Chapter XVII
1666-1670
THE SUBDUAL OF THE IROQUOIS
THE END OF THE HEROIC AGE
PRIMITIVE EXPEDITIONS UNDER DE COURCELLES, SOREL AND DE TRACY--THE ROYAL TROOPS AND THE MONTREAL "BLUE COATS"--DOLLIER DE CASSON, THE SOLDIER CHAPLAIN--THE VICTORY OVER THE IROQUOIS--THE HOTEL-DIEU AT MONTREAL RECEIVES THE SICK AND WOUNDED--THE CONFIRMATION OF THE GENTLEMEN OF THE SEMINARY AS SEIGNEURS--THE LIEUTENANT GENERAL AND INTENDANT IN MONTREAL--THE "DIME"--THE CENSUS OF 1667--MORE CLERGY NEEDED--THE ABBE DE QUEYLUS RETURNS, WELCOMED BY LAVAL AND MADE VICAR GENERAL--REINFORCEMENT OF SULPICIANS--THEIR FIRST MISSION AT KENTE--THE RETURN OF THE RECOLLECTS--THE ARRIVAL OF PERROT AS LOCAL GOVERNOR OF MONTREAL.
So eager was de Courcelles to carry on the war, for which the troops had come, that they started from Quebec on January 9th, in the depth of winter, a rash venture as de Maisonneuve could have told the Europeans. Yet they marched out, each soldier with his unaccustomed snowshoes and with twenty to thirty pounds of biscuits and provisions strapped on his back, crossing the frozen streams and waterfalls, to the number of 300 of the Carignan regiment, and 100 French Canadians. They were joined by others on the route, among them a party of 106 good Montrealers under Charles Le Moyne. These latter were de Courcelles' most valued men, being seasoned woodmen used to wars' alarms. He called them his "blue coats," and found they served and obeyed him, better than the rest. The expedition was an utter failure, for not counting the frozen fingers, noses and limbs, they lost many men, sixty dying from want of provisions, so that de Courcelles returned to Quebec disconsolate.
A second expedition, under Sorel, started in July. This time there were only "thirty good Montrealers." When within twenty leagues of the Iroquois camps, they were met by the famous chief, called the "Flemish Bastard," with some European captives. He asked for peace, and Sorel, believing him, marched back to Quebec with the Bastard.
De Tracy led the next expedition with de Courcelles on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, September 14th. Never had so large an army started out--600 Carignans, 100 friendly Indian allies from the missions and 600 French Canadians, of which 110 were the "blue coats" from Montreal under Le Moyne and Picoté de Bélestre, who led the van to meet the brunt of all disasters as they were chosen to be at the rear in retreat. The canoes and flat-bottomed boats started from Quebec crossed Lake Champlain; then, they landed and portaged their boats on their backs till they launched them again on Lake St. George (then called Lake St. Sacrament), and proceeded up the narrows to where Fort William Henry was afterwards built. There were 100 miles of marching now to be endured, through forests, streams and marshes gleaming in the Indian summer sun. Marie de l'Incarnation tells some adventures of this journey. As each one, even the officers, had to carry his knapsack of provisions, the fair Chevalier de Chaumont got a humour on his shoulders. Others suffered likewise. General de Tracy was placed in a dangerous predicament when crossing a ford. "He was one of the biggest men I have ever seen," says the good sister, "and a Swiss soldier was trying to carry him. When in the middle, de Tracy found himself overthrown, but luckily clung to a rock and saved himself. From this undignified position he was rescued by a hardy Huron, who conveyed him safely to the other side."
But the character of this journey was the genial chaplain of the Montreal forces, none other than Dollier de Casson, whom we have quoted so often. Dollier had arrived in Canada on September 7th. His venturesome spirit was enlisted at once in this expedition, in which he was quite at home being, besides a "man of God," a "man of war," having but ten years ago served and fought, as a cavalry officer under Marshal de Turenne. He was a very large man, as tall as de Tracy, and stronger. Grandet, who left a manuscript note on Dollier, says that he had such extraordinary strength, that he could hold two men seated in his hands. He was cheerful, courtly, courteous and genial. He had a merry and quick jest to cheer up the "blue coats" and others, in many a tight corner. He was doubtless the most popular man in camp.[94]
If he had lived in these days, the newspapers would have called him the "fighting parson." Grandet, in his manuscript note on Dollier, tells how on one occasion, being at prayer on his knees in an Algonquin camp, an insolent savage came to interrupt him. Without rising from his knees, the big burly missioner sent the astonished Indian sprawling on the ground by a blow from his fist--a proceeding which gained him admiration from the Algonquins, who exclaimed with pride in his physical prowess: "This is indeed a man!" Probably this strength helped him to become the great peacemaker he afterwards became at Montreal. Dollier says little of himself in his account of the march, speaking modestly and impersonally of himself. The big man seems to have suffered hunger very much on the small rations dealt out to him, for he says that "this priest made a good noviceship under a certain captain who could be called the Grand Master of Fasting; at least this officer could have served as novice master in this point to the Fathers of the Desert." This "ecclesiastic of St. Sulpice," he says, "was strongly built, but what enfeebled him was hearing the confessions of the men by night while the others were asleep. He felt the marching pretty badly, for his wretched pair of shoes gave way, so that having nothing left but the uppers the sharp stones of the water beds and banks played havoc with his bare feet. So weak and weary did he become that he could not save a man drowning in the water into which he had plunged to the rescue. This man happened to belong to the train of the Jesuits and Dollier explained that it was hunger that had so enfeebled him, whereat the good Jesuit took the good Sulpician aside and gave him a piece of bread, made palatable with two different sucres, one of Madeira and the other of appétit."
We cannot pursue the story of the war, as it takes us too far from Montreal. Suffice it to say that there was a complete victory, the greatest that had ever been won against the Iroquois. After the capture of the last stronghold of the Mohawk Iroquois, the warrior priest chanted a Te Deum and said mass. After that, the cross was planted with the arms of France and possession was taken of the country in the name of Louis XIV. "Vive le roi!"
At Quebec, when the news arrived, on November 2d, there were great rejoicings, and when de Tracy returned on the 5th the Te Deum boomed out anew. But the army was sorely depleted; many had died from cold, hunger and the chances of war, as also by accidents on the road, whereas the Iroquois had lost little else than their birch bark cabins.
After the termination of the expedition, some of the soldiers were picketed in the new forts. A chaplain was needed for Fort Ste. Anne, and Dollier de Casson, now returned to Montreal, volunteered, although he suffered from a swelling on the knee, to cure which he underwent a severe bleeding at the hands of one of the local medicos of Montreal, who did it so effectually that the big man fainted. However, he started out in two days, accompanied by Jacques Leber, Charles Le Moyne and Migeon de Branssat. At Ste. Anne's, he had busy work, with young Forestier, a surgeon from Montreal, in attending the sick men who suffered from famine and scurvy, while eleven died. Though himself sick the cheery chaplain did good, self-sacrificing service, none the less excellent, because it was seasoned with a plenteous fund of raillery and bantering. Among the officers there was La Durantaye, famous hereafter in Canadian annals. So the winter wore away at Ste. Anne's, relieved by provisions sent by the good folks of Montreal.
That winter the Hôtel-Dieu of Montreal was filled to overflowing with the sick and wounded, which it had received from the army under de Courcelles after the terrible war of the early winter. During the next year it continued its good work, for which Dollier de Casson says it deserved unspeakable praise, receiving the sick from the forts of Ste. Anne, St. Louis and St. Jean.
Before closing the narration of the events of this year we must not forget the joy at Montreal caused by the news spread in September that the king had settled all doubts of the rights of the Seigneurs of Montreal by confirming the letters patent of 1644. This confirmation M. Talon put into practice on September 17th when he received the fealty and homage of the Seminary for the Seigneurs of Montreal "with high, low and middle justice," and two days afterwards, in virtue of the extraordinary powers granted him by the king, ordered the seigneurs to be maintained in the possession of the administration of justice, thus supplanting the royal court of the sénéchal already established, as before mentioned.
The Seminary had right to name its own governor also, but no one was appointed to the vacant post of Maisonneuve till 1669.
Thus the year closed in a peace to last for twenty years. The king's arms had battered Iroquois insolence.
But the heroic age was at an end.[95]
After the successful war, de Tracy engaged himself before departing in May for Montreal, in consolidating the paternal government lately introduced and in conciliating the habitants on behalf of his royal master. He came to Montreal to take cognizance of it as a place which was most commonly resorted to by the savage as the most advanced point on the river.
He left Quebec on May 4th, and two days later Talon, as intendant, set out to pay his official visit to Montreal. He acquitted himself to the satisfaction of the settlers on all the côtes "for," says Dollier de Casson, "he went to the great edification of the public from house to house, even to the poorest, asking if all were being treated according to equity and justice, and when pecuniary assistance was needed, it was forthcoming."
We shall speak later of many of the progressive movements initiated through M. Talon at this time.
This year the Seigneurs of Montreal were given back the possession of the storehouse at Quebec, about which there had been much contention.
The question of the "dime" had agitated Montreal as elsewhere. Originally fixed by Laval at one-thirteenth it had been reduced to one-twentieth and then to one-twenty-sixth. Even then in view of the difficulties of a young country it was not payable for five years, to allow the settler to cultivate his lands more easily. But at the same time, it was arranged that in the future, better times might allow it to be increased. This was regulated by an act of the clerk's office at Montreal of August 23, 1667; but a further act of an assembly, held on August 12, 1668, shows appreciation on the part of the syndic and inhabitants of a desire to meet the seigneurs in the upkeep of the church by fixing the dime at one-twenty-first part for wheat and one-twenty-sixth for other grains.
The arrangements for the payment of the dime had been made jointly by de Tracy, de Courcelles and Talon. De Tracy left Quebec on September 28th, to the great regret of Laval and the clergy.
The census of Montreal for this year (1667) is given as 766 souls; Three Rivers and its dependencies, 666; Côte de Beaupré, 656; Isle of Orleans, 529; Quebec, 448; other settlements under the government of Quebec, 1,011; Beauport, 123; Côte de Lauson (south shore), 113. In this year there were 11,448 arpents under cultivation in New France. There were 3,107 heads of cattle, besides 85 sheep. These latter began to be imported in 1665, at the same time as the horses. In the following year 15,649 arpents were cultivated and the production of wheat amounted to 130,978 minots.
But more clergy was needed, so this year M. Souart, the curé of Montreal, went over to France to seek new missioners for the work of the Sulpicians. He left behind him M. Giles Pérot as curé and MM. Galinier, Barthélemy and Trouvé. At the Hôtel-Dieu the venerable superioress, Mother Macé, had five nuns under her direction, and at the house of the "Congregation" Marguerite Bourgeoys, with three helpers, continued her good work.
M. Souart brought back a most enthusiastic worker who was none other than the redoubtable Abbé de Queylus. There was at last no opposition on the part of Laval. The elements leading to this change of front are twofold: firstly, the archbishop of Rouen had some time ago renounced all pretension to jurisdiction in New France, and thus was removed Laval's contentious attitude against de Queylus, for it was not a question of persons with him, but of prerogatives. He had looked upon de Queylus as the representative of a rival authority which might tend to raise "altar against altar," and lead to schism and so destroy his policy of church centralization. Secondly, de Queylus had received an invitation from the king, who had been apprised of his good qualities through the papal nuncio, Picolomini, now become a cardinal, and the king's word went with Laval.
Accordingly, when de Queylus arrived in the spring with three Sulpicians, M. René de Brébant de Galinée, M. François Saturnin Lascares d'Urfé,[96] and his former secretary, M. Antoine d'Allet, Laval received them most cordially and gave de Queylus letters patent as his vicar general, a post held by him in Montreal during all his further stay.
Laval has described this reception himself in a letter to his friend, M. Poitevin, the curé of St. Fossé at Paris. Speaking of the consolation in receiving M. de Queylus and the new workers he says: "We have embraced them all in the name of Jesus Christ. What gives us most sensible joy is that we see our clergy disposed, with one heart and one soul, to procure the glory of God and the salvation of souls, both French and Indian. The fatherly tenderness which the king has made apparent to New France and the notable contributions he has made to make it more numerous and flourishing, furnishes an ample harvest field for all to employ their zeal and spend their lives for the love of Jesus Christ, who has given them the first inspirations to consecrate themselves to Him and His church."
This was not a diplomatic change of attitude with Laval. He was incapable of dissimulation or subterfuge. He saw the glory of God in the new situation and thenceforward the Sulpicians had a true friend and admirer.
On their part the Jesuits were no less cordial in their welcome. The "Relation" for 1668 speaks of the same powerful reinforcement of the clergy for Montreal and hoped for much good from "these great missionaries."
There were now about fifteen Sulpicians in Montreal when, in the month of June, 1668, an embassy of Iroquois came from the Bay of Kenté, on the banks of Lake Ontario, asking for a black robe to instruct their people in the religion of the white man. Two young priests, M. Fénelon and M. Trouvé, having offered themselves, on September 15th, Mgr. Laval gave them letters to establish their mission, and they embarked at Lachine on October 2d, and arrived at the Bay of Kenté (Quinté) on October 28th. This was the first mission of the Sulpicians. Their good work, begun at Montreal, was to stretch far and wide. If we do not follow them in detail it is because we are sketching only the original and cradle events of great movements in these annals. In the winter M. de Queylus sent M. Dollier de Casson and M. Barthélemy to Lake Nipissing.
The peace with the Iroquois left further opportunity for self-sacrificing missioners to work among them, so that in 1669 the clergy were glad to welcome the return of the Recollects. Not only did Laval welcome them, but the Jesuits, who succeeded them on the renewal of the French possession, after the occupation by the English under Kirke, though they are represented by mischief-making historians as having "supplanted" them, wrote as follows of their joy at their coming, in the "Relations" of 1670:
"The Reverend Recollect Fathers, who have come from France to be a new succour to the missionaries in the growth of this church, have given us an excess of joy and consolation. We have received them as the first apostles of this country, and in recognition of the obligation due to them by the French colony, the inhabitants of Quebec have been delighted to receive these good religious, now established on the same ground where they dwelt forty years before the French were driven from Canada by the English."
In fact, arrangements were made by those who had been put into possession of the Recollects' former estates, held prior to 1629, to cede them, and the friars now had an estate of ten by ten arpents, for which the governor general gave them new titles by an act of October 23, 1670.
We have now to record the appointment of a new governor for Montreal, left officially vacant since de Maisonneuve's departure, three and a half years ago, although several commandants had represented the Seigneurs. The choice fell upon M. Marie François Perrot, a gentilhomme by birth, and captain of an Auvergne regiment, who was then on the point of crossing over with his regiment to establish himself with his wife in Canada and doubtless make his fortune.
M. Perrot had married Talon's niece, Madeleine de Laguide, and it was the former intendant, then about to revisit Canada for a second time, who solicited the vacant post from M. de Bretonvilliers, the superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice in Paris who granted it by a letter addressed to M. Perrot on June 13, 1669, being "duly informed of your good life and character, talents, capacity and good qualities, we have made choice of your person to fill and exercise the office of governor ... without you at the same time being able to make pretensions to any salary or remuneration other than the country has been accustomed to give."
On the voyage, Perrot, his wife and Talon were shipwrecked, and they saved their lives on a broken mast by having promised a large sum of money to the sailors for having assisted them to it. Five hundred emigrants came with this expedition.
But on Perrot's arrival in Montreal, where he and his wife were well received, in pity for their shipwreck and out of interest in the lady governor--for Maisonneuve had been a sorry bachelor--he sought to have his commission made more certain by letters patent from the king. Accordingly, this was finally effected through Talon and Colbert, by letters dated March 14, 1671, and with the consent of M. Bretonvilliers, whose rights seemed not to be infringed, since it had been the custom for the governor generals named by the seigneur companies, also to receive a royal commission.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] M. Jacques Viger, the antiquarian and mayor of Montreal, by comparing Grandet's notice of Dollier de Casson with the "ecclesiastic" spoken of in the "Histoire de Montreal," established in 1888 the identity of Dollier with the "ecclesiastic," the writer and Sulpician who came in 1666. Hence the "Histoire de Montreal" is now attributed to Dollier de Casson.
[95] Abridged Family Roll of the Colony of New France--1666:
Quebec 555 Beaupré 678 Beauport 172 Island of Orleans 471 St. Jean, St. François and St. Michel 156 Sillery 217 Notre-Dame des Anges and Rivière St. Charles 118 Côte de Lauson 6 Montreal 584 Trois Rivières 461 ---- 3418 Number of males between the ages of 16 and 50 years of age, capable of bearing arms 1344
There are doubtless some omissions in the above roll, which will be supplied in the coming winter, this year.
(Signed) TALON.
[96] The "Baie d'Urfé," in the north of the island, is named after this missionary, who had an Indian settlement there later.
Chapter XVIII
1671-1672
THE FEUDAL SYSTEM ESTABLISHED
THE SEIGNEURS OF THE MONTREAL DISTRICT
SUBURBAN GROWTH--THE EARLIEST OUTLYING FIEFS--PRAEDIA MILITARIA--MILITARY SEIGNEURIES OF THE MONTREAL DISTRICT--THE FEUDAL SYSTEM--THE "NOBLESSE"--THE "PARISHES"--"CENS ET RENTES"--"LODS ET VENTES"--TRIBUTE TO THE FEUDALISM OF THE CLERICAL "SEIGNEURS OF MONTREAL"--MUNICIPAL OFFICERS--ORDER IN PROCESSIONS--THE CHURCH WARDENS--THE SOLDIER COLONISTS--CATTLE BREEDING, HORSES, ASSES--AGRICULTURE--NEW CONCESSIONS--LAWS REGULATING OPENING UP THE LAND--FIRST PUBLIC ROADS AND BRIDGES AT MONTREAL--NOTE: FORTS AND REDOUBTS.
So far we have kept our attention on the little straggling Village of Montreal, the home of de Maisonneuve and the seigneurs of the island. We have left it occasionally for Quebec, to consider it, as affected in its governmental relations with the headquarters of the governor general, but as we have in view also the greater Montreal of today, we must ask the reader's patience to allow us to record some vital elements in the suburban growth of the latter, the seeds of which are now being sown, and to watch the origins of the Canadian "noblesse" now being manufactured by letters patent in the neighbourhood of Montreal.
For years the fear of the Iroquois had huddled the Montrealers within narrow limits, and in the neighbourhood of the fort. There were few outlying stations, save that of the fortified house of Lambert Closse, who had been given on February 5, 1658, the first "noble fief" at Montreal, and the two redoubts or strongholds established by M. de Queylus for the seigneurs of the seminary. On the arrival of the troops the curé, M. Souart, had created a second "noble fief" for his nephew M. Hautmesnil between the River St. Lawrence and the Rivière des Prairies, and a third followed on the return of M. Queylus, given to La Salle.
Peace enabled the colonists to go further afield, and in 1671 the seigneurs determined to establish seigneurial manors for further protection against Iroquois incursions and to place on them, for the most part, the officers of the regiments left behind. A debt of gratitude was first paid to Sieur Picoté de Bélestre by a concession of land at Pointe aux Trembles, taking in Bout de l'Isle and extending to the Rivière des Prairies.
The northern part of the island facing the Rivière des Prairies and Ile Jésus--a dangerous spot--was chosen for two contiguous "noble fiefs" by Dollier de Casson on December 1, 1671 and given to Phillipe de Carion de Fresnoy, lieutenant in Lamothe's company, and Paul de Morel, ensign in the same company.
To strengthen the position of these seigneurs, Carion and de Morel, smaller concessions were granted nearby in the early months of 1672. On December 26th M. Zacharie Dupuis, the commandant of the town, received the letters patent of his seigneury of Verdun.
The southwest of the island, facing the Lake of the Two Mountains, had yet to be guarded, and on January 19th Dollier de Casson gave a fief to M. Sidrac de Gué, now Sieur de Boisbriant, and added "the neighbouring island and shallows" at a given denomination, which afterwards caused a lawsuit.
M. de Gué shortly sold his fief to Charles Le Moyne, Sieur de Longueuil, and Jacques Leber, his brother-in-law. It passed later to the son of the latter and became the fief of the Sieur de Senneville, as it was then named. In April[97] following, a seigneury was given to Charles d'Ailleboust des Musseaux, the judge. On July 30th the fief adjoining called "Belleville" was given to the brothers Louis de Bertet de Chailly and Gabriel de Bertet de la Joubardière. Finally a fourth, adjoining the latter, was assigned to M. Claude Robutel de Saint André.
The vulnerable points on the Island of Montreal thus being provided for, Talon determined to revert, as he says, "to the ancient custom of the Romans of distributing proedia militaria to the soldiers of a subjugated country," and the large distribution of "noble fiefs" and patents of nobility of officers and others likely to guard a country, dates mostly from the months of October and November of the year 1672. In order to further strengthen Montreal and the entrance of the Richelieu River,--both principal positions for Iroquois descents,--fiefs were given to Sieurs de Laubia, de Labadie, de Moras, de Normanville, de Berthier, de Comporte, de Randin, de la Valterie, M. Jean Baptiste Legardeur de Repentigny, the son of Captain de Saint Ours, and the Sieur de Berthelot, to whom was given Ile Jésus, originally conceded to the Jesuits but not having been cultivated, was yielded up by them on November 7, 1672.
All the above concessions were made on the left bank of the St. Lawrence, from Lake St. Peter to the head of the island, ascending to the Rivière des Prairies. From the mouth of the Richelieu and ascending up stream on the other side of the river many other concessions were made by Talon to de Sorel, du Pas, de Chambly, Chevalier Pierre de Saint Ours (captain of the Carignan-Sallières regiment), Antoine Pécaudy de Contrecoeur, de Vitré, de Verchères, de Varenne, de Grandmaison, Michel Messier, of Montreal, to whom was given the seigneury of St. Michel, and Jacques Le Moyne, also of Montreal, that of Cap de la Trinité; to Sidzac du Gué de Boisbriant, was given the Ile Thérèse facing Bout de l'Isle; to M. Boucher, the Seigneur de Boucherville, to Charles Le Moyne, two fiefs, one of which he called Longueuil, from his place of origin at Dieppe, in Normandy, and the other Chateauguay. To Zacharie Dupuis was given Heron Island; to M. Perrot the island below the southwest corner of the island, afterwards named Ile Perrot, after him, as well as Ile á la Paix, Iles aux Pins, Ste. Geneviève and St. Gilles.
This list of names has been given, since it is synonymous with that of many of the parishes hereafter erected in these districts, for not many of the seigneurs were as yet wealthy, and they could not fulfill the double condition of providing a village mill and a village church. Though noble in name, many were as poor as church mice. Having been granted their lands, for a nominal sum, in return for "fealty and homage," the new noble had to work hard to clear his land within a limited time, else he would forfeit it, for few had capital to work it. To make his claim permanent he had to subdivide his domain to cultivators en censive, or censitaires who tilled the land and paid his "cens et rente" on St. Martin's day to the seigneur, as was common at Montreal, in the shape of half a sou and a pint of wheat for each arpent. There were, however, restrictions such as having to grind his corn at the seigneur's mill, when there was one, for such was an expensive luxury. This was practically the only one of the "banalités," as they were called, of the French feudal system introduced into Canada, and it was not very much of a hardship. The "corvée" still existed, by which the seigneur could demand personal labor. In Canada this was about six days a year and was frequently remitted, as the seigneur found that the expense of food for the workers, etc., made it not worth his while to use their labour.
