They now sent embassies to Quebec seeking a treaty of peace, an idea to which, naturally, the French were not opposed. But the occasion was too much for Iroquois malice and lust of blood; for even whilst terms were under discussion, a band of French hunters was set upon by the Mohawks. The Marquis de Tracy, now thoroughly aroused to the sufferings of his countrymen, determined to strike a sudden and crushing blow. The Iroquois deputies, still in Quebec praying for peace, were seized and imprisoned, and a formidable force once more prepared to invade the country of the Five Nations.
It was in early October, 1666, that De Tracy and De Courcelles left Quebec at the head of thirteen hundred men. Of these, six hundred were regulars of Carignan-Salières, an equal number were irregulars from Quebec, under command of Répentigny, and a hundred Indian scouts from the missions ranged the woods. A hundred rugged colonists, commanded by the brave Charles le Moyne, joined the advancing column at Montreal. With confidence this imposing force swept on to annihilate the enemies of New France.
At the mysterious sound of the French drum-beat the Mohawks of the first village fled in terror, and the invaders pressed on to the second, third, and fourth towns, to find them also deserted.At Andaraqué, their largest village, the Mohawks prepared to make a final stand; but the first appearance of the French army and the roll of their "devil-drums" as they emerged from the forest put the savages to instant flight. Andaraqué, the last native stronghold, being thus abandoned, with its stores of corn and winter supplies, the French took what provisions they needed for their return journey, set fire to the town, and having planted on the site a white cross in the name of the King, they turned their faces homeward. The remaining Indian villages were given to the flames, and although the Mohawks had escaped with their lives, the French were content to leave them to the severities of coming winter.
This policy was successful, for by the time spring came again, not only the Mohawks, but their four confederate nations, were anxious to make a sincere peace with the avenging soldiers of New France. Hostages were exchanged, several representative chiefs remaining in Quebec. The Jesuits again undertook the Mission of the Martyrs, desiring both to win the savages into the fold of the Church and at the same time to wean the Iroquois from their friendliness towards the colonies of England, with whom the French were soon to enter into deadly conflict for the mastery of the North American continent.
The Marquis de Tracy, having in due time fulfilledthe King's commission, embarked for France, and with him departed the glitteringentouragewhich for almost two years had cast upon the court of Quebec some reflection of the glories of Versailles. The regiment of Carignan-Salières was disbanded, but its officers, for the most part, elected to remain in Canada and accept the gift of seigneuries which the King distributed on conditions of fealty and homage. The soldiers settled on the fiefs ascensitairesand became the retainers of the seigneurs. The feudal system, with all its antique forms, was thus imported into French Canada, further to cripple her progress in the race with the English colonies, where the individual was allowed to develop freely, evolving his own laws, and creating conditions best suited to his new estate. Talon became the royal instrument of a system which had its beginning and end in the maintenance of kingly authority.
The Canadian seigneur held his lands of the King, and thehabitants, or cultivators of the soil, held theirs of the seigneur upon the performance of specific duties and the payment ofcens et rente. These tributes varied curiously in kind and amount; and on St. Martin's Day, when thecensitairescommonly liquidated the obligations of their tenure, the seigneurie presented an animated scene. Here were gathered all the tenants, bearing wheat, eggs, and live capons to pay for their long narrow farms, at a rate ranging from four to sixteen francs.
The annual delivery of his handful of sous and his bundle of produce did not, however, complete the obligations of thecensitaire. Throughout the year he must grind his grain at the seigneur's mill, paying one bushel in every fourteen for the service, bake his bread in the seigneur's oven, work for him one or two days in the year, and forfeit one fish in every eleven to the lord of the manor. Militaryservice, however, was no part of thehabitant'sduty as a tenant; for the judicious Colbert, jealous always for the power of the monarchy, had clipped this ancient feature from Canadian feudalism, and given absolute military control of the country to the Governor at Quebec. The seigneur's judicial powers varied according to the importance of his fief. Barons were empowered to erect gallows and pillories, but the ordinary judicial powers of a Canadian seigneur were confined to Middle and Low justice, which comprehended only minor offences.
The solicitous interest of Louis XIV. in the affairs of New France promised much for the country's prosperity; and every ship sailing to the St. Lawrence carried out a fresh batch of emigrants. For all of these the King paid out of his own pocket, and it cost him a pretty penny to respond to Intendant Talon's persistent appeals for more settlers. Agencies were established at several points in France to recruit colonists, and grants of money and land were held out as inducements to new settlers. In this way the King and Colbert managed to send out about three hundred men each year. But, as might be expected of emigration state-aided and scarcely voluntary, Quebec became a city of men chiefly, there being few women besides cloistered nuns. There had always been a demand for wives, but now that the soldiers and officers of the Carignan-Salièreshad elected to remain in the country, the scarcity of women induced a matrimonial famine.
