INDEX

[2] According to the Jesuit Relations for 1643-4, the Hurons cried out in their despair: "The Iroquois, our mortal enemies, do not believe in God, have no love for prayer, commit all kinds of crimes, and nevertheless they prosper. We, since we have abandoned the customs of our fathers, are slaughtered and burnt, our villages are destroyed. What good do we get by lending ear to the Gospel, if conversion and death walk hand in hand?" Garneau, who quotes this passage, adds: "One tribe of them that had counted its warriors by hundreds was now reduced to thirty."

[3] Les Jésuites et la Nouvelle France. Vol. i. Introduction, p. xv. More than two centuries earlier the pious Superior of the Ursuline Convent, Mère de l'Incarnation, had referred, in her own gentle way, to their incompleteness. "If," she says, "any one is disposed to conclude that the labours of the convent are useless because no mention is made of them in the Relations, the inference must equally be drawn that Monseigneur the Bishop is useless; that his Seminary is useless; that the Seminary of the Jesuit fathers themselves is useless; that the ecclesiastics of Montreal are useless; and that finally the Hospital nuns are useless; because of none of these persons or things do the Relations say a word. Nothing is mentioned save what relates to the progress of the Gospel; and, even so, lots of things are cut out after the record gets to France."—Letires Spirituelles, edition of 1681, p. 259.

[4] Jesuits in North America, chap. xv.

[5] See the excellent monograph by M. Thos. Chapais, Jean Talon, Intendant de la Nouvelle France, Quebec, 1904.

[6] See particularly the interesting work of Mr. Ernest Myrand, Frontenac et ses Amis, Quebec, 1902.

[7] It was not till 1717 that the merchants of Montreal and Quebec were allowed to meet and discuss business affairs.

[8] Quoted by Faillon, vol. iii. p. 432.

[9] This office was held by Colbert (in connection with a general control of marine, finance, and public works) from 1669 to the date of his death, 6th September 1683; by his son, the Marquis of Seignelay, from 1683 to the date of his own death, 3rd November 1690; and from that time to the conclusion of the period covered by this narrative by the Marquis of Pontchartrain.

[10] Through the influence of Talon, the king was induced in the year 1668 to sign a decree permitting the Récollets to return to Canada, and reinstating them in their former possessions. Père Leclercq, Récollet, says they were very much wanted. "For thirty years," to quote his words, "complaint was made in Canada that consciences were being burdened; and the more the colony increased in population the greater was the outcry. I sincerely hope that there was no real occasion for it, and that the great rigour of the [Jesuit] clergy was useful and necessary. Still the Frenchman loves liberty, and under all skies is opposed to constraint, even in religion."

[11] He had been speaking of the slow growth of the population of Canada.

[12] Père Leclercq, Premier Etablissement de la Foi, vol. ii. p. 117.

[13] It was no doubt in large measure due to the extraordinary physical vitality of the French race in Canada that so strong a tendency was manifested towards this reversion, which of course was facilitated by the general condition of life in a country that was little else than forest. "L'école buissonnière" was at every one's door, and the men of the colony were not alone in feeling the call of the wild. Mère Marie de l'Incarnation, in her Lettres Spirituelles says: "Sans l'éducation que nous donnons aux filles françaises qui sont un peu grandes, durant l'espace de six mois environ, elles seraient des brutes pires que les sauvages; c'est pourquoi on nous les donne presque toutes, les unes après les autres." See Ferland's Cours d'Histoire du Canada, vol. ii. p. 85, who quotes this passage without any reference to page. Passages of similar purport may, however, be found on pp. 231 and 258 of the first edition (1681) of the Lettres Spirituelles.

[14] Mr. P. T. Bedard, in his lecture on Frontenac, published in the Annuaire of the Institut Canadien of Quebec for 1880 speaks of Frontenac's "duplicity" in this matter, a stronger term than the facts seem to justify.

[15] Vol. iii. pp. 446-52.

