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Pioneers of France in the New World

<h2> CHAPTER XVII. </h2> <h3> 1632-1635. </h3> DEATH OF CHAMPLAIN. On Monday, the fifth of July, 1632, Emery de Caen anchored before Quebec. He was commissioned by the French Crown to reclaim the place from the English; to hold for one year a monopoly of the fur-trade, as an indemnity for his losses in the war; and, when this time had expired, to give place to the Hundred Associates of New France. By the convention of Suza, New France was to be restored to the French Crown; yet it had been matter of debate whether a fulfillment of this engagement was worth the demanding. That wilderness of woods and savages had been ruinous to nearly all connected with it. The Caens, successful at first, had suffered heavily in the end. The Associates were on the verge of bankruptcy. These deserts were useless unless peopled; and to people them would depopulate France. Thus argued the inexperienced reasoners of the time, judging from the wretched precedents of Spanish and Portuguese colonization. The world had not as yet the example of an island kingdom, which, vitalized by a stable and regulated liberty, has peopled a continent and spread colonies over all the earth, gaining constantly new vigor with the matchless growth of its offspring. On the other hand, honor, it was urged, demanded that France should be reinstated in the land which she had discovered and explored. Should she, the centre of civilization, remain cooped up within her own narrow limits, while rivals and enemies were sharing the vast regions of the West? The commerce and fisheries of New France would in time become a school for French sailors. Mines even now might be discovered; arid the fur-trade, well conducted, could not but be a source of wealth. Disbanded soldiers and women from the streets might be shipped to Canada. Thus New France would be peopled and old France purified. A power more potent than reason reinforced such arguments. Richelieu seems to have regarded it as an act of personal encroachment that the subjects of a foreign crown should seize on the domain of a company of which he was the head; and it could not be supposed, that, with power to eject them, the arrogant minister would suffer them to remain in undisturbed possession. A spirit far purer and more generous was active in the same behalf. The character of Champlain belonged rather to the Middle Age than to the seventeenth century. Long toil and endurance had calmed the adventurous enthusiasm of his youth into a steadfast earnestness of purpose; and he gave himself with a loyal zeal and devotedness to the profoundly mistaken principles which he had espoused. In his mind, patriotism and religion were inseparably linked. France was the champion of Christianity, and her honor, her greatness, were involved in her fidelity to this high function. Should she abandon to perdition the darkened nations among whom she had cast the first faint rays of hope? Among the members of the Company were those who shared his zeal; and though its capital was exhausted, and many of the merchants were withdrawing in despair, these enthusiasts formed a subordinate association, raised a new fund, and embarked on the venture afresh. England, then, resigned her prize, and Caen was despatched to reclaim Quebec from the reluctant hands of Thomas Kirke. The latter, obedient to an order from the King of England, struck his flag, embarked his followers, and abandoned the scene of his conquest. Caen landed with the Jesuits, Paul le Jeune and Anne de la Noue. They climbed the steep stairway which led up the rock, and, as they reached the top, the dilapidated fort lay on their left, while farther on was the stone cottage of the Heberts, surrounded with its vegetable gardens,—the only thrifty spot amid a scene of neglect. But few Indians could be seen. True to their native instincts, they had, at first, left the defeated French and welcomed the conquerors. Their English partialities were, however, but short-lived. Their intrusion into houses and store-rooms, the stench of their tobacco, and their importunate begging, though before borne patiently, were rewarded by the newcomers with oaths and sometimes with blows. The Indians soon shunned Quebec, seldom approaching it except when drawn by necessity or a craving for brandy. This was now the case; and several Algonquin families, maddened with drink, were howling, screeching, and fighting within their bark lodges. The women were frenzied like the men, it was dangerous to approach the place unarmed. In the following spring, 1633, on the twenty-third of May, Champlain, commissioned anew by Richelieu, resumed command at Quebec in behalf of the Company. Father le Jeune, Superior of the mission, was wakened from his morning sleep by the boom of the saluting cannon. Before he could sally forth, the convent door was darkened by the stately form of his brother Jesuit, Brebeuf, newly arrived; and the Indians who stood by uttered ejaculations of astonishment at the raptures of their greeting. The father hastened to the fort, and arrived in time to see a file of musketeers and pikemen mounting the pathway of the cliff below, and the heretic Caen resigning the keys of the citadel