Talon speedily apprised Colbert of the situation, and the most comely inmates of the refuge hospitals of Paris and Lyons were summoned to fill this void. In 1665 one hundred of the "King's girls" arrived in Quebec, almost instantly to be provided with partners; and although the supply was doubled in the following year, it yet remained below the conjugal demand.
To supply the needs of the seigneurs also became a real problem. Talon, with grim humour, demanded a consignment of young ladies; and in 1667 he was able to announce as follows: "They send us eighty-four girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are fifteen or twenty of pretty good birth; several of them are reallydemoiselles, and tolerably well brought up." Amusing evidence, however, of the exceeding delicacy of such a market is found in a letter, in which the match-making Intendant alludes to the supply of the year 1670. "It is not expedient," he ungallantly writes to Colbert, "to send moredemoiselles. I have had this year fifteen of them instead of the four I asked for."
La Hontan, writing a few years later, cannot refrain from exercising keen but slanderous wit at the expense of these fair cargoes from Quebec so gladly received. His description, albeit scandalous,is amusing: "After the regiment of Carrigan was disbanded, ships were sent out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the direction of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three classes. These vestals were, so to speak, piled one on the other in three different halls, where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the flock. There was wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three harems; for here were to be seen the tall and the short, the blond and the brown, the plump and the lean; everybody, in short, found a shoe to fit him. At the end of a fortnight not one was left. I am told that the plumpest were taken first, because it was thought that, being less active, they were more likely to keep at home, and that they could resist the winter cold better. Those who wanted a wife applied to the directresses, to whom they were obliged to make known their possessions and means of livelihood before taking from one of the three classes the girl whom they found most to their liking. The marriage was concluded forthwith, with the help of a priest and notary, and the next day the Governor caused the couple to be presented with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and eleven crowns in money."
On their part the girls were permitted to reject any suitor who displeased them; and at these annualmarriage fairs the contest for favour was keen on both sides. But the paternalism of the Grand Monarch went even farther than the mere enlistment of wives for the colonists. Bounties were offered on early marriages; and the maid who married before she was sixteen received the "King's gift" of twenty livres, in addition to her ordinary dowry. Bachelors who refused to marry were rendered as uncomfortable as possible, and were taxed for their abstinence or timidity. Children were likewise made a good asset, and blessed was the man whose house was full of them. Thus runs an edict of the time: "...In future all inhabitants of the said country of Canada who shall have living children to the number of ten, born in lawful wedlock, not being priests, maids, or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a pension of three hundred livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children, a pension of four hundred livres, and that, to this effect, they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year in the months of June and July to the Intendant of justice, police, and finance, established in the said country, who, having verified the same, shall order the payment of said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of each year."
It was not by accident but by design that an aristocratic class was created in French Canada. Theperpetual contrast between the English and the French systems of colonisation was but the difference between natural evolution and artificial construction. The Canadian aristocracy was a consistent detail of the latter and in keeping with Louis' ambitious scheme of personal government. The caste system grafted upon the stem of the colonial plant was a picturesque adornment to the life of Quebec, but a doubtful experiment from any other point of view, as time proved.
For the most part the Canadiannoblessewere either officers of the disbanded Carignan-Salières regiment, orgentilhommeswho had come to the New World in search of adventure or gain. In both cases they were unsuited to the hard and restrictive conditions of a rugged country. The soldiers steadfastly refused to beat their swords into ploughshares or their spears into pruning-hooks, and most of them accepted a state not far removed from actual want, rather than stain their martial hands with manual labour. The leisured class thus became the starving class, and the King's annual subsidies alone kept these families from destitution. Many of them were also in receipt of the bounties granted to large families—an ineffective resource, inasmuch as hungry children but consumed the supply and renewed the demand. Disdaining work of any sort, the Canadiangentilhommeyet gave himself airs that were in amusing contrast to his shabbycoat and empty stomach. The world, he held, owed him a living without the labour of his hands, and to him "the world" was Louis the perpetual almsgiver.
The official correspondence of the period describes in some detail the pangs of these ill-conditioned gentry. "Two days ago," writes the Governor of Quebec in 1686, "Monsieur de Saint-Ours, a gentleman of Dauphiny, came to me to ask leave to go back to France in search of bread. He says that he will put his ten children in charge of any one who will give them a living, and that he himself will go into the army again. His wife and he are in despair; and yet they do what they can. I have seen two of his girls reaping grain and holding the plough. Other families are in the same condition. They come to me with tears in their eyes. All our married officers are beggars; and I entreat you to send them aid. There is need that the King should provide support for their children, or else they will be tempted to go over to the English."
