The first great Canadian, the story of Pierre Le Moyne, sieur d'Iberville

Front matter

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si

THE FIRST GREAT CANADIAN

Preface

IN this work for the first time an attempt is made to bring together with some approach to accuracy and continuity the scattered incidents in the life of Le Moyne d'Iberville. His activities were so various and were conducted in such widely separate arenas that it is not surprising that much confusion and obscurity surround his brief career. It is remarkable, however, that in the two centuries that have passed since his death no one in France or Canada, save only Desmazures, has made any adequate effort to commemorate and signalize the romantic and adventurous career of a man whose brave deeds and high ambitions brought wealth, vast territories, and great honor to those realms in whose behalf his life was spent. His feats of endurance and of achievement were so numerous and so extraordinary as to be wellnigh incredible if they were not sustained and vouched for by many unimpeachable testimonies. In a laudable desire to fix his place in history he has been variously termed " The Cid of New France," "Eobin Hood," the "Jean Bart of Canada," and the " Chief of the Maccabees,"

Vi PREFACE

and while some of these appellations may fittingly portray his personality, none of them sufficiently connotates the dignity and intrinsic importance of his exploits.

The writer has made no effort to produce an analytical and critical biography for which neither the inclination nor the records exist, but on the other hand he has spared no pains to make the narrative as clear, continuous, and complete as the documentary evidence would permit. Original sources have been sought out and taken for the foundation as far as possible, while secondary works of authority have been utilized to furnish the background and to exhibit the fortunes of the hero in their relation to contemporaneous history. All veracious material that threw any light upon the character of Iberville or his stirring exploits has been used with the utmost freedom.

The writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Margry's Decouvertes et Etahlissements, etc., wherein the original official reports, letters, and documents relating to Louisiana and the Mississippi expeditions have been laboriously collected and carefully summarized in the scholarly introduction. As equally important must be mentioned La Harpe's Journal Historique, Penicaut's Narrative, Baudoin's Journal, Father Silvy's Relation, the N. Y. Col. Documents, the Jesuit Relations of Thwaites (73 vols.), and the Histories of La Potherie and Charlevoix.

PREFACE vii

Among the secondary works Parkman is, of course, preeminent, although the writer feels and gladly acknowledges his heavy obligation to the valuable labors of Winsor, King, Laut, and Desmazures. To Thwaites also the writer is indebted for many of the explanatory footnotes which were taken from his edition of La Hon tan. Additional works are referred to in the bibliography at the end of the volume.

Thanks for courtesies extended are due to Arthur T. Doughty, Dominion Archivist, for the copy of Baudoin's Journal, to Judge Prowse for permission to use the map of the Newfoundland Campaign, to Miss Callaghan, who worked on the manuscript, and to Miss Caroline M. Mcllvaine, Librarian of the Chicago Historical Society. To the latter organization the writer wishes particularly to express his gratitude for the privilege of copying some original maps and plates with which to illustrate the text.

Conscious that errors must exist in spite of every care, but feeling, nevertheless, that through this effort renewed attention may possibly be directed toward the life and labors of a man of strong purpose, tireless industry, and lofty soul, the book is herewith

submitted.

C. B. R.

Chicago,

February 1, 1910.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. New France 13

II. The Le Moynes 27

Chapter I New France

FROM the earliest discoveries in America, adventurers of many nationalities had vied with one another in the prodigal expenditure of time, money, and life itself, to explore the extent and exploit the resources of the wonderful New World, a world veiled in an aureole of mystery and crowned with fabulous tales.

France among the first sent her hardy sailors and daring navigators to determine the truth or falsity of the wonders reported. As their acquaintance with the New World increased, their pretensions to possession expanded until finally it was claimed by the French that the domain of New France extended from Newfoundland to the Rocky Mountains and from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico. With difficulty could they admit the right of England to that little fringe on the Atlantic seaboard, a fringe which like the cloud from the jar of the genie was to increase and expand until it enveloped the continent. New France therefore was an immense triangle eleven times the area of the mother country and favored by nature with a wealth and abundance as limitless as it was various and easily accessible. To the west lay the boundless forests, to the north the vast fur trade, to the east the priceless fisheries of the Grand Banks, while on the south an enchanting climate and a wonderful fertility of soil furnished in great luxuriance all the products of the Tropics.