Not all the seigneurs were as diligent and as fortunate as Charles Le Moyne, of Montreal, who, from being the son of an innkeeper at Dieppe, founded the noble house of Longueuil and whose son Charles, Baron Longueuil, built a fort and a home which Frontenac said, gave an idea of the fortified châteaux of France.
Still many of these struggling nobles, with the revenue of a peasant, but who did sell their seigneuries, became fairly wealthy in time, and were the nucleus of the Canadian "noblesse" and "gentilhommes" for many a long day, though it must not be understood that all seigneurs were also ennobled, as in France.
Some of the lazier sort, who perchance looked to the "get rich quick" method of peltry trading, rather than the laborious toil of tilling the earth, were soon the victims of their own circumstances; for a few years later, in 1679, Duchesneau, the intendant, writing to the minister in France, says: "Many of our gentilhommes, officers and other holders of seigneuries, lead what in France is called the life of a country gentleman and spend most of their time in hunting and fishing. As their requirements in food and clothing are greater than those of the simple 'habitants' and as they do not devote themselves to improving their land, they mix themselves up in trade, run into debt on all hands, incite their young 'habitants' to range the woods and send their own children there to trade for furs in the Indian villages and in the depths of the forest, in spite of the prohibition of His Majesty. Yet, with all this, they are miserably poor."[98]
"It is pitiable," says another intendant, Champigny, in 1687, "to see their children, of which they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on them but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields."
Later, an intendant wrote to France not to create any more gentilhommes, for it meant making "beggars."
But it must be remembered that later letters of patent of nobility were not so easily granted as at this early tentative period, when noble, habitant, and peasant had a hard struggle with the soil to make all ends meet.
To form an idea of the establishment of a parish, it must be remembered that each seigneur was required to build a mill and a chapel to be served by a priest. The mill meant a heavy expense; the machinery had all to come from France, and the miller's wages had to be paid; the farmers, bringing grain, small in number. Beyond the three mills belonging to the seigneurs of the island at this period there was the one erected at Pointe aux Trembles and that erected by Jean Milot, a toolmaker, at a cost of 1,000 écus, after purchasing on November 9, 1670, La Salle's lands at Lachine, and that was finally taken over by the seminary also, on November 2, 1673. La Salle had been required to construct a mill, since his concession was larger than the military fiefs of 200 arpents granted to the other petty seigneurs. To these latter, the necessity of erecting their own mills was foregone on the stipulation that their grain and that of their censitaires, should be ground in the seminary mill.
The building of a parish church and providing a priest, both difficult tasks in this poverty-stricken time, were delayed for some time. The seminary meanwhile sent out its missioners to conduct services at Lachine and Pointe aux Trembles and the surrounding district. A temporary chapel was made in the rooms of farmers' houses as is done in country districts in the Northwest today. It was not till November 18, 1674, that the people of Pointe aux Trembles took definite steps for church erection, which resulted in the church of L'Enfant Jésus, blessed by the superior of the seminary on March 13, 1678, with the assistance of the curé of the new church and M. Jean Cavelier, brother of La Salle and a priest of the seminary.
The feudal system, prefigured by Richelieu long ago in his commission to the Marquis de la Roche and "following the custom of Paris," based on the tenure of land, was established as soon as peace was obtained, as the best method of building up the colony and of looking after private interests. It was a most suitable method for the time. The feudal absolutism then created, both of church and state, were necessary for the French at a period when they had not learned the first elements of self-government. The pity was that this system of leading strings was too prolonged and overdone, especially as later the French government did not do its duty by the people, thus preventing its progress by ruining its initiative. Had not the bolder spirits broken through it, we should not have had the redeeming point in the history of these times--the brilliant geographical discoveries. But in those early wild times the military civilization now forming and the paternal influence of the clergy at Montreal, seigneurs and parish priests, did much for that distinctively Canadian love of discipline and order, which is the foundation of the great and mighty people Canada is destined to be.
Talon, writing to Colbert on November 13, 1666, says: "I have already commenced the enfiefments by Montreal, the principal fief of this country, in receiving its 'foi et hommage' as also its 'aveux et dénombrements.'" A papier terrier, or land roll, was ordered to be made and a list of all the lands, houses and other properties accurately defined and registered. Uncertain titles were made clear and others made out that had been neglected.
The condition of land tenure was not onerous; the "cens and rentes" paid annually were not an equivalent for value received but a simple recognition of the legal primitive right of the seigneurs, on property given. Thus at Montreal, land sites on the portion reserved for the future town, had been given on the annual payment of five sous an arpent, while on those in the town itself all the annual revenue demanded was a liard for each fathom.
In all the Island of Montreal the tax for each arpent of land was two liards and a half pint of wheat. Thus the receiver of 100 arpents only paid fifty sous and fifty pints of wheat. In the first years, as the soil was not thought to be at its full value, he was relieved of all taxation. Sometimes, even the above slight tax was, for sufficient reason, modified. When any farm or small holding was sold or it passed by inheritance to collaterals, the seigneurs were entitled to "lods et ventes," a tax of one-twelfth of the estimated value of the land. This was usually paid within forty days of the transfer and a rebate was generally given of one-third, but not necessarily. If the farm was sold at a price lower than the seigneur thought proper, he had the right to purchase it back at the estimated value on which the tax of one-twelfth had been demanded. This system was by no means unjust. The seigneur gained very little, for during two centuries there were many lands which passed from father to son, or were passed on by donation without anything accruing to the seigneur who, it must be remembered, had practically granted the lands free to the "censitaires." It was only in later years when the lands became of substantial value that the "lods et rentes" gave a real source of income to them.
The feudal system worked well. Being based on land tenure, it centralized the people and made them powerful against attack, out of proportion to their numbers, as New England found later. It was as wise a system for New France as the introduction into Massachusetts "of free and common soccage."
It was wisely handled, on a more democratic basis than that of France, and there were no real grievances. The habitants and seigneurs moved side by side; indeed they frequently exchanged places. The class distinctions were never thus very arbitrarily defined as in France.
Whatever we may think of the military seigneuries, that of the Sulpicians of Montreal was very beneficial. Their rule was progressive and zealous. Speaking of such religious seigneurs William Bennett Munroe, Ph. D., professor of government, Harvard University, in his chapter in Volume II of "Canada and Its Provinces, 1912," entitled "The Seigniorial System and the Colony," says: "The priests seem to have had faith in the colony--which was more than could be said of all the Carignan officers who took lands from the king. This faith and optimism the priests often communicated to the people around them, and the results were seen in the neighbouring farms. The church in New France never lost, as at home, its grip on the confidence of those from whom it drew its chief strength--the rural classes. While it may seem that the crown was lavish to a fault in satisfying its claim to landed property, yet the church really gave the colony far more than it took away; for, if ever there abode on this earth labours worthy of their hire, these were the pioneer priests whose loyalty and devotion to France appear on every page of early Canadian history. The church owed much to the seigniorial system, but it made ample repayment." (P. 566.)
The parish life of Montreal, as that also of subsequent parishes, was that of an organized community or civil corporation. The head was the seigneur. One section, composed of those able to bear arms, formed the militia with its officers.
The seigneur could appoint its judge, and if unable to provide one, he could turn the cases arising to a neighbouring court, such as at Montreal. In addition, there would be the greffier, or clerk of the court, sergeants and the gaoler.
Municipal affairs were, at this time, managed at the "hangar," on the common of Montreal, through the syndic who had been appointed by a plurality of votes of the inhabitants in council, summoned thither by church bell. At these elections the judge was present as presiding officer, replacing the greffier, as mentioned in a previous chapter, and he was accompanied by the procureur fiscal and the greffier. Sometimes this election, for greater formality, was made in the hall of the seigneurs or at the château of the fort, as in the case of the election of syndic, Louis Chevalier, on May 15, 1672.
The syndic controlled the general law and order, and when necessary, called in the judge to his assistance, as on April 8, 1674, when the judge fined some delinquents, on the complaint of Louis Chevalier, then syndic, for damage done by straying cattle.
In order to surround the officers of the community with some dignity, various ranks were assigned, so that there should be an order of procedure in church or elsewhere, and notably in processions. In the latter the order was as follows: the governor general, the local governor, the officers of justice, the churchwardens. In the processions and in other religious ceremonies the military could claim no rank.
The marguilliers, or churchwardens, for their election needed an official document drawn up by the public notary, since they were an important body, being empowered to make contracts in the name of the Fabrique, and to make acquisitions and alienations. Zacharie Dupuis, major of the island, in 1666 is mentioned in such an act as honorary churchwarden. Up to 1676 these officers were elected by a general gathering, but at this date Laval ordered that the system, obtaining at Quebec since 1660, of election by secret votes, certified by past and present churchwardens, should be adopted in other parishes. In some localities, besides the marguilliers there was appointed a treasurer, or receiver of gifts or of fines made applicable to the Fabrique by the judge and other magistrates. According to custom, the parish church of each place was maintained by the inhabitants, as well as the establishment of the cemetery, and the preservation of its enclosure from damage. On one occasion we find at Montreal that cattle had broken into the enclosure, and the palisading had to be repaired.
No general taxation was made but it was ordered, in a general assembly, that M. Frémont, one of the priests of the cemetery, should go accompanied by one of the parishioners to canvass all the sections of the parish for a subscription for the purpose. Nevertheless we find that if the parishioners neglected their Easter duty of providing "blessed bread" for the church or chapel, an ordinance of Quebec of January 13, 1670, condemned them to an arbitrary fine.
As to the soldiers remaining after Tracy's departure, they had other duties beside the peopling of the colony. According to the feudal system incorporated by Talon, they were to take up land and incidentally be thus, by their presence, a safeguard for others against Iroquois attack. Montreal district, being the head and front of Iroquois invasion, consequently welcomed these colonists, and from Lake St. Peter to Lachine, on both sides of the St. Lawrence, fiefs were granted large and small to officers and men. Chambly, Sorel, Saint Ours, Contrecoeur, de Berthier, de la Valterie, Varenne, Verchères, soldiers' names, mark military seigneuries established about this time. Thus strong sentinel posts were, by Talon's masterly statesmanship, gradually linked together by this band of soldiers now turned husbandmen after the fashion prevailing since the Roman invasions of Gaul and Britain. The holdings were near one another and were called "côtes." We have named several of them as already existing in the vicinity of Montreal.
The work of opening up the land was the great hope of the king. About this time horses began to be employed, for up to July 16, 1665, they were unknown to the Indians, and great was their astonishment to see the twelve French "elks" that arrived that day, and the docility with which they obeyed their masters. It was a great honour indeed to possess one of these. Of the consignment of one stallion and twelve mares in 1670, the following distribution was made: the stallion and a mare to M. Chambly, two to M. Lachenaye, and one each to MM. Talon the intendant, Saint Ours, Sorel, Contrecoeur, Varenne, Latouche, Repentigny, La Chesnaye, and Leber. They were given with a view to their multiplication and, indeed, of all the other animals sent, the horses were the most prolific and successful. The conditions to be observed were: they should be kept in condition for three years; if any died during that time through the fault of the "donné," he should pay the king's receiver the sum of 200 livres. After the expiration of three years he might sell it and the foals, one of which he was to keep for the king's receiver, as well as the sum of 100 livres. It was further ordered that when these foals, given to the king's receiver, had reached the third year, they were to be given to private individuals as before on the same terms. Thus the stock breeding was merrily continued.
Cattle were sent to New France at this period, thus: 1665, 12 mares, 2 stallions, 7 sheep; 1667, 12 mares, 2 stallions, 29 sheep; 1668, 15 horses, 44 sheep; 1669, 14 horses, 50 sheep; 1670, 13 horses; 1671, horses and asses.
The asses sent in 1671 were distributed as follows: Sieur Marsollet, a male ass; Sieur Neveau, a female ass; the Jesuit Fathers, one male and one female ass; M. Dudouyt, a female; M. Damours, a female; M. de Villieu, a female; Sieur de Longchamps, a female; Bourg Royal, a female; Sieur Morin, a female. These did not suit the climate so readily.[99]
The cost of these horses and sheep was great. Each mare cost 120 livres, each stallion, 200, the sheep, about 6 livres apiece. In 1665 the transportation and feed of the consignment cost 11,200 livres. By November, 1671, Talon wrote that there were enough horses. Cows and pigs had already become as familiar as in France. It will be remembered that in 1647 a horse was sent for M. Montmagny, the governor general. In these early days the birch bark canoe was more useful than the horse, for the rivers were then the only highways.
Later on Montrealers became so interested in horse rearing that, "ignorant of their true interests," they had to be forbidden by Intendant Raudot in 1709 to possess more than two horses or mares, and one foal, for fear of neglecting the rearing of horned cattle.
But it must not be supposed that these seigneuries and small holdings grew up like mushrooms. The farmer's initiation for the first two or three years was a rough one. It was only by very patient labour, and, little by little, that the lands were cleared, tilled, and the modest house put up, and an assured means of easy livelihood secured. The cultivators had to follow the same strenuous methods that those, opening their concessions in the Northwest, employ today.
At Montreal, while there was still fear of the Iroquois, we have seen how difficult it was to work the fields, and how, for mutual protection, they had temporarily to till small portions of the seigneur's domain till they could safely go farther afield. But in 1664, when it was known that the king's troops were coming, many obtained new concessions on Côte St. Louis, some towards the mountain, some at the foot of the current near the fortified farm of Ste. Marie. In 1665 many resolved to go below the foot of the current and beyond the River St. Peter, for the lands on this side of the river, and especially those at Point St. Charles, had already been conceded, and although abandoned during the wars, were still claimed. East and west, the colonists now went afield to Côte St. Martin, Côte St. François (later called Longue Pointe), Côte St. Anne, Côte St. Jean (later called Pointe aux Trembles). At the latter place in 1669, land was given to Jean Oury with the intention of a village church and mill, being erected thereon.
These côtes were restricted to their river neighbourhood to guard the settlements from Iroquois descents by the stream.
This same plan was adopted along the whole length of the St. Lawrence. "It is pleasant to see at present," says the "Relation" of 1668, "nearly all the banks of our River St. Lawrence peopled with new colonies, with new villages rising, which facilitate navigation and render the journey, more agreeable by the sight of the houses, and more convenient by the frequent resting places offered."
All were not as diligent as could be desired in putting up within the year stipulated hearth and home (feu et lieu), or in clearing their concessions. Consequently when Talon was in Montreal in May, 1670, in consequence of just complaints he ordered that in future no copyholder should be granted land unless, in addition to building his homestead, he should put two arpents under cultivation yearly under penalty of forfeiting his grant, unless he could prove illness or other strong cause restraining him. Moreover, in the new contract, it was to be stipulated that no one could claim title to his land until he had put up his buildings and had placed two arpents in cultivation, with a pickaxe, for up to this, as seen by the concessions preserved in the archives up to 1657, a man had been thought to have tilled his ground if he had felled the trees and had uprooted all the roots which were a foot in diameter or upwards, and had used the others in such a way that a cart could pass along without obstacle.
Yet there were still difficulties, for on January 12, 1675, the Seigneurs put up the following public notice at the parish church, the fort, and the different mills:
"We have learned from many complaints, that several of our tenants take no trouble, not only to establish their homes on their lands and to put them to use, but even neglect to fell the timber, or to keep in order the little space they have cleared on taking possession. This negligence retards the advancement of the colony and prevents many strangers coming to take up land in this island and to dwell here. It causes a dearth of wheat and grain from which the people have suffered during the past two years. Finally it entirely ruins the adjoining lands already tilled, both because of the continued shadows which the standing woods cast on them, and because the squirrels and other small animals left on these uncultivated lands leave them to eat and destroy the greater part of the grain to the ruin of other lands."
To remedy this the seigneurs gave their tenants four months to put their lands in order and to cut down all standing timber on pain of forfeiture to the seigneurial domain.
Even in cutting down the timber there were abuses at Montreal. To provide against the carelessness of riverside cultivators, as all were at this time, in dumping their lumber into the river, Talon issued the following order in October, 1670: "Whereas it has been pointed out to us that the inhabitants of Montreal between Ste. Marie and La Petite Chine (Lachine) have cut their timber so that, having fallen into the river, it prevents navigation and blocks communication, we order them to cut their wood into logs and to place them on the stream in such a way that they may be carried away with the ice when it melts this year."
These logs could then be sold at Quebec in return for the necessities of life.
The history of the first public roads and bridges at Montreal now begins as the outcome of all this clearing and passing of carts to and fro. In the procès verbal of the road from Pointe aux Trembles to the stream, Jean des Roches gives us an insight into the formalities usually pursued. When the habitants had asked for a road, the Seigneurs or their representatives would meet them at the place indicated, when the projected road was traced and landmarks placed at intervals stamped with the lead seal of the Seigneurs. After the new road was clearly defined, a statement was drawn up, and then each proprietor set to work to clear the road space running through his property; if a bridge was necessary, one of logs was constructed; if a stream had to be crossed, being common property, all contributed to the construction of this as a public work. Thus the first bridge was thrown over the St. Pierre by order of M. Talon, dated October 24, 1670.
Several roads had already been partially made, e. g., from the redoubt of L'Enfant Jésus to Petit Lac (or the marsh which is now occupied by Place Viger and a part of St. Denis and Craig Streets); from the Coteau St. Louis to that of Ste. Marie; and provisional roads were made through the woods on either side of the River St. Pierre, and the marshy roads made practicable by log foundations or log bridges.
All these roads were eighteen feet broad, with the exception of the road bordering the River St. Lawrence, which Talon fixed at twenty feet; but the Seigneurs raised it to thirty-six feet seeing that it was used as a towing path for the horses drawing the bateaux between the currents and the rapids, and as it was the principal means of communication and circulation between the lower and higher parts of the island, they ordered the riverside owners to keep it in order. To indemnify them for the loss of this extra space, other land was added to the other extremity of their concessions. As most of these improvements took place under Intendant Talon, Abbé de Queylus and Dollier de Casson, city planners may know to whom honour is due.
NOTE
FORTS AND REDOUBTS BUILT ON THE ISLAND OF MONTREAL
(According to H. Beaugrand and P. L. Morin "Le Vieux Montréal.")
Ste. Marie (Barriere), fort in wood, 1658; St. Gabriel, fort in wood, 1659; Verdun, fort in wood, 1662; Rolland, fort in wood, 1670; Rémy, redoubt in wood, 1671; Lachine, redoubt in wood, 1672; Cuillérier, redoubt in wood, 1672; Gentilly (afterwards La Présentation), redoubt in wood, 1674; Pointe aux Trembles, fort in wood, 1675; The Mountain, fort in stone, 1677; Ste. Anne (Bellevue), redoubt in wood, 1683; Rivière des Prairies, redoubt in wood, 1688; Mission de Lorette, redoubt in wood, 1689; Senneville, fort in stone, 1692; Pointe St. Charles, redoubt in wood, 1695; Bout de l'isle, redoubt in wood, 1697; Longue Pointe, redoubt in wood, 1724; Sault-au-Récollet, redoubt in wood, 1736.
OUTSIDE THE ISLAND OF MONTREAL
St. Lambert, redoubt in wood, 1665; Boucherville, redoubt in wood, 1668; La Prairie, fort in wood, 1670; Varennes, redoubt in wood, 1693; Ste. Thérèse (Island), redoubt in wood, 1699; Brucy (Ile Perrot), redoubt in wood, 1708; Longueuil, fort in stone, 1715; Le Tremblay, redoubt in wood, 1716; St. Laurent, redoubt in wood, 1720; Lake of Two Mountains, fort in stone, 1721; St. Louis, redoubt in wood, 1735; Chateaugay, redoubt in wood, 1736; Beauharnois, redoubt in wood, 1737; Ste. Geneviève, redoubt in wood, 1758.
NAMES OF FIEFS ERECTED IN THE ISLAND OF MONTREAL
Carion, Morel, Verdun, Boisbriant, St. André, d'Ailleboust, Bellevue, St. Augustine, Lachine, Lagauchetière, St. Joseph, Nazareth, Hôtel-Dieu.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] These dates mark the actual conferring of the patents of the noble fief. In many instances, concessions had been granted and worked, in anticipation of the honour.
[98] Quoted by Parkman, Old Régime, page 257.
[99] Etat de la distribution des anesses et anons envoyés de France en Canada en l'année 1671.
Chapter XIX
1666-1672
ECONOMICAL PROGRESS
INDUSTRIES, TRADE AND LABOUR
COMMERCE--MINING--SHIP BUILDING--INDUSTRIES--A "MUNICIPAL" BREWERY--THE FIRST MARKET--PRICES--LABOUR--MEDICAL MEN
Farming is the backbone of a nation's prosperity. Hence Louis XIV, through Colbert and Talon, made this as we have seen their first solicitude. Commerce comes next, and in May, 1664, the king gave letters patent to the Company of the Western Indies, which should equip vessels to trade with the French colonies, giving it the exclusive right of trading with America. He gave it extensive backing, but in spite of his sacrifices he had to suppress it in 1674, ten years after its formation. It was accused of abuses of power, like the preceding monopolies.
Talon turned his attention to the exploitation of mines, which might give many an occupation. In the month of October, 1669, Mère de l'Incarnation writes: "They have discovered a fine lead or tin mine forty leagues beyond Montreal, with a slate quarry and a coal mine. Copper mines were also discovered near Lake Superior."
In 1672 the first ship built in Canadian waters was launched. Its capacity was four to five hundred tons. Previously Canadian wood had been sent to France for the royal dockyards. Perhaps some of the Montreal oaks that had been sent floating down stream to Quebec found a destination in the wooden walls of France.
General industries were favoured by the king, and Talon was told to spare no effort in opening out its various branches. Soon the enterprising intendant was accredited by Marie l'Incarnation and the historians of the "Relations" with initiating hemp, cloth, serge, soap, woolen, tanning, shoe, pots and brewing industries. The latter was especially encouraged as an offset against the dangerous evil dimensions of the strong liquor traffic in Canada.
The records of the city archives for June 23, 1672, give the details of a general assembly of the principal representatives of Montreal to build a large brewery to supplant that already in existence, and now found by experience, after the advent of the soldiers to be too small for the needs of the growing community. The money for this apparently municipal venture was borrowed from the Gentlemen of the Seminary, the only bankers of the time. Two water mills now began to be constructed, since with the advent of the soldiers, the old windmill at the fort and that of the "Côteau" no longer sufficed.
The manufacture of homespun materials was encouraged by Talon, but as yet it did not make much headway. Still Talon, writing in 1671 to Colbert, could report that he had caused drugget, coarse camlet, étamine, serge, woolen cloth and leather to be manufactured in Canada, adding: "I have, of Canadian make, the wherewithal to clothe myself from head to foot."