Nor was this impecuniousnoblessemerely a passive burden to New France, for the dignified hardships of their estate soon bred active conditions equally distressing to those in authority. Having no inducement to remain peacefully at home, the sons of the seigneurs took to the woods, often enticing the more unsettled of their ownhabitantsto follow them thither to a life of unbridled freedom andoutlawry. Reckless bushrangers, they carried on an illicit trade with the Indians, diverting peltries from the fur company at Quebec, and demoralising the savage proselytes of the missions. In this unfortunate way thegentilhommeand his children compromised with labour and managed to keep body and soul together.
Harsh edict and cruel ordinance were repeatedly launched against the practices of these well-bred offenders, but the ready covert of the forest made the evasion of the King's justice an easy matter. Moreover, the Church, while it suffered much from such children, did not venture to reprove too strongly their flagrant excesses, lest they should thenceforth dispense altogether with her sacraments; for a furtive life in the wild woods did not prevent the superstitiouscoureurs de boisfrom occasionally coming to confession or to Mass.
Old Bishop's Palace
A royal edict ordered that any person going into the woods without a license should be whipped and branded for the first offence, and sent for life to the galleys for the second; while a third offence was punishable by death. The whole criminal code of Quebec was, indeed, of a piece with this; and an obvious feature was the quasi-religious character of most of the offences. The edict against blasphemy read as follows: "...All persons convicted of profane swearing or blaspheming the name of God,the most Holy Virgin, His Mother, or the Saints, shall be condemned for the first offence to a pecuniary fine according to their possessions and the greatness and enormity of the oath and blasphemy; and if those thus punished repeat the said oaths, then for the second, third, and fourth time they shall be condemned to a double, triple, and quadruple fine; and for the fifth time they shall be set in the pillory on Sunday or other festival days, there to remain from eight in the morning till one in the afternoon, exposed to all sorts of opprobrium and abuse, and be condemned besides to a heavy fine; and for the sixth time they shall be led to the pillory, and there have the upper lip cut with a hot iron; and for the seventh time they shall be led to the pillory andhave the lower lip cut; and if, by reason of obstinacy and inveterate bad habit, they continue after all these punishments to utter the said oaths and blasphemies, it is our will and command that they have the tongue completely cut out, so that thereafter they cannot utter them again."[8]
A citizen who had the temerity to eat meat during Lent without priestly permission was condemned to be tied three hours to the public stake, then led to the door of the church, there on his knees to ask pardon of God and the King. For approving of the execution of Charles I. by his English subjects, one Paul Dupuy was held to have libelled the monarchy and to have encouraged sedition. He was condemned to be dragged from prison by the public executioner, led in his shirt, with a rope about his neck and a torch in his hand, to the gate of the fort, there to beg pardon of the King; thence down Mountain Hill to the pillory of Lower Town to be branded on the cheek with a fleur-de-lis, and set in the stocks. Poor Dupuy's crime was not yet expiated, for, according to the remainder of the sentence, he was to be "led back to prison and put in irons till the information against him shall be completed."[9]Convicts and felons were sometimes tortured before being strangled. The execution usually took placeatButtes-à-Neveu, a little hillock on the Plains of Abraham,—afterwards to become more justly celebrated and less notorious,—and the dead body, enclosed in an iron cage, was left hanging for months at the top of Cape Diamond, a terror to children and a gruesome warning to evildoers.
New Palace Gate
The people of Quebec were regularly apprised of the laws under which they lived. On Sundays after Mass the ordinances of the Intendant were read at the doors of the churches. These related to any number of subjects—regulations of inns and markets, poaching, sale of brandy, pew-rents, stray hogs, mad dogs, tithes, domestic servants, quarrelling inchurch, fast driving, the careful observance of feast days, and so on.
Law-breakers were tried by the Superior Council, which met for that purpose every Monday morning in the ante-chamber of the Governor's apartment at Fort St. Louis. The Governor himself presided at the Round Table, the bar of justice; on his right sat the bishop, and on his left the Intendant, the councillors sitting in order of appointment. Such at least was thevenueuntil about 1684, when the old brewery which Talon had built in Lower Town on the bank of the river St. Charles was transformed into aPalais de Justice. The altered structure served also as a residence for the King's judicial proxy, and was commonly known as the Palace of the Intendant.[10]It was an imposing mixture of timber and masonry, and at the close of the seventeenth century was the most considerable building in Quebec. While lacking the glorious site of the Castle of St. Louis, in point of interior decoration it far eclipsed this château of the Governor.
