IV
Samuel de Champlain Lights a Blaze of Red Terror
IT was the first spectacular profits of the fur trade toward the close of the sixteenth century that brought about a fresh and urgent need for the colonization of New France.
The French government saw danger from jealous foreigners, Englishmen in particular. Already the English had attempted settlements to the south at a place called Roanoke. Greatly emboldened on the sea these days they were admitting Spanish claims no more northerly than 34° and French claims no more southerly than 45°. The land in between, from Cape Fear to the Bay of Fundy, was claimed as English. All because John Cabot had sailed that coast more than a century earlier!
Now English boats, too many of them, were poking about Newfoundland, where England laid claim to certain discoveries, and even in the Gulf of St. Lawrence itself. London merchants like Charles Leigh, ostensibly on trading voyages in the great gulf, were boldly practicing piracy against French as well as Spanish vessels. And Hakluyt, the English geographer, was exhorting his countrymen to even greater competition. “While the French, Bretons, Basques and Biscayans do yearly return from these parts a manifold gain, we the English have merely stood still and been idle lookers on,” he wrote provocatively.
French merchants, however, were not showing much inclination to colonize the country; they saw no profit in underwriting such risky ventures when things were going so well. It cost money to plant colonies. Unencumbered competitive traders would probably profit as much as those who did the planting.
The king saw it differently however. Unless something was done to colonize the valley of the St. Lawrence, to fortify it, the great trade of the French and the hoped-for route to Cathay stood to be seized by foreigners. He resorted to offering monopolies.
Companies were given total rights to the fur trade in return for promising to settle specified numbers of colonists a year. But no volunteers as colonists appeared. When a company was given the fur monopoly it had to take worthless tramps or convicts furnished by the government and, as the merchants weren’t particularly interested in colonization anyway, they didn’t bother much about these derelicts and criminals once they had transported them to some desolate post in the wilderness. Furthermore, independent traders, as well as the fishermen who went ashore to barter, persisted in violating the monopolies. No one was happy. So vociferous were the conflicting protests that the king was forced to cancel the patents he granted one after another.
He didn’t begin to get the results he desired in New France until the advent of Samuel de Champlain.
Champlain, born at Brouage on the Bay of Biscay in 1567, was the son of a French naval captain and the nephew of a Spanish pilot major. He served with French troops as a quarter-master before the Peace of Vervins and later captained a Spanish transport conveying troops to the West Indies. He was there for two years. Having an observant eye he carefully sketched and mapped everything he saw in the Caribbean, the account of his adventures even containing a suggestion of a Panama Canal whereby “the voyage to the South Sea would be shortened by more than 1500 leagues.”
When he first came to the St. Lawrence valley in 1603 as an advance agent of a company with a fur trade monopoly, Samuel de Champlain held the title of Geographer Royal, a brevet nobility. It had been conferred upon him by Henry IV in recognition of his demonstrated ability to get at the facts in America. Now a captain in the French navy he came with instructions from the French monarch to bring back a true report on the St. Lawrence valley. While others in the expedition spent their time bartering with the aborigines, Champlain and Francois Grave, Sieur duPont, a principal merchant of the company, set out to explore the great waterway to the west and to get all the intelligence they could about it.
Actually, they penetrated no farther west than Cartier had done, and not so far as other traders in recent years, but Champlain judiciously recorded what he learned from the Indians and made impressive recommendations. Before returning to France he made a similar survey of the regions about Gaspe and the Acadian Peninsula where there were thought to be rich mines. His report, while recognizing the advantages of establishing a trading post on the St. Lawrence at Three Rivers as Dupont-Grave recommended, pointed out that the powerful league of Iroquois nations barred the way to any farther penetration westward. Too, the feasibility of a possible passage by this route to China was complicated by rapids and ice.
It might be better to try for a more southerly passage, one that would flank the war-like Iroquois, Champlain suggested. There were rivers on the coast south of the St. Lawrence that might lead directly to the lakes in the west—possibly to the western sea.
The new Huguenot head of the company, Pierre de Guast, Sieur de Monts, favored this plan. He’d like to find a new entry into New France, one free of the bitter cold of Canada, and one free of the jealousies of the merchants who had pioneered in the St. Lawrence. The king fully approved. The prospects of finding minerals in the more southerly parts intrigued him. To make sure the company had sufficient ground in which to operate he gave de Monts a patent extending from Cape Breton south to present-day Philadelphia, from 46° north latitude to 40°.
The next few years were spent in making settlements in the Bay of Fundy, at St. Croix and at Port Royal.
Scurvy and cold plagued the colonists even more than Basque pirates, Hollanders and other poaching foreigners annoyed the company’s traders. Trade was brisk nevertheless, with the furriers and hatters of Rouen and Paris bidding up all the pelts that could be shipped to France. In fact, prices rose so high that the Hatters Corporation of Paris complained to the ministry.
Meanwhile, Champlain explored to the south of the French settlements as far as Cape Cod for better sites. He found that Englishmen had been investigating that coast, but he didn’t discover a river that led inland to the lake country, skirting the terrible Iroquois. He didn’t look south far enough. If he had found the Connecticut or the Hudson, New England might today be populated by Frenchmen. And New Yorkers probably wouldn’t have their Dutch ancestors.
In the end Champlain advised the king and the merchants that the company should return to the St. Lawrence valley. Trading posts should be established there, he said. With the help of native enemies of the Iroquois he believed he could defeat the Five Nations—force them to trade—force a way through to Tartary or the western sea.