into the Catholic hands of Champlain. Le Jeune's delight exudes in praises of one not always a theme of Jesuit eulogy, but on whom, in the hope of a continuance of his favors, no praise could now be ill bestowed. "I sometimes think that this great man [Richelieu], who by his admirable wisdom and matchless conduct of affairs is so renowned on earth, is preparing for himself a dazzling crown of glory in heaven by the care he evinces for the conversion of so many lost infidel souls in this savage land. I pray affectionately for him every day," etc. For Champlain, too, he has praises which, if more measured, are at least as sincere. Indeed, the Father Superior had the best reason to be pleased with the temporal head of the colony. In his youth, Champlain had fought on the side of that; more liberal and national form of Romanism of which the Jesuits were the most emphatic antagonists. Now, as Le Jeune tells us, with evident contentment, he chose him, the Jesuit, as director of his conscience. In truth, there were none but Jesuits to confess and absolve him; for the Recollets, prevented, to their deep chagrin, from returning to the missions they had founded, were seen no more in Canada, and the followers of Loyola were sole masters of the field. The manly heart of the commandant, earnest, zealous, and direct, was seldom chary of its confidence, or apt to stand too warily on its guard in presence of a profound art mingled with a no less profound sincerity. A stranger visiting the fort of Quebec would have been astonished at its air of conventual decorum. Black Jesuits and scarfed officers mingled at Champlain's table. There was little conversation, but, in its place, histories and the lives of saints were read aloud, as in a monastic refectory. Prayers, masses, and confessions followed one another with an edifying regularity, and the bell of the adjacent chapel, built by Champlain, rang morning, noon, and night. Godless soldiers caught the infection, and whipped themselves in penance for their sins. Debauched artisans outdid each other in the fury of their contrition. Quebec was become a mission. Indians gathered thither as of old, not from the baneful lure of brandy, for the traffic in it was no longer tolerated, but from the less pernicious attractions of gifts, kind words, and politic blandishments. To the vital principle of propagandism both the commercial and the military character were subordinated; or, to speak more justly, trade, policy, and military power leaned on the missions as their main support, the grand instrument of their extension. The missions were to explore the interior; the missions were to win over the savage hordes at once to Heaven and to France. Peaceful, benign, beneficent, were the weapons of this conquest. France aimed to subdue, not by the sword, but by the cross; not to overwhelm and crush the nations she invaded, but to convert, civilize, and embrace them among her children. And who were the instruments and the promoters of this proselytism, at once so devout and so politic? Who can answer? Who can trace out the crossing and mingling currents of wisdom and folly, ignorance and knowledge, truth and falsehood, weakness and force, the noble and the base, can analyze a systematized contradiction, and follow through its secret wheels, springs, and levers a phenomenon of moral mechanism? Who can define the Jesuits? The story of their missions is marvellous as a tale of chivalry, or legends of the lives of saints. For many years, it was the history of New France and of the wild communities of her desert empire. Two years passed. The mission of the Hurons was established, and here the indomitable Breheuf, with a band worthy of him, toiled amid miseries and perils as fearful as ever shook the constancy of man; while Champlain at Quebec, in a life uneventful, yet harassing and laborious, was busied in the round of cares which his post involved. Christmas day, 1635, was a dark day in the annals of New France. In a chamber of the fort, breathless and cold, lay the hardy frame which war, the wilderness, and the sea had buffeted so long in vain. After two months and a half of illness, Champlain, stricken with paralysis, at the age of sixty-eight, was dead. His last cares were for his colony and the succor of its suffering families. Jesuits, officers, soldiers, traders, and the few settlers of Quebec followed his remains to the church; Le Jeune pronounced his eulogy, and the feeble community built a tomb to his honor. The colony could ill spare him. For twenty-seven years he had labored hard and ceaselessly for its welfare, sacrificing fortune, repose, and domestic peace to a cause embraced with enthusiasm and pursued with intrepid persistency. His character belonged partly to the past, partly to the present. The preux chevalier, the crusader, the romance-loving explorer, the curious, knowledge-seeking traveler, the practical navigator, all claimed their share in him. His views, though far beyond those of the mean spirits around him, belonged to his age and his creed. He was less statesman than soldier. He leaned to the most direct and boldest policy, and one of his last acts was to petition Richelieu for men and munitions for repressing that standing menace to the colony, the