The present dilapidated tenements clustering about the foot of Palace Hill can, of course, give no idea of the natural position of the ancientPalais de l'Intendant. La Potherie, who visited Quebec in 1698, and Charlevoix, who writes in 1720, describe this district as the most beautiful in the city. Insteadof the crowded quays of to-day there was a terraced lawn bordered with flower gardens; and where now the winches creak and rattle, and the railway engines hiss and scream, birds sang among willow-trees, and the Angelus echoed through a quiet woodland. Across the St. Charles lay the well-ordered grounds of the Jesuit monastery, and farther to the west the lonely spire of the General Hospital peeped through the ancient trees.
Intendent's Palace
Such were the pleasingenvironsof the block of buildings which went by the name ofLe Palais. In form it was almost a square, each side measuring about one hundred and twenty feet. An arched gateway, facing the sheer cliff, led into a large courtyard in which were situated the entrances to the Intendant's residence, the Court of Justice, the King's stores, and the prison. Soon it was also to be the site ofLa Friponne, the scene of the ribald revels of Bigot.
The picturesque figure of Count Frontenac now enters upon the stage of Canadian history. Broken in health, De Courcelles had asked to be recalled; and ominous signs of Iroquois hostility showed the need of a strong man for the dangerous post of governor. This strong man was Frontenac, whose courageous and vigorous administration in a period ofSturm und Dranghas induced Goldwin Smith to call him "the Clive of Quebec."
Born in 1620, of ancient Basque family, he was the son of a distinguished member of the household of Louis XIII., the King himself being the child's godfather. Frontenac's youthful passion was to be a soldier, and at the early age of fifteen he went to the war in Holland to serve under the Prince of Orange. Within the next few years he took a distinguished part in the sieges of Hesdin, Arras, Aire, Callioure, and Perpignan. At twenty-three he commanded a Norman regiment in the Italianwars, and at twenty-six he was raised to the rank of Maréchal de Camp. This was wonderful progress in the profession of war, even in an age when war was the sport of kings and soldiers fought for the mere love of fighting. Frontenac at least was one of these devotees, and when, in 1669, a Venetian embassy came to France to beg for a general to aid them against the Turks in Candia, the great Turenne selected him for this honourable duty.
Returning from the campaign in Candia with increased honour and distinction, Frontenac was appointed Governor of New France in 1672. The text of the royal commission indicates the extent of the activities which Frontenac had crowded into a life of fifty-two years, giving him his full title as: "Louis de Buade, Comte de Palluau et Frontenac, Seigneur de l'Isle Savary, Mestre de camp du régiment de Normandie, Maréchal de camp dans les armées du Roy, et Gouverneur et Lieutenant-Général en Canada, Acadia, Isle Terreneuve, et autre pays de la France septentrionale...."
There appear, however, to have been reasons other than his eminence which led to the New World appointment of Frontenac. Far back, in 1646, he had contracted an unfortunate marriage. The dashing brigadier-general of twenty-eight had won the immature affections of Anne de la Grange-Trianon, a maid of sixteen. Her father's oppositionto the match made it necessary for the lovers to resort surreptitiously to the little Church of St. Pierre aux Bœufs, which had the privilege of uniting couples without the consent of their parents. But Frontenac and his bride were ill-mated. Both were possessed of imperious tempers and wayward minds. For a time they held together, then suddenly they separated—Frontenac to find a soothing excitement in the clash of arms, and the precocious Comtesse to divert herself in the brilliantsalonsof Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the grand-daughter of Henry of Navarre.
The memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon allude with a humorous sympathy to Frontenac's appointment: "He was a man of excellent parts"—writes this garrulous chronicler—"living much in society, and completely ruined. He found it hard to bear the imperious temper of his wife; and he was given the government of Canada to deliver him from her, and afford him some means of living." A more scandalous report of the motive which sent Frontenac to Quebec is to be found in a whimsical ditty which gained quiet currency in the Louvre—
"Je suis ravi que le roi, notre sire,Aime la Montespan;Moi, Frontenac, je me creve de rire,Sachant ce qui lui pend;Et je dirai, sans être des plus bestes,Tu n'as que mon reste,Roi,Tu n'as que mon reste."
