The work and character of Marguerite de Bourgeoys are thus admirably summed up by a recent biographer:
"The visible result of Marguerite de Bourgeoys' long life in Canada was the institution of a band of young women who were bound by vows to teach the young, the building of a church, and the establishment of schools for the instruction of Indian and French children. She died January 12, 1700. Her heart, which had beaten with pain at the cry of suffering childhood, with agony at the shriek of the tortured victim of Iroquois cruelty, with shame at the contentions of Christian brotherhoods, and with rapture when even one little child received the anointing drops of baptism, that heart, encased in its silver covering, now rests in the chapel of a convent where she so long labored and loved."
These were the triumphs of peace, won by heroines of endurance and patience rather than of fiery physical courage; but of the latter quality there were many brilliant examples among the women of the French settlers of Canada. Madeleine de Verchères is both famous and typical among these sterner heroines. She was but fourteen years old when she found herself in charge of her father's fort, that fort suddenly burst upon by the savage Iroquois, and she with a garrison consisting of two soldiers, two boys, and an old man of eighty. There were women and children also, but these were detriments, not aids. The gallant girl, though actually surprised in the fields by the marauders, managed to close the gates, took command of the panic-stricken company,--the soldiers were as frightened and helpless as the rest,--and soon organized a defence which lasted for a week, and was ended by the arrival of a succoring force. Her little brothers, but ten and twelve years of age respectively, nobly seconded her efforts; but the whole glory of the splendid defence was due to Madeleine, whose account of the occurrence is extant. She inherited heroic blood on the distaff side, for her mother, two years before, had held the same fort with but four armed men against an attack by the Iroquois, the siege lasting two days.
The conditions of the first half century of Canadian colonization were generally similar to those existing in New England, of course, with a difference of racial impulses and customs. That half century saw but slow development of the country; but between 1665 and 1667 the coming of the Carignan regiment, sent by Louis XIV. to establish firmly his hold upon the new dominion, brought about a change. In order to prevent desertion and make the soldiers truly at home in the land, it was soon found necessary that there should be established homes, and to this end women were necessary. But women were precisely the rarest treasure in the Canadas, and there was therefore adopted the plan, already executed in the English colonies of the South, of importing girls as wives. Accordingly, from time to time, there arrived consignments of maidens, called "the king's girls," and semi-annual wife-markets were held in Quebec and Montreal. The character of these imported ladies was not invariably of the best; but a trifle such as this did not affect the soldiers of the baser sort, who were willing to overlook past peccadillos in consideration of the dowry which their wives brought them and in hope of gaining the bounty offered for the rearing of large families. Moreover, there was passed a law which provided that every unmarried young man, who had not within two weeks of the arrival of a company, entered into the matrimonial state should be deprived of the privileges of hunting, fishing, and trading, while the persistent bachelors were to be excluded from all places of honor and responsibility, and it was even suggested that they should be branded as felons. Marriage was certainly esteemed honorable in those days. The account of La Hontan, a witty officer of the Canadian forces, of the first coming of "the king's girls" is worth quoting in part:
"After these first inhabitants there came a folk useful to the country and a good riddance to the Kingdom. There arrived one day at Quebec a small fleet loaded with Amazons and crowds of females, Nuns of Paphos or of Cythera conducting this precious cargo. I have been told the circumstances of their coming, and I cannot resist the pleasure of sharing the story with you.
"This chaste folk was led to the pasture by old and prudish Shepherdesses. As soon as they had arrived, these wrinkled dames passed their soldiery in review, and having separated them into three classes, each group entered a different room. As they had to crowd quite close together on account of the smallness of the place, they made rather a pleasant decoration, and the good merchant Cupid had no reason to be ashamed of his wares. Never had he made a better assortment. Blonde, brunette, red, black, fat, thin, large, small,--he could satisfy the most bizarre and most fastidious tastes.
"The report of the new cargo being spread abroad, all the well-intentioned in the way of multiplication hastened thither. As it was not permitted to examine all and still less to take them on trial, it was a case of buying a pig in a poke, or rather of buying the whole piece from the sample. But the disposal of them was none the less rapid on this account. Each selected his partner, and in a fortnight these three lots of venison had been taken away with all the seasoning that could be taken with them.
"The next day the Governor-general caused to be distributed to them enough provisions to give them courage to embark upon this stormy sea. They went to housekeeping almost as did Noah in the Ark, with an ox, a cow, a pair of swine, a pair of fowls, two barrels of salted meat, and a piece of money. The officers were more fastidious than the soldiers and allied themselves with the daughters of other officers or of the richer settlers who had been established in the country for nearly a century."
The coming of these girls in such numbers, followed or accompanied as they were by many young Frenchmen of gay, if not dissolute habits, produced a natural change in the aspect of the social conditions. Simplicity became a thing of the past, and the merriment, as in New England, at last became scandalous to those of graver trend of thought. Some restrictive laws were passed, among others one which provided that all girls and women should be in their houses by nine of the night; but as some who incurred the penalty were dragged from their beds and whipped by officers of the town, the punishment seems hardly less conducive to lesion of good morals than the crime itself. As in New England, laws regulating personal adornment were passed, and the wearer of a top-knot was refused admission to the communion; and all these stern enactments had about as much repressive effect as their fellows in the lower colonies,--practically none.
From this time forward there began to grow in New France the follies and frivolities of her mother country, and there arose that which is termed "society," at least in the growing towns. Quebec and Montreal flourished, and the young, and also the old at times, frolicked and danced and made merry. On the frontiers there was still some of the fine simplicity of olden days; but those frontiers were being pushed further and further away from proximity to the towns. At last there came the time when the infamous Bigot ruled in Quebec, caring for nothing but to fill his purse and take his pleasures; and then Canadian society touched its lowest. There was thought of little beyond rout and revel; Bigot ruled as if king of New France, and emulated his sovereign in Old France by having his Pompadour in the person of Angelique de Pean, who was as grasping and reckless as was her French compeer. She was a beautiful woman, the wife of Monsieur de Pean,--who considered the surrender of his wife to Bigot but a fair return for certain lucrative offices,--and she did not, as it is said, though not proved, hesitate to stain her hands with blood in order to maintain her influence over the Intendant. At last came Nemesis; the English were at the gates of Quebec. Not all the influence and efforts of the noble Montcalm could avert the coming disaster, and Quebec fell. With it fell the ascendency of French ways in "Our Lady of the Snows." After the coming of the English and the partial amalgamation of the two races, there was a steady development of society; but it was along normal lines and was not of a nature to call for remark. It did not tend to any individuality of type; it produced very charming women, but not a typical woman as differing from the representatives of other modern races. This is said of the cities of Canada. There were mutations of fashion and custom and thought and conditions; but these were not individual but rather reflexes of the universal movements of society, save that they were a little modified by the circumstances which were imposed by natural causes upon their progress. It is true that Canadian society was peculiar in its preservation, in certain ways, of the lines distinguishing the Latin and the Teuton; but these lines grew fainter and fainter, and even when most distinctly marked held on the one side or the other nothing that was not of European origin and method. Therefore there remains nothing to be said of the Canadian woman of the cities. There were many individuals doubtless worthy of mention for special graces or attributes, but they were not typical of any peculiar culture. They represented nothing, being but projections of English or French womanhood in its variant aspects. With the coming of the English ends the story of Canadian women as found in the strongholds of femininity.