Chapter II: Champlain

“There are few chapters in history so full of romantic
interest, so compelling in their demands for sympathy and
admiration, as the record of the century and a half that began
with the wooden fortress of Champlain under the bluff at
Quebec, and ended with the fall of Montcalm on the Heights of
Abraham.”

—HON. ELIHU ROOT.

CHAMPLAIN AND THE GREAT LAKES.

On the Bay of Biscay, on the west coast of France, and not very far from Rochelle, there is a small village now some miles from the sea, but which in the days of Cartier and for some years after was a flourishing seaport. This is called Brouage, and is almost a deserted village to-day, the sea having receded and the railway passed it by. The great salt marshes are still there to remind one of the time when cargoes of salt were shipped from this harbour, and where ships, then considered great, found safe anchorage.

In this seaport, with its face to the great mysterious Western land, young Samuel de Champlain, son of a sea captain, grew up during the stirring times of civil war in France. When a boy of nine[5] his city was captured by Henry of Navarre, who, after years of struggle, during which were many mighty deeds of valour, finally overcame his enemies, entered Paris in triumph, and was crowned King of France. Indeed, the struggle was so long that Champlain grew up sufficiently to be accounted a gallant officer in Henry’s army.

When peace was declared and the country had settled down, Champlain in his love for adventure entered the service of the King of Spain, and made trips to the West Indies, going inland in America even to the city of Mexico.

On his return he made a report to the King of France, concerning this Western land, in the hope that his own country might once more send expeditions of discovery. In this report he says: “One might judge if the territory four leagues in extent, lying between Panama and the river were cut through, he could pass from the South Sea to that on the other side, and thus shorten the route by more than fifteen hundred leagues. From Panama to Magellan would make an island and from Panama to the Newlands (Newfoundland) would make another, so that the whole of America would be in two islands.”

Three hundred years afterwards this was done, and by the people of a country then undiscovered, and supplies from the Pacific Coast of that great nation passed through that canal to help the cause of the France which Champlain loved and served so well.

During the years of civil strife in France, the exploration of the Western world was being pushed forward by the merchant adventurers of England, and especially of Spain. Spies from the court of Spain watched every port and sent home the news of prospective sailings so that these rivals might be intercepted and America be preserved for Spain.

But now that peace was established enterprising mariners of the northern seaports of France remembered the expeditions of Cartier, and so the governor of Dieppe induced Champlain to undertake a voyage to New France. They left that port in March, 1603, and after coasting along the shores of Newfoundland, Anticosti and Cape Breton, sailed up the St. Lawrence and anchored at Tadoussac at the mouth of the Saguenay. Thence Champlain made a journey up the great river to Hochelaga, which in Cartier’s time was a flourishing town. Now all was deserted and nothing remained of what had been a great Indian community. Gathering up what furs they could, Champlain and his party sailed for home, which they reached in September.

This was a journey of inspection, spying out the land, and the King was so impressed by Champlain’s account that he gave his patronage to a larger expedition. This was under the command of Sieur de Monts, a nobleman, with Champlain as the King’s geographer, and was sent out in the hope that a colony might be established, and so actual possession of New France might be maintained against European nations who were claiming parts of the New World.

De Monts became the first Lieutenant-Governor of New France, and with nobles, soldiers, priests, and peasants, about 120 in all, his little fleet discovered and entered the harbour and river of St. John on the 24th of June, 1604, exactly to the day one hundred and seven years after the discovery of Newfoundland by Cabot; and there on the island of St. Croix (Holy Cross) established a colony, the only settlement of Europeans north of Florida. It was an exceptionally severe winter and the colonists suffered almost as much as Cartier’s men so many years before at Quebec.

In the spring Champlain set out to find some place for the settlement which might have a more congenial climate. Although he went south and passed the islands at the mouth of what is now the harbour of Portland, Maine, and even entered the harbour of Boston, he returned to Port Royal in Nova Scotia, the situation of which had appealed to him, and there the colony moved.

It was a prosperous settlement, and it is of interest in these days of grain growing, hydro-power development and ship building in Canada to know that these settlers raised the first wheat grown in America; here was used the first wheel to turn a millstone upon this continent; and in this harbour in 1606 the first Canadian vessel was built.

The position on the sea, with fertile soil and great forests near by, was very attractive, and perhaps is best described by Longfellow centuries afterwards:

“This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.”

To-day in its loneliness it reminds one of Brouage and it is difficult to think that it has been the most besieged city in America.

But it was when Champlain came back from France in 1608, after a year’s absence from the colony, that our great interest begins, for then he determined to press inland and re-assert the sovereignty claimed for France by Cartier. The bold headland where Cartier had spent the winter had attracted his attention upon his previous voyage, and so he founded there in 1608 a town, really the capital of New France, and to it he gave the native Algonquin name, “Quebec,” which means “the narrowing of the stream.”

In the following year he went up the St. Lawrence, and finding a party of Huron and Algonquin Indians about to set out on an expedition against their great enemy, the Iroquois, who were encroaching upon Algonquin territory near what is now Lake Champlain, he joined with them, thinking thereby to establish friendly and profitable relations with such powerful tribes. The result was that he made the fighting Iroquois the everlasting and unrelenting enemies, not only of himself but of France.

This was one of the great fights of history, full of meaning in the after years of Canadian life. When the Algonquins came within fighting distance of their adversaries they opened ranks, and Champlain, steel armour on breast and thighs, a plumed helmet on his head, a sword at his side, and a musket in his hands, stepped out to the front, and for the first time the Indians saw the death-dealing firearms of the white man.[6]

In his own words:

“I looked at them and they looked at me. When I saw them getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I levelled my arquebus which I had loaded with four balls and aimed straight at one of the chiefs. The shot brought down two and wounded another.”