Frontenac
Be these things as they may, Frontenac came on the scene of his new dominion with the evident purpose of devoting himself to its best interests. The city turned out in its best finery to welcome the new Governor; but to the lifelong courtier, bred in the household of royalty itself, this display appeared primitive and garish. As he recalled the usual brilliance of even the provincial courts of France, the rude and rugged walls of Castle St. Louis loomed before his critical eye in depressing contrast. And yet in his reception spectacular features were not entirely wanting. The Hurons from ancient Lorette flocked to the city to greet their new white chief; thecoureurs de boisin bold effrontery came to take the measure of their new antagonist; the sombre Jesuits with much misgiving hailed the arrival of so virile an executive; and the soldiers of the garrison acclaimed the gallant bearer of such prowess with salvos of artillery and afeu de joie.
Once duly installed, Frontenac could see no reason why even the wilderness-colony of New France should forgo the rightful forms and functions of a royal province. His mind wandered back regretfully tothe old days of the Estates General, which the kings of France were carefully burying in the cemetery of disuse. Technically they still existed, although the makers of absolute monarchy gave them no place in the machinery of government. Loving pomp and circumstance, Frontenac conceived the idea of reproducing the Estates General in New France.
The Jesuits were more than ready to constitute the order of the clergy, the small groups ofgentilhommesmade eager nobles, while the Quebecbourgeoisie, although they had never played the part before, called themselves theTiers État, and meekly awaited the further pleasure of the commanding Frontenac.
By and by all was ready, and heralds posted at the door of the Jesuits' church, which had been gorgeously decorated for the occasion, sounded the assembly. Frontenac, brilliantly apparelled, took his place upon the dais; the gallantnoblesse, in various attire, grouped themselves protectingly about his person; the sable Jesuits looked critically on; while the Third Estate hung breathlessly upon the gracious motions of his Excellency. A sunbeam from Versailles had fallen upon the rock in the wilderness, and Quebec once more basked in the splendour of a royal province.
One person of eminence, however, looked askance at the assembled "States." The Intendant Talontoo well knew the temper of the King to play with this fire so like to kindle his wrath. A disciple of Colbert, he knew that all constitutional or traditional forms standing in the path of absolutism were doomed to destruction.
Old St. Louis Gate
As for Frontenac, he went his own unheeding way until a letter came from Colbert in this strain: "Your assembling of the inhabitants to take the oath of fidelity, and your division of them into three estates, may have had a good effect for the moment; but it is well for you to observe that you are always to follow, in the government of Canada, the forms in use here; and since our kings have long regarded it as good for their service not to convoke the States General of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage, you, on yourpart, should very rarely, or to speak more correctly, never, give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should even, as the colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the syndic who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants; for it is well that each should speak for himself, and no one for all."
Thus at one fell swoop perished the only chance which ever came to French Canada of growing into a self-governing colony and of working out its own destiny. The physical conditions and administrative necessities of the land were, indeed, from first to last, misapprehended by its distant rulers.
For a time Frontenac nursed the chagrin natural to a proud and haughty nature thwarted in its purposes. Straightway he fell foul of Talon, and the latter withdrew to France. It was natural also that he should quarrel with the Jesuits and the Bishop, for where there was any question of mastery, he was always ready to contend. As an instance, the Bishop had pronounced the sale of brandy to the Indians a sin; and in view of the fact that the traffic was licensed under royal authority, Frontenac with his accustomed vehemence pronounced the prohibition seditious. He accused the Jesuits of keeping the Indians in perpetual wardship, and of thinking more of beaver-skins than of souls.
The next conflict was with a foeman well worthyof his steel. An officer named Perrot had been appointed Governor of Montreal through the influence of Talon, his uncle by marriage; and as it was a matter of common knowledge that Perrot was the patron and shared the profits of thecoureurs de bois, the enmity of Frontenac was roused against him, gaining vigour from the fact that Perrot carried his head too high. Bizard, another officer, was despatched with three guardsmen to Montreal, to arrest one Lieutenant Carion, who had assisted certain notablecoureurs de boisin their escape from justice; and Perrot, frenzied by this trespass upon his own domain, seized the Governor's officers. On hearing of such a reprisal, Frontenac's wrath was kindled sevenfold. He knew, however, that Perrot was only to be apprehended by strategy, and accordingly a letter was despatched, inviting him to come to Quebec to explain the affair. Perrot, already alarmed at his own boldness in resisting vice-regal authority, obediently set out for the court of Frontenac, attended by a Sulpitian priest, the Abbé Salignac de Fénelon.
High words marked the interview of Frontenac and Perrot, and as a result the latter found himself a prisoner in Château St. Louis. In due time he was brought before the sovereign council and convicted of obstructing the King's justice. He was confined for almost a year, and then, as the priestsalso joined in protest against the autocratic governance of Frontenac, it was judged prudent to refer the matter to the King. Perrot was accordingly taken from prison and shipped to France for a new trial. The result, however, was the vindication of Frontenac, both Louis and Colbert being determined to uphold the royal authority. Perrot was sentenced to three weeks in the Bastile, after which he tendered submission to Frontenac, and was again commissioned Governor of Montreal.
