When Talon came to Canada there were less than two thousand people in the colony. He wrote frantically to His Royal Master for colonists. "We cannot depeople France to people Canada," wrote the King; but from his royal revenue he set aside money yearly to send men to Canada as soldiers, women as wives. In 1671 one hundred and sixty-five girls were sent out to be wedded to the French youth. A year later came one hundred and fifty more. Licenses would not be given to the wood rovers for the fur trade unless they married. Bachelors were fined unless they quickly chose a wife from among the King's girls. Promotion was withheld from the young ensigns and cadets in the army unless they found brides. Yearly the ships brought girls whom the curés of France had carefully selected in country parishes. Yearly Talon gave a bounty to the middle-aged duenna who had safely chaperoned her charges across seas to the convents of Quebec and Montreal, where the bashful suitors came to make choice. "We want country girls, who can work," wrote the Intendant; and girls who could work the King sent, instructing Talon to mate as many as he could to officers of the Carignan Regiment, so that the soldiers would be likely to turn settlers. Results: by 1674 Canada had a population of six thousand seven hundred; by 1684, of nearly twelve thousand, not counting the one thousand bush lopers who roamed the woods and married squaws.
Between Acadia and Quebec lay wilderness. Jean Talon opened a road connecting the two far-separated provinces. The Sovereign Council had practically outlawed the bush lopers. Talon pronounced trade free, and formed them into companies of bush fighters—defenders of the colony. Instead of being wild-wood bandits, men like Duluth at Lake Superior and La Motte Cadillac at Detroit became commanders, holding vast tribes loyal to France. For years there had been legends of mines. Talon opened mines at Gaspé and Three Rivers and Cape Breton. All clothing had formerly been imported from France. Talon had the inhabitants taught—and they badly needed it, for many of their children ran naked as Indians—to weave their own clothes, make rugs, tan leather, grow straw for hats,—all of which they do to this day, so that you may enter a habitant house and not find a single article except saints' images, a holy book, and perhaps a fiddle, which the habitant has not himself made. "The Jesuits assume too much authority," wrote the King. Talon lessened their power by inviting the Recollets to come back to Canada and by encouraging the Sulpicians. Instead of outlawing young Frenchmen for deserting to the English, Talon asked the King to grant titles of nobility to those who were loyal, like the Godefrois and the Denis' and the Le Moynes and young Chouart Groseillers, son of Radisson's brother-in-law, so that there sprang up a Canadian noblesse which was as graceful with the frying pan of a night camp fire in the woods as with the steps of a stately dance in the governor's ballroom. Above all did Talon encourage the bush-rovers in their far wanderings to explore new lands for France.
New France had not forgotten the Iroquois treachery to the French colony at Onondaga. Iroquois raid and ambuscade kept the hostility of these sleepless foes fresh in French memory. When Jean Talon came to Canada as intendant, there had come as governor Courcelle, with the Marquis de Tracy as major general of all the French forces in America,—the West Indies as well as Canada. The Carignan Regiment of soldiers seasoned in European campaigns had been sent to protect the colonists from Indian raid; and it was determined to strike the Iroquois Confederacy a blow that would forever put the fear of the French in their hearts.
Richelieu River was still the trail of the Mohawk warrior; and De Tracy sent his soldiers to build forts on this stream at Sorel and Chambly—named after officers of the regiment. January, 1666, Courcelle, the Governor, set out on snowshoes to invade the Iroquois Country with five hundred men, half Canadian bushrovers, half regular soldiers. By some mistake the snow-covered trail to the Mohawks was missed, the wrong road followed, and the French Governor found himself among the Dutch at Schenectady. March rains had set in. Through the leafless forests in driving sleet and rain retreated the French. Sixty had perished from exposure and disease before Courcelle led his men back to the Richelieu. The Mohawk warriors showed their contempt for this kind of white-man warfare by raiding some French hunters on Lake Champlain and killing a young nephew of De Tracy.
Nevertheless, on second thought, twenty-four Indian deputies proceeded to Quebec with the surviving captives to sue for peace. De Tracy was ready for them. Solemnly the peace pipe had been puffed and solemnly the peace powwow held. The Mohawk chief was received in pompous state at the Governor's table. Heated with wine and mistaking French courtesy for fear, the warrior grew boastful at the white chief's table.
"This is the hand," he exclaimed, proudly stretching out his right arm, "this is the hand that split the head of your young man, O Onontio!"
"Then by the power of Heaven," thundered the Marquis de Tracy, springing to his feet ablaze with indignation, "it is the hand that shall never split another head!"
Forthwith the body of the great Mohawk chief dangled a scarecrow to the fowls of the air; and the other terrified deputies tore breathlessly back for the Iroquois land with such a story as one may guess.
With thirteen hundred men and three hundred boats the Marquis de Tracy and Courcelle set out from the St. Lawrence in October for the Iroquois cantons. Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal bushrover, led six hundred wild-wood followers in their buckskin coats and beaded moccasins, with hair flying to the wind like Indians; and one hundred Huron braves were also in line with the Canadians. The rest of the forces were of the Carignan Regiment. Dollier de Casson, the Sulpician priest, powerful of frame as De Tracy himself, marched as chaplain.