The first market place was opened in 1676 opposite the seigneurial manor house, which was established on St. Paul Street, and its site was the land now occupied today by the Inland Revenue and that running down to the river. Up to its opening, all sales had been conducted in private houses. The market was held every Tuesday and Friday from 8 o'clock A. M. in summer and 9 A. M. in winter to 11 o'clock A. M., and as there was no public clock then in the city the hour of commencing and closing were sounded by the parish church bell.
Some market prices of the period may be cited. M. Boucher, in his "Natural History of New France," written about 1663, says that a minot of wheat (French measure, 39 litres) cost 20 sous and sometimes 6 francs. After the arrival of the troops it sold for no more than 3 livres. In 1669, creditors were bound to receive the wheat of their debtors at 4 livres the minot. Under M. d'Argenson a barrel of 500 eels was sold for 25 to 30 francs. A hundred planks, 10 feet long, 10 inches broad and 1 inch thick, were worth 50 livres. Butter was sold at 12 to 16 sous a pound. An ox of seven to eight years, good for slaughter, went for 200 livres; an ordinary sow, 30 livres; a pig, good for killing, from 45 to 50 livres.
The day's work of a mason, a carpenter and a joiner was paid at the rate of 40 sous; that of a good manual labourer, 30 sous. Hired servants, after their time of service was completed, obtained 30 to 45 écus yearly, although their board cost their masters 200 livres, and in bad times 300. In 1663, day labourers, when boarded, were paid in winter at the rate of 2 sous and 30 in the summer. But after the arrival of the soldiers and the increase of population, prices were raised accordingly. By a judgment of the court of Montreal in 1667 the daily wage of manual labourers was valued at 40 sous and of artisans at 3 livres.
The master and apprentice system was not in vogue in Canada in these days, and everyone could set up for himself. Let us hope it was not so with the doctors, of whom there were from July 8, 1669, to the end of the following year, at least five, practicing in Montreal: Etienne Bouchard and Forestier, partners; René Sauvageau de Maisonneuve and Jean Rouxelle de la Rousillière, partners; and Jean Martinet de Fontblanche. The latter, later, had an "apprentice," for in the act of January 15, 1674, by Notary Basset, we find him promising to teach his brother-in-law, Paul Prud'homme, in the three years and a half with him, his art of surgeon and everything connected with that profession. In these days the first health officers of Canada were surgeons, pharmacists, doctors, dentists, apothecaries, all in one. They were officially mentioned as "surgeons" probably because the art of surgery in the time of hostility with the Iroquois was more in demand than that of any other department of medicine.
Montreal was a small enough place to support five medical men, especially as the treatment at the Hôtel-Dieu was gratuitous. In 1669, in the month of August, the letters patent confirming this body as a permanent and authorized corporation were granted.
Chapter XX
1666-1672
COLONIZATION AND POPULATION
ENCOURAGEMENT OF MARRIAGE--BACHELORS TAXED--"FILLES DU ROI"--DOWRIES--PENSIONS FOR LARGE FAMILIES--MONTREAL HEALTHY FOR WOMEN--NOTE ON IMMIGRATION.
One of the outstanding failures in New France so far had been that of inadequate attempts to increase the number of colonists. This the king was now anxious to remedy. To this end, when the war was over, through the efforts of Colbert and Talon and before Tracy had left with his glittering train, he offered inducements to the Carignan soldiers to remain as colonists and to take up land. To each such concessions of land were granted with a bonus of 100 livres, or fifty livres and provisions for one year. The sergeants would receive a year's provisions and one hundred to one hundred and fifty livres. Thus 400 of the Carignan regiment remained to swell the population.
To increase this number six infantry companies of fifty-three men each were sent back in 1669. To each of the six captains he gave a bonus of 1,000 livres, with another 6,000 to be divided among the lieutenants and ensigns. This military colonization largely influenced the future of Canada.
To encourage permanent settlement efforts were now redoubled to provide wives for the men. In 1665, 100 girls were sent over. In 1666, twice as many; in 1667, and 1668, still more; in 1669, 150 and the same in 1670. An ordinance published in Montreal November 30, 1670, shows the efforts of the government to promote match-making--all volontaires and others not married being forbidden the privilege of hunting, fishing and trading with the savages[100] and even of entering the bush under any pretext whatever, the latter prohibition probably being intended to prevent a bachelor finding a temporary Indian substitute for a French wife. Bachelors had a hard time. Colbert, writing to Talon on February 20, 1668, says: "It will be appropriate that those, who seem to have renounced wedlock, shall have to bear additional charges and to be deprived of all honours and even to have some marks of infamy added to them."
To press the execution of these commands, all those soldiers and unattached workers not having taken up land, were ordered to marry within fifteen days of the arrival of the ships bearing the girls. Thus, Marie de l'Incarnation tells us, in 1669, that no sooner are the vessels arrived than the young men go wife hunting, and marriages are celebrated thirty at a time.
Among the children of those already settled, early marriages were encouraged. "I pray you," wrote Colbert to Talon on February 20, 1668, "to command it to the consideration of the whole people that their property, their subsistence, and all that is dear to them, depend on a general resolution, never to be departed from, to marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years, and girls at fourteen or fifteen; since abundance can never come to them except through the abundance of men." And for this purpose the "king's present" of twenty livres to each of the contracting parties was given. Fathers of families, according to the decrees of the state council of this period, who did not marry their boys and girls when they had reached the ages of twenty-one and sixteen were fined, and following this up, they had to appear every six months after before the clerk of the court to give reason for further delays under penalty of fines to be made applicable to the hospitals.
We have already given indication of the extreme care that had been exercised at Montreal in the reception of such prospective mothers of the colony; how Marguerite Bourgeoys had herself brought over on her different voyages girls of noted virtue, whom she trained to become good housewives, and for many she found eligible partners in life.
At Quebec a similar work was carried on, by a Madame Bourdon, with motherly skill and devotion. If she was not as successful as Marguerite Bourgeoys this was not surprising, since the latter was singularly endowed by nature for such a task.
These girls were chaperoned, across the ocean, by the nuns or pious persons, or by Madame Bourdon herself, and then placed under her charge until marriage. We find an item of expense for 1671 paid by the king to a Demoiselle Etienne for the care she had taken in taking girls from the general hospital to Canada and in looking after them till they were married. These were received by Madame Bourdon.
Human nature, being very much the same then as now, we can imagine that some of these girls, drawn from the orphanages of Paris and Lyons, and carefully trained by the nuns, were rude and difficult to handle, but on the whole the venture was a great success. There was, of course, as Marie de l'Incarnation says, in 1668, "mixed goods," and in 1689, "along with honest people a great deal of 'canaille,' of both sexes who cause a great deal of scandal."
But such care was taken from the very beginning of colonization, since New France was viewed in the nature of a mission field, only to send persons of good repute and to deport undesirables, that French Canadians have no need to blush at their parentage. The families descending from the Carignan soldiers may point with pride to their origins. A caustic writer, La Hontan, writing twenty years after, by his amusing, witty, and scurrilous descriptions of the matrimonial market of this period, has done much to slander these early marriages, but he is discredited, and his version is regarded as a caricature and maliciously untrue, as Parkman points out.
These girls were called "les filles du roi," since they were maintained at the charge of the king's bounty in the philanthropic orphanages of France. At Montreal, under Marguerite Bourgeoys, they were lodged with her in a house bought by Saint Ange, since the old stable was too small. There, they were carefully instructed in religion and practical affairs to become good mothers of families, and they did not leave her till the day of their marriages. At this time, a pious congregation of lay women was formed by Marguerite Bourgeoys; these met on Sundays for the practice of virtue and many of the newly arrived girls were kept in touch with the gentle and motherly Marguerite, long after their marriages. It was from this date that her home began to be affectionately spoken of as "The Congregation."
In addition to girls of a humble class, demoiselles of a more superior station were also encouraged to come to provide wives for the officers and others, of whom Colbert wished to form the nucleus of a Canadian noblesse. Several others, who first thought of passing through the noviceship at the Hôtel-Dieu and joining the Hospitalières Sisters, found their vocation otherwise, like Perrine de Bélestre, sister of Picoté, who married Michel Godefroy, Sieur de Linlot, at Three Rivers.
When the king's daughters married, they were given the king's dowry, varying in form and value. Sometimes it was a house with provisions for eight months, more often, fifty livres in household supplies, besides a barrel or two of salted meat.[101] And when they were married they were encouraged to rear up a fruitful progeny, for in the "Edits et Ordonnances" of the Province of Quebec, p. 67, a decree is found that "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, monks or nuns, shall each be paid out of the moneys sent by His Majesty to the said country a pension of 300 livres a year, and those who shall have twelve children a pension of 400 livres; and that to this effect they shall be required to declare the number of their children every year, in the months of June or July, to the intendant of justice, police and finance, established in the same country, who having verified the same, shall order the payment of the said pensions, one-half in cash, and the other half at the end of eight years." Furthermore, he ordered that fathers of large families should have preference over others unless there was strong contrary reason. The decreasing birth rate in France at that period prompted such regulations in New France. The king's activity through Colbert in peopling his colony is seen in numerous letters to his officials. In an instruction to the Intendant Bouteroue in 1668 Colbert writes: "The end and rule of all your conduct should be the increase of the colony; and on this point I should never be satisfied, but labour without ceasing to find every imaginable expedient for preserving the inhabitants, attracting new ones and multiplying marriages."
These encouragements bore fruit. Laval, writing in 1668, says: "The families of our French people in this country are very numerous; for the most part they consist of eight, ten, twelve, and sometimes as many as fifteen or sixteen children. The savages, on the contrary, have only two or three and rarely do they go beyond four."
The Abbé de Queylus, now superior of the seminary at Montreal, wrote to Colbert on May 15, 1669, that owing to the efforts of the king "the number of the inhabitants of New France has increased two-thirds."
The population propaganda at Montreal was left largely to the seigneurs of the seminary. In 1666, there were 582 persons; in 1667, there were 766; in 1672, the population was doubled to 1,500 or 1,600 souls, as Dollier de Casson relates in his account of this year, which is the concluding chapter of his "History of Montreal."
We may fitly conclude this chapter by giving two of the worthy Dollier's reflections:
"First reflection, on the advantage that the women have in this place (Montreal) over men, which is, that although the cold climate is very healthy for the one and the other sex, it is incomparably to the advantage of the feminine, which finds itself here almost immortal--this is what everyone says since the birth of this settlement and what I myself have remarked for six years, for although there are fourteen to fifteen thousand souls here, there has only been the death of one woman for the last six years."
"The second reflection will be on the facility which people of this sex have of marrying here, a fact which is apparently clear to all the world since it is practiced every year, but which is admirably shown by an example I am going to tell you of one qui sera assez rare. It is of a woman who, having this year lost her husband, has had one of the bans published, and being dispensed of the two others had her marriage performed and consummated before her first husband was buried. These two reflections in my opinion will be sufficiently strong to thin out the Hôpital de la Pitié and to secure a good party of girls from all the Paris orphanages if only they are desirous, to live long, or to cultivate a devotion to the seventh of our sacraments."
NOTE
IMMIGRATION--1665-1670
The Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, which had been granted the domain of New France from May 16, 1664, one year after the forced retirement of the Hundred Associates, brought over on the king's account, in 1665,[3] 429 men and 100 women and girls; in 1667,[3] 184 men and 92 women and girls; and in 1668,[102] 244 of both sexes.
In addition, during the above period 422 officers and soldiers of Carignan regiment were established in the colony. In 1666 the company sent out on its own account 35 hired men (engagés); in 1669,[4] 200 men and 150 women; in 1670,[4] 100 men and 100 women; in 1671,[103] 100 men and 150 women; in 1672, the war in Holland stopped the movement.
In 1670 there came five companies of fifty men each, making with their officers an effective force of 266. Thus for the first period we have sent at the king's account about one thousand four hundred persons, and for the second 1,116 about two thousand five hundred and sixteen in all. But there was a certain number of others who came to find a position, or were brought over by the owners of fiefs or by the seigneurs of Montreal.
Talon encouraged marriages so that with the establishments of the officers and the soldiers, joined to the activity of the emigration movement from 1665 to 1668, the families had more than doubled their numbers, and the population was also almost doubled during this period.
In 1665 the first census under Talon shows, at the commencement of 1666, 3,215 souls and 533 families; at the commencement of 1668, 6,282 souls and 1,132 families.
Yet the official report of Frontenac in 1673 after the departure of Talon gave only a population of 6,705. This seems incredible and Colbert expressed surprise. From 1669 to 1672 the king had sent over 820 persons without counting the soldiers arriving in 1670. Add to this the material increase, the six to seven hundred births of 1671 and those of 1672, estimated in advance by Laval at 1,100, and it is difficult to admit that the population had only increased by 423 souls from 1668 to 1673. The census of 1675 gives 7,833. This is more reasonable and leads to the conclusion that the returns of 1673 were too small.
The population of Montreal, according to Morin "Le Vieux Montreal," was as follows: 1642, 72; 1650, 196; 1660, 472; 1665, 525; 1667, 760; 1662, 830; 1680, 1,400; 1690, 1,567; 1700, 2,100; 1710, 3,492; 1720, 5,314; 1730, 6,351; 1740, 7,710; 1750, 8,224; 1760, 8,321.
FOOTNOTES:
[100] François Le Noir was summoned before the judge at Montreal in December, 1670, for breaking this ordinance.
[101] In the manuscript notes by Jacques Viger kept in St. Mary's College, Montreal, the writer mentions one extract from the deliberations of the "Conseil Souverain," held at Quebec on October 27, 1663, showing how these marriageable girls were disposed of, and the dowry given by His Most Christian Majesty. "Des filles arrivées cette année par les vaisseaux du roy il en sera envoyé dix à Montréal et quatre aux Trois Rivières, et leur sera donné à chacune une barrique de farine, une paire de souliers, une paire de bas, une couverte, un just'a corps, cinquante livres de lard, dix pots d'eau de vie pour aider à marier, comme on a fait à celles qui ont été envoyées icy à Québec.
(Signé) PEUVRET."
[102] See letters of Marie l'Incarnation, Vol. II.
[103] See letters of Colbert.
Chapter XXI
1667-1672
EXPEDITIONS FROM MONTREAL
LA SALLE--DOLLIER DE CASSON--DE COURCELLES
A FEUDAL VILLAGE AND ITS YOUNG SEIGNEUR--LA SALLE'S JESUIT TRAINING--AN EX-JESUIT--THE SEIGNEURY OF ST. SULPICE--SOLD--THE FEVER FOR EXPLORATION--LA SALLE, DOLLIER DE CASSON AND GALINEE--SOLDIER OUTRAGES ON INDIANS--THE EXPEDITION TO LAKES ERIE AND ONTARIO--LA SALLE RETURNS--HIS SEIGNEURY NICKNAMED "LA CHINE"--THE SULPICIANS TAKE POSSESSION OF LAKE ERIE FOR LOUIS XIV--RETURN TO MONTREAL--DE GALINEE'S MAP--THE SUBSEQUENT EXPEDITION OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL, DE COURCELLES.
One of the feudal villages rising at this period was that now known as Lachine. Its original name was St. Sulpice. It was granted provisionally in 1667 as a fief to René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, a brother of M. Jean Cavelier, a young doctor in theology and a Sulpician who had joined the seminary at Montreal on September 7, 1666.
La Salle, as the former is known to us, became afterwards the celebrated discoverer of the Mississippi down to the sea and as a Montrealer deserves special notice here.
He was born at Rouen, November 21, 1643, and was educated at the Jesuit College there. In his fifteenth year he entered the Jesuit noviceship, on October 5, 1658. During the two years of noviceship, the père maître, or novice master, had a difficult task to train the impetuous, vigorous, impressionable, headstrong, exuberant, healthy youth of fifteen, to the calm regularity of obedience, and the soldierly, intellectual routine demanded by the Jesuit traditions; but it is just this type of strong character, so powerful for good, if brought under wise subjection, that the Jesuits love to mould; and so the young man was allowed to take the simple vows of Evangelical Poverty, Chastity and Obedience on October 10, 1660. The next two years he spent as a Jesuit scholastic at the Royal College of La Flèche studying philosophy and the physical sciences, showing ability in the latter courses. Instead of finishing the third year, the restless young man went out to teach as a Jesuit professor at Alençon for a year. He then resumed his delayed third year. From October, 1664, to October, 1665, he taught at Tours, and from 1665 to 1668 at Blois. In the September of 1666 he returned to La Flèche to study theology. He was then only twenty-three years of age, and had been promoted to the theology course seven or eight years ahead of the usual Jesuit course, because his inability to stay long in any one place and his want of success in a humdrum professorship for which he had no taste, and which was irritating to him and his students, forced his superiors to allow him to hurry through his studies, thinking doubtless that this ardent spirit might find congenial work in the distant mission fields with every facility for exercising his fiery zeal, with less restraint, and under less conventional circumstances than in France.
This resolution was brought about by Cavelier's own insistency in demanding immediately the foreign missions, in a letter of April 5th, written from Blois, to the general of the Jesuits, Jean Paul Oliva. The general on May 4, 1666, answered temporizingly to the young man, advising him to continue his studies and prepare himself usefully for the sacred ministry, and in the meantime maintain that most "perfect indifference," which is one of the most striking characteristics of the Jesuit philosophical training and has been subjected to so much criticism of praise or blame. To this Cavelier replied that he had still the same desire, but the general wrote that he could give no different reply. To understand Cavelier's nature he is described in the Jesuit informations of the time as "inquietus" and "scrupulosus," which words are very nearly English. Hardly had the theological studies at La Flèche commenced than he wrote to the general, on December 1, 1666, asking to be sent to Portugal for his studies. No doubt the restless Cavelier was undergoing a nervous strain of scrupulosity and doubt as to his fitness for religious and priestly life, and he thought that he could find peace of mind again in a change of scene. The general replied kindly, bidding him remain quietly in his own "Province," to conclude his studies, and after the third year of probational novitiate, which all Jesuits undergo after being ordained and before taking their final "solemn" vows, his zealous desire for the foreign missions would be satisfied.
This answer brought to a head Cavelier's doubts as to his fitness for the calmer repose of a studious life. On the one hand there were holding him his three simple vows, not lightly to be laid down, and to which he had been doubtless substantially faithful; on the other, he felt that his natural character was impelling him to a freer life than that of restrained self-sacrifice he had honourably tried to follow up. So that making use of the privilege of a Jesuit scholastic, not irrevocably bound to the Society till the taking of the last vows, and after laying his conscience open to his superior and not "hiding his moral infirmities," and probably exaggerating them, he applied, canonically, for his letters of release. By January 28th, in the year following, the final application was sent to Rome by the Jesuit rector of La Flèche, and on March 1st, the general, Jean Paul Oliva, wrote to the Jesuit provincial of France: "After a serious examination of the informations which you have sent us, we authorize you to accept the resignation of Robert Ignatius Cavelier, approved scholastic." Ignatius was a name taken by Cavelier on taking his simple vows in 1660 in admiration of Ignatius Loyola, the soldier saint and founder of the Society of Jesus.
Robert Ignatius Cavelier left the College of La Flèche on March 28, 1667, an ex-Jesuit. Before his final letters of freedom were given him he received a kind letter from the general, in which he was told that the French provincial had been instructed by him "to absolve you from your vows and set you free." He added in Latin, "But do you, dearest brother, wheresoever and in whatever state you shall find yourself, be ever mindful of the state from which you have gone forth, and attend to the rock from which you have been hewed, and although you may be separated from us in time and place, strive always to be in heart with us and to live in Christ with us. May His grace be always with you!" (Archives General S. J.) Cf. Rochemonteix "Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle France."
Circumstances in later life separated him largely from intercourse with the Jesuits, as his career took him across the Sulpicians and the Recollects.
Cavelier de La Salle is free! Where will he turn his steps? He has no position and very little of a fortune, for on becoming a Jesuit he had yielded up his inheritance to others of his family. Canada calls him, for his brother François, the priest, had gone there in the September of 1666. Canada, therefore, had doubtless been luring him during his late mental struggles at La Flèche, and the summer of 1667 found the ex-Jesuit with his brother, the Sulpician, at Montreal.
The Abbé de Queylus received the young man of twenty-four years kindly, and doubtless for his brother's sake gave him a "fief noble" of great extent opposite the Sault St. Louis. To encourage him to make good, the title was not given in writing to him till January 9, 1669, when he paid a medal of fine gold, which was to be repaid to the Seminary at every subsequent change of seigneur.
The adventurous Sieur de La Salle set whole-heartedly to work in his new vocation. He gratefully called the seigneury "St. Sulpice" and, commencing the clearing of the land, he mapped out the borders of his future village and subdivided his land as grants to his feudal tenants in lots of sixty arpents, with half an arpent in the village itself. He relieved them of any seigneurial dues till the year 1671, provided they had built their homes by the feast of St. John, 1669. He gave them the right of hunting on their lands and of fishing in front. He took off 200 arpents of land from his fief towards Lake St. Peter for a "common," whereon each could feed his beasts at a feudal fine of five sous a year, while he reserved 400 arpents for his seigneurial manor. This, however, he sold in 1670, when the passion for travel and discovery seized him, as shall be later described.
We have ventured to give the romantic details of the history of one of the early seigneurs because they illustrate the adventuresome period and also because many of these facts surrounding the life of La Salle were not generally known, even by many of the leading historians of Canada. They will help as a key to explain the temperament and character of the celebrated discoverer, in his Canadian life, his enterprises and his misfortunes, his extreme need of movement, his uncertainty, his passion for travel, his reputation for learning, and also his active and ardent faith deepened by his Jesuit training.
His robust health and his commanding figure were of powerful avail to him in his adventurous tasks. The generous blood of Normandy flowed freely in his veins and, like his countrymen, he was active, intelligent, industrious, resourceful and self-regarding. He made a better pioneer than a patient, plodding land owner, as we shall see, and the defects of an untractable youth made the success of the man as an explorer.
We left the young La Salle organizing his seigneury, but before long he is to be found, gun on his shoulder and knapsack on his back, traversing the woods and in his canoe exploring all the rivers and lakes around the neighbourhood. Trading his merchandise for beaver skins with the Indians and coming in contact with the coureurs de bois, he learns the directions of the rivers and the products of the countries through which they pass, and soon there seizes him the great desire to discover the long-sought-for northwest passage to China and Japan and thus to open out a fruitful field for commerce for France, and glory and fortune for himself.
During the autumn of 1668 some Seneca (Tsonnontouan) Indians stopped at St. Sulpice and from them he learned that the river he called the Ohio entered into the Mississippi, which emptied its waters into the "River of the Sault," which he thought to be the Pacific.[104] With the aid of these he started to master the Iroquois language.
Meanwhile, a similar idea of exploring and evangelizing the Shawnee district had presented itself to Dollier de Casson who was now at Quebec, making arrangements with M. de Queylus for his departure.
Dollier had spent the winter of 1668 in the woods with the Indians at Lake Nipissing, learning an Algonquin dialect from a Nipissing chief named Nitaukyk. This latter had a Shawnee slave who, on a visit to Montreal, so enthused Queylus, that he sent a letter back by the slave, telling M. de Casson of his desire to convert the Shawnee people who seemed to provide special aptitude for Christianity, and offering this mission to the zealous Dollier, who hastened to his superior at once and thence to Quebec.
