignan. It had lately fought with distinction side by side with the Austrians against the Turks, and in 1665, under Colonel de Salières, was sent out to Canada, the first regiment of the line which had ever landed in New France. The main outlet for Iroquois incursions was the line of the Richelieu river. On that river forts werebuilt and garrisoned, and along its banks and also along the St. Lawrence, between the mouth of the Richelieu and the island of Montreal, time-expired soldiers were planted out as settlers. Officers and men alike were given grants of land and bounties in money, and the soldiers were kept for a year by the King, while building their houses and clearing their land. The theory was that the officers should be Seigniors, and that the soldiers who had served under them should become tenants of their old commanders. Where the lands were most exposed, the houses were grouped together within palisades. Elsewhere they were detached from one another, forming a line of dwellings along the river-side, whence the settlements were known ascôtés.
The usual size of a Seigniory, whether granted to a soldier or to a civilian, was four arpents in front by forty in depth. In other words, an arpent6being rather less than an acre, the frontage of a Seigniory was about 260 yards long, while the depth was about 2,600, or a mile and a half. This long hinterland contained the corn land, the timber, and the hunting-grounds, but the most valuable and distinctive feature in the Seigniories was the river frontage. In a word, Canadian colonization consisted of a series of river-side settlements, forming a long, narrow, military frontier, with a wilderness behind.
6Thearpent de Pariswas .845 of an acre or 36801.7 English square feet; therefore one side of the arpent was about 64 yards.
Such was the colony, its land, and its people. There is no exact parallel to be found in the story of other European colonies. None of them, perhaps, started with such very strong contrasts. Canada was not a seaboard colony, it was a purely inland colony; yet its settlements were so many little ports, and its active life was mainly by, and on, the water. It was pre-eminently not a colony of towns or of townsfolk, yet Quebec was as much the heart of Canada as Paris was of France, and the conquest of Canada consistedin the taking of Quebec and Montreal. It was not a plantation colony, it was not a mining colony, it was not a pastoral colony; it was a colony of agriculturists and hunters, and its trade, such as it was, came not so much from agriculture as from the chase. No colonists were ever more carefully drilled and organized than the Canadian agriculturists; none ever lived a life of more unbounded freedom than the Canadiancoureurs de bois. The drilling and organization of the one element, and the roving enterprise of the other, combined to produce a good fighting population; but the extremes in either case were too great to result in forming a community, which should be at once stable and progressive. What was natural in Canada was not colonization. What was colonization, that is to say permanent European settlement in the land, was purely artificial. The system of settlement was cleverly conceived, and skilfully as well as humanely carried into effect; but it depended not on law so much as on the personal will of an absolute master. It was wanting in safeguards, it was wanting in elasticity, it stunted individual effort, and it contained no element of growth. A full-blown colony was called into being under regulations which implied childhood, and the result was to leave the Canadians contented so long as they knew no other rules of life, but to leave them standing still, while their English rivals, neither too lawless nor too conservative, grew out of infancy into clumsy manhood, and proved their strength when the fullness of the time was come.
On June 30, 1665, the Marquis de Tracy arrived at Quebec. He had been appointed by the King of France Lieutenant-General for the time being of all his American possessions, including the West Indies; and, before coming to Canada, he had visited Cayenne and the French West India Islands. His mission was temporary, to put the colony in a proper state of defence, and to inaugurate the system of administration devised by the King. The new Governorof Canada, De Courcelles, and the Intendant, Talon, landed in September of the same year. They were good men for their respective posts—the one a keen soldier, the other, Talon, a born administrator, whose power of organization and creative genius left a lasting mark on New France.
The most pressing need of the colony was security against Iroquois raids. Before the year 1665 ended, three forts had been built on the Richelieu; one, Sorel, at its mouth, a second below the rapids at Chambly, a third at some little distance above the rapids. The line of communication was strengthened by the construction of sixteen or seventeen miles of road from Chambly to the bank of the St. Lawrence opposite Montreal, and in the following year a fourth fort was built near the northern end of Lake Champlain.
The Frenchmen determined to strike soon and hard at the Five Nations. In January, 1666, in dead of winter, Courcelles led an expedition against them up the Richelieu, by Lakes Champlain and George, on to the head waters of the Hudson river. The route, well known in after years, was unfamiliar then, and instead of turning to the west into the country of the Mohawks, the Frenchmen found themselves in the middle of February near the small Dutch settlement of Schenectady, where they were challenged as invaders of an English province, for in 1664 the Duke of York had become proprietor of New Netherland. It was news to the French commander that the valley of the Hudson had passed into British hands—unwelcome news, and would have been more unwelcome, had he foreseen the results of the change on after history. Of all events which strengthened the English cause in America against the French, the most important perhaps was the substitution of English for Dutch ownership of the present State of New York. At the time, no rupture took place between French and English, and, after an interchange of courtesies, Courcelles led his troops back to Canada, losing men through cold and privation, andby the hands of the Mohawks, who dogged his retreat. He had achieved nothing, yet the daring of his venture seems to have impressed the Indians, and he had gained knowledge which was soon to tell.