The title of France to the possession of this magnificent realm was based with much justice on the feats of her sailors and explorers. From Verazzano (1524) and Cartier (1534) to Roberval (1542) and Champlain (1601), from discovery and exploration to colonization and exploitation, the line of descent was clear and unquestioned and supported furthermore by her settlements. The focus of her activity, the nucleus which justified as much as might be the universality of the French claim, was the group of settlements along the lower St. Lawrence. Quebec and Montreal were the points in which the fur trade of France centred and the bases from which her emissaries took their departure. Her claim to the country adjacent to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi basin excited at first only vague and sleepy objections, but when under the bold, far-seeing Frontenac, La Salle, Du Luth and others attempted to take possession of these regions and hold them with a line of forts, the English saw their commerce in furs cut off, their Indian trade destroyed, and their position turned. Then the enemy was aroused and the claim was vigorously contested.

From those English settlements along the Atlantic which France acknowledged were held by right of possession if not by title, sturdy adventurers threaded the passes and pushed steadily across the Alleghanies to dispossess the French, an operation which in the north lasted with some intermissions for over seventy years. From Florida and Mexico, too, came ominous growls and snarling protests from the haughty old Spaniards who saw in this movement encroachments, which they were too feeble to resent, on the realm secured to Spain by the priority of De Soto and wrung by the conquering Cortez from the exhausted Incas.

Among the shifting scenes and changing figures of the New World the lines of interest were very clearly drawn. Rightfully jealous of both English and French, but particularly arrayed against the latter, in bitter memory of Champlain's attacks, was the great Iroquois * Confederacy, which for half a century kept the French settlements in dread and their allies in terror. These Indians living just south of Lake Ontario constituted a kind of buffer between the English and French colonies, and no nation could have been selected more willing or better prepared to perform that

* "Iroquois" was a title bestowed by the French ; the tribesmen called themselves " People of the Long House " ; while to the English they were known as the " Five Nations."

office. With an intelligence and foresight far above that of their neighbors and unique in Indian annals, these five tribes, named, respectively, the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Senecas, had formed an offensive and defensive alliance known as the Five Nations or the Iroquois Confederacy. From their advantageous location, they were within easy trading distance of the English and easy striking distance of the French.

Attracted by the personal ascendancy of the English Governors, an ascendancy which only Frontenac was able to nullify, and held by self-interest to the superior trading facilities, they formed a more or less inconstant coalition with the English to limit the power, restrict the growing settlements, and resist the encroachments of France. In this league the attitude of the English and their Dutch allies was the result not only of local jealousies and rival conditions of trade but more particularly the outgrowth of European contests, begun and continued in European interest. In the absence of such provocations, it is probable that both colonies would have lived and thrived largely in peace, except for such conflicts as grew out of the ever-alluring fur trade.

Louis XIV, through such of his Governors as he could imbue with a national rather than a personal interest, was working for the aggrandizement of France, a purpose which included also New France so far as European politics and the drain of European wars would permit. He was eager also for that storied wealth of the New World as a support to his exhausted treasury, but in particular he aimed to form a mailed fist which he could thrust at will into the face of England. The Canadian Noblesse, by reason of their origin and by natural sympathy, were generally found loyally supporting and zealously forwarding the designs of the King as represented by the Government at Quebec. This was not always true of that other large and influential faction composed of the Clericals and led by the Jesuits. This party was striving with every energy and all its immense influence to hold and, if possible, to increase its power. It was an effort to obtain in New France that complete religious ascendancy which was denied at home. The Jesuits also labored for an additional strength and leverage in the Huron Nation on Georgian Bay, where they were rapidly converting this offshoot of the Iroquois Stock into a Catholic dependency with French affiliations.

