Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

Duchesneau himself, shortly after his arrival in the country, had a passing difficulty with the bishop, arising out of an idea he entertained, that, as intendant, he ought to rank next to the governor; and this wretched matter had also to be referred to the court, which promptly decided in the bishop's favour. From that time forward there was perfect harmony between the two, so much so that, on more than one occasion, the intendant drew down upon himself the censure of the court for what was regarded as his undue subservience to the bishop's views. One of the first matters regarding which he and the bishop joined forces was the policy of the governor in connection with the issue of hunting and trading licences. The law under which Frontenac had previously taken severe measures against the coureurs de bois was still in force; but the governor had felt himself justified in issuing a limited number of permits to responsible persons, authorizing them to carry goods to the Indians and trade in the Indian settlements. These persons became, in a certain sense, coureurs de bois; but as they went out by authority, and could be held to the terms of their licences, and as, moreover, they could be used for the purpose of obtaining information as to the movements and disposition of the native tribes, the governor thought, or professed to think, that he was acting for the best in relaxing to this extent the strict letter of the law. The bishop, on the other hand, objected to the system; in the first place, because the persons licensed carried liquor as part of their stock-in-trade, and, in the second, because it threw impediments in the way of the effective ecclesiastical control of the population. It was agreed that he and the intendant should both write to the minister, the one dwelling on the evils of the liquor traffic with the Indians, and the other on the infringement of the law. Duchesneau, we have seen, had been warned in his instructions to keep in close touch with the governor in all that he did; but he had not been three months in the country before, in a matter of the first importance, and one affecting the governor's own actions, he sent home recommendations of which his superior officer knew nothing.

The answer came back the following year. It was dated 15th April 1676, but seems only to have reached Quebec in September. The governor, by royal edict, was forbidden to issue permits under any pretext whatsoever. The punishment of contumacious coureurs de bois was placed in the hands of the intendant exclusively, as it was he alone—such was the reason given—who had official knowledge of the conditions under which the fur trade was being farmed out. Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers were at the same time indicated as the only places where the trade with the Indians might lawfully be carried on.

Frontenac was not at Quebec when this document arrived; he was at Fort Frontenac (Cataraqui), which was now in the hands of his friend La Salle under a concession from the king. Doubtless he was enjoying, not only his temporary freedom from the worries and vexations of office, but also the congenial society of a man, who, though much his junior, had, in common with himself, a large knowledge of the world, a keen and aspiring spirit, and a strong love of adventure. At Quebec the councillors were somewhat at a loss what to do in the matter of the despatch. Some were indisposed to register, in the absence of the governor, an edict which so directly condemned the policy he was pursuing. Duchesneau, however, did not approve of delay, and on the 5th of October the document was registered, and thus became the law of the land. When Frontenac returned to Quebec and found what had been done—that one of the first acts of the intendant had been to hand him over to the censure of the court, and that its censure had practically been pronounced—he was indignant beyond measure. He saw at a glance that, if the situation were not in some way retrieved, his authority and prestige in the colony he had been sent out to govern would be gravely compromised. The fall vessels were to leave in a week or two, so he sat down and wrote a despatch to Colbert which gave that able minister something to think about. The bishop, dreading lest the governor's reasons—he probably knew that Frontenac wielded a vigorous pen—might lead to a countermanding of the instructions, thought it well to send an envoy of his own to France in the person of the Abbé Dudouyt. Frontenac meantime so far complied with the edict as to publish an order requiring all coureurs de bois, licensed and unlicensed, to return at once to the settlements; though, according to Duchesneau, he nullified this to a great extent by issuing a number of hunting permits which were only trading permits in disguise.