[16] Le Comte de Frontenac, p. 159.

[17] It is to be found in Margry, Mémoires et Documents des Origines Françaises des Pays d'Outre Mer, vol. i. pp. 301-25.

[18] See Report (Procès Verbal) of the proceedings of the assembly in Margry, Mémoires et Documents, vol. i. pp. 405-20.

[19] He had been charged some years before by a commissioner sent out by the Company of the Hundred Associates with embezzlement, and had taken part in a violent attack on the commissioner and in the seizure of his papers.

[20] Vie de Colbert, vol. i. p. 502.

[21] Quoted by Gaillardin, Histoire du Règne de Louis XIV, vol. iv. p. 311.

[22] See extract from a letter written by him in Faillon, vol. iii. p. 315. The Récollet, Père Leclercq, is uncharitable enough to hint that the canoe accident may have been made to cover a lack of the documents which the explorer professed to have had with him.

[23] See the Recit d'un ami de l'Abbé Galinée, in Margry, vol. i.

[24] Mère de l'Incarnation remarked even in her day the decrease of the native population. "When we arrived in this country," she says, "the Indians were so numerous that it seemed as if they were going to grow into a vast population; but after they were baptized God called them to Himself either by disease or by the hands of the Iroquois. It was perhaps His wise design to permit their death lest their hearts should turn to wickedness."—Lettres Spirituelles, edition of 1681, p. 230.

[25] Colden pithily sums up the result of the campaign in the following words: "Thus a very chargeable and fatiguing expedition (which was to strike terror of the French name into the stubborn hearts of the Five Nations) ended in a scold between the French general and an old Indian."

[26] Saint Vallier, Etat présent de l'Eglise et de la Colonie Française, p. 84.

[27] New York Colonial Documents, vol. ix. p. 268. See also "Transactions between England and France, relating to Hudson's Bay, 1687," in Canadian Archives, 1883, p. 173.

[28] Clément, Vie de Colbert, p. 456.

[29] "In dealing with indigenous races," observes M. Lorin, "governors were sometimes obliged to sacrifice a few victims to the ferocity of savages; and it was not on the eve of a campaign that it would have been wise to exhibit towards the Iroquois a humanity that would have been mistaken for weakness."—Comte de Frontenac, p. 333. We may certainly agree that it would have been difficult for those who had captured peaceful and unsuspecting natives for the horrible régime of the galleys to adopt a high humanitarian tone in reproving the cruelties of their Indian confederates and converts.

[30] New York Colonial Documents, vol. ix. p. 389.

[31] See his Lake St. Louis, Old and New.

[32] Both as regards the number of the slain and the details of the massacre Charlevoix simply repeats the statements made by Frontenac in a despatch dated the 15th November 1689, one month after his return to Canada, and after several days spent at the scene of the disaster and at Montreal. It is he who speaks of the "enlèvement de cent vingt personnes après un massacre de deux cents brûlés, rôtis vifs, mangés, et les enfans arrachés du ventre de leurs mères." The tendency in furnishing information to the French government was always to exaggerate the havoc wrought by the Indians. At the time Frontenac wrote this despatch he was not aware of the further massacre at La Chesnaye, the news of which only reached him on the 17th of November.

[33] Frontenac et ses Amis, p. 93.

[34] Comte de Frontenac, p. 358.

[35] Far from yielding to Frontenac's view of the matter, Denonville doggedly adhered to his own opinion that the fort ought to be entirely abandoned; and, when it was found that it had only been partly destroyed, he wrote to the king advising that Frontenac should be ordered to send up three hundred men with instructions to demolish it utterly.

[36] Parkman tells the story in his usual brilliant manner in chapter iii. of his Old Régime in Canada. Père Charlevoix gives the facts and adds: "Je l'ai vu en 1721, âgé de quatre-vingt ans, plein de forces et de santé; toute la colonie rendant hommage à sa vertu et à son mérite," vol. ii. p. 111, edition of 1744.