The colonists were the pawns which were moved and changed, swayed and divided, as their inclinations were enlisted or their force required by the union or conflict or parallelism of interests. All local issues were subordinate to European demands and policies. Both King and Cleric rejoiced in the growth of the colony along Catholic lines, and they were both instrumental in augmenting it with shiploads of approved immigrants. The numerical increase was further favored by offering rewards for the encouragement of marriage and the growth of large families and by placing heavy penalties upon the celibate. Both were interested in the wide exploration and exploitation of the interior; the King because it extended his boundaries and increased his wealth ; the Jesuit because it broadened and solidified his influence. The Jesuits themselves bore no small part of this burden, and their enthusiastic devotion and rigid obedience carried them, either alone or with the foraying Noblesse, through the Great Lakes, down the long river valleys, and across the pathless wilderness to remote portions of the New World which they ofttimes consecrated with their blood.

The coureurs de hois and especially the Noblesse, comprising such partisan leaders as Verendrye, Du Luth, Montigny, La Salle, and the Le Moynes, spent their lives in the same hazardous manner. These are conspicuous names in American history. Uninspired by religious fervor but driven by love of travel and adventure, by the demands of their fur trade and their own high courage, they kept the forests alive with intrepid wanderers. The Noblesse was composed of seigniors, or proprietors, who as a result of wealth, prominence, influence, or services to the State had received a grant of land and a title from the Crown. They in turn furthered the feudal idea by securing vassals to cultivate the soil, who were known as habitants. It is from the ranks of the Noblesse that many of the most daring of the forest rangers, explorers, and warriors have been recruited. " On the Great Lakes, on the plains of the Northwest, on the shores of Acadia they are found tracing unknown streams, piercing the wilderness, trading, fighting, negotiating, and building forts. It was they and such as they who discovered the Rocky Mountains, the source and mouth of the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri, and who founded such cities as Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans." * As far as possible colonization, the establishment of depots, forts, and villages, was made to keep pace with exploration. Thus at Tadousac, Quebec, Three Rivers, Montreal, La Chine, and Fort Frontenac, the line extended inward along the St. Lawrence, ever deeper and yearly stronger. Hindered and poorly supported by France, beleaguered, assaulted, and sometimes overwhelmed by enemies, the establishments nevertheless took strong root and sent shoots south and east along the Richelieu River and Acadian coast toward the rival colonies in New England. The settlements themselves constituted an interesting experiment in sociology. Many groups of people living in feudal dependence were transported with all their habits, customs, ideals, beliefs, and traditions into a strange environment wherein nothing recalled their previous life except the religious belief and the social customs which they brought with them. * Parkman.

The character of this society was thoroughly romantic and mediaeval. There were knights, nobles, priests, pilgrims, nuns, and mendicant friars, each more or less on the defensive against the others and all warring against the paynim and the heretic and the robber barons of the neighboring rocky pinnacles to the south. Troubadours, knights errant, and distressed damsels were there in abundance to increase the romantic glamour. These classes dwelt under the iron rule of the King and in the leash of mediaeval Catholicism, the purpose and design of both being to destroy individuality and reduce all to a common malleable type.

In retrospect it would seem that the result could not have been unexpected. The Government, which had been retaining a thick fluid substance in its feudal flask, now beheld a sieve in its hand which leaked beyond control. Always on the least suspicion of pressure, knights and nobles took to the woods, the more adventurous spirits to become coureurs de hois J the knights errant of the wilderness, while the others married squaws, joined the tribes, and became Indians in all but name, — true pilgrims of the forest.

