Voyages of Samuel De Champlain — Volume 01

by Samuel de Champlain

These delays prevented the complete organization of the company contemplated by Champlain's new plan, but it was nevertheless necessary for him to make the voyage to Quebec the present season, in order to keep up the continuity of his operations there, and to renew his friendly relations with the Indians, who had been greatly disappointed at not seeing him the preceding year. Four vessels, therefore, were authorized to sail under the commission of the viceroy, each of which was to furnish four men for the service of Champlain in explorations and in aid of the Indians in their wars, if it should be necessary.

He accordingly left Honfleur in a vessel belonging to his old friend Pont Gravé, on the 6th of March, 1613, and arrived at Tadoussac on the 29th of April. On the 7th of May he reached Quebec, where he found the little colony in excellent condition, the winter having been exceedingly mild, and agreeable, the river not having been frozen in the severest weather. He repaired at once to the trading rendezvous at Montreal, then commonly known as the Falls of St. Louis. He learned from a trading barque that had preceded him, that a small band of Algonquins had already been there on their return from a raid upon the Iroquois. They had, however, departed to their homes to celebrate a feast, at which the torture of two captives whom they had taken from the Iroquois was to form the chief element in the entertainment. A few days later, three Algonquin canoes arrived from the interior with furs, which were purchased by the French. From them they learned that the ill treatment of the previous year, and their disappointment at not having seen Champlain there as they had expected, had led the Indians to abandon the idea of again coming to the rendezvous, and that large numbers of them had gone on their usual summer's expedition against the Iroquois.

Under these circumstances, Champlain resolved, in making his explorations, to visit personally the Indians who had been accustomed to come to the Falls of St. Louis, to assure them of kind treatment in the future, to renew his alliance with them against their enemies, and, if possible, to induce them to come to the rendezvous, where there was a large quantity of French goods awaiting them.

It will be remembered that an ulterior purpose of the French, in making a settlement in North America, was to enable them better to explore the interior and discover an avenue by water to the Pacific Ocean. This shorter passage to Cathay, or the land of spicery, had been the day-dream of all the great navigators in this direction for more than a hundred years. Whoever should discover it would confer a boon of untold commercial value upon his country, and crown himself with imperishable honor. Champlain had been inspired by this dream from the first day that he set his foot upon the soil of New France. Every indication that pointed in this direction he watched with care and seized upon with avidity. In 1611, a young man in the colony, Nicholas de Vignan, had been allowed, after the trading season had closed, to accompany the Algonquins to their distant homes, and pass the winter with them. This was one of the methods which had before been successfully resorted to for obtaining important information. De Vignan returned to Quebec in the spring of 1612, and the same year to France. Having heard apparently something of Hudson's discovery and its accompanying disaster, he made it the basis of a story drawn wholly from his own imagination, but which he well knew must make a strong impression upon Champlain and all others interested in new discoveries. He stated that, during his abode with the Indians, he had made an excursion into the forests of the north, and that he had actually discovered a sea of salt water; that the river Ottawa had its source in a lake from which another river flowed into the sea in question; that he had seen on its shores the wreck of an English ship, from which eighty men had been taken and slain by the savages; and that they had among them an English boy, whom they were keeping to present to him.

As was expected, this story made a strong impression upon the mind of Champlain. The priceless object for which he had been in search so many years seemed now within his grasp. The simplicity and directness of the narrative, and the want of any apparent motive for deception, were a strong guaranty of its truth. But, to make assurance doubly sure, Vignan was cross-examined and tested in various ways, and finally, before leaving France, was made to certify to the truth of his statement in the presence of two notaries at Rochelle. Champlain laid the story before the Chancellor de Sillery, the President Jeannin, the old Marshal de Brissac, and others, who assured him that it was a question of so great importance, that he ought at once to test the truth of the narrative by a personal exploration. He resolved, therefore, to make this one of the objects of his summer's excursion.