Henceforth friendship took the place of enmity, and the two governors now conspired to patronise thecoureurs de bois. These were halcyon days for the picturesque banditti, whose periodical visits disturbed the wonted calm of the saintly city. The inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses while these bacchanals ran riot in the streets, bedecked in French and Indian finery, and making hideous both day and night with their ribaldchansons. Yet even these roystering forest rovers were destined to bear a part in building up French empire in the West.
Thecoureurs de boiswere in fact the most intrepid explorers of New France, and their rovings were turned to account under the tactful guidance of Talon. Talon's aim was to occupy the interior of the continent, control the rivers which watered it, and hold this vast forest domain for France against all other nations; and for this Imperial work heenrolled the daring Jesuit priests and the adventurous fur-traders. His chief reliance, however, was upon those Frenchmen whose civilisedennuihad driven them to the restless life of the woods.
In the pursuit of this "forward" policy, the Jesuits had already established missions on Manatoulin Island, at Sault Ste. Marie, at Michillimackinac, at La Pointe on the western end of Lake Superior, and at Green Bay near the foot of Lake Michigan. These remote posts were visited from time to time by Indians from the far west, who brought news of a great river flowing southwards. Talon's enthusiasm for enterprise in the unknown west was doubled by the report, and he forthwith despatched an expedition under the leadership of Joliet and Père Marquette to take possession of the Father of Waters.
Louis Joliet was a native French Canadian, born at Quebec in 1645. His exceptional brilliancy while a student at the Jesuits' College attracted the attention of Talon; but at the age of seventeen, the forest proved more alluring than the priesthood, and he became an adventurous fur-trader. His companion, the Père Marquette, was a fearless Jesuit, who in 1670 had undertaken a mission at the western end of Lake Superior. The destruction of this post, however, sent him back to Michillimackinac, where he was working when ordered westward with Joliet.
Leaving St. Ignace in the middle of May, 1673,the two voyageurs proceeded to the head of Lake Michigan, ascended the Fox River, portaged to the Wisconsin, and on the 17th of June reached the Mississippi. They descended this broad and rapid stream as far as the mouth of the Arkansas. It now seemed clear that the great river emptied, not into the Vermilion Sea[11]as was currently conjectured, but into the Gulf of Mexico; and fearing to fall into the hands of the Spaniards, the explorers decided to retrace their steps. They reached Green Bay before the end of September, and here the Jesuit remained to recruit his failing strength, while Joliet kept on his way to Quebec. Nine years were to pass by before the navigation of the Mississippi, thus begun, was to be completed by the greatest of all Canadian adventurers.
Robert Cavelier de la Salle
Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, was born at Rouen, of a family of wealthy merchants, on the 2nd of November, 1643. As a child he was sent to a Jesuits' school; and although, like Joliet, he soon abandoned all idea of entering the priesthood, he nevertheless retained a pious enthusiasm which gave a mediæval colouring to the stirring romance of his after-life. With a small allowance from his family, La Salle embarked for Canada in 1666. Through his brother, a priest of St. Sulpice, he was granted a feudal fief at Lachine, and under hisresolute occupation the hitherto dangerous seigneury became a strong bulwark for the trembling settlement of Montreal. Young, gallant, and winning, La Salle drew the Indians about him by his dashing courage and by the magnetism of his person; and, whether through weakness of flesh or strength of spirit, he disappeared among them and withdrew from civilisation for the space of three years, a term which he employed in achieving mastery of Indian dialects and gaining knowledge of their character. On his return to Quebec in 1673, he found favour in the eyes of Frontenac, and an inexplicable sympathy united the proud veteran of a hundred fights andthe debonaircoureur de bois, beneath whose dreamy countenance the Governor read reckless valour and invincible determination.
In 1677 La Salle was despatched to France to procure royal authority for following up the explorations of Joliet and Marquette. He also applied for a patent of nobility; and as this request was strongly supported by Frontenac, he was made seigneur over a large tract of land, including the fort of Cataraqui,[12]and was empowered to build and occupy other forts in furtherance of exploration. The opening sentences of this instrument show the King's anxiety to extend his vast dominions in the New World: "Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre, to our dear and well-beloved Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, greeting. We have received with favour the very humble petition made us in your name, to permit you to labour at the discovery of the western parts of New France; and we have the more willingly entertained this proposal since we have nothing more at heart than the exploration of this country, through which, to all appearances, a way may be found to Mexico...."