Iroquois. His dauntless courage was matched by an unwearied patience, proved by life-long vexations, and not wholly subdued even by the saintly follies of his wife. He is charged with credulity, from which few of his age were free, and which in all ages has been the foible of earnest and generous natures, too ardent to criticise, and too honorable to doubt the honor of others. Perhaps the heretic might have liked him more if the Jesuit had liked him less. The adventurous explorer of Lake Huron, the bold invader of the Iroquois, befits but indifferently the monastic sobrieties of the fort of Quebec, and his sombre environment of priests. Yet Champlain was no formalist, nor was his an empty zeal. A soldier from his youth, in an age of unbridled license, his life had answered to his maxims; and when a generation had passed after his visit to the Hurons, their elders remembered with astonishment the continence of the great French war-chief. His books mark the man,—all for his theme and his purpose, nothing for himself. Crude in style, full of the superficial errors of carelessness and haste, rarely diffuse, often brief to a fault, they bear on every page the palpable impress of truth. With the life of the faithful soldier closes the opening period of New France. Heroes of another stamp succeed; and it remains to tell the story of their devoted lives, their faults, follies, and virtues. <h2> END NOTES: </h2>  1 (return) [ Herrera, Hist. General, Dec. I. Lib. LX. c. 11; De Laet, Novus Orbis, Lib. I. C. 16 Garcilaso, Just. de la Florida, Part I. Lib. I. C. 3; Gomara, Ilist. Gin. des Indes Occidentales, Lib. II. c. 10. Compare Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis, Dec. VII. c. 7, who says that the fountain was in Florida. The story has an explanation sufficiently characteristic, having been suggested, it is said, by the beauty of the native women, which none could resist, and which kindled the fires of youth in the veins of age. The terms of Ponce de Leon's bargain with the King are set forth in the MS. Gapitnincion con Juan Ponce sobre Biminy. He was to have exclusive right to the island, settle it at his own cost, and be called Adelantado of Bimini; but the King was to build and hold forts there, send agents to divide the Indians among the settlers, and receive first a tenth, afterwards a fifth, of the gold.]  2 (return) [ Fontanedo in Ternaux-Compans, Recueil sur la Floride, 18, 19, 42. Compare Herrera, Dec. I. Lib. IX. c. 12. In allusion to this belief, the name Jordan was given eight years afterwards by Ayllon to a river of South Carolina.]  3 (return) [ Hakinyt, Voyaqes, V. 838; Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, 5.]  4 (return) [ Peter Martyr in Hakinyt. V. 333; De Laet, Lib. IV. c. 2.]  5 (return) [ Their own exaggerated reckoning. The journey was prohably from Tampa Bay to the Appalachicola, by a circuitous route.]  6 (return) [ Narrative of Alvar Nunez Caheca de Vaca, second in command to Narvaez, translated by Buckingham Smith. Cabeca do Vaca was one of the four who escaped, and, after living for years among the tribes of Mississippi, crossed the river Mississippi near Memphis, journeyed westward by the waters of the Arkansas and Red River to New Mexico and Chihuahua, thence to Cinaloa on the Gulf of California, and thence to Mexico. The narrative is one of the most remarkable of the early relations. See also Ramusin, III. 310, and Purchas, IV. 1499, where a portion of Cabeca de Vaca is given. Also, Garcilaso, Part I. Lib. I. C. 3; Gomara, Lih. II. a. 11; De Laet, Lib. IV. c. 3; Barcia, Ensayo Crenolegico, 19.]  7 (return) [ I have followed the accounts of Biedma and the Portuguese of Elvas, rejecting the romantic narrative of Garcilaso, in which fiction is hopelessly mingled with truth.]  8 (return) [ The spirit of this and other Spanish enterprises may be gathered from the following passage in an address to the King, signed by Dr. Pedro do Santander, and dated 15 July, 1557:- "It is lawful that your Majesty, like a good shepherd, appointed by the hand of the Eternal Father, should tend and lead out your sheep, since the Holy Spirit has shown spreading pastures whereon are feeding lost sheep which have been snatched away by the dragon, the Demon. These pastures are the New World, wherein is comprised Florida, now in possession of the Demon, and here he makes himself adored and revered. This is the Land of Promise, possessed by idolaters, the Amorite, Ainalekite, Moabite, Cauaauite. This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the faithful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy Scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, and, by reason of their idolatry and sin, to put them all to the knife, leaving no living thing save maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their walls and houses levelled to the earth." The writer then goes into detail, proposing to occupy Florida at various points with from one thousand to fifteen hundred colonists, found a city to be called Philippina, also another at Tuscaloosa, to be called Cxsarea, another at Tallahassee, and another at Tampa Bay, where he thinks many slaves can be had. Carta del Doctor Pedro de Santander.]  