In September of the same year he set out again with 1,300 men, the whole commanded by Tracy in person. This time no mistake was made as to the route. The hearts of the Mohawks failed them. They fled before the invaders, leaving their strongholds empty and undefended. Each village in turn was burnt to the ground, the stores were destroyed or carried off, and, homeless and starving, the Indians were glad to make peace with the French, leaving Canada unmolested for some years to come. During those years the colony grew stronger, the administration was recast, the settlements were organized, and, beyond the line of colonization, explorers carried French influence further to the west.
In 1667, Tracy returned to France. In 1671, Courcelles and Talon followed him. In 1672, Count Frontenac came out as Governor to Canada.
It has been noted above how great are the contrasts in the story of Canada, and, so far as it was colonized, how much in the system was artificial, how little was the result of natural growth. The record of Canada, as compared with that of the English colonies in America, is much more a series of biographies, much less a chronicle of a community. Of the great men, whose lives and doings make up Canadian history in French times, it may be said that some created Canada, while others were Canada's own creations. In other words, some were in but not of Canada; they came out from France to make, to rule, to save, or to try to save, the French colony on the St. Lawrence; while others, though many of them also came out from home, and all of them were in their way builders of New France, yet were the outcome of Canada itself, the result of the unbounded freedom of its backwoods,their deeds being done and their lives spent mainly beyond the limits of the Canadian settlements. To the first class belong, among others, Champlain (though Champlain's name might in truth appear in either list), Talon, Frontenac, and Montcalm. The second class comprises the names of explorers such as La Salle, of Du Luth, the notedcoureur de bois,and of Iberville, the bold guerilla chief, who raided the English in Newfoundland and on Hudson Bay, who carried out La Salle's unfinished work in Louisiana, and of whom, when dead, Charlevoix wrote: 'The late M. d'Iberville, who had all the good qualities of his country without any of its defects, would have led them (his countrymen) to the end of the world.'7
7Charlevoix'sLetters to the Duchess of Lesdiguières,Eng. tr., 1763, p. 104.
Of these last there will be more to tell. Of the former class it may be said that, while not children of Canada, their influence on the history of the colony and their distinction in Canadian annals was in proportion to the extent to which New France was the land of their adoption. If we except discoverers, the three greatest names in Canadian history are Champlain, Frontenac, and Montcalm, all three of whom died at Quebec.
The strongly marked contrasts characteristic of Canada and its story are illustrated in the case of Count Frontenac. Like other Governors, before and after him, he came out from the very centre of civilization, the Court of France: from serving in the finest army in the world, he came to rule a barbarous borderland, and to command troops, the majority of whom were backwoodsmen or native Indians, or at best a half-disciplined militia. He did not come young to the work. He was fifty-two on his arrival. When he was appointed Governor for the second time, in 1689, he was in his seventieth year. He had great merits and great defects. He was pretentious, arrogant, violent and overbearing,insubordinate to his employers, somewhat unscrupulous in his policy, and not cleanhanded in repairing his broken fortunes. On the other hand, he was resourceful, fearless, and determined; he stood by his friends, he was not unkindly, he had in many respects broad views, and above all he believed in Canada, its fortunes, and its peoples. He had in a high degree the admirable French quality of adapting himself to places and to men. He was trusted and revered by the Indians beyond any other French or English Governor, for, while he refused to treat them as equals, he humoured their customs and to some extent walked in their ways. His force of character impressed native and colonist alike. He took Canada in hand at a time of danger and disorganization. When he died, he left her on the lines of prosperity and possible greatness.
The term of his first government lasted for ten years, from 1672 to 1682. They were years of constant wrangling and worry. He was at daggers drawn with the Jesuits, and his quarrels with his colleagues on the Council, notably the Intendant, Duchesnau, were similar to the disputes between Warren Hastings and Francis at another time and place. The end of it was that both Frontenac and Duchesnau were recalled; but Frontenac had left his mark, and after seven years' interval, during which two governors failed, he was sent back at a critical time to Canada.