The colonies, both English and French, were greatly handicapped by the control of their home Governments, both of which had approximately the same theories and ideas. The wisdom of colonization was definitely recognized and materially aided, but the colonies were expected to develop only along such lines and by such methods as best suited the paternalism of the Fatherland, and only such measures were approved as seemed advantageous to King and Nation, and to the favorites and industries of the European base. As a consequence every industry of the new colony was the subject of most oppressive restrictions, and all commerce and trade was controlled by monopolies. This protective spirit was more seriously felt by the French than by the English colonists, since the latter to their great advantage had been left frequently to themselves, while the attention of their English Majesties was diverted by revolutions; but in France, Church and State were sympathetically united in a common and constant policy of meddlesome and oppressive interference. In obedience to authority the French colonies developed, and for the maintenance of authority the colony was controlled abroad and received its great men from the nobility of France with such perfect regularity that for over one hundred years no Canadian achieved national eminence. The only advantage of the system was that it favored military ejBiciency; but while this latter condition presents many desirable features as an accessory to government it is a repeatedly demonstrated failure as the sole and permanent support of the State. The Canadian population sprang in a great measure from soldiers and was born in the midst of warfare which every son was expected to continue. Thus the more efficiency the population as a whole acquired in a military sense, the less efficient it became in the true colonial sense. The result was restriction rather than development, and involution rather than evolution.

New France was united against the English, Dutch, and Iroquois, but there were intervals in which the Clericals, the colonists, and the King's representatives, animated by self-interest or provoked by sense of duty, waged an internecine conflict. Communication with France being possible only during the Summer, the long Winters enabled the warfare between priest, intendant, and governor general to reach a stage acute enough to interest and involve the entire colony. The force of iron as represented by militarism and the sword was striving with the force clerical as represented by the priests, for rule and sway in New France; but a new force stronger than either and destined to dominate was silently instilling its subtle poison into castle and hovel, into high and low. The desire for gold that levels all ranks, shapes the future, develops commerce, promotes industry, incites to exploration, and impels to conquest, now took the form of the fur trade. The lawless coureurs de hois, attaching themselves first to one faction and then to another as self-interest required, ebbed and flowed through the vast channels of the forest enthralled by the ^ romance and dangers of the game which was the most fascinating, prevalent, and remunerative occupation in the colony. For one hundred and seventy-five years the economic interests of Canada were subordinate to the passionate pursuit of the fur trade, and it was much longer before they recovered from the effects of that imperial domination. Like every other industry this too was ruled from the beginning by monopoly and by restrictions that ill suited the bolder spirits, and increased very materially the hazards of the game which secretly or openly all were playing with the utmost concentration. With two such absorbing pursuits as war and the fur trade (or war for the fur trade) furnishing continual opportunities to the colonists, it is no wonder that agriculture was practically abandoned by this versatile and mercurial people.

Besides the conflict with neighboring colonies which fluctuated according to European policy and local necessity, war was always at the gates, through the relentless activity of the blood-thirsty Iroquois. Relying upon their splendid organization and a remarkable individual ferocity, an Iroquois war party was always in motion. In 1640 their various desultory expeditions began to crystallize into a definite purpose of exterminating their neighbors, and they then began that mad quest for scalps which ended only with complete desolation. Like insensate maniacs they threw themselves with homicidal fury against every Indian nation far or near. The very existence of other tribes, no matter how inoffensive, was a source of anger to the Iroquois. First the Hurons, then numbering about ten thousand, went down before repeated onslaughts, and the battered fragments were driven, some to Mackinac and Lake Superior and some to Quebec, where even the shadow of that frowning rock furnished insufficient protection against the unrelenting animosity of their enemies. With that appalling disaster a blight fell upon the hopes and ambitions of the Jesuits whose success among the Hurons had inspired the belief that they could people the interior of the continent with christianized Indians true to the Faith and France, and erect a bulwark against Protestant and English aggression. After the ruin of the Hurons, the Iroquois destroyed in turn the Eries, the Tobacco Nation, the Neutrals, and the Andastes, until the great Confederacy remained alone in a peace that was a solitude. Their thirst for blood being unappeased, they now devoted an attention previously divided between the French colonists and their Indian allies, entirely to the colonists, and with such success that appeal after appeal was sent to France for help. The King finally responded, and as much to preserve the colony from extinction as to relieve it from the necessity of constant warfare, the victorious Carignan Regiment fresh from European wars under the great Turenne was sent to play its conspicuous role in the New World.