To raise the money for La Salle's expedition the seigneurs bought back a great part of his land for 1,000 livres, payable in merchandise to arrive by the vessels at Quebec. But he still wished to retain his seigneurial domain of 400 arpents. Indeed on January 11th he received the written titles of these from the seminary.
But on February 9th, following, La Salle, still in need of funds, sold his seigneurial domain for 2,800 livres to Jean Milot--a very good bargain considering that he had been granted it for very little, and that the documents of the transaction reveal that he had only cleared nine or ten arpents; and that, on the other part, the wood had only been felled, and not logged, and buildings had only been commenced.[105] Then he set out to Quebec to interest M. de Courcelles, the governor, in his project and to obtain all the necessary passports and authorizations to range the woods and lakes.
De Courcelles warmly approved of his enthusiasm, seeing glory for his own administration at no cost to himself, and he even allowed soldiers to quit their companies and join La Salle. He also persuaded Dollier de Casson, then in Quebec, consulting de Queylus on the Shawnee mission, to combine with La Salle's expedition, thus giving it a certain governmental éclat and public importance. Dollier de Casson received his letters from Laval on May 15, 1669. On returning to Montreal, preparations were made for departure. La Salle engaged four canoes and fourteen men, among whom was the Sieur Thoulonnier and the surgeon, La Roussillière. To meet additional expenses he had to sell another piece of land above St. Sulpice to Jacques Leber, for 600 livres tournois, on July 6, 1669, the day of departure.
De Casson had three canoes and seven men, and with them M. de Galinée, a Sulpician deacon, an astronomer and mathematician, who joined only three days before the departure. They took a Hollander to interpret the Iroquois language.
Before leaving Montreal the party witnessed the execution of three French soldiers of the Carignan Regiment, who were put to death for the assassination, near Point Claire on Lake St. Louis, of an Iroquois chief of the Senecas (Tsonnontouans). On the eve of this date it was found out, by a confession to La Salle, that three other Frenchmen had committed, near Montreal, on the River Mascouche, a more atrocious assassination of six Oneida Iroquois (Onneiouts), three of whom were a woman and two children. Yet the bodies were never found, so this remains a mystery. Rewards were offered for the capture of the prisoners, but they were never taken. Both of these horrible slaughters had been caused by a desire of seizing the peltry belonging to the Indians. Such treachery was likely to rekindle war with the natives. On this occasion, therefore, M. de Courcelles came up to conciliate the assembled Indians and to assure them, by presents, of the governmental displeasure at these acts. Under these critical and dangerous circumstances, the expedition of seven canoes containing twenty-two Frenchmen and guided by two other canoes of those Tsonnontouans who had lived with La Salle, left Montreal.
They made their way to the great village of Tsonnontouan and stayed there a month, trembling in fear of their lives, for the chief, lately murdered at Montreal, came from this place. Added to this one of those drunken bouts, the results of the liquor traffic, seized the inhabitants and threatened the Europeans' safety. While here Dollier de Casson, worn out by the unaccustomed hardships of the journey, fell into a great fever and was near his end, but happily recovering, the explorers left and arrived at a river whose cataracts marked the descent of the waters of Lake Erie into those of Lake Ontario.
Five days' journey brought them to the other side of Lake Ontario. While here a fever also fell upon La Salle which in a few days imperilled his life. On September 22d, they journeyed again and on the 24th reached a village named Tenaoutoua, where they met the explorer, Joliet, arrived there the evening before. He had previously set out from Montreal with canoes and merchandise, under instructions from M. de Courcelles, to seek the whereabouts of a copper mine said to be situated on Lake Superior. Finding the winter coming on, he had relinquished this project and was about to return to Montreal. He gave a description of the places he had visited and Galinée, the Sulpician geographer, entered them on his map.
La Salle now determined that he also would return to Montreal, urging for excuse the state of his health and the inexperience of his men to stand a winter in the woods, where they were likely to perish of hunger. But the missionary party was firm in its resolution to proceed to the Mississippi Indians. Thus it was that some of La Salle's party arrived the autumn of 1669 in Montreal alone. Whether La Salle returned with them is doubted, for his traces for two years are hard to follow. The failure of his expedition to discover La Chine was commemorated in derision by the wags of Montreal who henceforth dubbed his seigneury of St. Sulpice, as that of "La Chine." Such it soon began to be named, even in the official documents, as for example one of June 10, 1670, "this place La Chine, so called." So La Chine it has remained to this day.
Meanwhile the Montreal missionaries, after leaving Tenaoutoua on October 1, 1669, arrived, the 13th or 14th, on the banks of Lake Erie, which seemed to them like a great sea lashed and tossed by the tempestuous winds. At the mouth of a pleasant river, after three days they built their cabin and there they remained for fifteen days, till the fierce lake winds drove them to a more sheltered place in the woods, about a quarter of a league away, on a bank of a stream. There they reconstructed their cabin, but more strongly, and wintered for five months and eleven days.
When spring came, they determined to push on to the Mississippi Indians, but before doing so, an event is to be chronicled in the history of discovery, from Montreal. On March 23d, on Passion Sunday, descending to the banks of Lake Erie, the explorers took possession of the country in the name of Louis XIV.
The following procès verbal, then drawn up and preserved in the marine archives of France, fully explains the picturesque ceremony:
"We, the undersigned, certify having affixed the arms of the king of France, on the lands of the lake named Erie, with this inscription:
"In the year of salvation 1669, Clement IX being seated on the chair of St. Peter, Louis XIV reigning in France, M. de Courcelles being governor of New France and M. Talon intendant there for the king, two missionaries of the Seminary of Montreal, arrived at this spot accompanied by seven other Frenchmen, who are the first Europeans to have wintered on this lake, the lands of which being unoccupied, they take possession of in the name of their king, by placing up his arms which they have affixed to this cross.
"In testimony of which we have signed the present certification.
"François Dollier, "Priest of the Diocese of Nantes, in Brittany;
"De Galinée, "Deacon of the Diocese of Rennes, in Brittany."
On the 26th of March they proceeded further on their journey, but in Easter week, having halted by the side of Lake Erie, and drawn some of their canoes onto the land, leaving others on the sandy shore near the water's edge, wearied out with fatigue after a day's journey of twenty leagues, the party fell asleep. A great wind arose and heaped up the waters so that the awakened sleepers had difficulty in rescuing their canoes. One they utterly lost, as well as apparel and chapel accoutrements. A barrel of gunpowder floating on the waves was saved but the ammunition was lost. This disaster made them resolve to turn back to Montreal.
They chose for their return voyage the route passing by the mission of Sault Ste. Marie. On their way, after 100 leagues' navigation, they destroyed a rude Indian idol, and after entering Lake Huron arrived on May 25th at Sault Ste. Marie Fort, where they were joyously received by the Jesuits, Dablon and Marquette, with the little colony of twenty to twenty-five Frenchmen.
Thence they started on May 28th, with a guide from the fort, and after a strenuous journey of twenty-two days reached Montreal on June 18, 1670.
M. de Galinée on his return made a corrected copy of his map, which he sent to M. Talon, with a copy of the "prise de possession," already described, and these were of great use later, to the French government, which sent them to London in 1687 as evidences of the pretensions which the French claimed over Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the neighbouring countries.
Dollier de Casson wrote a history of this voyage but no copy has been found. Though the journey was unsuccessful in the conversion of the Indians, yet it paved the way to succeeding explorations which were quickly sent by Talon, and to the eventual evangelization of these parts.
Of La Salle's experience, after leaving the Sulpicians, we have little to record, as he was lost to civilization; but we see him coming back at intervals to Montreal as his base to obtain supplies for his explorations. On the 6th of August, 1671, he received on credit "in his great need and necessity" from the hands of Migeon de Branssat, procureur fiscal of Ville Marie, merchandise to the sum of 454 livres tournois. Again on December 18, 1672, being in Montreal, there is an "obligation" recorded at the city greffe of a promise to pay, on the August following, the same sum in peltry or money, either at the house of Jacques Leber, where he lived, or at Rouen at the house of his relative, M. Nicholas Crevêt, king's councillor and master of accounts.
Montreal, being at the head of navigation, became the starting point of many subsequent expeditions. We may add here the expedition of Governor General de Courcelles to Lake Ontario, which left Montreal on June 2, 1671. The object of the voyage was to conciliate the Indians who had made peace but who were in danger of breaking it, irritated as they had been by such breaches of faith as that related to have recently occurred at Montreal, by the brutal assassinations, and to show them by a dignified appearance among them not, in canoe, but "en bateau" that their waters were not inaccessible, and that the French knew how to punish and keep them in check. Another motive was to explore the lands bordering on Lake Ontario with the view of establishing a fort and colony and of diverting the peltry trade into French instead of English hands, and of claiming those lands for the French.
Accordingly de Courcelles arrived at Montreal with a specially constructed bateau of two or three tons under the management of Sergeant Champagne and eight other soldiers. The governor's daring expedition was joined at Montreal by M. Perrot, the local governor of Montreal; M. de Varennes, that of Three Rivers; Charles Le Moyne, M. de Laubia, M. de La Vallière, M. de Normanville and several others, as a mark of esteem for the governor; finally the genial Dollier de Casson as chaplain. It is from him that we have the history of the expedition.
The party of fifty-two went by road to La Chine and embarked above St. Louis Rapids on the governor's barque and thirteen birch bark canoes. On June 12th it reached the mouth of Lake Ontario. On the way a party of Iroquois had been met and impressed with fear and respect. These were now sent with letters to the missionaries to publish around news of the mission of the governor general. The Iroquois were overwhelmed by the dignity of the governor and his party, and for a time they kept dumb with their hands and their mouths, in astonishment. Of the French they said that they were demons and brought to a conclusion everything they wanted. The governor, they thought an incomparable man. He made capital of his success and menaced destruction to those who should revolt, whose settlements he would take and destroy at will.
The party returned on June 14th and soon arrived in Montreal, the whole expedition having taken only fifteen days. It was most successful with the Indians and restrained their trade with the Dutch and English, and even the latter, according to Marie l'Incarnation (letter No. 89) feared lest they should be driven from their trading posts.
FOOTNOTES:
[104] La Salle wondered where the Ohio emptied itself. His mind wavered between the Gulf of Mexico or the Vermillion River (the Gulf of California). He seems to have favoured the latter hypothesis.
[105] The Abbé Véreault says La Salle hired a small house in Montreal in November, 1668. At the southeast corner of St. Peter and St. Paul Streets a tablet commemorates such a house. On January 9th he was again in Montreal. Probably he found Lachine lonely and naturally sought the town.
Chapter XXII
1667-1672
EDUCATION
AT QUEBEC: JACQUES LEBER, JEANNE LEBER, CHARLES LE MOYNE (OF LONGUEUIL), LOUIS PRUDHOMME--MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS' SCHOOL AT MONTREAL--"GALLICIZING" INDIAN CHILDREN--GANNENSAGONAS--THE SULPICIANS AT GENTILLY--THE JESUITS AT MADELEINE LA PRAIRIE.
Another effort of Louis XIV, through his minister Colbert, was the furtherance of education in the colony. It was naturally of a very rudimentary character in these early days of scarce population. To help, Colbert sent from the king, 6,000 livres on April 5, 1667. The work of education was in the hands of the clergy and religious with the exception of that done at Montreal by Marguerite Bourgeoys, who had not yet established her order. At Quebec, the Jesuits had since 1635 commenced a college for boys at which later young Joliet, who afterward with Père Marquette, was the discoverer of Illinois, was taught to defend philosophical theses. The Ursulines had a pensionnat of thirty girls, of whom Marie l'Incarnation, writing in 1668, says: "They gave more trouble than sixty in France. The externes give us some more trouble." Still she says that there is a great desire to educate the French girls and "they learn to read and write, to say their prayers, learn Christian morals and all that a girl ought to know." Among the pensionnaires was Jeanne Leber, the daughter of Jacques Leber, the Montreal merchant, and she was pious, and clever at elocution and lace work.
At Montreal, as the population began to grow, Marguerite Bourgeoys now handed over the boys, who were beginning to be educated with the girls in the little primary school in the stable, to M. Souart, who, since the return of M. de Queylus, had been supplanted as curate by M. Gilles Pérot, and we find him styled in the documents of the time "former curé--schoolmaster." In this occupation he was assisted by M. Rémy, a deacon, who was afterwards entrusted for some time with the primary education of the town. The education was given gratuitously, but to maintain the schoolmaster, the syndic, accompanied by the clerk of the court, canvassed subscriptions from private individuals. In the fall, the Seminary made up the deficit. Marguerite Bourgeoys, and her four companions, still taught during the day for nothing, without any assistance as before, but during the night they worked at manual labour for their support. "Thus," says Dollier de Casson writing of 1652, "what I admire most about these young women, is that being without goods and willing to teach gratuitously, they have nevertheless acquired by the grace of God and without being a charge to anyone, houses and lands in the island of Montreal." In fact on August 29, 1668, Marguerite Bourgeoys bought a house thirty-six feet square adjoining the "Congregation" from the widow of Claude Fézeret. On September 21, 1668, she acquired from François Leber a grant of land, with a house on it, at Pointe St. Charles. The site of this house, with its buildings, can be seen to this day.
In 1669, she acquired, from Maturin Roulier, another piece of land with a granary and a meadow, situated in the direction of Sault St. Louis. All this, added to the original donation from M. de Maisonneuve, and sixty arpents and more granted through the Seigneurs, out of which she had put thirty-two under cultivation and on which she had placed a granary, went in great part to support her community of pious lay associates. In addition, on July 6, 1672, she bought an arpent of land adjoining the "Congregation" and built on it a larger establishment, as the number of her pupils surpassed the limited space of her stable school.
On October 9, 1668, Laval at Quebec started his "petit séminaire," out of the boys of which he hoped to draw the nucleus of a Canadian clergy. He started with six Hurons, to whom were added eight French boys. In 1669 there were three Montrealers being educated there, probably on a bourse from the king's bounty, viz., Charles Le Moyne, de Longueuil; Jacques Leber, brother of Jeanne, and Louis Prud'homme. The French boys, supported by the king's bounty, boarded, however, at the Jesuit College. Soon others joined, but as it was found that many of them did not care for study, they were sent to Cap au Tourment, where they learned mechanical trades and arts suitable to young colonists.
In 1670, there were only five teachers for the many calls on the education of the girls, so Marguerite Bourgeoys went to France for assistance, and after six months she saw Colbert, who promised to assist her so that her congregation in May, 1671, received the approval of the "Roi Soleil," Louis XIV, who was then with his brilliant court at Dunkerque. She returned to Quebec in 1672, on August 14th, bringing back a miraculous oaken statue of the Blessed Virgin, of some eight inches in height for the church of Bonsecours, already projected in 1651 and to be built shortly. With her came several novices to join her order, some of noble families, Elizabeth de la Bertache, Madeleine de Constantin, Thérèse Soumillard, Pierrette Laurent, Geneviève Durosoy, Marguerite Soumillard, and Marguerite Sénécal, who was the bursar of the very slender funds of the party.
In addition to the externes the congregation was beginning to have boarders and was reaching such a point of utility, when she might extend her work throughout the colony, that she had been persuaded to ask for the above royal letters patent of incorporation. Her eventual aim was to establish a regular congregation, with religious vows of its own. For the present, Laval did not favour such a plan; he rather wished to avoid a multiplicity of religious congregations in a poor country, and he would have preferred her companions to join the Ursulines at Quebec, becoming if necessary a branch establishment.
To this the independent Marguerite Bourgeoys was opposed. The Ursulines was an enclosed order and the Montreal congréganistes wished indeed to live in community, but to circulate freely among the people--a new idea then among religious congregations of women, very untried and to which consequently the conservative bishop of Petrea was not favourable. Yet, in 1689, on a visit of Laval to Montreal, the foundress was authorized to spread her fellow workers over his diocese, and it was about this time that they began to adopt a form of dress based on an Acadian model.
The education of Indian children was greatly promoted under the new policy of Louis XIV, and Laval, in the intention of "Gallicizing" the natives in language, religion and customs, and eventually of allying them in marriage with the colonists from France. This had been one of Laval's objects in founding the "petit séminaire" of Quebec. He persuaded the Jesuits and the Ursulines to start Indian schools for Algonquin boys and Huron and Algonquin girls at Quebec. On September 27, 1670, Marie de l'Incarnation announced the marriage of some of her girls to Frenchmen, with domestic success.
Laval also induced the Sulpicians at Montreal to undertake the work for the children of those Algonquin and Huron parents who had been captured by the Iroquois. The city archives contain the contracts of July 16, 1669, by which Jacques Akimega, thirteen years of age, and Louise Resikouki, an Algonquin girl of twelve years, bind themselves to be lodged and educated like French people till eighteen years of age, at the seminary on a gift of 500 livres, provided by Dollier de Casson on the stipulation that if the contract was broken the money shall go for the education of other savage children.
Other Indian girls being forthcoming, Marguerite Bourgeoys undertook their training at the congregation, and on November 14, 1672, we have the contract of marriage between one of them, Marie Magdalene Catherine Nachital, and Pierre Hogue, born at Belle-Fontaine, near Amiens.
One of the pupils of the congregation, called Gannensagouas and baptized Marie Thérèse, after the queen of France, later in 1681 made her religious profession as a nun in the congregation order, by that time erected.
But the work of Gallicizing and civilizing these wayward, liberty-loving, capricious children of the woods was an ungrateful task. Most of those who entered the cloister of the Ursulines were like birds of passage and they flew over the cloister walls to escape the melancholy of their restrained lives, even when their parents did not take them away. Nor did the Jesuits succeed any better. The Sulpicians made a bold attempt by taking their Indian school into the country. M. de Fénelon, one of their number, was charged to form an establishment under the name of La Présentation at Gentilly, situated on the bank of the St. Lawrence above Lachine, and in addition he secured a concession on January 9, 1673, of the three islands opposite between Lachine and Cap St. Gilles, which had been granted originally to Picoté de Bélestre and were now exchanged for land on the island. These islands were then named the Iles de Courcelles, after the governor general, and on one of them at a place called the Baie d'Urfé, after the name of one of the Sulpician missionaries, an Indian mission was established. We may here mention the Jesuit missions, on the south shore facing Montreal of the seigneuries of Madeleine la Prairie and St. Lambert, which commenced with a few savages in 1669, the progenitor of the fifth site, the Caughnawaga reservation, as known today.
NOTE
Caughnawaga, or Sault St. Louis, an Iroquois reservation, situated on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, about ten miles above Montreal. Area, 12,327 acres. Population in 1905, 2,100, all Catholics except five or six families. The language is the Mohawk dialect. The sault (or rapids) was an old seigniory, or concession, granted to the Jesuits in 1680. To Père Ruffeix, S. J., is due the idea of thus grouping the Iroquois neophytes on the banks of the St. Lawrence to guard them from the persecution and temptation to which they were subject amid the pagan influences of their own villages. In 1667 the missionary prevailed upon seven communities to take up their residence at La Prairie, opposite Montreal. Other Christian Iroquois from different localities soon came to join the settlement, and in 1670 there were twenty families. As the proximity of the whites was prejudicial to the Indians, the mission was transferred, in 1676, several miles higher up the river. This second site is memorable as the scene of the saintly life and death of Catherine Tekakwitha (died 1680). In 1890 a granite monument was erected on the site, in memory of the humble Iroquois virgin. In 1689, to escape the threatened attacks of their pagan tribesmen, the Christian Iroquois sought refuge in Montreal, where they remained eight or nine months. When the danger had passed they founded another settlement a mile or two above the last. In 1696 another migration took place to a fourth site. Here it was that Père Lafitau, S. J., discovered the famous "ginseng" plant, so valuable in the eyes of the Chinese. The discovery created a great sensation, and was for a time the source of lucrative commerce. The fourth site still proving unsatisfactory, the settlement was moved to the present site of Caughnawaga in 1716. From 1667 to 1783 the mission was conducted by the Jesuits; from 1783 to 1903 by secular priests and oblates. In 1903 it was again confided to the Jesuits. Among the more noted missionaries were Fathers Bruyas, S. J.; Chauchetière, S. J.; Lafitau, S. J.; Burtin, O. M. I.; Marcoux, who composed an Iroquois dictionary and grammar; and Forbes, who drew up complete genealogical tables of the settlement. The Indians are intelligent and industrious. Some are engaged in farming, others take rafts down the Lachine rapids. The industries are principally bead work and the making of lacrosse rackets and snowshoes. Besides the presbytery, dating from 1716, and the church built in 1719 and restored in 1845, there are in the village the ruins of a French fort of 1754, two schools and a hospital. The government by chiefs was, in 1889, replaced by that of a mayor and council. Note by Joseph Gras, S. J.
N. B.--Joseph Gras, S. J., the writer of this monograph, is assistant missionary at Caughnawaga.
Chapter XXIII
1666-1672
GARRISON LIFE--SLACKENING MORALS
SIEUR DE LA FREDIERE--LIQUOR TRAFFIC WITH THE INDIANS--SOLDIERS MURDER INDIANS--THE CARION-DE LORMEAU DUEL--THE FIRST BALL IN CANADA--LARCENIES, ETC.--A CORNER IN WHEAT--THE "VOLUNTAIRES," OR DAY LABOURERS--THE TAVERNS--A POLICE RAID--"HOTEL" LIFE--BLASPHEMY PUNISHED--THE LORDS' VINEYARDS RUINED.
The history of garrison towns, sad to relate, seems always to be besmirched with scandals having their origin among the soldiers. So it was with Montreal after the settlement of the officers and men of the Carignan and other regiments, in marked contrast with the times of de Maisonneuve and his brave "milice," who had been especially trained under religious influences and had not been reared in the atmosphere of camp or barrack life.
Among the officers sent to Montreal, after the war of 1666, to command the garrison, was the Sieur de la Fredière, a nephew of M. de Sallières and a major in the Sallières-Carignan Regiment. This man, disfigured by the loss of an eye, has left a name as one who was repulsive alike in mind, in conscience, and in honour. He was banished to France after the visit of Talon in 1667, who heard from the inhabitants such a catalogue of acts of tyranny, injustice, and immorality against this officer of the king that, having referred the charges to de Tracy, the latter ordered the expulsion of the offender.
On de Sallières' remonstrance at the severity of the sentence, Talon ordered on September 1, 1667, a judicial investigation into the charges so that they might be presented in legal form.
Accordingly the copies of records of the judicial archives of Montreal of September 17-19, preserved in the greffe of the city, containing these informations against la Fredière before M. d'Ailleboust, remain as standing evidence produced by Jean Beaudoin, Mathurin Marsta, André Demers, Claude Jaudoin, Anne Thomasse, his wife, and Marie Anne Hardye, wife of Pierre Malet, of the justice of the above charges. Those who wish to read the scandalous details can do so at will.
One of the charges against la Fredière had been that of selling liquor to the savages, and of fraudulently diluting it, at that. He was not without imitators among the officers who, not content with selling them liquor in their settlements, followed them to their hunting fields, so that through their continual drunken orgies, the savages brought back but few skins, and thus the habitants of Montreal, who had gone to great expense in advancing them on credit, arms, powder and provisions, were reduced to great want. Dollier de Casson, contrasting the singlemindedness of M. de Maisonneuve with the new régime of avaricious officers, says that if things went on so, the country would be ruined.
