Читать книгу The rise of Canada, from barbarism to wealth and civilisation онлайн

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The first white man who opened up the trade of the St. Lawrence was M. Pontgrave, of St. Malo. He made several voyages in search of furs to Tadousac, and the wealthy merchant was successful. With the aid of a Captain Chauvin, of the French navy, whom he induced to join him, Pontgrave attempted to establish a trading post at Tadousac. He was, however, unsuccessful. Chauvin died in 1603, leaving a stone house for his monument, then the only one in Canada.

It was now determined by the French government to form settlements in Canada. And the military mind of France attempted to carry into effect a plan not dissimilar to that recommended a few years ago by Major Carmychael Smyth, the making of a road to the Pacific through the wilderness by means of convicts. The plan, however, failed, though attempted by the Marquis De la Roche, who actually left on Sable Island forty convicts drawn from the French prisons. A company of merchants having been formed for the purpose of making settlements, Champlain accepted the command of an expedition, and accompanied by Pontgrave, sailed for the St. Lawrence in 1603. They arrived safely at Tadousac, and proceeded in open boats up the St. Lawrence; but did nothing. The effort at settlement was subsequently renewed. In 1608, Champlain, a second time, reached Stadacona or Quebec, on the 3rd July, and struck by the commanding position of Cape Diamond, selected the base of the promontory as the site of a town. He erected huts for shelter; established a magazine for stores and provisions; and formed barracks for the soldiery, not on the highest point of the headland, but on the site of the recently destroyed parliament buildings. There were then a few, and only a few, Indians in Stadacona, that Indian town being situated rather on the St. Charles than on the St. Lawrence. Few as they were, famine reduced them to the necessity of supplicating food from the strangers. The strangers themselves suffered much from scurvy, and after an exploration of the lake which yet bears the name of its discoverer, Champlain returned to France. Two years later the intrepid sailor set out for Tadousac and Quebec with artisans, laborers, and supplies for Nouvelle France, the name then given to Canada, or the Great "Pass" to China. He arrived at the mouth of the Saguenay on the 26th of April, after a remarkably short passage of eighteen days. He found his first settlers contented and prosperous. They had cultivated the ground successfully, and were on good terms with the natives. Champlain, however, desirous of annexing more of the territory of the Indians, stirred them up to strife. He himself joined an hostile expedition of the Algonquins and Montagnais against the Iroquois. What success he met with is not now to be ascertained. Deficient in resources, he again returned to France, and found a partner able and willing to assist the Colony in the person of the Count de Soisson, who had been appointed Viceroy of the new country—a sinecure appointment which the Count did not long enjoy, inasmuch as death took possession of him shortly afterwards. The honorary office of Viceroy, which more resembled an English Colonial Secretaryship of the present day, than a viceroyalty, was, on the death of Soisson, conferred on the Prince de Condé, who sent Champlain from St. Malo for the Colonial Seat of Government, on the 6th March, 1613, as Deputy Governor. Champlain arrived at Quebec on the 7th of May. The infant colony was quiet and contented. Furs were easily obtained for clothing in winter, and in summer very little clothing of any kind was necessary. The chief business of the then colonial merchants was the collection of furs for exportation. There were, properly speaking, no merchants in the country, but only factors, and other servants of the home Fur Company. The country was no more independently peopled than the Hudson's Bay Territory now is. The actual presence of either governor or sub-governor was unnecessary. Champlain only made an official tour of inspection to Mount Royal, explored the Ottawa, and returned to France. He was dissatisfied with the appearance of affairs, and persuaded the Prince of Condé, his chief, to really settle the country. The prince consented. A new company was formed through his influence, and, with some Roman Catholic Missionaries, Champlain again sailed for Canada, arriving at Quebec early in April, 1615—a proof that the winters were not more intense when Canada was first settled than at present. Indeed the intense cold of Lower Canada, compared with other countries in the same latitude, is not so much attributable to the want of cultivation as to the height of the land, and the immense gully formed by the St. Lawrence, and the great lakes which receive the cold blasts of the mountainous region which constitutes the Arctic highlands, and from which the rivers running to the northward into Hudson's Bay, and to the southward into