9 (return) [ The True and Last Discoverie of Florida, made by Captian John Ribault, in the Yeere 1692, dedicated to a great Nobleman in Fraunce, and translated into Englishe by one Thomas Haclcit, This is Ribaut's journal, which seems not to exist in the original. The translation is contained in the rare black-letter tract of Hakinyt called Divers Voyages (London, 1582), a copy of which is in the library of Harvard College. It has been reprinted by the Hakluyt Society. The journal first appeared in 1563, under the title of The Whole and True Discoverie of Terra Florida (Englished The Florishing Land). This edition is of extreme rarity.]  10 (return) [ Ribaut thinks that the Broad River of Port Royal is the Jordan of the Spanish navigator Yasquez de Ayllon, who was here in 1520, and gave the name of St. Helena to a neighboring cape (Garcilaso, Florida del Inca). The adjacent district, now called St. Helena, is the Chicora of the old Spanish maps.]  11 (return) [ No trace of this fort has been found. The old fort of which the remains may be seen a little below Beaufort is of later date.]  12 (return) [ For all the latter part of the chapter, the authority is the first of the three long letters of Rena de Laudonniere, Companion of Ribaut and his successor in command. They are contained in the Histoire Notable de la Floride, compiled by Basanier (Paris, 1586), and are also to he found, quaintly "done into English," in the third volume of Hakluyt's great collection. In the main, they are entitled to much confidence.]  13 (return) [ Above St. John's Bluff the shore curves in a semicircle, along which the water runs in a deep, strong current, which has half cut away the flat knoll above mentioned, and encroached greatly on the bluff itself. The formation of the ground, joined to the indicatons furnished by Laudonniere and Le Moyne, leave little doubt that the fort was built on the knoll.]  14 (return) [ I La Caille, as before mentioned, was Laudonniere's sergeant. The feudal rank of sergeant, it will be remembered, was widely different from the modern grade so named, and was held by men of noble birth. Le Moyne calls La Caille "Captain."]  15 (return) [ Laudonniere in Hakinyt, III. 406. Brinton, Floridian Peninsula, thinks there is truth in the story, and that Lake Weir, in Marion County, is the Lake of Sarrope. I give these romantic tales as I find them.]  16 (return) [ This scene is the subject of Plate XII. of Le Moyne.]  17 (return) [ Le Moyne drew a picture of the fight (Plate XIII.). In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him with his sword.]  18 (return) [ For Hawkins, see the three narratives in Hakinyt, III. 594; Purchas, IV. 1177; Stow, Chron., 807; Biog. Briton., Art. Hawkins; Anderson, History of Commerce, I. 400. He was not knighted until after the voyage of 1564-65; hence there is an anachronism in the text. As he was held "to have opened a new trade," he was entitled to bear as his crest a "Moor" or negro, bound with a cord. In Fairhairn's Crests of Great Britain and Ireland, where it is figured, it is described, not as a negro, but as a "naked man." In Burke's Landed Gentry, it is said that Sir John obtained it in honor of a great victory over the Moors! His only African victories were in kidnapping raids on negro villages. In Letters on Certain Passages in the Life of Sir John Hawkins, the coat is engraved in detail. The "demi-Moor" has the thick lips, the flat nose, and the wool of the unequivocal negro. Sir John became Treasurer of the Royal Navy and Rear-Admiral, and founded a marine hospital at Chatham.]  19 (return) [ "Better a ruined kingdom, true to itself and its king, than one left unharmed to the profit of the Devil and the heretics."— Correspondance de Philippe II., cited by Prescott, Philip IL, Book III. c. 2, note 36. "A prince can do nothing more shameful, or more hurtful to himself, than to permit his people to live according to their conscience." The Duke of Alva, in Davila, Lib. III. p. 341.]  20 (return) [ Cartas escritas al Rep per el General Pero Menendez de Aeilgs. These are the official despatches of Menendez, of which the originals are preserved in the archives of Seville. They are very voluminous and minute in detail. Copies of them were ohtained by the aid of Buckiugham Smith, Esq., to whom the writer is also indebted for various other documents from the same source, throwing new light on the events descrihed. Menendez calls Port Royal St. Elena, "a name afterwards applied to the sound which still retains it." Compare Historical Magazine, IV. 320.]  21 (return) [ This was not so remarkable as it may appear. Charnock, History of Marine Architecture gives the tonnage of the ships of the Invincible Armada. The flag-ship of the Andalusian squadron was of fifteen hundred and fifty tons; several were of about twelve hundred.]  22 (return) [ Barcia, 69. The following passage in one of the unpublished letters of Menendez seems to indicate that the above is exaggerated: "Your Majesty may he assured by me, that, had I a million, more or less, I would employ and spend the whole in this undertaking, it being so greatly to the glory of the God our Lord, and the increase of our Holy Catholic Faith, and the service and authority of your Majesty and thus I have offered to our Lord whatever He shall give me in this world, Whatever I shall possess, gain, or acquire shall be devoted to the planting of the Gospel in this land, and the enlightenment of the natives thereof, and this I do promise to your Majesty." This letter is dated 11 Septemher, 1565. I have examined the country on the line of march of Menendez. In many places it retains its original features.]  