"It is impossible that it can hold together," he says in his account of the year 1667, "if individuals have not the wherewith to buy utensils, linen, clothes, in a country where wheat has no value. Owing to the cupidity of the officers, the inhabitants, not having any peltry for exchange, are forced to sell their arms to provide the wherewith to cover themselves, and having only their feet and arms to defend themselves, they will become the prey of the Iroquois, should they wish to begin to war again."
Speaking of this period Marie l'Incarnation (letter of October, 1669) says "that it would have been better to have less inhabitants and better Christians," and Dollier de Casson in his history of the year 1664, bewailing the departure of M. de Maisonneuve, says that "since Montreal had fallen into other hands, vices unknown before had crept in."
The common soldiers followed the licenses of their betters and were within an ace of endangering the safety of the colony by rekindling the smouldering embers of Iroquois hatred. In their greed the soldiers of the Montreal garrison had killed a Seneca chief for his peltry, having plied him with brandy and killed him. His body they loaded with weights to sink it, but it was found floating by some Iroquois who brought it to Montreal, and thus the murder was out. As we have related they were put to death, on the day of the departure of La Salle for the West. About the same time, in the winter of 1668-69, three other scamps who had left the Carignan Regiment and settled at Montreal cruelly massacred six Oneidas (Onneiouts) on the banks of the River Mascouche, first intoxicating them in their cabin, and then during the night falling on them, not even sparing the woman and her young children. And this for a load of fifty elk and beaver skins! One of the assassins confessed the brutal deed to La Salle, as we have said, before departing.
The first armed attack on life at Montreal among Frenchmen was also committed by a soldier, viz., by Carion, a lieutenant of La Motte's regiment, on the person of M. de Lormeau, an ensign of M. de Gué's company, in payment of a grudge. The case was brought up before M. d'Ailleboust in May, 1671, and the records of the greffe giving the depositions of the witnesses, tell an exciting story, of how, on Pentecost evening, after vespers and just before the first sound of the "salut" pealed, the Sieur de Lormeau was walking with his wife towards the common and had passed the seminary enclosure, apparently on the way to his dwelling, when nearing the house of Charles Le Moyne, of Longueuil, who was at table entertaining Picoté de Bélestre and a merchant of Rochelle named Baston, they saw M. de Carion coming to meet them. They advanced towards him and they were near Migeon de Branssat's house when Carion, seeking a pretext for provocation, called out, "Coward! Why have you struck this child? Why don't you attack me?" "Coward yourself!" was the reply. "Go away!" On the instant Carignan's sword is out and de Lormeau follows suit. Three or four blows are struck and they clinch one another. In the struggle Carion, taking his sword by the blade, tries to plunge its point into de Lormeau's stomach. De Lormeau's péruque now falling to the ground, Carion takes the opportunity of seizing his sword by the hilt and deals blows with its pommel on de Lormeau's unprotected head till the blood began to flow. Whereupon de Lormeau's lady, Marie Roger Lepage, terror-stricken and beside herself, runs back to Charles Le Moyne's house and disturbs the supper party by crying, "Murder! Murder! M. de Bélestre, come out!" The three, leaving the table, rushed to separate the struggling officers but in vain. Picoté de Bélestre then exclaimed in indignation: "Since you won't separate, then kill yourselves if you want to." And now, one called Gilles, a former servant of M. Carion, comes on the scene with drawn sword, brandishing it in defence of his master, but doing no damage. M. Morel, an ensign in the same company as Carion and a partner in the same quarrel against de Lormeau, also comes on with naked sword and makes a thrust at de Lormeau, much to Charles Le Moyne's disgust strongly expressed, at seeing an unarmed man so struck.
By this time de Lormeau had received three wounds, when two priests from the seminary ran out to separate them, M. de Frémont and M. Dollier de Casson, the strapping soldier priest, whose presence soon acted as a peacemaker. But de Lormeau took the affair to the court, as we have seen.
The military introduced a love of gayety, good cheer and dissipation into the colony. In Quebec in 1667, on February 4th, the first ball was held and the Jesuit journal of the period adds this reflection: "May God grant that there are no sad consequences."
At Montreal, larcenies, breaches of respect for authority, blasphemies and Sabbath breaking are now recorded.
In 1670 an attempt was made for the first time, in Montreal to make a corner in wheat to the detriment of the poor. By an act of January 26, 1671, Talon fixed the price at three livres and two sous the bushel, and punished a refractory miller, de la Touche-Champlain who, profiting by the dearth of wheat, sold it at twenty sous, and even then it was mixed with Indian corn.
The "volontaires," or day labourers, began to be a trouble, as they were more numerous at Montreal than elsewhere. Many of these were lazy and wanderers, and would not hire themselves out or take up land, and doubtless many of the petty larcenies now commencing, were due to these gentlemen living on their wits. The woods appealed to them and the "coureurs de bois" would soon be recruited from them. The simplicity of primitive manners was going. An ordinance of the "procureur fiscal" in the records of the city for March 9, 1670, shows that precautions had to be now taken to prevent sacks of wheat and flour from being willfully changed at the mill, and their amounts from being falsified.
Theft was severely punished, according to the "greffe" of April 15, 1667. A man who had stolen thirteen bushels of wheat was condemned to be marked with the royal "fleur de lys" and to be sent to the Canadian galleys for three years. On December 20, 1668, another was sentenced to stand outside the parish church for a quarter of an hour, as the people were leaving after mass on Sunday. The town clerk read his sentence out to the people and an officer of justice affixed to the culprit's breast a notice in large characters so that all might read the legend, "voleur de blé" (wheat thief).
Again, on March 8, 1670, a man convicted of stealing from a store by night was condemned by M. d'Ailleboust, under the good pleasure of the sovereign council, to be hanged on a market day, so that by "this dire example, the evil disposed might be intimidated and prevented from committing greater larcenies and other crimes." The condemned man, however, appealed to the sovereign council, and the execution does not appear to have taken place.
Tavern frequentation was also a source of dissipation and trouble. The cabarets became the rendezvous of Montrealers, although they were only licensed for strangers and marketers. In 1669, the intendant came to town and on this occasion at the request of the Seigneurs brought about a special ordinance dated April 2, 1669, which ran as follows:
"Desirous of doing all in our power to stop these dissipations and debaucheries, which serve only for the corruption of morals and the destruction of families and of the colony, we, in execution of this ordinance of the king, very expressly forbid all those who shall keep cabarets or taverns, in the town as well as in the bourgs, villages or other places, to open them to receive any person on Sundays and holy days and during divine service, under a penalty of a fine for the first offence, and of prison for the second. We forbid, under the same penalties, all those domiciled in towns, bourgs and villages where there are cabarets or taverns, even those who are married and have families or households, to go to eat or to drink in these places, and those who keep these cabarets or taverns to give them food or drink, or gaming, under any pretext whatever. They can only sell them wine by the pot, which they shall take home to drink.
"We forbid them also, under the same penalties, to receive in these places any dissolute or lewd men or women, or to give them food or 'aliment' of any kind, or likewise to give to any engagé (hired man) or 'volontaire' food or drink.
"They shall, however, be allowed to give drink in moderation to travelers and to give board and lodging to those who shall be obliged to reside in this town to manage their affairs. Finally we forbid all innkeepers to give credit for their dues or to exact any promise or obligation of payment under the penalty of loss of their stock, for which they shall not take any action of recovery, conformably to Article 128 of the 'Custom of Paris.'"
This ordinance appears to have been strictly enforced for some time, for we find the syndic himself on August 19, 1670, appearing before M. d'Ailleboust to answer a charge of eating and drinking at an inn on a Sunday or a feast day during divine service. The syndic owned up to having contravened the law on a week day, but brought witnesses to prove that he had not broken the ordinance of the Sunday and feast day observance. The innkeeper was condemned to pay the law expenses of the case and to pay a fine to the church.
Even those who broke the ecclesiastical abstinence in these cabarets seem to have been in danger of the secular arm.
A watch was kept by the Seigneurs on the weights and measures and they had them stamped with their seal. In order to see that innkeepers did not substitute others, the procureur fiscal, or his substitute, accompanied by the clerk of the justices and two sergeants, went on a tour of inspection from time to time. (Greffe de Ville Marie, June 11, 1673.)
In 1676, on a surprise visit after vespers one Sunday,--"on information received" doubtless,--these officers found four men being entertained at one of the cabarets, now beginning to open up without authorization and apparently contravening all the above-quoted ordinance. One June 11th the four men and the innkeeper were fined. On September 27th the judge of the seigneurs, forced to cut down the growing abuses, ordered all inns to be closed under penalty of a 100 livres, provided that the autumn then ending and the forthcoming winter did not bring any strangers to Montreal. He declared at the same time that in the spring there would be established one or two "cabaretiers hôteliers," which we may translate as "hostelry innkeepers," to board and lodge traveling merchants coming to Montreal. Shall we consider this the first indication of the hotel life of Montreal, the commercial metropolis of Canada?
The crime of blasphemy was severely punished. On Ascension Day, 1668, the new royal edict, supplementing a former one of 1651, was placarded at the door of the parish church at Montreal.[106] Various fines and imprisonments are meted out to those who shall sin. At the sixth offence it is ordered that the blasphemer's upper lip shall be cut with a hot iron, the lower lip on the seventh, and if after this he still continues his blasphemy, his tongue is to be cut out.
A man near Lachine, having attempted outrage on two young girls of eleven and seven years, was fined and banished, on June 2, 1672, from the Isle of Montreal, for seven years.
Evil livers were punished even after death. A former corporal, who had been killed by accident by an Ottawan at the "Little" River, was, in July, 1674, refused burial in holy ground but was allowed to be buried on the commons by one who offered to do that service on the condition that the clothing covering the deceased man should be left him.[107]
We may sum up the history of the transition of morals from the pristine fervour of the early days of Maisonneuve to the early years of royal colonization, in the words of Sister Morin in her annals: "But this happy time is past. The war with the Iroquois having obliged our good king to send us troops at several times, the officers and soldiers have ruined the Lord's vineyards, and vice and sin are almost as common in Canada as in Old France. This it is that makes good people grieve, especially the missioners who wear themselves out in preaching and exhortation almost without fruit, regretting with tears and sobs those happy bygone years, when virtue flourished, as it were, without any labour on their part."
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Edits et Ordonnances, page 62-63.
[107] The "Greffe" of Montreal, dated July, 1674.
Chapter XXIV
1671-1673
NOTABLE LOSSES
DE QUEYLUS FINALLY LEAVES VILLE MARIE--DE COURCELLES AND TALON RECALLED--TRIBUTE TO THEIR ADMINISTRATION--MGR. DE LAVAL ABSENT FOR THREE YEARS--THREE DEATHS--MADAME DE PELTRIE--MARIE L'INCARNATION--JEANNE MANCE--HER LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
In the autumn of 1671 the Abbé Queylus left Montreal with M. d'Allet and M. de Galinée, the cartographer. It was his hope to further the interests of his beloved Ville Marie, but his failing health kept him in France, where he died on March 20, 1677.
Towards the end of 1671 de Courcelles was recalled, to be followed by Talon in the following year. This was the result of the growing estrangement between the governor and the intendant. Both had wisely written asking for their recalls and each had urged the plea of ill health. Both received characteristic letters from the king accepting their resignations, and Colbert wrote to Talon: "As you are both returning to France, the little difficulties that have arisen between M. de Courcelles and yourself will have no consequences."
All's well that ends well! The administration of both had been excellent and their influence on Montreal was productive of great good. On April 6, 1672, Louis Buade, Comte de Frontenac, was appointed governor general.
On his arrival Talon and de Courcelles left together, towards the end of 1672. We cannot do better than repeat the skillful appreciation of the "Relation" for that year which gracefully ignored in silence the blamable acts of their administrations and remembered the good, so that, commenting on the chagrin felt at the sight of the vessels in the harbour bearing M. de Courcelles and Talon away, it said: "'Eternellement,' we shall remember the first, who has so well reduced the Iroquois to their duty, and 'éternellement' we shall desire the return of the latter to put the finishing touches to the projects he has begun so profitably for the good of the country."
This same year Mgr. de Laval went to France to settle the long deferred question of the establishment of a bishopric of Quebec and was absent for three years, as we shall relate.
But although the king created Talon Comte d'Orsainville in 1675, having already made him Baron des Islets in 1671, he never returned, and Canada was without an intendant for three consecutive years, when on June 5, 1675, M. Duchesneau was appointed to succeed him.
Various griefs fell upon the colony at this time. On November 18, 1671, Madame de la Peltrie, one of the earliest pioneers of Montreal, died at the Ursuline Convent at Quebec, where she had dwelt in humble seclusion for eighteen years, in charge of the linen of the community.
Six months later another, Marie de l'Incarnation, whose valuable letters of this early period, from 1639-72, we have frequently quoted, also went to her reward.
But a greater grief fell upon Montreal on June 18, 1673, when the beloved and venerable Jeanne Mance, now aged sixty-six to sixty-seven years[108] passed away at 6 o'clock in the evening in the quiet of the Hôtel-Dieu which she had so lovingly founded and administered. According to her wish, made verbally to M. Souart, the executor of her last will and testament, her body was buried in the church of the Hôtel-Dieu and her heart was encased in a double vase of metal and placed "en dépôt" under the lamp of the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament until the new parochial church, then being built, should be ready to receive it. Unfortunately it never reached its destination, for during the delay of the church erection a fire, breaking out in the Hôtel-Dieu, consumed the venerable relic.
FOOTNOTE:
[108] Her friend, Marguerite Bourgeoys, did not die until June 12, 1700, in her eightieth year and the forty-seventh since her arrival in Montreal.
Chapter XXV
1672-1675
TOWN-PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE
THE FOUNDATION OF THE PARISH CHURCH AND BON SECOURS CHAPEL
THE FIRST STREET SURVEY--"LOW" TOWN AND "UPPER" TOWN--THE ORIGIN OF THE NAMES OF THE STREETS--COMPLAINTS AGAINST CITIZENS STILL CULTIVATING THE STREETS--ORDERS TO BEGIN BUILDING--THE NEW PARISH CHURCH--THE FOUNDATION STONES AND PLAQUES--THE DEMOLITION OF THE FORT FORBIDDEN--THE CHURCH OF BON SECOURS--THE POWDER MAGAZINE IN ITS GARRET--A PICTURE OF MONTREAL.
In 1672, peace prospects being bright, town planning received its first conscious impetus. Hitherto "Low Town," the neighbourhood of the fort and principally the portion near the Hôtel-Dieu and Maisonneuve's house, now the manor of the Seigneurs of the Seminary, with the small collection of houses around the fortified redoubts at Ste. Marie and St. Gabriel, had housed the slender population, fearful of attack. The advent of the troops enabled them to think of opening up higher land, and of forming a future "Upper Town," on which some had already taken concessions. There it was intended to build a parish church; for at present the chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu served the purpose.
Accordingly, following the procès verbal, of March 12, 1672, we find Dollier de Casson, representing the Seigneurs, accompanied among others by Bénigne Basset, at once town clerk and town surveyor, tracing the first streets,[109] starting from the site of the land reserved for the projected parish church of Notre-Dame, and making out the limits of the concessions granted. Notre-Dame Street was first marked out, starting from a well opened by a former syndic, Gabriel le Sel dit Duclos, and extending eastward to the mill redoubt on the elevated portion of ground called afterwards "Citadel hill."[110] Notre-Dame Street, then the greatest street of the city, was thirty feet broad. Bénigne Basset placed a post at intervals on either side of this road, affixing the leaden stamp of the seminary to each. St. Joseph Street, now known as St. Sulpice, having been already named and used as a trail and in some sort a street, had a breadth of eighteen feet assigned it, and the property lines marked out. A similar breadth was given to St. Peter Street, in honour of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, the patron saint of M. Pierre Chevrier, Baron de Fanchamp, one of the first founders of the Company of Montreal.
St. Peter Street ran down to the common and the street skirting this common was named St. Paul Street, after the patron saint of Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve. This was now formally traced, because the line of houses already built on the north side of this common had been constructed along it.
A fourth street was named St. James, the patron saint of M. Jacques Olier. This was north beyond Notre-Dame, beginning with Calvary Street and terminating with St. Charles Street, of which we shall speak later. A fifth street, eighteen feet broad, was that of St. Francis Xavier, parallel to St. Peter. It was called by Dollier de Casson St. Francis, after his own name, Francis, in honour of St. Francis d'Assissi. Later on, Xavier was added in deference to St. Francis Xavier, the apostle of the Indies. Calvary Street, at the extremity of St. James Street, was given a breadth of twenty-four feet; it went north towards the mountain. Another street of twenty-four feet, going in the same direction from Notre-Dame Street, was called St. Lambert, in honour of the brave Lambert Closse. These streets were broader than the rest, for they were meant for carriage service.[111]
A ninth street, eighteen feet broad, parallel to that of St. Joseph, and abutting on St. James Street, de Casson called St. Gabriel, after the patron saint of Gabriel de Queylus and Gabriel Souart.
Finally the tenth street, parallel to the latter and also abutting St. James Street, was named St. Charles, after Charles Le Moyne, Sieur de Longueuil. The city plan being made, it was necessary to carry it out. Some of the streets afterwards formally laid out, had already been marked out by pathways that had grown up. Thus, that running from the fort to the Hôtel-Dieu, became St. Paul Street; that to St. Jean-Baptiste Street, opened in 1684, was started as early as 1655. St. Dizier Street, opened in 1691, was traced as a path in 1664. Another pathway was traced from the fort to Bon Secours Chapel in 1657. The original Place d'Armes, opposite the fort, was opened in 1650.[112]
Those who had taken land adjoining these streets were, by their contract, obliged to build houses, this same year. But some of the proprietors of lands crossed by these traced roads seemed to have neglected the landmarks placed by Dollier de Casson and went on cultivating and sowing as before. This was resented by those anxious to build, as it blocked the way to the hauling of their building materials. Accordingly in March and June of 1673 there are records of an assembly of inhabitants, including Mademoiselle Jeanne Mance and M. d'Ailleboust, addressing a request to M. Dollier de Casson that as he had himself mapped out the boundaries of the streets, apportioning to each its line, length, breadth, angles, and its name for the building and decoration of the town, he should take means to prevent individuals tilling and sowing any of these streets. To this just demand, Dollier acceded, and he forbade any further cultivation of the roadways, leaving each one free to enclose his lot with stakes or quick-thorn hedges. The offending parties submitted, especially so as they saw that the roads crossing their properties increased their value--an elementary principle of city planning.[113]
By 1675, some had neglected to enclose their ground, and in consequence of the complaint of those that had done so, the seigneurs put up a notice, dated January 12, 1675, warning the tardy ones that if they did not bring the necessary building materials immediately after the following spring seeding, "to rear their buildings, destined for the ornamentation and decoration of their town and to facilitate trade both with the inhabitants and the strangers, the seigneurs would reclaim these concessions, redistribute them, on demand, to others presenting themselves."
One of the delays leading to the erection of houses on the streets, of the upper town section, traced in 1671 was the interruption of the building of the new parish church determined on, on the occasion of a pastoral visit of Mgr. Laval, when at an assembly of the inhabitants, held on May 12, 1669, it was settled that operations should begin on June 8th under the direction of Bénigne Basset at a monthly honorarium of thirty livres. But though stones were brought to commence the work at once, two years elapsed before the site could be agreed upon. That which had been chosen, once the property of Jean Saint-Père, was considered as being too low down. Two years later, the naming of Notre-Dame Street indicated the resolution arrived at by the seminary to build the church of Notre-Dame higher up, at the head of St. Joseph Street and facing Notre-Dame Street. At a meeting held on June 6, 1672, the proposition to build on such land bought by the seminary from Nicholas Godé and the wife of Jacques Le Moyne, was accepted.
Besides, a promise of the grant of the land, the sum of a 1,000 livres tournois for three years was offered in the name of M. de Bretonvilliers, the superior of the Sulpicians in Paris. On June 19th, at a new assembly, it was agreed upon to engage François Bailli, a master mason, to take charge of the construction and to receive one écu for every day's work and thirty livres a month while the operations lasted. If there had hitherto been delay, the next steps were very swift.
Next day, on June 20th, the land transfer was made, the contour of the new church traced, and on June 21st the foundations were laid. On June 29th, the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, after vespers, a procession formed from the Hôtel-Dieu Chapel at the foot of St. Joseph Street, to the head of the street, and Dollier de Casson, as superior of the seminary, planted the cross, with a great gathering of people witnessing the ceremony.
Next day, June 30th, after high mass the same gathering repaired thither again in procession. The first five stones were placed, each bearing the following inscription on a leaden plate:
"D. O. M. et Beatae Mariae Virginis sub titulo Purificationis."[114]
These five stones were each accompanied by the arms of the persons placing them. The first was placed in the middle of the rondpoint by the governor general of Canada, Daniel Rémy, Seigneur de Courcelles, being one of his last public acts before being succeeded by Comte Frontenac in the September following. The second bore the arms of Jean Talon, intendant, inscribed in advance, for being unable to be present he was represented in the ceremony by Phillipe de Carion, lieutenant of M. de La Motte--Saint Paul's regiment. The third was placed by the governor of Montreal, Chevalier François Marie Perrot, Seigneur of St. Geneviève.[115]
The fourth was placed by Dollier de Casson in the name of M. Bretonvilliers, superior general of the congregation of St. Sulpice in Paris. The last was fittingly placed by Jeanne Mance, the administratrix of the Hôtel-Dieu, who had seen Montreal grow from its earliest infancy and had been so long the mother of the colony.[116]
There was great desire to have the church soon completed. Divers persons imposed voluntary assessments on themselves, some in money, others in materials and labour.
The priests of the seminary resolved to demolish the ancient fort, now being allowed to fall into ruins, so as to employ the wood of the buildings and the stone bastions of the enclosure, in the church construction. Indeed in their eagerness they started the demolition before waiting to receive M. de Bretonvilliers' consent from France. Eventually he disapproved, fearing that it was premature, for if the Iroquois renewed their attacks they would repent their action. The officers of the king also forbade them to proceed further, and thus the final demolition of the battered old fort of de Maisonneuve and his harassed and beleaguered veterans, did not take place till ten years later, in 1682 or 1683.