To La Salle the commission was full of promise, for his ardent mind was filled with bold designs. He foresaw a time when French enterprise, leaving the rugged civilisation on the banks of the St. Lawrence,would seize upon the rich valley of the Mississippi; a fortified post at the mouth of the Father of Waters would hold the interior of the continent against the Spaniards; and the peltries and buffalo hides of the great West would fill his forts with gold. With Henri de Tonty, La Motte de Lussière, Father Hennepin, and thirty men, La Salle hastened to Quebec in the summer of 1678, and without loss of time he organised his first expedition to the distant Mississippi.
The story of that enterprise is a tale of disaster which has few parallels in history. A perilous passage over Lake Ontario in a ten-ton vessel brought them to Niagara. Above the falls they builtThe Griffin, a schooner of forty-five tons, to carry the necessities of the Mississippi settlement westward by way of the Great Lakes. This vessel was lost by some obscure calamity, and the conjecture is that she foundered in Lake Michigan. La Salle now found himself at the head of a mutinous company stranded at Fort Crèvecœur on the Illinois, facing a winter with practically no provisions. Six of his men deserted, and on two occasions treachery all but deprived him of his life.
In the circumstances La Salle saw only one possible course before him: to return to Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies and material for further progress. Leaving Tonty his trusted lieutenant in charge ofFort Crèvecœur, he set out with an Indian guide and four Frenchmen. The hardships and disasters of the journey deprived him of his companions, one by one, but he pressed on alone. "During sixty-five days he had toiled almost incessantly, travelling about a thousand miles through a country beset with every form of peril and obstruction.... In him an unconquerable mind held at its service a frame of iron, and taxed it to its utmost endurance. The pioneer of Western pioneers was no rude son of toil, but a man of thought, trained amid arts and letters."[13]
This first chapter of his reverses, however, was not yet completed; for even while La Salle was getting succour for his company on the Illinois, a letter arrived from Tonty telling him of the mutiny of the garrison and the wilful destruction of Fort Crèvecœur with all it held. The calamitous news would have killed the spirit of any one less courageous than La Salle; but the bold explorer, whose whole life was a long grapple with adversity, prepared with all haste to return to the rescue of Tonty, who, he hoped forlornly, had survived the mutinous treachery. By the 10th of August he was ready, and with a new outfit and twenty-five men he set out once more for the distant Illinois.
After three months of toil and hardship he came again to Fort Crèvecœur. Anxiety for Tonty andhis faithful companions had consumed him all the way. Yet he was unprepared for the shocking sight that met his eyes. The once populous town of the Illinois was now a valley of dry bones; the bodies of women and children strewed the plain, and the charred trophies of Illinois warriors hung tragically upon blackened stakes. Such were the terrible marks of an Iroquois visitation.
Wolves ran howling away as the Frenchmen drew near, and voracious buzzards wheeled overhead. Anxiously La Salle sought among the revolting remnants for any sign of Tonty; but none was to be found, and although the relief expedition continued for weeks and months to search for their missing comrades, it was spring before the explorer heard with joy that his lieutenant had found refuge among the Pottawattamies. Meanwhile, his resources for the Mississippi expedition had been again dissipated, and once more he returned to Fort Frontenac for fresh supplies.
Soon, for the third time, the persistent adventurer set his face towards the west. His company now included twenty-three Frenchmen and eighteen Indians, equipped with all the care his former experiences could suggest. Summer had gone before his plans were completed; but all seasons were alike to La Salle, and in the early autumn his expedition began. Lake Huron was reached in October,Fort Miami a few weeks later, and on the 6th of February their canoes glided out of the Illinois into the eddying current of the Mississippi.
Down past the turbid Missouri they swept, and beyond the mouth of the Ohio. Every day brought them newer signs of spring, and every day saw the spirits of La Salle rising at the happy consciousness of fulfilled ambition. On the 13th of March they encamped near the mouth of the Arkansas, and three hundred miles below they were well received by the Natchez Indians. On the 6th of April the great river divided before them into three wide channels: La Salle followed that of the west; Tonty took the middle course; and D'Autray descended the eastern passage. On the 19th of April the three parties met on the Gulf of Mexico. A cross bearing the arms of France was set up, and the country was named Louisiana after the Grand Monarch.