This day of fateful beginnings was two months before Hudson discovered the river that bears his name and eleven years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed upon the stern and rock-bound coast of America. One of our own poets, Bliss Carman, pictures the setting out of the expedition:

“On such a day three hundred years ago
By toilsome trails, and slow,
But with the adventurer’s spirit all aflame
The great discoverer came
Finding another Indies that he guessed
To reward his darling quest
And fill the wonder-volume of Romance,
The sailor of Little Brouage, the founder of New France,
Sturdy, sagacious, plain
Samuel de Champlain.”

During the next few years Champlain crossed the sea almost annually and arranged for the development of the fur trade, for which he established a post on the site of the ancient Hochelaga and where Montreal now stands. Then he resumed his search for the great “Western Sea” which lured on these early adventurers, or some outlet through the great continent to the fabled land beyond; and in 1613 he followed up the waterway of the St. Lawrence by going up the Ottawa beyond where now is the capital of the Dominion of Canada. His journey really began when he left the end of the island of Montreal at the confluence of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, where St. Anne de Bellevue now stands and where, many years after, Tom Moore, the famous Irish poet, lived for a short time and wrote the Canadian Boat Song.[7]

He soon came back, his information having proved unreliable, and he returned to France to make his report on the fur trade and the state of the country. He set sail again in 1615 for New France, having with him four Franciscan Fathers called Récollet friars from the convent in Brouage, who were anxious to convert to Christianity the savages of this great new world of which Champlain had told them.

He stayed but a short time at Quebec as he wished to follow up a party of Huron and Algonquin Indians who had gone up the Ottawa to gather the tribes for a raid against the Iroquois. With them went Father Le Caron, one of the Récollets who had come out from Brouage with Champlain.

The advance party of a Mohawk war expedition has returned to Theonondiogo (Two Noses), the Mohawk capital (1634). They have brought with them two Mahikan Indian captives from the vicinity of Skanehtade (Albany).

One prisoner in defiance has thrown down his burden and his captor is about to strike him when a chief woman of the village coming up the steep hill interposes by holding up a string of white ransom wampum saving the captive from death. Another warrior examines the bag of booty dropped by the prisoner. To the right near the stockade wall is seen a Mohawk war chief in full regalia leading a captive Mahikan, who bends beneath his burden. In the background is a figure calling the rest of the warriors to the hilltop council.

The scene is laid on the hill overlooking the ancient Mohawk site of Two Noses, just above the present village of Sprakers in the Mohawk valley, and the observer is looking north toward the foothills of the Adirondacks.

The purpose of this group is to illustrate (1) the treatment of prisoners, (2) the authority of the Iroquois woman, (3) the difference between the Mohawks and the Hudson river Mahikans, (4) an Iroquois village with its stockade wall, (5) a typical Mohawk valley landscape in Indian times.]

Accompanied by Etienne Brulé, his interpreter, a brave and skilful woodsman, Champlain’s party went up the Ottawa, crossed over the divide from the Upper Ottawa and launched their canoes on Lake Nipissing. Thence they paddled down the French River into Lake Huron. One can imagine the joy of Champlain when he saw this great body of water stretching away beyond his vision and which he christened Mer Douce (Fresh Water Sea). This was the first of the Great Lakes to be discovered by a white man, and Champlain, with Le Caron and Brulé, were the first white men to sail on its waters.

Down the shore they went for more than a hundred miles until the Indians came to the outlet of a well-known trail leading into the heart of the territory of the Hurons, to the palisaded town of Otoucha. This part of the country had many permanent Indian villages whose inhabitants were more agricultural than those in the east, and Champlain was greatly impressed with the fields of maize and pumpkins and sun flowers. Here he found Le Caron, who had preceded him on the journey, and on August 12th, 1615, the first mass, the first religious service in what was afterwards known as Upper Canada, was celebrated in what is now the township of Tiny, near Penetanguishene, in the county of Simcoe. This event was commemorated three hundred years later by the Archbishop of Toronto, who celebrated mass as nearly as possible on the same spot, and to mark which a monument has been erected.

The Indians gathered up their warriors and started southward. When the expedition reached Lake Simcoe, Brulé left Champlain that he might go directly south and persuade an Indian tribe who lived in that part of the country west and south of where Buffalo now stands, to join them against the Iroquois. Brulé paddled up the Holland river, crossed over the height of land and thence down the Humber river until he came to its mouth where the city of Toronto now stands. He was the first white man who saw Lake Ontario; and this was some five years before the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers.

Champlain in the meantime crossed Lake Simcoe, portaged to Balsam Lake, thence through the Otonabee River, Rice Lake, and the Trent River, into Lake Ontario, which he too saw for the first time, and with his Huron companions crossed over to the country of the Iroquois. The raid was a failure, and Champlain, himself wounded, returned with the retreating Hurons and spent the winter with them in Huronia on the Georgian Bay.

The remaining years of Champlain’s life were spent in trying to build up this little colony[8] in a vast country and reconciling the conflicting elements in it. The most important event was the capture of Quebec in 1629 by an English fleet under Sir David Kirke, a descendant of French Huguenots who had taken refuge in England. Those were times when news travelled slowly, and much to their mutual surprise it was found that a peace had already been signed between England and France, and so Quebec was restored to France in 1632 and Champlain, who had been taken to England as a prisoner, was released and restored to his governorship.

But his spirit was failing, and on Christmas Day, 1635, one hundred years after Cartier had first sailed up to the great rock at the narrowing of the stream, this brave soldier, resourceful general, and true gentleman, passed away in the country which he loved and in the city he had founded.