[37] New York Colonial Documents, p. 464.

[38] Perrot and his party, according to Monseignat's narrative, left the end of the Island of Montreal on the 22nd May. The Albany—or more correctly Schenectady party, for they did not venture to attack Albany—returned towards the end of March. Frontenac's message must have been composed some months before Perrot's departure, otherwise he would undoubtedly have mentioned with pride the Schenectady massacre. It was certainly not up to date.

[39] "There was little resistance," says Père Chrétien Leclercq, a contemporary writer, "except at one house, where Sieur de Marque Montigny was wounded; but Sieur de Ste. Hélène, having come up, all were slaughtered with sword or tomahawk, the Indians sparing no one."—Premier Etablissement de la Foi.

[40] Documentary History of New York, vol. ii. pp. 164-9.

[41] New York Colonial Documents, vol. ix. p. 440. See also Lorin, Comte de Frontenac, chap. x.

[42] Comte de Frontenac, p. 367.

[43] Names given by the Indians to the governors of New York and Massachusetts; Corlaer being a corruption of Cuyler, a Dutchman of the early period held in high honour by them, and Kishon signifying "The Fish."

[44] See "Winthrop's Journal" in New York Colonial Documents, vol. iv. p. 193.

[45] The letter is given in Cotton Mather's Magnalia, vol. i. p. 186.

[46] New York Colonial Documents, vol. ix. p. 486.

[47] The same mistake was destined to be made in later days, more than once, under the English régime.

[48] "La Canardière (the name given to the flats where the New Englanders landed) was in those days nothing but a horrible marsh, covered with impenetrable woods thickly fringed with underbrush. So dense was the thicket that in full daylight our skirmishers were invisible to the English, who in their exasperation had nothing to guide them in firing but the smoke of their enemies' muskets."—Myrand, Sir William Phipps devant Quebec, p. 271.

[49] Premier Etablissement de la Foi, vol. ii. p. 434. As Leclercq is the one authority of importance of whom Mr. Myrand, in his discussion of this matter, makes no mention, his exact words, which I have not elsewhere seen reproduced, may be quoted: "L'amiral le suivit (le contre-amiral) d'assez près et avec précipitation; il fila tout le cable de son ancre qu'il abandonna; son pavillon fut emporté dans la rivière et laissé à notre discrétion, que nos gens allèrent pêcher."

[50] In his work already quoted, Sir William Phipps devant Quebec, Mr. Myrand goes very carefully, and in a spirit of great impartiality, into the question of the probable losses on the New England side. Those on the Canadian side he is able to establish by means of authentic records. Mr. Myrand has laid his readers under great obligations by reprinting the principal original documents bearing on the Phipps expedition, as well as by his own intelligent discussion of the whole episode.

[51] As Belmont was a very ardent enemy of the drink traffic he may have been a little inclined to exaggerate in these matters.

[52] Chapter xiv.

[53] The Baron de Saint-Castin had come to Canada in 1665 as an ensign in the Carignan-Salières Regiment, being then only in his seventeenth year. On the disbanding of the regiment he had gone to Acadia, and betaken himself to the life of the woods. He became a famous hunter and trader, and acquired great influence over the Indian tribes. The chief Madocawando, as above mentioned, was his father-in-law, but he had others.

[54] The Peace of Ryswick, 20th September 1697.

[55] Τὰ κοινὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων πάθη.—Aristotle, Rhet. vii.

[56] Monseigneur de Saint Vallier et son Temps, p. 32.

Transcriber's Notes:

hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the original

Page 203, extirpating Protestanism ==> extirpating Protestantism

Page 249, that of Pemquid ==> that of Pemaquid

Page 250, fort at Pemquid ==> fort at Pemaquid

Page 287, much as may be, ==> much as may be.

Page 291, she tell us ==> she tells us

Page 307, the neigbourhood. ==> the neighbourhood.

Footnote 55, "hover" mouse to see Greek transliteration