So the colony grew, and Quebec gave place to Three Rivers as the bulwark on the border, until, in 1642, Montreal was founded on the island of that name, and this became in turn the defendant of the frontier. This settlement really owes its importance, in fact all its subsequent prosperity, to the nourishing care of Maisonneuve, its founder, who spent over twenty years of his life in its service. In 1646 it had a population of less than one hundred, and in twenty years it had increased only to something less than five hundred people. At that time, however, it constituted a most advantageous post, the distant sentinel of the French, located one hundred and eighty miles toward the frontier from Quebec and in the very midst of the savages. A more beautiful situation could not have been chosen. The village was composed of little one-story houses located on streets running parallel to the water and intersected by others which ran directly to the river. It was originally placed on a slight elevation only a few yards from the shore where the mighty St. Lawrence rolled in majesty its ample flood, while on the opposite side of the island a small offshoot from the mouth of the Ottawa River guarded the settlement against surprise and made the site ideally strong for defence. Behind the village and sheltering it from the north winds were the heights of Mount Royal (Montreal) covered with trees and descending like an amphitheatre to the fertile, flower-strewn prairies at its foot. Opposite the village lay the two islands, St. H^l^ne and St. Paul, which served as outposts on the river front, while the panorama was completed by the range of hills and mountains that reared a series of emerald domes across the river to the south.

Montreal was bound to Quebec by mutual ties and dangers, and though numerically feeble the settlements were strong in spirit and formed the twin heads of New France, even as Boston and New York formed the backbone of the English and Dutch colonies. These latter colonies, moreover, furnished the main antagonism to the designs of Louis XIV as conceived and interpreted by Frontenac and La Salle, and strenuously developed by that rarely capable officer whose fortunes form the substance of this narrative. Thus inspired by the jealousies, hatreds, and ambitions of European politics, these crumbled fragments of the Old World hurled into limitless space by the revolutions of that orb, still maintained their original attributes and encroached upon one another and fought and worried and ventured and lost with all their former selfishness and virulence.

What more appropriate stage setting could be devised to surround the introduction of a hero?

CHAPTER n

A LTHOUGH the colony was greatly hampered /-% by the demands of its King and the exactions imposed upon its commerce, yet the most serious check to its progress came from the enmity of its neighbors on the south. The raids of the never-resting Iroquois at times brought Montreal to the verge of starvation, a condition which the shrewd traders of New England and Hudson Bay materially aided by securing an almost complete diversion of the peltries to England. The fur trade of the colony at length reached such a deplorable state that the French relied for most of their furs on the "upper nations," or the tribes consisting of the Ottawas, the Pottawattamies, Sacs, Poxes, and Sioux, who lived near the more distant of the Great Lakes or even beyond them. A change was imperative or the colony would perish, and happily a change was at hand through the activity and valor of a native son who played a strenuous part in history during that forty years which marked the transition of the feeble little settlement on the St. Lawrence to the majesty of a colony almost as large as Europe. This man, who by his adventurous life brought new possessions to Canada and France and by his brilliant career has given an increased glory to French arms, was the very illustrious Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d' Iberville, Chevalier of the Orders of the King and Commander of the King's Ships. No lingering lineage with impoverished blood nor ancestry renowned in war gave rise to this Canadian chieftain, but rather the sturdy stock of an innkeeper at Dieppe, France, who sent two young scions to seek their fortunes in the New World.

Charles Le Moyne and his brother Jacques left Dieppe in 1640 to join their uncle in Canada. Charles, then fourteen years of age, first went with the Jesuit Fathers to the Huron Mission, and there he learned the country, customs, and all the Indian dialects so perfectly that he was in great demand as interpreter and guide. He adopted the Indian dress as most convenient for the trail and the chase and became an adept with paddle, snowshoe, and axe. Courageous, energetic, and cool-headed, he shrank from no enterprise and soon became a leader upon whom all in the colony relied. As his reputation spread, he was called first to Three Rivers and later (1646) to Montreal, where he finally settled and began his lifelong warfare with the Iroquois who beset the frontier village on every side. In 1665, while hunting, he was taken prisoner by a band of these Indians and dragged off for torture and death at the stake. His family mourned him as dead when, at the end of three months, he suddenly returned. He had gained over his enemies by telling them of the many Iroquois prisoners he had befriended, besides threatening them with the vengeance of his friends. When he returned he was accompanied by a delegation of the Iroquois, who congratulated the French and felicitated themselves on the fact that he returned with no part of his body burnt nor even one of his nails pulled out. Wonderful stories are told of his battles and hairbreadth escapes in the many Indian combats in which he participated. His name appears constantly during this period in the records of the colony, either as interpreter or ambassador or as counsellor to the Governor on Indian affairs, or as leader of expeditions against the savages. So efficient and active was he that, in 1668, " in consideration of the great services which Sieur Le Moyne has rendered to this colony," the King granted to him and his heirs in entail the title of nobility as Sieur de Longueuil, with a baronial seat on a little eminence among the ancient pines through whose gaunt arms he could look across the noble St. Lawrence, shimmering in the sun, upon the growing strength and beauty of Montreal, in whose behalf his life was spent.