the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, take their rise. The icy breath of the distant north and northwest sweeps down such rivers as the Ottawa, the St. Maurice, and the Saguenay, to be gathered into one vast channel, extending throughout Canada's whole extent. And, clear the forest as we may, Canada will always be the same cold, healthy country that it now is. Lower or rather Highland Canada, will be especially so, without, however, the general commercial prosperity of the country suffering much on that account. There are lowlands enough for a population far exceeding that now occupying the United States. But this is a digression. Champlain's Missionaries set themselves vigorously to the work of christianizing the heathen, while Champlain himself industriously began to fight them. He extended the olive branch from his left hand, and stabbed vigorously with a sword in his right hand. The Missionaries established churches, or rather the cross, from the head waters of the Saguenay to Lake Nepissing. Champlain battled the Iroquois from Mont Royal to Nepissing. Rather he would have done so. He did not find them until he reached, overland and in canoes, Lake Huron, the superior character of the land in that neighbourhood attracting his particular attention. He found his "enemy" entrenched by "four successive palisades of fallen trees," says Smith, "enclosing a piece of ground containing a pond, with every other requisite for Indian warfare"—a very Sebastopol, upon which Champlain discharged his fire-arms, driving the Iroquois back to their camp. The place was, however, impregnable, and the siege was reluctantly raised. The Algonquins would only fight as they pleased. They were sadly in want of a head. They would not use fire-arms, but "preferred firing their arrows against the strong wooden defences." Champlain was twice wounded in the leg, and his allies, making the non-arrival of reinforcements an excuse, retreated. Champlain insisted upon going home, but transport was wanting, and he was compelled to winter, as best he could, in a desolate region, with his discomfitted allies. In the following year he got away, and made haste down his Black Sea of Ontario, to his Golden Horn at Tadousac, from thence, on the 10th of Sept., 1616, returning to his native country to find his partner, the Prince of Condé, in disgrace and in confinement, for what the historian knows not. The Prince had possibly been playing Hudson, for we find that the Marshal de Themines was prevailed upon to accept the office, on condition of sharing the emoluments. But he too became involved in "controversy with the merchants," and after only two years presidency of the Company, resigned, when the Duke de Montmorenci obtained the Viceroyalty from Condé, for eleven thousand crowns. The Duke was Lord High Admiral of France, and Champlain was exceedingly glad. Another new colonizing company was formed. Seventy-seven artisans, farmers, physicians, or gentlemen, three friars, horses, cows, sheep, seed-corn, and arms were collected at Rochelle for exportation in 1619. But the laymen, partly Protestants and partly Roman Catholics, began to squabble about the immaculate conception, or something else, equally stupid and unimportant, until Champlain himself got into trouble and nearly lost his Deputy Governorship, and the expedition was delayed. In 1620, Champlain, however, set sail, and on his arrival at his capital, in July, was agreeably surprised to find that a missionary, named Duplessis, had got so far into the good graces of the Hurons, at Trois Rivieres, that he had discovered and frustrated a plan for the massacre of the French colonists. At Tadousac affairs were not at all flattering. The colonists had neglected cultivation. Only sixty white people remained, ten of whom were religiously engaged in keeping school, or were engaged in keeping a religious school. At this period of time it is difficult to say which. Worse than this scurvily decimated condition of the people, was the intrusion of some unprincipled and unprivileged adventurers from Rochelle, who had been bartering fire-arms with the Indians for the Company's furs. Champlain was very wroth, but moderated his anger somewhat on ascertaining that an enfant du sol—a real French-Canadian baby was in the land of the living. Who was the father of the child or who the mother, is neither mentioned by Hennepin nor Charlevoix, and the office of Prothonotary, or Registrar of Births, Marriages, and Deaths had not been instituted. It is not even in the chronicles that Champlain was at the christening, nor is the ceremony alluded to at all. This great, and most interesting event happened on some hour of some unmentioned day in the year 1621. It is possible the mother was of a distinguished Huron family. It is certain that the Hurons were about that time in close alliance with the French, for the Iroquois began to be jealous of the alliance between the Hurons, Algonquins, and the French, and declared war with the view of destroying the settlements. The Iroquois succeeded in burning some