So far as the sale of liquor to the Indians was in question, it is impossible not to approve, theoretically at least, the stand taken by the bishop. He would have suppressed it absolutely, if he had had the power. The thing, however, was practically impossible. We see the effect probably of Frontenac's representations on the subject in a despatch which the intendant received dated in the spring of 1677. He is told that he had yielded too easily to the extreme views of the bishop in regard to this matter. The bishop had spoken of the fearful effects caused by drink amongst the Indians, who maimed and murdered one another, and committed all kinds of abominations, when under its influence. Colbert is not content with such a general statement; he wants particulars; and instructs Duchesneau to find out how many such crimes can be proved to have been committed since he (the intendant) had arrived in Canada. Here was a very suitable piece of work cut out for M. Jacques Duchesneau, who was nothing if not a man of facts and figures; but there is nothing to show that he ever prepared the desired statement. The minister goes on to say: "The general policy of the state is necessarily opposed to the views of a bishop who, in order to prevent the abuse made by a few individuals of a thing good in itself, is prepared to abolish entirely the trade in an article of consumption which serves greatly to promote commerce, and to bring the savages into contact with orthodox Christians like the French. We should run the risk, if we yielded to his opinion, not only of losing this commerce, but of forcing the savages to do business with the English and Dutch, who are heretics; and it would thus become impossible for us to keep them favourably disposed towards the one pure and true religion." Colbert, it will be seen, had that judicious blending of the missionary with the commercial spirit which has been so efficacious in our own day in promoting great colonial enterprises. One or two other allusions to the bishop may be quoted: "It is easy to see that, though the bishop is a very good man, and most faithful in the performance of his duty, he nevertheless is aiming at a degree of power which goes far beyond what is exercised by bishops in any other part of Christendom, and particularly in France." Then, with reference to his attendance at meetings of the Sovereign Council: "You ought to try and put him out of love with going there; but in doing so you must act with the greatest prudence and secrecy, and take care that no person whatsoever knows what I am writing to you on this point."

The minister, it is evident, had hard work to keep his representatives in Canada to their respective spheres of duty. He opens his despatch to Duchesneau by begging him to mind his own business, and not in future recommend any military appointments, as he had done in a late communication. He wrote to Frontenac a few days later, cautioning him to keep aloof from questions of justice, police, and finance, observing that men in military command "are too apt to let flatterers persuade them that they ought to take cognizance of everything and look after everything." Touching on the drink question, he said that "if the disorders complained of are limited in number, and if the Indians are only a little more subject to getting intoxicated than the Germans for example, or, among the French, the Bretons," there was no need for drastic prohibitive measures; the irregularities happening from time to time could be dealt with by the courts. He was not to take ground openly against the bishop; but he was to see that the latter did not go beyond his proper prerogative "in a matter that was purely one of police." The Abbé Dudouyt had evidently not succeeded in winning over the minister to the bishop's extreme views. He must, however, have had more success with the king, for on the 12th May 1678 a royal edict was issued, dealing in a very uncompromising fashion with the coureur de bois question as well as with that of the liquor traffic. As regards the former, the previous prohibition, which, it was complained, had been rendered nugatory by the system of special permits, was renewed in all its force. The liquor traffic was equally condemned: no liquor was to be sold to the Indians under any circumstances. Colbert thereupon presented a memoir to his Majesty setting forth his reasons for considering a prohibition of the liquor traffic inexpedient, these being much the same as he had embodied in his despatch to Duchesneau of the preceding year. The result was that the king, without recalling his edict, ordered that the whole matter should be fully discussed in a meeting of the principal inhabitants of Canada, including the administrators and magistrates, and that a report of the proceedings should be sent to him for his information and further consideration.

Thus was the question referred back to Canada, and an appeal actually made, after a fashion, to public opinion. The meeting ordered by the king was held at Quebec on the 26th October. The persons composing it were chosen by Frontenac and Duchesneau jointly, and were beyond doubt as influential men as could be found in the country—nineteen in all, exclusive of those who attended in an official capacity. The sense of the meeting was overwhelmingly against the suppression of the traffic, and against the stand taken by the bishop in making a "reserved case" of the selling of liquor to the Indians, or, in other words, excluding from the sacraments all who were guilty of that act. Two of the delegates, the seigneurs of Berthier and Sorel, said that the prohibition which was then nominally, and to a considerable degree practically, in force worked injury, not only to trade, but to the Indians themselves. They could get all the liquor they wanted from the Dutch of Orange (Albany); and the Dutch rum was not nearly so good as the French brandy. The last time the Indians came to trade at Cataraqui, they had forty barrels of Dutch spirits with them, having laid in a supply owing to their apprehension that they might not be able to obtain any from the French. But of course they would cease coming to Cataraqui or trading with the French at all, if they could not get liquor. They denied that the drinking of brandy prevented the Indians from becoming Christians. Did not the Christian Indians in the missions near Montreal drink brandy? Yet they remained docile to their teachers, and were not often seen drunk—a statement which certainly might have been challenged. Others urged the argument with which we are already familiar that, if the Indians had to get their liquor from the Dutch and English, they would either imbibe heresy at the same time, or be left in their heathenism. Others again said that the disorders caused by drink amongst the savages had been greatly exaggerated, and moreover things of the same nature occurred among Indians who made no use of spirituous liquors. The "reserved case" was doing no good; on the contrary it was troubling consciences, and had possibly already caused the damnation of some inhabitants. Drunkenness, another delegate remarked, was not confined to the Indians. In the most civilized countries, where all were Christians, it was a common vice; yet no one thought of making a "reserved case" for the liquor sellers. One speaker went so far as to say that the Indians would never become Christians unless they were allowed the same liberties as the French, and that the clandestine sale of liquor promoted immoderate drinking. Robert Cavelier de la Salle was strongly in favour of the trade being left open. It was for laymen, he said, to decide what was good or bad in relation to commerce, and not for ecclesiastics. There had been but little disorder, upon the whole, amongst the savages as the result of drink. He thought they were less given to intoxication than the French, and much less than the English of New York. Two delegates were entirely opposed to the trade as being hurtful to religion, and the source of moral disorders. Two others thought it should be restricted to the settlements, and that no liquor should be sold in the woods.[18]