In 1676 a meeting was held, on January 26th, to raise funds for the completion of the church, and it was determined to hold a canvass in the island, which resulted in a collection of 2,070 livres; and finally, although M. Souart had engaged himself to furnish the necessary wood, all this assistance was insufficient, and the church building, dragging on for two years, was not finished till 1678. The church was in the form of a Latin cross, with "bas côtés," terminated by a circular apse; its front entrance at the south end, built of cut stone, was composed of two orders, Indian and Doric, the last being surmounted by a triangular pediment. The beautiful entrance, erected after the plans of the king's engineer, Chaussegros de Léry, in 1722, was flanked on the right by a square tower with a square belfry tower, surmounted by a fleur-de-lys cross twenty-four feet high. The church was built directly in the middle of Notre-Dame Street and projected into Place d'Armes Square, measuring 140 feet long, 96 broad, while the tower was 144 feet high. This first church of Notre-Dame was of rough stone pointed with mortar.[117]
The erection of the parish church now being on its way permitted funds for the long deferred church of Bon Secours, also to be gathered. The miraculous statute brought from France was meanwhile housed in the little wooden chapel raised in 1657 by Marguerite Bourgeoys before leaving for France and there it remained till the new stone building was commenced. It was not, however, till June 29th, the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, in the year 1675, that M. Souart placed the first stone in the name of M. de Fanchamp, bearing a medal of the Blessed Virgin and a leaden tablet bearing the inscription:
D. O. M. Beatae Mariae Virginis et sub titulo Assumptionis[118]
The bell was cast from the metal of a broken cannon used against the Iroquois and given some time previously by M. de Maisonneuve. It weighed a little less than 100 livres and the casting was paid for by M. Souart.[119]
The site chosen was still thought to be far from the town, but near enough for easy pilgrimages. In order to secure its perpetuity the sisters requested the bishop to make it an inseparable annex to the parish church, to be served by the parish clergy. To this the bishop of Quebec[120] acceded in the mandement of November 6, 1678. In addition he imposed upon the curé the duty of having mass celebrated there each Feast of the Visitation, the principal feast of the new order, and of going thither in procession every Assumption Day. These conditions still obtain. A Sulpician of Notre Dame Church today is known as the Chaplain of Notre Dame de Bon Secours, the first being M. Frémont.
As the chapel was at some distance from the chief buildings, its garret was used for the storage of powder for the safety of Ville Marie, there being no other magazine. M. de Denonville, governor general, writing on November 13, 1685, to the minister said: "At Montreal I have found the powder in the top of a chapel towards which the people have great devotion. The bishop has strongly urged me to take it away, but this I have not been able to do since I have found no other place where to put it without danger of fire." The church was burned down in 1754.[121]
To give the reader a comprehensive view of the outlook for Montreal at this period (1674-76) we may quote from Parkman's "Old Régime," where he imagines a journey up the river to inspect the lines of communication by the formation of settlements and villages resting under the newly established feudal system:
"As you approached Montreal, the fortified mill built by the Sulpicians at Pointe aux Trembles towered above the woods; and soon after the newly built chapel of the Infant Jesus more settlements followed, till at length the great fortified mill of Montreal rose in sight, then the long row of compact wooden houses, the Hôtel-Dieu and the rough masonry of the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Beyond the town the clearings continued at intervals till you reached Lake St. Louis, where young Cavelier de La Salle had laid out his seigniory of Lachine and abandoned it to begin his hard career of western exploration. Above the Island of Montreal the wilderness was broken only by a solitary trading station on the neighbouring Ile Pérot."--Parkman, "Old Régime," p. 241.
FOOTNOTES:
[109] A description of the first thoroughfares has already been given.
[110] This hill has been removed since to add to the extension of the Champ de Mars, and the site, once Dalhousie Square, is now covered by the southeastern portion of the Canadian Pacific Railway yardage at Place Viger Station.
[111] The widow of Lambert Closse, Elizabeth Moyen, was, on June 27th of this year (1672) given a new seigneurial fief.
[112] The early streets of Montreal, according to H. Beaugrand and P. L. Morin "Le Vieux Montreal":
The first pathway, 1645, was replaced by St. Paul Street in 1674; second pathway, 1655, was replaced by Jean Baptiste Street in 1684; third pathway, 1660, was replaced by St. Claude Street in 1690; fourth pathway, 1664, was replaced by Capitol Street in 1666; fifth pathway, 1668, was replaced by St. Vincent Street in 1689; first Place d'Armes was opened in 1650.
Notre Dame Street was opened in 1672; St. Joseph (St. Sulpice) in 1673; St. Peter Street in 1673; St. Paul Street in 1674; St. Charles Street in 1677; St. James Street in 1678; St. François Xavier Street in 1678; Dollard Street in 1679; St. Lambert Street in 1679; St. Gabriel Street in 1680; St. Victor Street in 1681; St. Jean Baptiste Street in 1684; St. Vincent Street in 1689; St. Thérèse Street in 1689; St. Eloi Street in 1690; St. Giles Street (Barracks) in 1691; St. Francis Street in 1691; Frippone Street in 1691; Hospital Street in 1702; St. John Street in 1711; St. Alexis Street in 1711; St. Denis Street (Vaudreuil) in 1711; St. Sacrement Street in 1711; St. Augustine Street (McGill) in 1722; St. Nicholas Street in 1739; St. Anne Street (Bonsecours) in 1758; Callières Street in 1758; Port Street in 1758. St. Helen, Récollets, Le Moine, St. William, Common, Commissioners and Gosford Streets were opened shortly after 1760. Some of the earliest lanes were: St. Dizier, Donnacona, Chonamigon and Capitale.
[113] About this time a road was constructed from Montreal along the river to Pointe aux Trembles, and another from Sorel to Chambly, a distance of six miles. (Kingsford History of Canada I, page 364).
[114] "To the Almighty and Good God, and to the Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, under the title of the Purification."
[115] The old church, of which the first stone was placed in honour of St. Joseph on the 28th of August, 1656, now became exclusively destined to the service of the Sisters of the Hôtel-Dieu and their sick.
[116] These plaques were found in September, 1830, during the work of demolition.
[117] It stood till 1830, when it was demolished at the completion of the present Notre-Dame Church begun in 1824 and opened on July 15, 1829. The belfry tower, however, remained standing till 1843.
[118] "To the Almighty and All Good God and to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Assumption."
[119] Cf. Autobiographical Notes by Sister Bourgeoys.
[120] In 1674 Quebec was erected into a bishopric and the erstwhile Bishop of Petrea became the titular of the see on October 1st.
[121] The Bon Secours Church was rebuilt between 1771 and 1773. It has been several times restored, but it still stands a venerable link connecting the old and the new Montreal.
Chapter XXVI
1672-1682
ALTERCATIONS
FRONTENAC'S FIRST TERM OF GOVERNORSHIP
I. THE RIVAL GOVERNORS
II. CHURCH AND STATE
III. THE GOVERNOR, THE INTENDANT AND THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL
I. THE TWO GOVERNORS--PERROT--ILE PERROT--REMONSTRANCES OF CITIZENS--FRONTENAC--A "VICE-ROI"--GENEROUS ATTEMPT TO GRANT REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT RESTRAINED--FORT FRONTENAC (OR KINGSTON)--CORVEES--THE GOVERNOR GENERAL--EXPEDITION STARTS FOR MONTREAL--LA SALLE--THE FRONTENAC-PERROT DUEL COMMENCES--PERROT IMPRISONED--COUREURS DE BOIS--DULUTH--CHICAGO--FRONTENAC RULES MONTREAL.
II. THE FRONTENAC-FENELON DUEL--THE EASTER SERMON IN THE HOTEL-DIEU--LA SALLE PRESENT IN THE CHAPEL--M. FENELON RESIGNS FROM THE SULPICIANS--THE TRIAL BEFORE THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL--THE MONTREAL PARTY PRESENT THEIR CASE IN FRANCE--FRONTENAC AND FENELON REPRIMANDED, PERROT IN PRISON--PERROT QUICKLY RELEASED AND SENT BACK AS LOCAL GOVERNOR OF MONTREAL.
III. THE MONTREAL COMPLAINTS HAVE A RESULT--THE REARRANGEMENT OF THE POSITIONS OF HONOUR IN THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL--THE GOVERNOR AND THE INTENDANT, DUCHESNEAU--RIVAL FACTIONS--CENTRALIZATION AND HOME RULE THE CAUSE OF FRENCH FAILURE IN CANADA--PERROT MADE GOVERNOR OF ACADIA.
We have now to consider the fortunes of Montreal under the reign of Frontenac, as governor general, and M. Perrot, as local governor. Louis de Buade, Count de Pallua et de Frontenac, arrived in Canada in September of 1672, whereas M. Perrot had been in Montreal since 1670 as governor, by the goodwill of the seigneurs, and by the letters patent of March 14, 1671, he held the rank also by royal commission. He considered himself in a strong position, but Frontenac was also a strong man, and when the clash came in the autumn of next year, the old opposition of Quebec and Montreal was renewed. Both antagonists had powerful protectors at court. Unfortunately Perrot's character was haughty and violent, and his unworthy attempts to enrich himself by engaging in the nefarious liquor trade, leaves us unable to sympathize with his case, as we did with that of the gentle and single-minded de Maisonneuve. To illustrate this, Perrot, as governor of Montreal, could not openly engage in the trade, yet he chose a situation on an island given to him by Talon as his seigneury and named after him, "Ile Perrot," lying at the toe of Montreal, between the seigneuries of Bellevue and Vaudreuil and at the western end of Lake St. Louis, an excellent spot for a receiving station for peltry from the Indians, descending from above. There, he placed a former lieutenant of his company, Antoine de Fresnay, Sieur de Brucy, who acted as his agent and gave protection to the deserting volontaires now illegally becoming coureurs de bois, who were growing numerous around Montreal and were being more or less openly encouraged by the local government. These were given liquor and merchandise in exchange for the products of their hunting expeditions. The consequence was that frequent disorders occurred through their irregularities.
A delegation consisting of the foremost citizens called on M. Perrot, respectfully remonstrating on this situation. Among them were Migeon de Branssat, Charles Le Moyne, Picoté de Bélestre, Jacques Leber, and Vincent de Hautmesnil. The haughty governor received them with insult and he imprisoned their spokesman, Migeon de Branssat, who as procureur fiscal was acting as judge in place of M. d'Ailleboust, then absent. "I am not like M. de Maisonneuve," said he, "I know how to keep you in your proper places." Next day, Dollier de Casson as a representative of the seigneurs expostulated at such imprisonment, especially as the course of justice was being held up; but to no avail at the moment. Perrot was governor by royal commission, and he meant to show it. Eventually, however, the procureur fiscal was freed and the court sittings continued.
It will be remembered that Marie François Perrot had espoused Madeleine de La Guide, niece of Talon, and under the régimes of Courcelles and his uncle, Talon, the illicit commerce had either passed unperceived or authority had closed its eyes. But he was to meet his match under the new government.
Let us now turn to Frontenac, who was soon to cross swords with Perrot of Montreal. The new governor general, now a man of fifty, having been born in 1622, was a very complex character with high qualities and serious defects. He was every inch a Gascon, a boastful talker, an exaggerator, fond of posing and a little of a bully. Yet he could be gay, was a lover of a good table, a man of the world, brilliant, communicative, and generous with his friends, as he was haughty and distant with those he disliked.
From the age of fifteen he followed camp life, serving at first under Maurice, Prince of Orange, and his reputation for bravery was sound. He was placed at the head of a Norman regiment and distinguished himself in Flanders, Germany and Italy; at the battle of Orvietto he broke his arm. In 1664, while at St. Gothard, Turenne sent him to fight against the Turks, to the Island of Candia, whence he returned to Paris, covered with glory. He rose to the rank of a maréchal de camp or brigadier general. His married life was not too domestic. Himself, the godchild of Louis XIII, his father being the chief majordomo and captain of the Château de St. Germain-en-Laye, he married the daughter of one of his neighbours in Paris, Lagrange Trianon, a master of accounts. Madame de Frontenac was handsome, gallant, witty, fond of high society, imperious, and very independent. In these qualities, she resembled monsieur and after a time Frontenac found warring more to his taste than the fireside, and madame lived with Mademoiselle Montpensier, and together these two "divines" held a kind of court of their own in their "apartment," in which they set the tone for the best society of Paris. It was, therefore, no doubt through her influence, combined with his services as a distinguished soldier to the king, that the office of governor general of Canada was secured for him, to help him in his poverty.
As a governor he had high gifts of administration; according to Charlevoix, "his work and his capacity were equal; ... his views for the development of the country were great and just." He knew how to maintain his position, and even to gain the affection of those he ruled, especially the Indians. But he was absolute, dominating, despotic, violent, headstrong, ambitious, jealous, choleric and impatient of opposition. He also came full of prejudice against the clergy and especially the Jesuits.
On arriving at Quebec, this "High and Puissant Seigneur," as he prefixed to his title of "Governor, Lieutenant-General for the King in France," introduced a gayety and high style of living, somewhat surprising and unaccustomed to the Canadian bourgeoisie. In official, governmental life he assumed the reins with a high hand. He was, as he thought himself, a "vice-roi" and he would model the colony on the lines of France. Thus his preliminary act was to call a representative convocation of the people in three several orders or estates, the clergy, the noblesse, and the third estate, to receive the oath of fealty from them, a proceeding which Colbert evidently disapproved of as too democratic, and opposed to the centralizing policy, then in favour in France, a policy which eventually ruined the initiative and delayed the progress of the colony. The minister wrote on June 13, 1673: "It is good for you to know that in the government of Canada you always ought to follow the forms practiced in France, where the kings have for some time considered it better for their service, not to assemble the 'Etats Généraux.' Also, you ought but rarely, or better say, never, give this form to the body of habitants of your country; it will even be necessary, in a little time, and when the colony is stronger than it is now, gradually to suppress the office of the syndic, who presents the requests in the name of all the inhabitants; it being good that each speaks for himself and not one for all." What is everybody's business is no one's, was evidently Colbert's view. Thus the people never learned the art of self-government.
The new governor very soon showed his desire to be sole master of the situation. Of his own responsibility he had made several police regulations and had established aldermen at Quebec and, contrary to the rights of the Company of the West Indies, then still existing, he had attributed to them the power of administering police regulations. This brought a letter from Colbert, dated May 17, 1674: "His Majesty orders me to tell you, that you have therein passed the limits of the power given by him. Besides, the police regulations ought to be made by the Sovereign Council, and not by you alone. The power which you have been given by the king gives you entire authority in the command of the army, but with regard to what concerns the administration of justice, your authority consists in presiding at the Sovereign Council. The intention of His Majesty is that you take the advice of the councillors and that it is for the council, to pronounce on all matters which belong to its jurisdiction."
On his arrival he quickly turned his gaze on Lake Ontario, lately visited by M. de Courcelles, and already the construction of a fort was in his mind, to divert the fur trade towards Montreal, and on to Quebec in place of it descending to Albany. Writing to Colbert, on November 2, 1672, two months after his arrival, he says: "You will have heard from M. de Courcelles of a post which he has projected on Lake Ontario and which he believes to be of the utmost necessity, in order to prevent the Iroquois taking peltry to the Dutch and to force them to trade with us, as it is but just, seeing that they hunt on our lands.
"The establishment of such a post will strengthen the mission at Kenté, already settled there by the Messieurs de Montréal. I beg you to believe that I will spare no trouble or pains or even my life to attempt to do something to please you."
It is alleged by the Duke de St. Simon in his mémoires (Paris 1829, Vol. II), that Frontenac came to France a "ruined man," that he was given the governorship for his means of living, and that he would sooner go to Quebec than die of hunger in Paris. His disinterestedness in setting up a trading post for the good of the colony is therefore somewhat discounted.
Frontenac determined to construct this fort before the return of the vessels from France. In order to obtain the necessary men, boats and canoes, he relied on the precedent of M. de Courcelles' official visit as governor general to Lake Ontario. To impress the Indians with the dignity of the French conquerors, he called a corvée from Quebec, Montreal, Three Rivers and other places to supply the above at their own expense. In the meantime he had built two bateaux to face the rapids and currents and mounted on them two pieces of cannon. These he had painted, which was considered a novelty.
At Montreal there was no little murmuring at his novel and burdensome corvées, for to avoid the Rapids of St. Louis, he made the inhabitants repair the road leading to Lachine. He requisitioned about 200 canoes and 400 men and kept them at work until he finished his fort there.
La Salle was then in Montreal, and Frontenac, seeing an ally in this already experienced traveler, wrote to him to proceed to Onondaga, the ordinary rendezvous of the Iroquois nation, and there to explain, that the projected expedition was a visit of courtesy to the Mission of Kenté and to the neighbouring tribes. La Salle, nothing loath, set out ahead, leaving Montreal in the beginning of May, 1673. Frontenac left Quebec on June 3d and arrived at Montreal on June 15th, having delayed his journey, being received in the other towns on his way. Arriving at 5 o'clock that evening, the governor general was met at the wharf by Perrot, the governor of Montreal--no doubt with some jealousy and some resentment at the corvées demanded by his superior--and the principal citizens, with their military companies. After the volleys of musketry and cannon, there came the addresses of the officers of justice and that by Sieur Chevalier, the syndic of the people. Then they made their way to the temporary parish church attached to the Hôtel-Dieu and there the clergy held their reception and also harangued him. After which the Te Deum was sung in thanksgiving for his happy voyage and the governor retired to the hospitality of Fort Maisonneuve, not as yet demolished as we know.
For thirteen days, there was a great bustle at Montreal, fixing up canoes and loading them, and arranging the men in companies,--all requisitioned in the name of the king. The last preparations for the important journey were broken, however, by the celebration of feast of St. Jean Baptiste; on this occasion M. de Salignac Fénelon, the brother of the famous archbishop of Cambrai, returned from Kenté with M. Durfé, and about to return together, with the expedition, pronounced an elegant eulogium on the governor-general. At last all to join the vice-regal party had left the town and gone by road to Lachine, whence on June 28th, all being reunited, the expedition started--two flat bateaux, nearly one hundred and twenty canoes and about four hundred men, among them being Charles Le Moyne, who was a skilled interpreter.
We cannot follow its progress. For us, it is interesting to record it in connection with Montreal as resulting in the establishment of Fort Frontenac, or Cataracqui, the modern Kingston, the construction and management of which was now entrusted to a Montrealer, Sieur de la Salle to whom, on May 13, 1675, on the occasion of his visit to France, letters of nobility were given with the property and government of the new fort and some adjacent leagues of land. La Salle had gone to France in 1674, well recommended by Frontenac. His family, seeing a fortune in the new trading station, procured the necessary funds for him to pursue his career, and presented a memorial of La Salle's discoveries and his good actions, which secured the above privilege. La Salle named his seigneury Fort Frontenac in honour of his patron. His enemies say that he became Frontenac's agent, as de Brucy was that of Perrot.
On returning from Lake Ontario, Frontenac and Perrot soon began their duel. Towards the end of autumn, 1673, Frontenac, receiving Perrot at Quebec, reprimanded him severely for the continued disturbances already mentioned at Montreal. Perrot respectfully promised better care, in regard to the observances of the king, for the future, and returned to Montreal. But hardly had he been back eight days, when trouble began. Two coureurs de bois had returned and gone to lodge with M. Carion, the officer of whom we have spoken. Charles D'Ailleboust, the judge, sent Sergeant Bailly to arrest him, whereupon Carion obstructed and ill treated the sergeant. Instead of punishing Carion, Perrot sent for D'Ailleboust and reprimanded him for having sent the sergeant to the house of an officer, without warning him, and threatened him with prison himself, if he repeated his conduct, notwithstanding any orders from the governor-general.
The astonished D'Ailleboust acquainted Frontenac with this incident, and he, scenting rebellion, immediately dispatched three of his guards with their lieutenant, Sieur Bizard, to arrest Carion. Bizard did this faithfully, leaving a guard over him. But he had made a grave error in etiquette in so doing. Before leaving Quebec he had received from Frontenac a letter for Perrot, acquainting him of the intended arrest in his jurisdiction, but fearful of the wrath of the local governor, Bizard sought the house of Jacques LeBer, to leave the letter there, so that it might be delivered to Perrot after the departure of the guard from the town. Meanwhile Madame Carion had quickly acquainted Perrot of her husband's arrest and immediately the indignant governor, with a sergeant and a guard from the garrison, angrily confronted Bizard at LeBer's house and threw Frontenac's letter, presented him, back in Bizard's face.
"Take it back," he said, "to your master and warn him to teach you your official duties, better, a second time." He then put him into prison but released him the next day with a letter to M. Frontenac. Bizard, however, had a statement of his arrest made out which was signed by Jacques LeBer, La Salle and a domestic, the witnesses of it. Four or five days later, Perrot, coming to hear of this, sent LeBer to prison without any form of justice; but La Salle he left alone, keeping him under watch during the day. But by night the nimble explorer, with Norman adroitness, leaped the enclosure of the house and hurried secretly to Quebec to tell his patron Frontenac of his flouted authority. Thither also journeyed later the friends of M. LeBer to make their protestation.
If Frontenac's officer had erred in trespassing on the prerogatives of the governor of Montreal, the latter, by imprisoning Bizard, had similarly encroached on those of the governor-general. They could have cried quits, but it is alleged that Frontenac was eager to deprive Montreal of its autonomy, and herein was his excuse. It was Frontenac's policy to appear to smoothen out the situation. He wrote to Perrot inviting him to set LeBer at liberty and to come himself to Quebec to render an account of his conduct, and to M. de Salignac Fénelon, the Sulpician, who had eulogized him in the parish church of Montreal before departing to Fort Frontenac, he wrote another, saying that he wished to terminate amicably the differences between himself and M. Perrot. Both fell into the trap. M. Fénelon, determined to accompany M. Perrot, started with him on the ice of the river in the heart of winter, and they arrived at nightfall in Quebec on the 28th of January, 1674.
The next morning M. Perrot made his call on the governor and hardly had he set his foot across his threshold than he was arrested by Lieutenant Bizard, his sword being taken from him and then led to prison in solitary confinement in the Château St. Louis without any formal process, and there he remained till the following November. The simplicity of M. Fénelon was rudely shocked by this "volte face." He sought the governor to intercede for his friend and when he strove to obtain a pass to see the prisoner he only angered Frontenac, who accused him of wishing to corrupt his guards.
Back went Fénelon on the St. Lawrence on his snowshoes. Hardly had he reached Montreal when Dollier de Casson received several letters from the governor-general, complaining of the conduct of M. Fénelon "as unworthy of a man of his character and birth." There is reason from after-events to believe that Fénelon's zeal was not sufficiently tempered with discretion. Montreal having now need of a governor, Frontenac speedily appointed on the 4th of February, as commandant in his absence, one of his devoted friends, M. de la Nouguère,[122] an ensign in a cavalry regiment. In the act, making this appointment, he explains his superseding of the town major, Sieur Dupuis, as due to the advanced stage of his age, but he bids him to have de la Nouguère recognized by the officers of the garrison. (Vide this document in the City Hall Archives, dated February 10, 1674.) He then ordered the new commandant to arrest Sieur de Brucy and two of his servants, and to send M. Gilles de Boisvinet, the judge of Three Rivers, to conduct the trial and to inform against all coureurs de bois in Montreal--an insult to M. Charles D'Ailleboust, whose faith and sympathy he distrusted. Certainly Frontenac had made himself master of Montreal.
These actions, derogatory to the privileges of the Seigneurs granted in 1644, were borne with wise moderation, though under protest, to avoid undue friction in a difficult position. A document of Dollier de Casson, dated March 22, 1674, on the occasion of a protest against Boisvinet, who had gone beyond the limits of his commission, following a former juridical protestation against the infringement of their right to appointment of a governor, dated March 10, 1674, shows this clearly and explains the neutral policy now adopted.