Huron villages, but were repulsed by the French both at the Sault St. Louis and at Quebec. Quebec was now a fortified town. There were wooden, but not very extensive, walls around the barracks and the huts. Champlain had, on the whole, great reason to be thankful. His power and authority seemed to be undisputed. He had seen the first of a new world generation, and the means of wealth were seemingly at his feet. But he met with disappointment. The association of merchants who had fitted out his expedition, and from whom he obtained his supplies, were suddenly deprived of all their privileges of trade and colonization, by Montmorenci. The Duke, determined on doing as he pleased with his own, transferred the supremacy of the colonists to the Sieurs de Caen, uncle and nephew. The one de Caen was a merchant, the other a sailor. The sailor was soon at Tadousac. Before Champlain had well known, by a letter of thanks for past services, that he was recalled, or rather superseded, his successor had arrived at the head quarters of Nouvelle France—Tadousac. De Caen solicited an interview with Champlain, which was conceded. Smarting with indignation, Champlain was too polite. His courtesy was so excessive, that De Caen became exacting as if to show who he was. He wanted to seize all Champlain's trading vessels. They belonged, he said, to a company whose privileges had been transferred to him as the representative of another company. The furs with which they were laden belonged to Montmorenci and the De Caens, as his Grace's agents. Champlain demurred, and Captain De Caen peremptorily demanded Du Pont's vessel. Champlain, no longer courteous, flew into a violent passion. Du Pont was the favourite agent of his company, and his own particular friend. Champlain's rage was of no avail. Nor was the sympathy of the colonists of any value. De Caen was supreme, and did as he pleased. The colonists, however, excessively indignant, resolved to leave in a body, unless their opinions were allowed some weight, and a number did take their departure. Although De Caen had brought eighteen new settlers, the colony was reduced to only forty-eight. Champlain, however, remained in Canada. He felt himself to be the chief colonist, and only removed to Quebec, where he erected a stone fort. The fort was partly on that part of the present city on which the old Church of Notre Dame stands, in the Lower Town, and partly where the former Palace of the Roman Catholic Archbishop stood. Champlain pitched his tent outside the walls, which were almost rectangular, under the shadow of a tree, which, until six years ago, threw its leafy arms over St. Anne Street, from the Anglican Cathedral Church yard. While this fort-building, vessel seizing, and unchristian feeling were rending the infant colony to pieces, interfering with trade, and proving vexatious to all, a union had been formed in France between the old and new companies. The coalition was not productive of good. There was so little cordiality and so much contention between the parties, that Montmorenci threw up his viceroyalty in disgust, that is to say, he sold out to the Duke de Ventadour. Ventadour was in a world of difficulties. France was then half Protestant and half Catholic. Ventadour's chief object in purchasing Canada was to diffuse the Catholic Religion throughout the new world. With much energy of character, he was singularly pious. He attended mass regularly at an early hour every morning. His bedroom was religiously fitted up; the symbol of redemption hung constantly over the head of his bed. He was no bigot. He was thoroughly in earnest. He was only not wise. The man who had caused Champlain so much annoyance was himself a Huguenot, and not that only,—to the Duke's mortification, he had taken to Canada chiefly Protestants, and had even caused the Roman Catholic emigrants to attend Protestant worship on shipboard. Two thirds of the crews of his ships were Protestants. They sang psalms on the St. Lawrence. The new viceroy was much annoyed on ascertaining that De Caen had permitted such a state of things. The exercise of the Protestant religion, he had given orders, should be barely tolerated, and he had been disobeyed. Champlain did not trouble himself about religious squabbles. He made himself difficulties with the Indians, leaving religious dissensions to be made by his would be superior. Amid all these difficulties the fur trade languished, and the celebrated Cardinal Richelieu, who knew the advantages to be derived from Ventadour's pious missionary effort, revoked the privileges of De Caen's new company, and established a newer company called the Hundred Associates. The associates were not only to colonize, but they were amply to supply necessaries to the colonists. They were to send out a large number of clergymen. Those clergymen were to create churches and erect parsonages. They were to be supported by the Associates for fifteen years. They were to have glebes, or reserved lands, assigned to them for their sufficient support. At a blow the wily cardinal had extinguished