The Louisiana of to-day conveys no idea of the vast tract of country defined by La Salle's proclamation of 1682. To the explorer it meant the extent of the mighty continent, stretching westward from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, and north and south from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. All former accessions of territory were small beside it, and to his eyes it seemed the fertile Canaan of French enterprise. Yet the very magnitude ofthis new success made for the undoing of New France, by scattering her feeble forces over the length and breadth of a continent and distending her line of defence so far that it could be easily pierced. La Salle, however, was driven irresistibly forward by the hot ambition which ruled him. His romantic vision pictured a greater New France in the valley of the Mississippi, governed by himself—a prosperous trading colony shipping cargoes of beaver-skins directly to Europe by way of the Gulf of Mexico. Quebec, however, was the home of his enemies. His former reverses had shattered the faith of creditors, while the Canadian merchants envied him the monopoly of the Western trade. They heaped calumny upon his enterprises, labelled him acoureur de bois, and persistently wrecked his schemes. Final success enabled La Salle in a measure to disregard these annoyances; but when the new Governor, La Barre, went the length of seizing Fort Frontenac—thus cutting off the far west from its supplies—and even declared him an outlaw, La Salle, although he had but lately recovered from a fever, made up his mind to carry his cause to France.
In the spring of 1684, therefore, the weatherbeaten woodsman of the New World stood before the throne of the Grand Monarch; and although the Court had greater terrors for him than the Canadian forests, yethe was able to set forth the rights of his case with the honest boldness of a frontiersman and the force of a cultured intellect. Louis followed his words with deepest interest, and was moved to carry out a purpose which for some time had possessed his mind. Within three months four armed vessels, bearing nearly four hundred men, set sail from Rochelle for the Gulf of Mexico. A new commission empowered the explorer to establish a fort on the southern gulf, from which to harass the Spaniards, and to fortify a base near the mouth of the Mississippi for the effective control of Louisiana.
But the story of this, the final enterprise of La Salle, is a sickening record of disaster. After a stormy passage three of the four vessels reached St. Domingo, theSt. Francoishaving fallen a prey to Spanish buccaneers. At St. Domingo a violent fever threatened the leader's life and mind, and delayed further progress for almost two months. At length, near the end of December, they entered the Gulf of Mexico; but the uncertainties of its navigation were further increased by dense fogs; and when, after days of anxious searching, the fleet came to anchor off a low-lying marshy coast, La Salle had sailed four hundred miles beyond the mouth of the river he sought. Unaware of his mistake, he determined to land and build a temporary fort; but the frigateAimable, laden with stores, was wrecked upon a reef; Beaujeu, the recreant commander of theJoly, deserted his leader and made sail for France, and presently La Salle was left with only the little frigateBelle. Soon afterwards this vessel also sank beneath the stormy waters of the forbidden sea.
Thus, by accident and by disease the imposing expedition which had left Rochelle in the midsummer of 1684 was now reduced to a wretched band of starvelings, huddled together on the malarial sands of the Mexican gulf. In this last extremity La Salle saw one hope of salvation, and the magnitude of his new project was characteristic of the invincible adventurer whom fate had so often buffeted in vain. At the head of half his followers he boldly set out for Canada overland, hoping to bring back succour to the desolate maroons who still remained at Matagorda Bay.
Throughout his undertakings the virile mind of La Salle had always held his fellows in willing or unwilling subjection. The weak were glad to lean upon his strength, and to these he was the "guardian angel."[14]To others, however, his fine reserve and distinguished manner were causes of gnawing discontent. This evident lack of frankness in dealing with his companions contrasted strangely withthat keen appreciation of the character of the Indians which had brought him such success in his intercourse with them. The handful of men with whom he set out from Matagorda Bay on the 7th of June, 1687, besides a few whose admiration for their leader knew no bounds, also included others who, like the children of Israel, thirsted for the life of him who had led them out into the wilderness to die.
Week after week the little band of Frenchmen struggled on, now through a sea of prairie grass, now wading through deep savannahs, and presently swimming or fording streams which blocked their progress. Despair invaded the camp, and hostile murmurings arose against La Salle and the little group who remained true to him. A terrible plot was on foot. Presently the blow fell. Moranget, La Salle's nephew, was despatched with an axe; Nika, the faithful Shawanoe, and Saget, the leader's servant, were murdered as they slept. As for La Salle, a wanton bullet pierced his brain. Thus the man who had braved the poisoned arrows of the Iroquois and the hatchets of Indians without number, against whose iron strength deadly fevers had stormed in vain, whose fortitude had been unbroken by the almost incredible perversities of fortune—this paladin of the wilderness was at last laid low by the hand of a traitor. The New World has no morepiteous tale than that of the unabated sufferings of La Salle, who knew no fear and acknowledged no defeat, even at the hands of a relentless destiny. It has no nobler record than the tale of his life.