Meanwhile in his prison at Quebec, the deposed governor of Montreal refused to be judged by Frontenac and the Sovereign Council, and asked to have his case tried by the king. In justification of his firm action at Montreal, Frontenac wrote to Colbert some months later, that he had hanged one of the coureurs de bois, the same that had lodged with Carion, and that the others, to the number of thirty, had been thus intimidated and had submitted to fines and had taken up lands as habitants. "I can assure you," he says, "with certainty, that there are now not more than five coureurs de bois in Canada, of whom three belong to M. Perrot's garrison, whom he allowed to desert; the fourth is a farmer on the island bearing his name. You will gather from this whether I have reason or not, in retaining him as a prisoner."
That there were only five coureurs de bois in Canada seems an exaggeration unless we take it that they were dispersed over the North American continent. For from Montreal there wandered many an expedition which left its mark there. Accompanying these were the "voyageurs," "coureurs de bois" and "bois brulés," as they were variously named. These often allied themselves with women of the Indian tribes and united the vices of both races. Restlessly they pursued their vagabond life, and it would be impossible to find a northern Indian tribe unaffected by these wanderers. In 1678 David Greysolon Duluth or the Sieur Du Luth built the first trading post at the western end of Lake Superior. The only post of Minnesota bears his name. He was by no means a saint--he was a worthy gentleman of the wild woods--a knight of the fur trade--a great leader of the coureurs de bois, and he enhanced his fortunes with illicit trading in spirits. But he was a power among the Indians in the land of the Dakotas (Minnesota), which was the name of one of the principal tribes formed into a league, or Dakota, and given to the general body. They were called the Ojibways north of Lake Superior and Nadowaysioux, the last syllable of which, "Sioux," being used as a nickname for them by the French. Other historical sites as that of Chicago were first visited by those who started from Montreal, such as Marquette, the Jesuit, and Joliet, who arrived at the site of modern Chicago in August, 1673.
Meanwhile Frontenac was exercising a control and overlordship over Montreal as the following document will indicate:
"Count Frontenac, king's councillor, governor and lieutenant general for His Majesty in Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland and other countries in Western France.
"Being necessary to create and establish a captain of militia in the Town and Island of Montreal, under the authority of its local governor, to exercise and manoeuvre with army, and to put it in a better state of defence, in the event of an attack from enemies. We have appointed and do establish, the Sieur Le Moyne in the said position of captain, under the authority of its local governor, commandant of the militia of the said town and island. To whom we ordain, that he must be careful that he drills the said inhabitants of the said place as often as he can, and at least once or twice a month; to take care that they keep their arms in good condition; to prevent as much as in his power, that they trade or do away with their arms, and to execute all orders that we may give to him, being assured of his fidelity to the service of the king, of which he has given many proofs in numerous engagements, as well as of his bravery and experience in drill. This warrant is given to Sieur de la Nougère, present commandant in the said Town and Island of Montreal, that he may make the appointment known to the inhabitants of the said island, to whom we commend that they must obey in all duties appertaining to his functions, on penalty of disobedience, and we give him full power and authority to command the same, in virtue of powers confided to us by His Majesty. On proof of which we have signed these presents and have appended the seal of our arms and have further signed by one of our secretaries.
"Given at Quebec, the 24th day of April, 1674.
"Frontenac.
"By His Lordship's orders,
"B. Chasseur."
The Sieur de la Nougère, above mentioned, is M. Th. X. Tarieu de Lanaudière. The spelling of the period was not as hidebound as today. Frontenac's secretary spelled phonetically like so many of his contemporaries--a source of embarrassment to historians.
CHURCH AND STATE
The difficult equipoise of neutrality, aimed at by the Seigneurs in the Frontenac-Perrot dispute, was rudely jolted on Easter Day, little more than a month later, in a most dramatic manner. The scene was the crowded Hôtel-Dieu chapel, then being used as a parish church, while the new parish church higher up the street was being slowly raised, and all the notables of Montreal were present at the High Mass. The celebrant was M. Perrot, the curé, in the absence of the superior of the seminary, Dollier de Casson, who was confined to his bed in the hospital from the effects of fever, after an accident on the St. Lawrence, when the ice having broken he had almost lost his life through cold from the long immersion in the water, before rescue came. The deacon was M. de Cavelier, La Salle's brother, and the subdeacon M. Rémy, the lawyer Sulpician. After the gospel, M. de Fénelon, the same who had preached the eulogium of Frontenac the year previously, mounted the pulpit. The preacher announced that he would speak on the Christian's double necessity, of dying with Christ, and of rising with him. Following the scholastic divisions of St. Thomas Acquinas he divided the life of man into the vegetative, sensitive and rational states. The sinful vices, destroying the vitality of this threefold life, must die in Christ and the new man must arise with Christ, purified and reestablished in his threefold life. In pursuing this second point the preacher entered into the details of the various dispositions that risen Christians of different conditions should manifest as a sign of the new Easter life in them. Turning to those vested with temporal authority, he said, "that the magistrate, animated with the spirit of the risen Christ, should have as much diligence in punishing those faults committed against the person of the prince, as he had of readiness in pardoning those against his own person...."
La Salle, who had been sitting towards the back of the chapel, near the door, and had listened with approbation to the familiar doctrine of St. Thomas, which as a Jesuit he had studied in his philosophical course, began now to show unusual interest in the preacher's application. In order to get a better view of the speaker, he rose from his seat. He saw that M. de Fénelon, a man who was known to have been in sympathy with Perrot and to have had trouble with his own patron, Frontenac, was treading on delicate ground and might commit himself. La Salle had, what journalists call, the reportorial instinct for "news." Besides, since the famous expedition of 1669, his relations with the Sulpicians were cold. As the preacher proceeded, La Salle's face flushed with anger, and casting his eyes around, he drew the special attention of several to what the preacher was saying. Among these was Jean Baptiste Montgaudon de Bellefontaine, the brigadier of de Frontenac's guard. Soon La Salle's gestures attracted the attention of the celebrant, seated in the sanctuary, to what was being said; but he shrugged his shoulders in return, as though to convey that no personal allusions were being made. The preacher had also noticed La Salle, "and changed colour," said Bellefontaine later in giving his procès verbal. The preacher went on: "The Christian magistrate should be full of respect for the ministers of the altar, and should not maltreat them, when in the exercise of their duty, they strove to reconcile enemies and to establish peace everywhere; that he should not make creatures to praise him, nor oppress under specious pretexts persons also vested with authority and who, serving the same prince, were opposed to his enterprises; that he should make use of his power to maintain the authority of the monarch and not to further his own interests; that looking upon his subjects as his own children and treating them as a father, he should be content with the rewards which he received from the prince, without troubling the commerce of the country and without ill using those who did not share their profits with him; and, that in fine, he should not harass the people with extraordinary and unjust corvées for his own interests, under cover of the king's name, who was unaware of their extent and that they bore so heavily on them."
These phrases were shortly afterwards attested to, in the official declarations of MM. de la Salle, Jean Baptiste Montgaudon de Bellefontaine, Jacques LeBer, de la Nouguère, commandant of Montreal, Rémy, and Jean Baptiste Migeon de Branssat, procurator fiscal of the seigneury of Montreal and others, before Commissioners Legardeur de Tilly and Dupont, sent from Quebec as the court of investigation which opened on May 2d and lasted for a fortnight.
To La Salle, every phrase appeared leveled at the conduct of the governor general, especially as the preacher was M. de Fénelon. Jacques LeBer testified that the curé, who came to visit him the same day, declared that the words of the preacher appeared to him so imprudent and out of place that he was very near intoning the Credo to cut the sermon short. Others saw in them only generalities within the legitimate sphere of a preacher. The Sulpicians took immediate steps to disclaim to M. de la Nouguère all responsibility for the utterance of one of its members. It was in no way authorized or foreseen, and Dollier de Casson left his sick bed to confirm this and to assure the commandant that M. de Fénelon should never preach again. They also wrote immediately to Frontenac a similar disclaimer. That afternoon M. de Fénelon, before his fellow clergy, gave his word of honour as a man and a priest, that he had meant no conscious personal allusion, but had spoken in general terms of all bearing authority. There is no doubt, however, that M. de Fénelon, though a virtuous and zealous missionary, had been "blazingly indiscreet." In his want of prudence, he had also but recently personally canvassed the householders of the Island of Montreal for signatures to a petition to be sent to court, on behalf of Madame Perrot, in which the subscribers stated that they had no complaint to make against her husband. The memorial was signed by many prominent men, such as Louis Chevalier, the syndic, Zacharie Dupuis, Sieur de Verdun and Mayor of the Isle of Montreal, Philippe de Hautmesnil, Picoté de Bélestre and others. Madame Perrot had previously approached d'Ailleboust to make the canvass, but the judge, already in hot water, was too wary. M. de Fénelon fell an easier victim, and his action was not calculated to prejudice M. de Frontenac in favour of his pretentious of absence of malice prepense, in his Easter sermon. La Salle communicated the details of the latter to Frontenac. On April 23d, in his anger, the governor wrote, ordering the Sulpicians to expel the offending preacher from their community. This they could not do, without a formal conviction of rebellion, as required by canon and civil law. M. de Fénelon, however, resigned from the "congregation," using his right to do so, as the Sulpicians was not a "religious order," and thus saved the situation. In this way, there was no acquiescence to any claim of jurisdiction of the governor general over ecclesiastics. M. de Fénelon retired to Lachine as a secular priest, and is reckoned one of the first curés of this place.
With the above letter M. de Frontenac sent out a set of questions to be answered by each of the Sulpicians. This was equivalent to giving evidence against M. de Fénelon in a civil court, whereas they claimed the right of trying such a case in a prior ecclesiastical court, according to precedent. They, therefore, refused, but later consented when assured that their information would not be used juridically. Commissioners Legardeur de Tilly and Dupont accordingly arrived at Montreal, and opened a court of investigation, beginning on May 2d.
On August 21st M. de Fénelon appeared by command before the Sovereign Council at Quebec. He came determined to protest against the competency of the civil court to try him, relying on the privileges granted by the kings of France. "Clericus, si cogatur ad forum laici, debet protestari," was an axiom of many jurisconsults of the period, such as Aufrerius, president of the parliament of Rouen.[123]
Among other privileges, a cleric summoned before the lay court, unless sent there for misdemeanour by his bishop, could reply seated and uncovered. On entering the hall of justice, M. de Fénelon, uncovered, made for a seat. The governor reproved him, and Fénelon quoted his canonical privilege. The heated head of the council then told him, he might walk out if he would not take the attitude ordered. M. de Fénelon demanded rather that M. de Frontenac should leave the council, as he was acting not as his judge and the head of the council, but as his opponent. The council, however, sustained the governor and M. de Fénelon was taken as prisoner to the brewery under the conduct of an usher.
On August 23d M. de Fénelon again appeared, presenting his protest in writing, and refusing to be tried till sent by his bishop, when he would give his reasons for alleging that the governor was his opposing party and was not acting as the president of the council. Again the recalcitrant de Fénelon went back to his prison. The council, however, began to doubt their power to try the case, and it sent to the king the judgment on M. de Fénelon, with the statement that there remained only three judges whom he did not refuse. Similar action was taken in M. Perrot's case. The unfortunate governor of Montreal had been kept a close prisoner since January 26th and had not ceased sending to the council protest upon protest,[124] refusing to accept his judges, and demanding, without avail, to have his case concluded and sent to be tried before the king in France.
In the month of September some of the council wavered and M. de Villeray refused to act against either, alleging that there was such a natural connection between the affairs of M. de Fénelon and M. Perrot that having refused to act in the case of M. Perrot, fearing to displease the late Intendant Talon, the uncle of Madame Perrot, who had given him his own nomination to the council, he could do not less for M. de Fénelon, and his reasons were accepted by the council. (Archives de la Marine, October 22, 1674.) Thus it was that Frontenac had to allow M. Perrot and M. de Fénelon to go for a time to France by the last vessels sailing in November. With them went Dollier de Casson, now broken in health and suffering from the loss of sight in one of his eyes since his fall on the ice, and M. l'Abbé d'Urfé, on important business to the country. The latter intended to complain at court of the vexatious conduct of M. de Frontenac in regard to the missionaries, whose letters to France he opened and to whom he handed, among those arriving for them, only such as he pleased. Perhaps it was knowledge of his intention, added to his displeasure at M. d'Urfé's friendship for Fénelon, that made the governor refuse to allow M. d'Urfé's servant to accompany him on the voyage. Thus the Montreal party sailed, hoping for redress in France.
At the same time M. de Frontenac, scenting recrimination, wrote, on November 14, 1674, to Colbert: "I am sending M. Perrot to France and with him M. l'Abbé Fénelon, so that you may judge of their conduct. On my part, I submit mine to everything that it shall please His Majesty to impose on me; if I have been found wanting, I am ready to accept the correction pleasing to him. A governor would be very much to be pitied, if he was not sustained, having no one in whom he can trust, and being ever obliged to distrust everybody; and when he should commit any fault, it should assuredly be very pardonable, since there are not wanting snares stretched for him, so that having to avoid a hundred of them, it would be difficult not to fall into one. The distance, too, from the court and the impossibility of receiving new orders, except after a long interval, make his faults necessarily no short ones. Thus, Monseigneur, if it shall have happened that I have made any false step, which may displease His Majesty, he will have the goodness to pass it over and to believe that it has occurred rather by an excess of zeal to do my duty and to carry out His intentions, than from any other motive."
But Colbert was likely to be sympathetic to the Montrealers. When M. d'Urfé arrived he was warmly welcomed by the minister, for on the 8th of February following, his son, the Marquis de Seignelay contracted a marriage with M. d'Urfé's cousin-germain, the rich and youthful heiress, the Marquise Marie-Marguerite d'Allègre, only daughter of Claude-Ives d'Allègre. The chosen intermediary in the marriage was also M. de Bretonvilliers, the superior general of the Sulpicians at Paris. Hence M. d'Urfé's mémoire on the conduct of M. de Frontenac, received by Colbert and communicated to the king, on April 22, 1675, brought from the latter the following series of counsels to guide the governor in his future conduct: "I have noted with attention," wrote the king, "all that is contained in your dispatches of February 16th and November 14th last, and to explain to you my designs and all they contain, I will tell you that in a feeble colony, such as yours, your principal and almost sole employment ought to be, to maintain and conserve all the inhabitants there and to induce others to come thither. You ought then to use the power I give you, only with the greatest moderation and gentleness, more particularly with regard to the ecclesiastics whom it is your duty to uphold in their functions, in peace and concord, without giving them any trouble: being assured, as I am, that they will never be wanting in the obedience due me, nor in their readiness to inspire my people with the same sentiments.[125] Although I do not attach importance to all that has been told me of many petty annoyances, given by you to the ecclesiastics, I deem it necessary all the same for the good of my government, to warn you of them, so that you correct what is amiss, if they are true. But my present order is, that you make known to no one, that I have written to you about them; and that even when the bishop or the ecclesiastics speak of them, you will not cherish any resentment against them.... They say, then here, that you are not willing to allow the ecclesiastics power to attend to their missions and their other functions, or to leave their stations without passports, even to go from Montreal to Quebec; that you cause them to journey to you often for very slight reasons; that you intercept their letters and do not allow the liberty of writing; that you have not been willing to allow M. d'Urfé's valet to cross over to France with his master; nor permitted the grand vicar of the bishop of Petrea to take his place at the Sovereign Council, in accordance with the regulation of the month of April, 1673. If any part of the things is true, or even the whole, you must make amends."
In a similar delicate strain Colbert wrote on May 13, 1675, adding that he wished Frontenac to pay some mark of consideration to M. d'Urfé, now that he had become allied to him as his daughter-in-law's first cousin.
The conduct of M. de Fénelon at Montreal, both for his sermon and his support of M. Perrot, was blamed, and caused a letter dated May 7, 1675, to be written by M. de Bretonvilliers to the Sulpicians at Montreal: "I exhort you all to profit by the example of M. de Fénelon. For being too much mixed up with the world, and with affairs which did not concern him, he has mismanaged his own affairs, and has done wrong to those of his friends, while wishing to serve them. In these kinds of affairs, which have regard only to personal quarrels, neutrality is to always be approved...."
The upshot was that M. de Fénelon was not allowed to return to Canada by the king, on recommendation of M. de Bretonvilliers. The criminal procedure instituted by de Frontenac was not allowed to proceed. A letter from the king to Frontenac, dated April 22, 1675, explains this: "I have blamed the action of M. de Fénelon and I have ordered him not to return to Canada. But I must tell you that it was difficult to institute criminal procedure against this cleric and also to oblige the priests of the Seminary of Montreal to testify against him; at least, he should have been left in the hands of the bishop or the grand vicar. Besides, the differences between you and the priests of the Seminary of Montreal are entirely settled and can have no consequences. As, moreover, the superior of the Seminary of St. Sulpice (M. de Bretonvilliers) has assured me that all the priests of his community, who are at Montreal, live in the respect and obedience due to me, and to your dignity, I desire that you forget all that has passed. Strive then, assiduously to reunite to yourself all minds, that these differences may have divided."
On the 14th of May a characteristic letter of Colbert followed this up: "It is to the good estate and good government of the king and the colony, that you show particular consideration for the community of the Seminary of St. Sulpice at Montreal, of which M. de Bretonvilliers, the superior, is one of my best friends."
M. Perrot did not escape as easily as did M. de Fénelon, at the hands of the king, being sent to the Bastille Prison for three weeks. On the same April 22d as above, the king writing to Frontenac said: "I have seen, and examined with care, all that you have sent me concerning the Sieur Perrot; and after having also seen the memoirs, which he has put in for his defense, I have condemned his action in having imprisoned the officer of the guards sent to Montreal. To punish him, I have put him for some time in the bastille, in order that this punishment may not only render him more circumspect in the future regarding his duty but will serve moreover as an example to restrain others. But having given this satisfaction to my authority, which has been violated in your person, I must tell you, to direct you in my views, that you ought not, without absolute necessity, carry out an order in the territory of a local governor, without having apprised him of it, and also that the punishment of ten months, accorded him, has appeared to me too great in proportion to the fault committed. This is why I have made him undergo the punishment in the bastille only long enough to repair publicly the violation of my authority. Another time, I direct that in a like fault, you must be content with the satisfaction offered you, or with some months in prison, or to transfer the case for decision to me, sending over to France the defaulting officer; imprisonment for ten months being a little too rigorous."
But thanks doubtlessly to M. Talon's interest in his relative, M. Perrot was confirmed by the king in the government of Montreal, as the above letter continues: "After having left M. Perrot some days in the bastille I will send him back to his government and I will order him to call on you and to offer you his apologies for all that has passed. After which I desire that you will not retain any resentment against him, but that you will treat him in accordance with the power I have given him. Finally you ought to punish the habitants only for capital faults, avoiding lengthy punishments, because minds are thus divided, and embittered and are diverted from their principal work, which is to provide for the surety and subsistence of the family."
Colbert's letter of May 13th begged Frontenac to live in good harmony with M. Perrot, urging his family alliance "with persons for whom I have great consideration," of whom, no doubt, Talon was one.
THE GOVERNOR, THE INTENDANT AND THE SOVEREIGN COUNCIL
One of the gravest charges alleged against Frontenac, by the Montrealers now in France, was that he had usurped the powers of the council and that he had rendered himself absolute and all powerful. This brought about that, at Colbert's instigation, the king himself named the councillors and fixed the rank they should hold in the Sovereign Council. In consequence, on April 25th of this year, Louis XIV named M. Denis-Joseph Ruette d'Auteuil as his procureur général; on May 10th following, the seven councillors in order of rank: Louis Rouer de Villeray, first councillor, Charles Legardeur de Tilly, Mathieu d'Amours, Nicholas Dupont, René-Louis Chartier de Lothbinière, Jean Baptiste de Peyras and Charles Denys. To render them the more independent of the governor, the king named on June 5th M. Jacques Duchesneau, then treasurer of France at Tours, as the intendant, making him the real president of the council and reserving for the governor general only a simple presidency of honour. He arrived on September 25th. He further endowed the new intendant[126] with full powers concerning the administration of justice, police and finance, with the order, to see to it that all the inferior judges and other officers of justice should be upheld in the exercise of their functions without any interference--a privilege often demanded by the Montrealers. He arranged that the intendant should judge conjointly with the Sovereign Council all civic and criminal cases, in conformity with the coutume de Paris and that the council should make all police regulations; with this clause, however, that the intendant could, if he deemed it opportune, act alone as supreme judge in civil matters, and could make all police regulations and ordinances.[127]
At this time the remuneration of the governor general was 3,000 livres, of the local governors of Montreal and Three Rivers 1,200, and the members of the Sovereign Council 300 each. This was small, but there were not many inhabitants as yet. A letter of the minister to Duchesneau, dated April 15, 1675, showing surprise that there are only 7,832 persons in Canada, 1,120 guns and 5,117 horned cattle helps us to understand the situation. The smallness of salaries would certainly tempt the governors to engage in commerce.
Finally the king, on June 5th, by a new declaration confirmed the establishment of the Sovereign Council, reserving the right to name the councillors after a place fell vacant. The council was to be composed as before, of the governor general, the bishop of Quebec or in case of his absence in France, of his representative, the grand vicar, the intendant and seven councillors. To take away from the governor general every pretext of mixing himself in the transactions of the council, the king ordered that in conformity with the custom of the sovereign or supreme courts of the kingdom of France, the intendant, although only holding the third place of honour, should, however, as president of the council, consult the opinions of the councillors, count their votes, pronounce their resolutions and enjoy the same advantages as the first presidents of the courts of the kingdom. (Edits et Ordonnances, Quebec, 1854, pp. 83, 84.)
Still, four years later, bitter animosities continued in the council for some months to the exclusion of all other business, as to the exact position of the governor and the intendant. In spite of the ordinance of 1675, Frontenac claimed to be entered in the minutes as the chief and president of the council, in that the intendant was only the acting president. Thus was the governor general "cribbed, cabined and confined." His wings were cut and his powers more closely defined and limited than ever. Moreover, a rival was placed by his side, to be a thorn in it for many a long day. He was no longer absolute in the council chamber. Thence began the long series of vexatious complaints of Frontenac and Duchesneau of encroachment on one another's authority,--this intolerable bickering eventually ending in the recall of both, by the instructions of the king on May 10, 1682. The new form of legislation, however, was a marked improvement, and since it was the outcome of Montreal agitation for clearly defined and responsible government, hence, the length of treatment that has been accorded to its constitutional history of this picturesque period may be not out of place.
Letters went to and fro; one from the minister to Duchesneau on April 25th severely blames him, that in relying on the great power given him and by his title of president, he was wrong in thinking himself nearly equal to the governor, and that the latter can do nothing without consulting him. The reverse should be the position. When the governor interdicts any affair at the council, he had only to submit. The council can only make representations and if the governor does not listen to them, let the matter be submitted to the king. Even then the governor should be shown the complaints, so that he may be in a position to make his reply. This would seem to show that Frontenac's position was upheld. Still the trouble went on and finally produced on May 20, 1679, a decision of the Council of State, that in the minutes of the Sovereign Council M. de Frontenac shall be solely intitled, the governor and lieutenant general of His Majesty in New France and M. Duchesneau as the intendant of justice, police and finance, but that he should also exercise the functions of the first president of the council--a re-affirmation of the declaration of His Majesty of June 5, 1675,--a victory for the Intendant Duchesneau.