This is what the company now proceeded to do. An expedition was sent to the St. Lawrence in 1608. Dupont-Grave traded at Tadoussac with one ship while Champlain in another set out to erect a factory at Quebec. There, at the foot of the cliff where the river was narrow, he built a trading post fort consisting of a two-story wooden building surrounded by a large moat. Cannon which would carry across the river were placed on mounds at the corners, and the surrounding land was cleared of timber and brush against attack.
The going was rough, for le capitaine tolerated no shirking of toil. Some of his men conspired to murder him by poison, and, should that fail, by “a traine of gunpowder.” This plot, he discovered in the nick of time. One of the mutineers was hanged; the others were shipped back to France, condemned to the galleys.
When the trading ships with their cargoes of beaver and “blacke Foxes, which seeme to exceede Sables” returned to France in the fall, Champlain remained behind at Quebec with twenty-eight men. But scurvy and dysentery took its usual toll. Only eight remained by spring. Nevertheless the French captain proceeded with his plan to invade the country of the Iroquois. He made overtures to their ancient enemies, the Montagnais and the Algonkin Indians.
“Notwithstanding, being a man, who is astonished with nothing, and of a gentle conversation, knowing wisely how to acquaint, and accommodate himselfe with those people, after having promised them, that when the land of the Iroquois, and other Countries should be discovered, the great French Sagamos (meaning our King) would give them great rewards: he invited them to goe to warre against the said Iroquois, promising (for himselfe) that he would take part with them. They (in whom the desire of revenge dieth not, and who delight in nothing more then in warre) passe their word unto him, and arme themselves about one hundred men, for that effect, with whom the said Champlain, ventures himselfe, accompanied with one man, and one of Monsieur deMonts his footemen.”
This alliance of 1609 was to have far reaching effects on the future colonial history of America. It sparked a blaze of red terror along the borders between Dutch and French, and between French and English, wherever the competition for the fur trade was joined, that was not to be extinguished for a hundred and fifty years.
News has a way of travelling fast in the wilderness, especially news of a war alliance. The Hurons in the west were Iroquoian, but were bitter enemies of the Five Nations. They wanted to be members of such a promising war party, one with white men carrying the astonishing “fireguns” that the nations of the enemy league had never before seen or heard.
Down the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence the Hurons came to Quebec, with furs to barter but with their tomahawks well sharpened. Champlain and his savage allies gave them a resounding welcome. The French captain traded with them and made a war pact. Then they all set off up the St. Lawrence for the mouth of the Richelieu River, beyond which lay the territory of the Five Nations. There, turning south in a flanking movement, they ascended the Richelieu to reach the “Lake of the Iroquois,” later to be called Lake Champlain.
The invaders proceeded with extreme caution after reaching the lake, travelling only at night. However, the French captain had an opportunity to observe something of the advanced state of civilization of the Iroquois before the alarm was given. Their farms, sown with corn and beans, were models of orderliness. Their palisaded forts, he noted, contained buildings of three to four stories, similar to those he had previously observed among the highly organized natives of Mexico.
Champlain must have had some premonition then that these intelligent but bloodthirsty savages would prove far more troublesome than any other natives the French had encountered in America.
When the battle was joined, the invading savages cunningly kept the three Frenchmen hidden behind ranks until, by the sudden appearance of white men with death-dealing thunder, the greatest consternation might be created among the Iroquois. The effect upon the Iroquois was even more dramatic than was anticipated. “On a sodaine, all was in disorder, astonished at such a noise, and death so unexpected. Upon this feare, the men of Kebec loosing no occasion, followed earnestly their enemies, and killed about fiftie of them, whose heads they brought backe, to make therewith merry feasts, and dances, at their returne, according to their custome.” They also took back ten or twelve live prisoners reserved for torture.
The Iroquois, when they recovered sufficiently from their shock to learn more about white men and guns, became the irreconcilable haters of the French. The flame blazed. And it would be fed even more by the Frenchmen—by surprise arquebus massacres and the savagery of the white men’s Algonkin and Huron allies.
Champlain went back to France that fall. Once more the monopoly had been cancelled; the company had lost its exclusive patent. The government was permitting free trade to all Frenchmen in the St. Lawrence valley. However, the company decided to stick it out in the face of this competition. Champlain became affianced, under a marriage contract, to a girl of twelve who was to join him later as his wife, and then he returned to Canada.
The French captain now carried the war to the Iroquois nations again, successfully urging his Indian allies to help him push farther west. All his battles with the Five Nations were not victories, for the Iroquois were fiercely stubborn foes. However Champlain forced his way to Lake Ontario and Niagara. He ascended the Ottawa and visited Lakes Nipissing and Huron, blazing a trail west for the beaver traders to follow. Because of his tireless efforts in the western wilderness the economy of the new country rested solidly on the fur trade for many years, and the beaver rightfully came to occupy a prominent place in the Canadian coat of arms.
Samuel de Champlain became the first Governor of French Canada, the ruler of all New France. But he didn’t find the western sea, or a passage to China.
He did force the Five Nations of the Iroquois into alliances with the enemies of the French, the incoming Dutch fur traders who furnished the savages with guns, and then with the English. The story of the brutal border wars that resulted is in large measure the story of the colonial struggle for most of the American continent.