The greatest of all American historians was indeed exceptionately fortunate in his choice of a subject. Writing as he did of the colonization of North America from the landing of Champlain, and of the warfare between France and England for the control of the American continent, his theme is so closely allied to his own countrymen that it must always have a special interest for them and for the people of Canada, upon the early history and settlement of which country he has thrown so much light, and in regard to which he has aroused such great attention. Notwithstanding physical infirmities, he lived to complete his work, and to bring his series of historical narratives down to the year 1760, when Canada passed with the death of Montcalm from the hands of the French to be ruled by the nation that had fought more than half a century for its possession.
The remarkable series of histories grouped under the general title of "France and England in North America" may truly be termed the life work of their gifted author. He was but a youth of eighteen at Harvard College when he conceived the plan of writing a history of the French and Indian Wars, and his vacations at that time were passed adventurously and in a way which familiarized him with scenes in which the actors in his historical drama had moved. In the year 1846 he made with a friend his notable journey across the continent, to the desert plains and mountains and the Indian camps of the far West. "I went," says the author in the preface to the fourth edition of "The Oregon Trail," "as a student, to prepare for a literary undertaking of which the plan was already formed. My business was observation, and I was willing to pay dearly for the opportunity of exercising it." He camped among the Sioux Indians, listened to Indian legends, and studied Indian customs, but paid dearly indeed for the opportunity, for he became through the exposure an invalid for life.
"The Oregon Trail," an autobiographical narrative of the journey, was first published in 1847 in the Knickerbocker Magazine; and four years later the author gave to the world his first historical work, "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," pronounced by the eminent historian, Dr. John Fiske, "one of the most brilliant and fascinating books that has ever been written by any historian since the days of Herodotus." From that year until the completion of his work with the publication of "A Half Century of Conflict" in 1892, he occupied himself with the preparation of his series of historical narratives, "France and England in North America," laboriously searching through the French archives and elsewhere for his authorities, and dictating to an amanuensis at such times as the condition of his health would permit. The authorities he collected from the large number of documents and letters examined fill seventy folio volumes of manuscript, and are in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The wealth of material was selected from immense accumulations in France, England, and America, mostly unpublished and in manuscript. Personal visits had to be made to the Archives de la Marine et des Colonies, the Archives de la Guerre, and the Archives Nationals at Paris, and the Public Record Office and the British Museum in London, to obtain manuscript copies, it being necessary to have the authorities constantly at hand. The colonial records of Massachusetts, New York, and other States were also carefully examined.
The initial volume of the series, "Pioneers of France in the New World," was published in 1865. It is divided into two parts. I. The Huguenots in Florida. II. Champlain and his Associates. He described the subject of the proposed series as the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and Rome to dominate the American continent, the rise and growth of North America, and the conflict of nations, races, and principles for its mastery. He had for the scenes of his great historical pictures the whole United States and Canada, from Quebec to Florida and Louisiana, and from Massachusetts to the Western Frontier. In the preface to "Pioneers of France in the New World" Parkman epitomized his purpose in a passage which was given a place of honor in Edmund Clarence Stedman's "Library of American Literature." He said:—
"New France was all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit, the lank, lean body would not thrive. Even commerce wore the sword, decked itself with badges of nobility, aspired to forest seignories and hordes of savage retainers. Along the borders of the sea an adverse power was strengthening and widening, with slow but steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle,—a body without a head. Each had its strength, each its weakness, each its own modes of vigorous life: but the one was fruitful, the other barren; the one instinct with hope, the other darkening with shadows of despair. By name, local position, and character, one of these communities of freemen stands forth as the most conspicuous representative of this antagonism,—Liberty and Absolutism, New England and New France.… The expansion of New France was the achievement of a gigantic ambition striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain attempt.… Borne down by numbers from without, wasted by corruption from within, New France fell at last; and out of her fall grew revolutions whose influence to this hour is felt through every nation of the civilized world. The French dominion is a memory of the past; and when we evoke its departed shades they rise upon us from their graves in strange, romantic guise. Again their ghostly campfires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us; an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Stick was the domain which France conquered for civilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their dauntless hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of toil."
Mr. Parkman did not at once achieve popularity, but his "Pioneers of France" received cordial appreciation and even aroused enthusiasm among writers and critics. The tributes to this and subsequent works are not surpassed if equalled by those accorded to any previous writer. "In vigor and pointedness of description, Mr. Parkman may be counted superior to Irving," said the New York Tribune. The London Athenæum accorded him "a place alongside of the greatest historians whose works are English classics." The late George William Curtis referred to his theme as "a subject which Mr. Parkman has made as much his own as Motley the 'Dutch Republic,' or Macaulay the 'English Revolution.'" "He has taken," said The Spectator, "musty records, skeletons of facts, dry bones of barest history, and breathed on them that they might live." His books have been pronounced "as fascinating as any of Scott's novels;" he has been termed "Easily the first of living historians;" his descriptions of Indian life have been described as unsurpassed, and his sketches of lake and forest scenery praised as "of exquisite beauty."
"Pioneers of France in the New World" was followed in 1867 by "The Jesuits in North America." "Few passages of history," said the author, "are more striking than those which record the efforts of the earlier French Jesuits to convert the Indians. Full as they are of dramatic and philosophic interest, bearing strongly on the political destinies of America, and closely involved with the history of its native population, it is wonderful that they have been left so long in obscurity."
The historian, in this as in all his works, endeavored to write with the utmost fairness, basing all his conclusions on authorities and documents. In the preface to a later work, "A Half Century of Conflict," he says: "The statements of secondary writers have been accepted only when found to conform to the evidence of contemporaries whose writings have been sifted with the greatest care. As extremists on each side have charged me with favoring the other, I hope I have been unfair to neither."
The third volume in the series, "La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," appeared in 1869, and embodied the exploits and adventures of the first European explorers of the Valley of the Mississippi, the efforts of the French to secure the whole interior of the Continent, the attempt of La Salle to find a westward passage to India, his colony on the Illinois, his scheme of invading Mexico, his contest with the Jesuits, and his assassination by his own followers. The leading personages in this remarkable narrative are the intrepid Cavelier de la Salle, Henri de Tonty, his lieutenant, Hennepin, the historian of the expedition, Joliet and Marquette, the explorers of the Mississippi, etc. This volume is of especial value and interest to the people of the Northwest, giving, as it does, the early history of their own homes.
Five years elapsed before the author was able to complete the fourth volume of the series, "The Old Régime in Canada," which was published in 1874. In the preface he quotes De Tocqueville, who said: "The physiognomy of a government can best be judged by its colonies, for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more distinct. When I wish to judge of the spirit and the faults of the administration of Louis XIV., I must go to Canada. Its deformity is there seen as through a microscope." Mr. Parkman, in "The Old Régime in Canada," portrayed the attempt of the monarchical administration of France to make good its hold on the North American continent. "The means of knowing the Canada of the past," wrote Mr. Parkman, "are ample. The pen was always busy in this outpost of the old monarchy. The king and the minister demanded to know everything; and officials of high and low degree, soldiers and civilians, friends and foes, poured letters, despatches, and memorials, on both sides of every question, into the lap of the government." Among the strikingly important events treated of in this work are the Jesuit Missions to Onondaga, the Holy Wars of Montreal, the heroic death of Dollard and his companions at Long Saut, the foundation of the Laval Seminary, the chastisement of the Mohawks, the importation of wives for the Canada emigrants, the transplantation of feudalism into Canada, the development of trade and industry in New France, etc.