In a letter from the king to Frontenac this latter had been styled, "Chief and President of the Council," and relying on this, Frontenac wished to force the recording clerk to inscribe this intitulation. On the other side it was argued, that a private letter giving incidentally this title to the governor, could not prevail against the formal ordinance of June 5, 1675, not revoked. The quarrel became so envenomed that all the business of the council was paralyzed during many months. For as surely as the time came for the minutes to be read and the titles of those present to be enumerated, the pother began anew. The clerk received contrary orders, and nothing was done. Finally he was sent to prison by M. de Frontenac. Some of the councillors, opposing this, came also under his condemnation, and M. de Villeray, M. de Tilly and M. d'Auteuil were sent to "rusticate" with their friends while awaiting the order to go to France to answer for their conduct. Rival factions were also created in the colony, and Montreal was divided.
Even with this new restatement of the position, the spheres of authority of the governor and of the intendant were still ill-defined. There were apparently two independent heads, yet overlapping; still one was supposedly subordinate to the other. Consequently harmony was impossible and the history of the French régime up to the final fall is one continual attempt to harmonize contradictions. Had the French government been less paternal, less desirous of centralization and less jealous of delegating its powers; had it given a measure of home rule or representative government, the rulers in Canada would have found a way to solve their difficulties, even those of church and state, without having to recur, like children in every trivial dispute, to the jealously guarded center of authority at headquarters, thousands of miles away. "L'état c'est moi," said Louis XIV, Le Soleil, in his brilliant court at Versailles, while Canada was a big growing boy confined to petticoats. If the French Government had even given the governor and intendant some real initiative power, instead of expecting them to be the mere executive arm of a not too well informed directing mind, far away, the sense of responsibility would have kept things in order, with less friction and with more progress. If only it had trusted its own appointed official advisers, instead of encouraging every subordinate Jack-in-office to write to His Majesty criticizing, misrepresenting, and offering suggestions on the administration of colonial affairs, there might have been some unity. The policy of espionage of the departments, on one another, encouraged by the mother country, only provoked tale bearing, tittle-tattle, suspicion, jealousy, cabals, intrigues, discord and infringement on one another's privileges, and was one of the chief causes leading to the slow development of colonization, the paralyzation of the trade and the delay of the progress of New France.
It must not be imagined that M. Perrot was entirely free from further trade arrangements and scandals at Montreal. A document, believed to have been written by Duchesneau in 1681 to the king, speaks of the ill-treatment meted out by him or his employés to many persons. He is accused of ruining the country, of trading publicly, of having a store on the "Common" and holding open market there, of trading himself and through his representatives and soldiers, in the camp of the Indians, and of monopolizing the market by having a guard at the end of the bridge leading to it which allowed only his friends to pass. Thus the habitants had only the fringes of the trade with the Indians. He still encouraged the coureurs de bois and had fitted out a great number of them. His avidity is thus described: "He has been seen filling barrels of brandy with his own hands and mixing it with water to sell to the Indians. He bartered with one of them his hat, sword, coat, ribbons, shoes and stockings and boasted that he had made thirty pistoles by the bargain, while the Indian walked about town equipped as 'governor.'" It is further stated that last year his commerce was valued at 40,000 livres. In his reply in March, 1682, to the above mémoire, he states that he has made little trade since, the result of his business transactions reaching only 13,325 livres. The money of the country being the beaver, trading in peltry was one of the necessities of life. He continued to have troubles with the seminary and in August, 1682, he was removed during the first year of M. de La Barre's governorship and given the government of Acadia!
FOOTNOTES:
[122] The real name was Thomas Tarieu de la Naudière. His son, Pierre Thomas de la Naudière, married the heroine Madeleine de Verchères.
[123] A subplot in this drama is the refusal of M. Trancheville and M. Rémy, Montreal Sulpicians, to appear against de Fénelon before secular judges. M. Rémy, who was fined several times for not appearing, claimed exemption on the same ground that as a son is not obliged to witness against a father, a brother against a brother, similarly an ecclesiastic is not obliged to face a situation which would make him fall into sin and ecclesiastical irregularity. They pleaded the privilege of canon law, recognized in France.
[124] August 17, 27. September 6, 22. October 15, 22.
[125] Archives de la Marine, Registre des Dépêches, 1674-5, Vol. QQ, 12.
[126] Duchesneau arrived on September 25th.
[127] Complément des Ordinances, Quebec, 1856, pp. 42, 43.
Chapter XXVII
1672-1683
TRADE AT MONTREAL UNDER FRONTENAC AND PERROT
WEST INDIA COMPANY SUPPRESSED--MONTREAL HEAD OF FUR INDUSTRY--EXPEDITIONS--MARQUETTE--JOLIET--THE ANNUAL FAIRS--LAVAL RETURNS--THE "CONGREGATION" CONFIRMED--THE INDIAN MISSIONS--CATHERINE TEKAKWITHA--THE "FORT DES MESSIEURS"--EXPLORATIONS--LA SALLE, DULUTH, HENNEPIN--LOUISIANA NAMES--THE GOVERNOR GENERAL AND THE INTENDANT--FACTIONS AT MONTREAL, "A PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES!"--FRONTENAC AND DUCHESNEAU RECALLED.
Trade at Montreal was prospering. In 1674 the West India Company, which had fulfilled none of its obligations, was suppressed, being succeeded by that of Oudiette and others, till 1707. Speaking of this period, Garneau (I, 262) in his "Histoire du Canada" says: "The new impulses which had been given to Canada by Colbert and Talon began to bear fruits. Commerce revived, immigration increased and the natives, dominated by the genius of civilization, feared and respected everywhere the power of France."
Montreal was to share in this prosperity. It was the centre of the fur trade and the starting place and base of expeditions such as the one of Joliet and Marquette, who had set out in 1673 to discover the Mississippi. La Salle frequently made Montreal his home at this period, as well as Duluth. At the east corner of the present Royal Insurance Building on the Place d'Armes, a tablet placed by the Antiquarian Society records the dwelling of another explorer: "Here lived in 1675 Daniel de Greysolon, Sieur Duluth, one of the explorers of the Upper Mississippi, after whom the city of Duluth was named."
Meanwhile, on May 18th, Father Marquette died on the west shores of Michigan. In 1776 the "Place du Marché" was granted by the seigneurs of the seminary to the people. It was situated where now stands the Place Royale and faced the historic landing place of the first pioneers arriving with de Maisonneuve. The growing trade needed a regular market and on this site subsequently were held the annual fairs in June, the first recorded being held in 1680. The picturesque description of Francis Parkman in his "Old Régime in Canada," dealing with this period, may be here introduced:
"To induce the Indians to come to the colonists, in order that the fur trade might be controlled by the government, a great annual fair was established, by order of the king, at Montreal. Thither every summer a host of savages came down from the lakes in their bark canoes. A place was assigned them a little distance from the town. They landed, and drew up their canoes in a line up the bank, took out their packs of beaver skins, set up their wigwams, slung their kettles and encamped for the night.
"On the next day there was a grand council on the common, between St. Paul street and the river. Speeches were made amid a solemn smoking of pipes. The governor was usually present, seated in an armchair, while the visitors formed a ring about him, ranged in the order of their tribe. On the next day the trade began in the same place. Merchants of high and low degree brought up their goods from Quebec, and every inhabitant of Montreal of any substance, sought a share in the profits. Their booths were set up along the palisades of the town and each had an interpreter to whom he usually promised a certain portion of his gains. The scene abounded in those contrasts, which mark the whole course of French Canadian history. Here was a throng of Indians, armed with bows and arrows, war clubs, and the cheap guns of the trade, some of them, completely naked, except for the feathers on their heads and the paint on their faces; French bush rangers, tricked out with savage finery; merchants and habitants in their coarse and plain attire, and the grave priests of St. Sulpice robed in black."
In June, 1676, Monseigneur Laval, on his return from France as bishop of Quebec, visited Montreal to receive postulants into the new religious communicants of the "Congregation," which approved by him in 1669 and later confirmed by royal letters, was now confirmed by him in an authentic act, shortly after his arrival at Quebec--but whose rules were still to be examined and approved, which did not occur until January 24, 1698. Historians date from the above epoch the adoption of the religious habit, worn by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame to this day. In order to prepare her rules wisely Marguerite Bourgeoys determined to go to France for advice and experience, having been previously elected as the first superior. The opportunity was offered her in November as a companion to the wife of the governor, Madame Perrot, who had been advised to go to France for the good of her health. On her return she was followed to Montreal by Louis Frins, the servant of M. de Maisonneuve, who had died in Paris on September 9, 1676, as well as by several young girls, who were sent out to the colony at the expense of the seminary.
In 1676 the Mountain Mission was commenced.[128] To encourage the Indians to settle with the Europeans, various attempts had already been made. This nomadic people could not be civilized as long as the trail, by the lakes and rivers and through the forest, called them to the pursuit of the chase or the lust of battle. Thus we have seen the Jesuits had already formed their Christian Indian settlements at Madeleine la Prairie on the south shore across the St. Lawrence. But now the Sulpicians would do the same on the island, on the slope of Mount Royal, and today the site of Montreal College, on Sherbrooke Street, with its old-time Martello towers, marks the scene of the Mountain Mission. Quarrels had arisen among the chiefs at La Prairie and thus the dissentients joined the Christian band at the mountain, while the La Prairie Mission was transferred to the Sault St. Louis, known as the Caughnawaga Reservation. By 1681, it was determined to conduct schools for the children of redskins, and M. François Vachon de Belmont, who came as a deacon to Canada in this year, was named director of the boys' school. That for the girls was to be under the care of the Sisters of the Congregation. Marguerite Bourgeoys says that the Mountain Mission was the first place on the island where the Indians came for instruction. On arriving, M. de Belmont began to build a little chapel, dedicated to Notre Dame des Neiges, and a straggling village of a few irregularly built bark huts clustered round it. In these lived the missionaries and the sisters, and round them were the wigwams of their neophytes, Huron and Iroquois. Fearing attack from the non-Christian tribes, M. de Belmont, a priest since September 14, 1681, had built by 1685 a palisade surrounding his settlement which boasted of four bastions. These fortifications were gradually strengthened. The schools were soon in operation. "In the Mountain Mission and that of the Sault de la Prairie de la Madeleine (Sault St. Louis); in those of Sillery and Lorette, the only Indian villages we have, boys are now being taught to read and write. In the Mountain Mission of Montreal the Congregation nuns apply themselves to the instruction of the little girls and make them do needle work," is the description of M. Duchesneau in a letter to the minister of finance, dated November 13, 1681. Later on these children were taught to knit, spin and do lace work, the government providing grants of money for women to instruct them. In 1685 Monseigneur de St. Vallier, Laval's successor, visited the Mountain Mission and gave this account of its success: "The daughters of the Congregation, now spread over the different parts of Canada, have in the Mountain Mission a school of about forty Indian girls, whom they clothe and bring up 'à la Française.' They are also taught the mysteries of faith, manual labour, the hymns and prayers of the church, not only in their own tongue, but also in ours, that they may be brought little by little to our manners and customs."
Two of the Indian maidens of the Mountain Mission stand out, Marie Barbe Attontinon and Marie Thérèse Gannensagouas. Both were received into the congregation community. The latter was one of the first pupils of the mission, receiving baptism on the 28th of June, 1681, at the age of fourteen, and was a teacher in the mission until her saintly death at the age of twenty-seven.
The chapel at Caughnawaga preserves the bones of the holy Mohawk maiden, Catherine Tekakwitha, born in 1656 of an Iroquois father, a pagan, and an Algonquin mother, a Christian, who both died in her infancy. On Holy Wednesday, 1678, she died, leaving behind her the reputation of sanctity. The anniversary of "La bonne Catherine" is kept each year with great devotion by the Caughnawaga Indians. Charlevoix, the historian, speaking of the appearance of the face of this holy maiden, says: "Nothing could be more beautiful, but with that beauty, which the love of virtue inspires. The people were never weary of gazing at her." The latter's grandfather, the warrior, François Thoronhiongo, who had been baptized by the Martyr Jesuit, Père de Brébeuf, lived at the Mountain Mission. In 1824 the east Martello tower, now standing on Sherbrooke Street, wherein the Sisters of the Congregation had lived while teaching, was transferred into a chapel and the bodies of the grandfather and grandchild, which had rested there since 1796, were allowed to remain. The tower on the west was a school for the Indian girls. These towers, still remaining, are all that is left to mark the site of the Priests' Fort and Jacques Viger's manuscripts tell us that this fort was so called to distinguish it from the enclosure next to it and which, being surrounded by a palisade, was known as "The Indian's Fort." Both structures formed part of the same outwork and are mentioned under the common title of "The Mountain Fort." The Priests' Fort was built in 1694 by the Sulpician, François Vachon de Belmont, at his own expense. It was, first a square enclosed by a stone wall with portholes and flanked by a tower at each angle; secondly, the fort proper or manor, in the middle of the enclosure where the missionaries lived; thirdly, the chapel which was opposite the manor and between the two towers. In 1844 the erection of the vast edifice now used as a college and as a seminary was begun on this very site. The two towers still standing and the wall connecting them are over two hundred years old and are after the Seminary of St. Sulpice on Notre Dame Street the oldest building in Montreal. Long may the towers stand as sentinels guarding the traditions of the past!... The Sulpicians accompanied the Indians when the mission was transplanted to Sault-au-Récollet and thence later to the Lake of the Two Mountains.
Leaving the Mountain Mission whose commencement we have placed in 1676 and traversing the streets down town, we notice the unpaved state of the streets. In this year, 1676, an ordinance stipulated that proprietors should pave to the middle of the roadway every street passing in front of their dwellings. But it seems that up to the cession, these regulations had fallen into desuetude.
The year of 1678 saw great preparations at Montreal for new ventures on the part of La Salle and Duluth, in which the governor general was reported by Intendant Duchesneau to be commercially interested. In July, 1678, La Salle left France armed with a royal patent allowing him "to build forts through which it would seem that a passage to Mexico can be found." He had made good friends in France since his previous visit in 1674 and found financial supporters, "bringing with him about thirty artisans and labourers, with much of the gearing and equipment necessary for rigging a vessel, including anchors, with the usual assortment of the articles required for his intercourse with the Indians." With him was Henri de Tonti, an Italian officer, who was to prove a most devoted and loyal lieutenant to La Salle. At the siege of Gaëta, de Tonti had had a hand blown off and it was now replaced with a metal substitute, which, though covered with a glove, could deal a heavy blow, as the surprised Indians afterwards learned. A third was with them, the Sieur de la Motte. Arriving at Quebec on September 15th, La Salle was shortly afterwards joined by the Recollect Father, Hennepin, eager to explore the Mississippi.
While at Quebec, La Salle was named one of the twenty commissioners, then sitting to investigate the murders and other crimes reported to have arisen during the past six years from the use of liquors. In consequence, the old dispute was arising again as to the propriety of preventing liquors being taken to the Indians, to encourage traffic with the French instead of the Dutch. It was urged that the fur trade would leave Montreal for Albany, as beaver skins, if they got there, would fetch a higher price. For prohibition, were Laval and the Intendant Duchesneau, whilst against it was Frontenac backed up by Colbert, who supported Talon, one of whose last actions in Canada had been to permit the use of spirits as an article of commerce. The report of the commission to France was in favour of the traffic in spirits as necessary for the support of the fur trade, which was the one source of wealth for the country. M. Laval started for France with a counter memorial. Finally a compromise was arranged to the effect that strong liquors might not be taken to the woods openly, and if clandestinely, punishment was to follow. But as liquor was permitted in the houses of the French and those houses could be built anywhere, the law was easily evaded, so that in reality liquor became to be recognized currency in the trade for fur.
Shortly after the above event La Salle left Montreal, doubtless with a good supply of "eau de vie," for his fief, Mount Cataracqui, and in the second week of November he started thence to make his way to the Mississippi, returning at intervals to Montreal for supplies. At last after thrilling and hazardous adventures La Salle and his men reached the mouth of the Mississippi, where he declared the basin of the river to be the territory of Louis the Great and named it Louisiana. All honour to Montreal, the fruitful home of discoverers!
David Greysolon du Luth left Montreal on the 1st of September, 1678, with seven Frenchmen on a similar adventure. It was he who built the fort at the entrance of the Kaministiquia, Lake Superior, known under Hudson Bay rule as Fort William, and who strove persistently to foil the rival English traders of this company. He was a man equally at home in camp, in society, or in the Indian wigwams--a type of the many roving adventurers, fighters, traders and explorers, whom Canada was then alluring and who were little removed from the coureurs de bois, at whom so many ordinances were leveled, but whose number was steadily increasing.[129]
Meanwhile relations had become more and more strained between Frontenac and Duchesneau. As early as 1676 the troubles began with the questions of precedence and of the degrees of courtesy that should be paid to the governor and the intendant. On May 1, 1677, Colbert wrote to the intendant warning him not to take sides against the governor and on May 18th he wrote to the governor exhorting him to live amicably with the intendant. On April 30, 1681, the king wrote to Frontenac complaining of his arbitrary conduct and threatening to recall him unless he mended his ways. He was accused of being too lenient with the coureurs de bois and in consequence the king ordered that whoever went to the woods without a license should be branded and whipped for the first offence, and sent to the galleys for life, for the second.
Every ship to France carried complaints from Duchesneau and Frontenac against one another. The rivalry was intense. The last official act of Frontenac in the Registre du Conseil Supérieur is a formal declaration that his rank in that body is superior to the intendant's. Finally the untenable position was relieved by the king, who recalled them by an act of May 1st. Before leaving and early in the August of this year Frontenac was at Montreal to meet the Ottawas and the Hurons on their yearly descent from the lakes and there he met the famous Huron Iroquois chief, the Rat, and at a solemn council succeeded in averting, for the time, the war then brewing about Michillimackinac, when the Illinois and some of the tribes of the lakes were in likely danger of speedy and complete destruction at the hands of the Iroquois. This would have been fatal to the trade of Canada.
Shortly afterwards, Frontenac sailed for France, leaving Canada when he was most needed. When he sailed, "it was a day of rejoicing to more than half of the merchants of Canada" (who were not in his ring), says Parkman ("Frontenac," p. 71), "and excepting the Recollects, to all the priests; but he left behind him an impression, very general among the people, that if danger threatened the colony, Count Frontenac was the man for the hour."
Montreal was no little concerned with this division between the disputants, for whereas the merchants, traders and habitants over the country took sides with either party, those of Montreal, such as Le Moyne and his sons, Jacques LeBer, and left many more of the leading men sided with Duchesneau, while Perrot, the local governor, seems to have come to a mutual understanding with Frontenac and carried on illicit trade as before. "Frontenac had," as the intendant wrote to the minister on November 16, 1679, "gradually made himself master of the trade of Montreal; as soon as the Indians arrived, he sets guard in his camp, which would be very well, if these soldiers did their duty and protected the savages from being annoyed and plundered by the French, instead of being employed to discover how many furs they have brought with a view to future operations. Monsieur, the governor, then compels the Indians to pay his guards for protecting them; and he has never allowed them to trade with the inhabitants till they have first given him a certain number of packs of beaver skins, which he calls his presents. His guards trade with them openly at the fair, with their bandoliers on their shoulders." Moreover, Duchesneau in the same communication accused Frontenac of sending up goods to Montreal to be traded in his behalf, so that with the presents exacted and his trading, only little ever reached the people of the colony of what the Indians brought to market. It is only fair to add that Frontenac made similar charges against the intendant for engaging in trade. Meanwhile partisan spirit ran high and the streets of Quebec and Montreal witnessed brawls such as those between the Capulets and Montagues of Romeo and Juliet. "A plague on both your houses!" The Count de Frontenac and the Intendant Duchesneau were respectively replaced on May 1, 1680, by M. de La Barre and M. de Meulles, although they did not enter upon their functions until Friday, October 9th, of the same year.
NOTE
A writer who visited Quebec in 1683 in his "Memoirs of North America" tells us that the merchant who had carried on the greatest trade in Canada was the Sieur Samuel Bernon of Rochel, who had great warehouses at Quebec, from which the inhabitants of the other towns were supplied with such commodities as they wanted.
"There is no difference," he says, "between the pirates that scour the seas and the Canada merchants, unless it be this, that the former sometimes enrich themselves all of a sudden by a good prize; and the latter cannot make their fortune without trading for five or six years, and that, without running the hazard of their lives. I have known twenty little peddlers that had not above a thousand crowns stock when I arrived at Quebec in the year 1683, and when I left that place, had got to the tune of 12,000 crowns. It is an unquestioned truth that they get 50 per cent upon all goods they deal in, whether they buy them up, upon the arrival of the ships at Quebec, or have them from France by way of commissions: but over and above that, there are some gaudy trinkets, such as ribbands, laces, embroideries, tobacco-boxes, watches, and an infinity of other baubles of iron ware, upon which they get 150 per cent, all costs clear.
"As soon as the French ships arrive at Quebec the merchants of that city, who have their factors in other towns, load their barks with goods in order to transport them to these other towns. Such merchants as act for themselves at Trois Rivières, or Montreal, come down in person to Quebec to market for themselves, and then put their effects on board of barks to be conveyed home. If they pay for their goods in skins, they buy cheaper than if they made their payments in money or letters of exchange; by reason that the seller gets considerably by the skins, when he returns to France. Now you must take notice, that all these skins are bought up from the inhabitants, or from the savages, upon which the merchants are considerable gainers. To give you an instance of this matter, a person that lives in the neighbourhood of Quebec, carries a dozen of marten skins, five or six fox skins, and as many skins of wild cats, to a merchant's house, in order to sell them for woolen cloth, linen, arms, ammunition, etc. In the trade of those skins, the merchant draws a double profit, one upon the score of his paying no more for these skins than one-half of what he afterwards sells them for, in the lump, to the factors, for the Rochel ships; and the other, by the exorbitant rate he puts upon the goods which the poor planter takes in exchange for his skins. If this be duly weighed, we will not think it strange that these merchants have a more beneficial trade than a great many tradesmen in the world."--Canadian Antiquarian and Numismatic Journal, 1872, p. 130.
FOOTNOTES:
[128] Some authors have supposed that the Mountain Mission began as early as 1657, but this appears impossible, when we recollect that for twenty-seven years or more settlers scarcely dared to leave the town for fear of the Iroquois, who tracked them to their very doorsteps! Moreover, the first registrations of the Mountain Mission date from 1688, and, note, that all previous baptisms had been set down in the Ville Marie registre. The latter before 1677 makes no mention of the aforesaid mission. (Cf. Note by Mary Drummond in the "Life and Times of Marguerite Bourgeoys.")
[129] In 1680 Duchesneau reported on November 13th the population of Canada at 9,400; of this number there were five or six hundred coureurs de bois. "There is not a family," wrote the Intendant, "of any condition or quality soever, who have not children, brothers, uncles and nephews among them."