psalm singing on the St. Lawrence for at least a century. In 1627 the Hundred Associates were formed. But plans cannot be always carried into effect as soon as determined upon. War was proclaimed by England against France in the following year, 1628. The weakest and the meanest of English kings had caused the Puritans, previously persecuted by Elizabeth, to leave their country. The Puritans, in November, 1607, had settled in New England. The year in which the first Franco-Canadian saw the light of day, Governor Carver, of Plymouth Colony, had entered into a league of friendship, commerce, and mutual defence with Massassoit, the great Sachem of the neighbouring Indians. Some years previously (1619) the Colony of Virginia had received her first Governor General from England, who had instructions to convoke a general legislature. With all his impotent stammering, slobbering, weeping, buffoonery, and pedagoguism, James had an indistinct idea that it was as necessary to hear the voice of the people as the voice of the king. He chose rather to direct than to suppress the expression of opinion. But the Governor General of Virginia was appointed by the London Company, whose privileges were taken away by James on the year preceding his death, which occurred in March, 1625, after the company had expended £100,000 in the first attempt to colonize America. James appointed a viceroy or governor and directed him how to govern. New France, at the breaking out of such a war, had something to dread from New England, so much further advanced in colonization. Cardinal Richelieu's plan of Canadian settlement was roughly interfered with, by the capture of his first emigrant ships by Sir David Kerk, who afterwards proceeded to Tadousac, burned the village, and proceeded to Quebec to summon Champlain to surrender. The brave Frenchman refused and Kerk retreated. But Kerk came back again. He again appeared before the walls of Fort Quebec, and summoned it to surrender. Reduced to great distress by famine, Champlain surrendered, and the whole settlement was taken captive to England. With the exception of a few houses, a barrack, and a fort at Quebec, and a few huts at Tadousac, Trois Rivieres, and Mont Royal, Canada was again as much a wilderness as it ever had been since the Asiatics had stepped across Behring's Straits to replenish the western hemisphere. The great curiosity, the first Franco-Canadian baby, now eight years old, was doubtless carried to the tower, and caged as a curiosity, near the other lions and tigers of London. It was not until the restoration of peace in 1633, that Champlain was reappointed Governor of Canada, which, by the treaty of 1632, was surrendered back to France, on the supposition that it was almost worthless. This time colonization was systematically undertaken by the Jesuits, who only arrived in Canada in time to supply the loss of Champlain, a man of exemplary perseverance, of ambitious views, and of wonderful administrative capacity, for a layman of that day, who died in December, 1635. The foundation of a seminary was laid at Quebec. Monks, Priests, and Nuns were sent out from France. The Church was to settle in the wilderness to be encircled by the godly. If Admiral Kerk had carried off a settlement, Mother Church was to produce other settlements. A new governor was named—Montmagny. Business, however, began to languish. The Indians became exceedingly troublesome. And the Iroquois had subdued the Algonquins, and had nearly vanquished the Hurons. To defend the settlement from these fierce warriors, Montmagny built a fort at Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu, down which river the savage enemy usually came. The construction of the fort had the desired effect. Peace with the Indians soon followed, and the colony became happy and contented. The effect of Jesuitical tact and judgment soon began to exhibit itself. An Ursuline Nunnery and a Seminary were established at Quebec, through the instrumentality of the Duchess d'Aiguillon. The religious order of St. Sulpice, at the head of which was the Abbé Olivier, proposed to the King of France to establish a new colony and a seminary at Mont Royal, bearing the name of the order and composed of its members. The proposal was entertained, and the Island of Montreal conceded to the religionists for their support. The Sieur Maisonneuve—a name admirably chosen—was placed at the head of the faithful emigrants, and invested with its government. The third regular governor of Canada was M. d'Aillebout. He succeeded Montmagny, whose term of office had expired. On the death of Champlain, no Governor of Canada was to hold the reins of government longer than three years. D'Aillebout was an exceedingly able man. He was firm, and, on the whole, just. He was left entirely to himself in the management of affairs, and he left the conversion of the Indians to peace and Christianity, to the missionaries, who labored well and earnestly, establishing the Hurons, and even the Iroquois, in villages. The latter, who were never to be trusted, only feigned