"Et par les sauuaiges que auions, nous a essé dict que cestoit le commencement du Saguenay & terre habitable. Et que de la ve noit le cuyure rouge qu'ilz appellent caignetdaze."—Brief Récit, par Jacques Cartier, 1545. D'Avezac ed., p. 9. Vide idem, p. 34.
When Cartier was at Isle Coudres, say fifty miles below Quebec, on his return, the Indians from the Saguenay came on board his ship, and made certain presents to their chief, Donnacona, whom Cartier had captured, and was taking home with him to France. Among these gifts, they gave him a great knife of red copper, which came from the Saguenay. The words of Cartier are as follows:—
"Donnerent audict Donnaconan trois pacquetz de peaulx de byeures & loups marins avec vng grand cousteau de cuyure rouge, qui vient du Saguenay & autres choses."—Idem, p. 44.
This voyage of Cartier, made in 1535, was the earliest visit by any navigator on record to this region. It was eighty years before the Recollects or any other missionaries had approached the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There was, therefore, no intercourse previous to this that would be likely to furnish the natives with European utensils of any kind, particularly knives of red copper. It is impossible to suppose that this knife, seen by Cartier, and declared by the natives to have come from the Saguenay, a term then covering an indefinite region stretching we know not how far to the north and west, could be otherwise than of Indian manufacture. In the text, Champlain distinctly states on the testimony of an Algonquin chief that it was the custom of the Indians to melt copper for the purpose of forming it into sheets, and it is obvious that it would require scarcely greater ingenuity to fabricate moulds in which to cast the various implements which they needed in their simple arts. Some of these implements, with indubitable marks of having been cast in moulds, have been recently discovered, with a multitude of others, which may or may not have passed through the same process. The testimony of Champlain in the text, and the examples of moulded copper found in the lake region, render the evidence, in our judgment, entirely conclusive that the art of working copper both by fusion and malleation existed among the Indians of America at the time of its first occupation by the French.
During the period of five years, beginning in 1871, an enthusiastic antiquary, Mr. F. S. Perkins, of Wisconsin, collected, within the borders of his own State, a hundred and forty-two copper implements, of a great variety of forms, and designed for numerous uses, as axes, hatchets, spear-heads, arrowheads, knives, gouges, chisels, adzes, augers, gads, drills, and other articles of anomalous forms. These are now deposited in the archives of the Historical Society of Wisconsin. Other collections are gradually forming. The process is of necessity slow, as they are not often found in groups, but singly, here and there, as they are turned up by the plough or spade or other implements of husbandry. The statement of Champlain in the text, and the testimony of Carrier three-quarters of a century earlier, to which we have referred, give a new historical significance to these recent discoveries, and both together throw a fresh light upon the prehistoric period.
365. This was the Island St. Ignace, which lies opposite the mouth of the river Iroquois or Richelieu. Champlain's description is not sufficiently definite to enable us to identify the exact location of this conflict with the savages. It is, however, evident, from several intimations found in the text, that it was about a league from the mouth of the Richelieu, and was probably on the bank of that river.
366. For some account of Saint Luc, see Memoir, Vol. I. By those of the religion, ceux de la Religion, are meant the Huguenots, or Protestants.
367. The assassination of Henry IV. occurred on the 14th of May, 1610; but the rumor of the death of the Duke of Sully was erroneous. Maximelien de Béthune, the Duke of Sully, died on the 22d of December, 1641, at the age of eighty-two years.