With two bark canoes, laden with provisions, arms, and a few trifles as presents for the savages, an Indian guide, four Frenchmen, one of whom was the mendacious Vignan, Champlain left the rendezvous at Montreal on the 27th of May. After getting over the Lachine Rapids, they crossed Lake St. Louis and the Two Mountains, and, passing up the Ottawa, now expanding into a broad lake and again contracting into narrows, whence its pent-up waters swept over precipices and boulders in furious, foaming currents, they at length, after incredible labor, reached the island Allumette, a distance of not less than two hundred and twenty-five miles. In no expedition which Champlain had thus far undertaken had he encountered obstacles so formidable. The falls and rapids in the river were numerous and difficult to pass. Sometimes a portage was impossible on account of the denseness of the forests, in which case they were compelled to drag their canoes by ropes, wading along the edge of the water, or clinging to the precipitous banks of the river as best they could. When a portage could not be avoided, it was necessary to carry their armor, provisions, clothing, and canoes through the forests, over precipices, and sometimes over stretches of territory where some tornado had prostrated the huge pines in tangled confusion, through which a pathway was almost impossible. [76] To lighten their burdens, nearly every thing was abandoned but their canoes. Fish and wild-fowl were an uncertain reliance for food, and sometimes they toiled on for twenty-four hours with scarcely any thing to appease their craving appetites.

Overcome with fatigue and oppressed by hunger, they at length arrived at Allumette Island, the abode of the chief Tessoüat, by whom they were cordially entertained. Nothing but the hope of reaching the north sea could have sustained them amid the perils and sufferings through which they had passed in reaching this inhospitable region. The Indians had chosen this retreat not from choice, but chiefly on account of its great inaccessibility to their enemies. They were astonished to see Champlain and his company, and facetiously suggested that it must be a dream, or that these new-comers had fallen from the clouds. After the usual ceremonies of feasting and smoking, Champlain was permitted to lay before Tessoüat and his chiefs the object of his journey. When he informed them that he was in search of a salt sea far to the north of them, which had been actually seen two years before by one of his companions, he learned to his disappointment and mortification that the whole story of Vignan was a sheer fabrication. The miscreant had indeed passed a winter on the very spot where they then were, but had never been a league further north. The Indians themselves had no knowledge of the north sea, and were highly enraged at the baseness of Vignan's falsehood, and craved the opportunity of despatching him at once. They jeered at him, calling him a liar, and even the children took up the refrain, vociferating vigorously and heaping maledictions upon his head.

Indignant as he was, Champlain had too much philosophy in his composition to commit an indiscretion at such a moment as this. He accordingly restrained the savages and his own anger, bore his insult and disappointment with exemplary patience, giving up all hope of seeing the salt sea in this direction, as he humorously added, "except in imagination."

Before leaving Allumette Island on his return, Champlain invited Tessoüat to send a trading expedition to the Falls of St. Louis, where he would find an ample opportunity for an exchange of commodities. The invitation was readily accepted, and information was at once sent out to the neighboring chiefs, requesting them to join in the enterprise. The savages soon began to assemble, and when Champlain left, he was accompanied by forty canoes well laden with furs; others joined them at different points on the way, and on reaching Montreal the number had swollen to eighty.

An incident occurred on their journey down the river worthy of record. When the fleet of savage fur-traders had arrived at the foot of the Chaudière Falls, not a hundred rods distant from the site of the present city of Ottawa, having completed the portage, they all assembled on the shore, before relaunching their canoes, to engage in a ceremony which they never omitted when passing this spot. A wooden plate of suitable dimensions was passed round, into which each of the savages cast a small piece of tobacco. The plate was then placed on the ground, in the midst of the company, and all danced around it, singing at the same time. An address was then made by one of the chiefs, setting forth the great importance of this time-honored custom, particularly as a safeguard and protection against their enemies. Then, taking the plate, the speaker cast its contents into the boiling cauldron at the base of the falls, the act being accompanied by a loud shout from the assembled multitude. This fall, named the Chaudière, or cauldron, by Champlain, formed in fact the limit above which the Iroquois rarely if ever went in hostile pursuit of the Algonquins. The region above was exceedingly difficult of approach, and from which it was still more difficult, in case of an attack, to retreat. But the Iroquois often lingered here in ambush, and fell upon the unsuspecting inhabitants of the upper Ottawa as they came down the river. It was, therefore, a place of great danger; and the Indians, enslaved by their fears and superstitions, did not believe it possible to make a prosperous journey, without observing, as they passed, the ceremonies above described.