24 (return) [ Amid all the confusion of his geographical statements, it seems clear that Menendez believed that Cheeapeake Bay communicated with the St. Lawrence, and thence with Newfoundland on the one hand, and the South Sea on the other. The notion that the St. Lawrence would give access to China survived till the time of La Salle, or more than a century. In the map of Gastaldi, made, according to Kohl, about 1550, a belt of water connecting the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic is laid down. So also in the map of Ruscelli, 1561, and that of Mactines, 1578, as well as in that of Michael Lok, 1582. In Munster's map, 1545, the St. Lawrence is rudely indicated, with the words, "Per hoc fretfl iter ad Molucas."]  25 (return) [ The "black drink" was, till a recent period, in use among the Creeks. It is a strong decoctiun of the plant popularly called eassina, or nupon tea. Major Swan, deputy agent for the Creeks in 1791, thus describes their belief in its properties: "that it purifies them from all sin, and leaves them in a state of perfect innocence; that it inspires them with an invincible prowess in war; and that it is the only solid cement of friendship, benevolence, and hospitality." Swan's account of their mode of drinking and ejecting it corresponds perfectly with Le Moyne's picture in De Bry. See the United States government publication, History, Condition, and Prospects of Indian Tribes, V. 266.]  27 (return) [ The earliest maps and narratives indicate a city, also called Norembega, on the banks of the Penobseot. The pilot, Jean Alphonse, of Saintonge, says that this fabulous city is fifteen or twenty leagues from the sea, and that its inhabitants are of small stature and dark complexion. As late as 1607 the fable was repeated in the Histoire Unicerselle des Indes Occidentales.]  28 (return) [ Such extempore works of defence are still used among some tribes of the remote west. The author has twice seen them, made of trees piled together as described by Champlain, probably by war parties of the Crow or Snake Indians. Champlain, usually too concise, is very minute in his description of the march and encampment.]  29 (return) [ According to Lafitan, hoth bucklers and breastplates were in frequent use among the Iroquois. The former were very large and made of cedar wood covered with interwoven thongs of hide. The kindred nation of the Hurons, says Sagard (Voyage des hlurens, 126-206), carried large shields, and wore greaves for the legs and enirasses made of twigs interwoven with cords. His account corresponds with that of Champlain, who gives a wood-cut of a warrior thus armed.]  30 (return) [ It has been erroneously asserted that the practice of scalping did not prevail among the Indians before the advent of Europeans. In 1535, Cartier saw five scalps at Quebec, dried and stretched on hoops. In 1564, Laudonniere saw them among the Indians of Florida. The Algonquins of New England and Nova Scotia were accustomed to cut off and carry away the head, which they afterwards scalped. Those of Canada, it seems, sometimes scalped dead bodies on the field. Thu Algonquin practice of carrying off heads as trophies is mentioned by Lalemant, Roger Williams, Lescarbot, and Champlain. Compare Historical Magazine, First Series, V. 233.]  31 (return) [ Traces of cannibalism may be found among most of the North American tribes, though they are rarely very conspicuous. Sometimes the practice arose, as in the present instance, from revenge or ferocity sometimes it bore a religious character, as with the Miamis, among whom there existed a secret religions fraternity of man-eaters sometimes the heart of a brave enemy was devoured in the idea that it made the eater brave. This last practice was common. The ferocious threat, used in speaking of an enemy, "I will eat his heart," is by no means a mere figure of speech. The roving hunter-tribes, in their winter wanderings, were not infrequently impelled to cannibalism by famine.]  32 (return) [ The first white man to descend the rapids of St. Louis was a youth named Louis, who, on the 10th of June, 1611, went with two Indians to shoot herons on an island, and was drowned on the way down; the second was a young man who in the summer before had gone with the Hurons to their country, and who returned with them on the 18th of June; the third was Champlain himself.]  33 (return) [ Wampum was a sort of beads, of several colors, made originally by the Indians from the inner portion of certain shells, and afterwards by the French of porcelain and glass. It served a treble purpose,—that of currency, decoration, and record, wrought into belts of various devices, each having its significance, it preserved the substance of treaties and compacts from generation to generation.] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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