semi-civilization, and unexpectedly renewing the war, they fell upon their old enemies, the Hurons, with diabolical fury. In the Indian village of Sillery, while a missionary was celebrating mass in the Catholic Church, and none but old men, women, and children were present, a terrible and foul massacre occurred. The Iroquois rushed into the chapel with tomahawk and scalping knife, murdering all the congregation, nor stayed their hands until upwards of four hundred families, being every soul in the village, were slain. About this time our friends south of the line 45°, first began to dream of the annexation of Canada. An envoy from New England visited Quebec, and proposed to the French governor the establishment of a peace between the two colonies of New France and New England, which was not to be broken even should the parent states go to war. Governor Montmagny consented, on condition that the Iroquois were to be put down. He was so willing that he sent an envoy to Boston to ratify a treaty. But the New Englanders would not quarrel with the Iroquois, and no treaty was effected. A more hopeful international commercial alliance, of which the Boston Jubilee of 1851 was indicative, has lately been entertained. Compared to the Iroquois, or even the Algonquins, the Huron tribe of Indians were mild in disposition and peaceably disposed. The French missionaries obtained a powerful hold over them. Great numbers became christianized, and even, to some extent, civilized. Descendants of Nimrod though they were, their wandering habits were partially subdued, and very many began to cultivate the ground. As if there was something in the climate of Quebec to produce such an effect, they were naturally inclined to be supremely tranquil. And notwithstanding the recent horrible massacre they soon sank back into their ordinary state of lethargy. They were fearfully aroused from their lethargy, however, by another series of attacks on the part of the Iroquois. The latter ferocious red men made a descent upon the village of St. Ignace, killing and capturing all the Hurons there. They next attacked St. Louis, and though some women and children managed to escape, both missionaries and Hurons were carried off for the torture. The Huron nation, terribly damaged, seemed to be at the mercy of their more savage enemies. They scattered in every direction. Their settlements were altogether abandoned. Some sought refuge with the Ottawas, some with the Eries, and not a few attached themselves to missionaries, who formed them into settlements on the Island of St. Joseph, in Lake Ontario. Unable, however, to find sufficient subsistence on the island, they were compelled to form villages on the main land, where they were again slaughtered by the Iroquois. So inferior had they become, physically and intellectually, if not numerically, to the Iroquois, that they resolved to put themselves altogether under French protection. This protection the missionaries procured for them, and a new settlement was formed at Sillery. The Iroquois now did what they pleased. They were in full possession of the whole country. The French were literally confined to Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. But that which neither French nor Hurons could do by force, they were made to do themselves. They were destroyed in hundreds by rum. The French appealed to their appetites. Iroquois independence was broken in upon by a mere artifice of taste. Furs were now bought, not with pieces of tin and strings of beads, but with plugs of tobacco and bottles of spirits. Intoxication had its ordinary effect. It caused these naturally hot-blooded, quarrelsome, freemen to butcher each other, and it made them the slaves of the fur trader, whose exertions increased as the favorite narcotic lessened the exertions and weakened the energies of the hunter. So injurious was the effect of the "fire water," and so obvious was the injury to the Indians themselves, that the Chief of the domesticated Indians petitioned the Governor, their great Father, to imprison all drunkards. Whether or no D'Aillebout granted the request is not recorded. Probably it was not then granted. Among the Edits, Ordonnances Royaux, declarations, et arrêts du Counsel d'etat Roi concernant le Canada, nothing concerning Indian intoxication is to be found. D'Aillebout ceased not long afterwards to be governor. In 1650 he was succeeded by Monsieur de Lauzon. So hostile, however, had the feelings of the Iroquois now become, that M. de Lauzon returned to France for a detachment of soldiers. He brought out 100 men in 1653. Then the Iroquois were disposed for peace. They begged for it. Might is right. The power of the new Governor was acknowledged by the Iroquois. One hundred muskets was a powerful argument against even 6,000 bows and arrows. Frenchmen were sent among them. An Iroquois Roman Catholic Church was founded. For two years all was tolerably quiet, but at the end of that time the spirit of insubordination was so great that the French, anticipating massacre, made a moon-light flitting to Quebec.