That the sentiments of this royal message were inspired by Villebon is evident from the tenor of the letters he addresses to the French ministry at this time. In one of these he says of the brothers d’Amours: “They are four in number living on the St. John river. They are given up to licentiousness and independence for the ten or twelve years they have been here. They are disobedient and seditious and require to be watched.” In another communication he scornfully terms them “the pretended gentry” (soi disant gentilhommes). Writing to the French minister the next year he observes: “I have no more reason, my lord, to be satisfied with the sieurs d’Amours than I previously had. The one who has come from France has not pleased me more than the other two. Their minds are wholly spoiled by long licentiousness and the manners they have acquired among the Indians, and they must be watched closely as I had the honor to state to you last year.”
Fortunately for the reputation of the brothers d’Amours we have evidence that places them in a more favorable light than does the testimony of Governor Villebon. M. de Champigny, the intendant at Quebec, wrote to the French minister. “The sons of the sieur d’Amours, member of the supreme council at Quebec, who are settled on the River St. John, apply themselves chiefly to cultivating their lands and raising cattle.
“I sent you, my Lord, the census of their domain, which has been made by Father Simon, the Recollet, who is missionary on the same river, in which you may have every confidence, he being a very honest man. It is very unfortunate, my lord, that any one should have informed you that they lead a licentious life with the savages for I have reliable testimony that their conduct is very good. It 57 seems as if all who live in that locality are in a state of discord; the inhabitants make great complaints against the Sieurs de Villebon and des Goutins. Some who have come to Quebec say they are constantly so harrassed and oppressed that if things are not put upon a better footing they will be compelled to abandon the country.”
That the inhabitants living on the river were turning their attention to agriculture is shown by a communication to Frontenac or Champigny in 1696, in which the writer, probably Villieu, says: “I informed you last year, Monsieur, by the memo that I did myself the honor to send you, that the inhabitants of this river begin to cultivate their lands. I have since learned that they have raised some grain. M. de Chouffours, who had sown so considerably last year, has not received anything in return, the worms having eaten the seed in the ground; M. de Freneuse, his brother, has harvested about 15 hogsheads of wheat and M. de Clignancourt very little; M. Bellefontaine, about 5 hogsheads; the Sieur Martel very little, as he has only begun to cultivate his land during the last two years; the other inhabitants nothing at all, unless it is a little Indian corn. The Sieurs d’Amours, except the Sieur Clignancourt, have sown this year pretty considerably of wheat and the Sieur Bellefontaine also, the Sieur Martel some rye and wheat and much peas. The other inhabitants have sown some Indian corn, which would have turned out well only they have sown too late on account of their land being inundated.”
Baron la Hontan visited Fort Nashouac about 1694. He describes the St. John as “a very pleasant river, adorned with fields that are very fertile in grain.” He says that two gentlemen of the name of d’Amours have a settlement there for beaver hunting.
The census made in 1695 by Simon, the French missionary, shows that there were then ten families, numbering forty-nine persons, on the St. John river, besides the garrison at Fort Nachouac. Their live stock included 38 cattle and 116 swine; there were 166 acres of land under cultivation and 73 in pasture; the crop of that year included 130 bushels of wheat, 370 of corn, 30 of oats, 170 of peas.
The testimony of John Gyles, who spent three years in the family of Louis d’Amours at the Jemseg, conclusively disproves Villebon’s assertion that the d’Amours tilled no land and kept no cattle. He speaks of a fine wheat field owned by his master, in which the blackbirds created great havoc and describes a curious attempt made by a friar to exorcise the birds. A procession was formed, headed by the friar, in his white robe with a young lad as his attendant and some thirty people following. Gyles asked some of the prisoners, who had lately been taken by privateers and brought to the Jemseg, whether they would go back with him to witness the ceremony, but they emphatically refused to witness it and when Gyles expressed his determination to go, one of them, named Woodbury, said he was “as bad as a papist and a d—d fool.” The procession passed and re-passed from end to end of the field with solemn words of exorcism accompanied by the tinkling of a little bell, the blackbirds constantly rising before them only to light behind them. “At their return,” says Gyles, “I told a French lad that the friar had done no service and recommended them to shoot the birds. 58 The lad left me, as I thought, to see what the friar would say to my observation, which turned out to be the case, for he told the lad that the sins of the people were so great that he could not prevail against those birds.”
A story analogous to this is related in Dr. Samuel Peters’ history of Connecticut, of the celebrated George Whitefield, the New England Independent minister and revivalist: “Time not having destroyed the wall of the fort at Saybrooke, Whitefield, in 1740, attempted to bring down the wall as Joshua did those of Jericho, hoping thereby to convince the multitude of his divine mission. He walked seven times around the fort with prayer and ram’s horn blowing, he called on the angel of Joshua to do as he had done at the walls of Jericho; but the angel was deaf to his call and the wall remained. Thereupon George cried aloud: ‘This town is accursed and the wall shall stand as a monument of a sinful people!’”
Mathieu d’Amours, Sieur de Freneuse, seems to have thought seriously of leaving the St. John river on account of the difficulties and discouragements of his situation, for on the 6th August, 1696, he made out to one Michel Chartier, of Schoodic, in Acadia, a lease of his seignioral manor of Freneuse, consisting of 30 arpents (acres) of arable land under the plough, meadow, forest and undergrowth, with houses, barns and stables thereon, a cart and plough rigged ready for work; also all the oxen, cows, bullocks, goats, pigs, poultry, furniture and household utensils that might remain from the sale which he proposed to make. Chartier was to enjoy the right of trade with the Indians through the whole extent of the manor except where lands had been granted by the Sieur de Freneuse to private individuals. The lease was to be for a term of five years beginning with the first day of May following, and the lessee was to pay the Sieur de Freneuse 600 livres annually, half in money and half in small furs, such as beaver, otter and martins.
It is not likely that this transaction was ever consummated, for less than three months after the lease was arranged and six months before Chartier was to take possession, all the buildings of the Sieur de Freneuse were burned, his cattle destroyed and his fields laid waste by Hawthorne’s expedition returning from their unsuccessful seige of Fort Nachouac. The original lease, a very interesting document, is now in possession of Dr. W. F. Ganong and a fac-simile of the signature of the Sieur de Freneuse is here given.[11]