Charles Le Moyne had lived eight years in Montreal when in 1654 he married Catherine Thierry Primot, the belle of the settlement, who was con-

30 SIEUR DTBERVILLE

spicuous for her piety, modesty, and precocious wisdom. In course of time Le Moyne qualified to receive the pension of four hundred livres which the Government gave as an encouragement to the father of twelve or more children. Each of the eleven sons in addition to the family name received a surname at birth as a mark of distinction. Usually the child was given the name of one of the villages or landmarks in the neighborhood of Dieppe, as a memento of the country of his father's birth. Thus the eldest was called Charles Le Moyne de Longueuil (b. 1656) ; the second, Jacques de St. Helene (b. 1659), from one of the islands opposite Montreal ; the third, Pierre d'Iberville (b. July 20, 1661) ; the fourth, Paul de Maricourt (b. 1663) ; the fifth, Fran- 9ois de Bienville (b. 1666) ; the sixth, Joseph de Serigny (b. 1668) ; the seventh, Fran9ois Marie de Sauvole (b. 1670) ; the eighth, Anomyme (b. 1672) ; the ninth, Catherine Jeanne * (b. 1673) ; the tenth, Louis de Chateauguay (b. 1676) ; the eleventh, Marie Anne t (b. 1678) ; the twelfth, Jean Baptiste de Bienville (b. 1680); the thirteenth, Gabriel d'Assigny (b. 1681) ; the fourteenth, Antoine de Chateauguay (b. 1683). All lived to reach eminence or met a death of glory in the service of their country. St. Helene, Bienville I, and Chateauguay I met early deaths

* Jeanne married Jacques le Ber and became the mother of the celebrated ascetic Jeanne le Ber.

•(• Marie Anne married Pierre Mareau, Sieur de Chassaigne, Governor of Montreal and later of Three Rivers.

while fighting for the colony and the Crown. Maricourt, after many important and hazardous services to the Government, died from exposure in one of the Iroquois campaigns. Serigny attained high rank in the French navy and died Governor of Rochefort. Antoine de Chateauguay II was long associated with Bienville in Louisiana and later became Governor of Cayenne. Bienville II was Governor and the bright particular star of Louisiana for thirty-five years. Charles Le Moyne, Baron de Longueuil, the eldest son, became the Governor of Canada, as did his son after him. Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d'Iberville, was the third and most interesting member of this remarkable family. From boyhood he was distinguished for his energetic and hardy spirit and his extraordinary force of character. As the children grew up, the family feeling became very strong, but all recognized and bowed to the qualities of leadership which Pierre possessed, for he early showed his restless and monarchical disposition. He was a proud, high-spirited, impulsive, and generous lad, intensely loyal and patriotic, and excelled in sports and games of all kinds. He was resolute and ready to espouse a cause, and having accepted an issue, he, far more than his brothers, was willing, nay, eager, to pursue it to the bitter end. In his fortitude, endurance, courage, and quick intelligence lay the claims to leadership which all accepted. Thus in warm emulation but definitely under his guidance, they hunted in pairs, and one or more of the brothers in an associated or subordinate capacity are usually found in every expedition made by Iberville. " Le Moyne " soon became a word to conjure with, and the brotherhood has been named the " Canadian Maccabees."