Two incidents in his first administration may be picked out as illustrating the boldness of his character, and implying foresight and breadth of view unusual in a French Governor under Louis XIV. The first was his crude attempt, already noticed,8to form a kind of Canadian parliament on the old French model, with the three estates of clergy, nobles, and people. It was a rash step to take immediately after his arrival, when he could not have known the conditions of the colony, and must have known well the wishes of the King.It brought upon him a severe reprimand from home, and his scheme came to nothing. But the step, if ill timed, was in the right direction. Some semblance of popular assembly would have done much for Canada, if only as tending to create a national sentiment and to allay local jealousies. For among the many elements of weakness in the colony in its early days was the semi-independence of Montreal. Montreal was the commercial dépôt for the upper St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, and the great lakes. It was the meeting-place of French and native fur-traders. In it centred the natural wealth of Canada, and to it resorted the most enterprising and the least settled part of the population. It was jealous of the older settlement of Quebec, which was the seat of government, the centre of law and order, and which, being nearer the sea, commanded the import and export trade with Europe. Under its feudal Seigniors, the Sulpician monks, Montreal claimed to have some voice in the appointment of the local Governor; and Perrot its Governor, in the early days of Frontenac's first administration, defied within the limits of his district the authority of the Governor-General, and imprisoned his officers.
8See abovenote.
The second event to be specially noted was the building of a fort on the northern bank of the St. Lawrence, at the point where it flows out of Lake Ontario. The place was known to the Indians as Cataraqui. It is now the site of the town of Kingston. The new fort, built in 1673, the year after Frontenac came to Canada, was named after him, Fort Frontenac. Its building marked the onward movement of the French. Hitherto their main concern had been to secure mastery of the central St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal, together with the command of the Richelieu river. Among the Iroquois, they had fought chiefly with the Mohawks, the easternmost and nearest of the Five Nations. But before Frontenac came, and long before the central St. Lawrence was wholly safe, traders and missionaries hadgained knowledge of the western lakes, and Fort Frontenac was built to be at once a new outpost of the colony, guarding the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence, and a starting-point for further exploiting the trade routes of the west. By building it, the Frenchmen made good their claim to the river of Canada for its whole length from the lakes to the sea, and planted themselves at the entrance of a new and vast system of waterways.
As the St. Lawrence on its upward course broadens into Lake Ontario, so, as the French went further west, the story of Canada widens out. From the tale of two or three river settlements it slowly grows into the history of a continent. The struggle becomes more and more a struggle not so much for bare existence as for supremacy. The Iroquois were a deadly danger still, but the danger largely consisted in the fact that behind them was a strong and, as a rule to them, a friendly European colony—the English State of New York. Every year intensified the rivalry between French and English. Every year showed that both sought to control the trade of the west. The main practical issue, for the time being, was whether the furs from the lake region should come down the St. Lawrence to Montreal and Quebec, or be diverted to Albany through the country of the Five Nations. The Iroquois held the key of the position, and they knew it. Unless they could be taught either to fear or to love the French, there was little hope for Canada.
As the French moved up the St. Lawrence, and along Lake Ontario, they passed along the line of the Five Nations, and came directly into conflict with the furthermost and the strongest of the five, the Senecas. After Tracy's successful expedition against the Mohawks in 1666, the Iroquois gave comparatively little trouble for some years. They knew well the difference between a strong and a weakOnontio,as they styled the Governor of Canada, and for Courcelles, and his successor Frontenac, they had a wholesome respect.When Frontenac was recalled, in 1682, there was a different tale to tell.
His successor in that year was La Barre, an old soldier of some distinction, who had been Governor of Cayenne, which he recaptured from the English. In Canada he proved to be an irresolute commander and an incapable administrator, notable even among Canadian officials for greed of gain. The Iroquois became more and more menacing. The Senecas especially, at the western end of the line, who had never yet felt in any measure the weight of the French arm, raided the Indians of the Illinois, who were nominally under French protection, threatened the tribes of the lakes, and were in a fair way to master the trade on which Canada depended. There had been some prospect of a rupture between the Five Nations and the English, owing to border forays on Virginia and Maryland; but in 1684, at a great council held at Albany, the old alliance was solemnly renewed. There was no hope from this quarter for the French.
La Barre, whatever may have been his faults, was in a most difficult position, but made up his mind to take the offensive, hoping by a demonstration of force to bring the Iroquois to terms. Having collected troops and native allies, he moved up the St. Lawrence in the summer of 1684, from Montreal to Fort Frontenac. There he waited while his force sickened with malarial fever. After delay he moved his men across to the southern side of Lake Ontario, and encamped at a place called La Famine, where more men went down with fever. There, at length, deputies of the Iroquois came to meet him. He talked swelling words, but the state of his camp gave them the lie. He made a kind of truce, in which the Indians practically dictated the terms, and he retreated down the river again, having encouraged his enemies, disgusted his allies, brought embarrassment on the colony, and procured his own recall. He was succeeded in the following year by the Marquis de Denonville.