How far the opinions of those who favoured the traffic were disinterested may be open to question. Traders are apt to consider exclusively the immediate interests of trade; and the love of gain is often sufficient to stifle the instincts of humanity. The church looked upon the Indians as its wards; but the majority of the settlers, it is to be feared, thought only of exploiting, if not of actually plundering, them. It is difficult to read the little treatise composed about twenty-five years after these events, under the title of the History of Brandy in Canada, without feeling persuaded that there was more ground for the position taken by the clergy than the seigneurs and others who assembled at Quebec were willing to admit. From what the anonymous writer, evidently a missionary in close touch with the facts, says, it is clear that brandy was often made an instrument for the robbery of the unhappy Indian. We are told of one man at Three Rivers who, having made an Indian drunk, insisted next day that the score for the brandy the poor savage had taken amounted to thirty moose skins. The author of the treatise is convinced that the horrible massacre at Lachine, of which we shall have to speak in a later chapter, was a direct manifestation of the anger of God at the drink traffic, of which that place in particular was the headquarters. If so, the warning unfortunately was not taken to heart, for the writer himself tells us that the traffic was resumed and prosecuted as vigorously as ever as soon as the village was rebuilt.

When Laval, who had just laid the corner-stone of his seminary at Quebec, saw the way things were going, he decided to start for France himself, to see what he could effect for the cause he had so deeply at heart by personal representations. The decision of the court, however, was what might have been expected under the circumstances. Two edicts were issued in the following year, one dated the 25th April 1679, confirming the regulations previously laid down respecting the coureurs de bois, but allowing the governor to grant hunting permits good from the 15th January to the 15th April of each year; and the other, dated 24th May, expressly prohibiting the holders of such permits from carrying liquor to the Indians, under pain of a fine of one hundred francs for the first offence, three hundred for the second, and corporal punishment for the third. The French of the settlements on the other hand were left free to sell liquor to the Indians resorting thither. The bishop was at the same time requested to make the "reserved case" apply only to those selling under illegal conditions, which, with no little reluctance, he consented to do.

It is to be noted that the second edict contains a clause expressly entrusting its enforcement to "Sieur, Comte de Frontenac, governor and lieutenant-general for his Majesty in the said country," and not as previously to the intendant. Frontenac thus had it in his power, M. Lorin observes, "to free himself in practice from the time limits imposed, or even tacitly to authorize the hunters to carry a few goods to the Indians." This writer, who is an ardent admirer of Frontenac, seems to regard it as a thing quite to be expected that the king's representative should seize the opportunity to violate the king's regulations. The motive, however, which he assigns for such probable disobedience is a very high one: the governor was anxious to keep in touch, through the traders, with the outlying Indian tribes, in order that he might watch the course of their trade, study their dispositions, and thus be enabled to take timely measures to maintain them in right relations with the French colony. Were there ground for assurance that this was his only, or even his greatly predominant, motive, we might well join with M. Lorin in considering such far-sighted devotion to the king's interests as more than a set-off to a technical irregularity. But can we? The question is one in regard to which the documents before us, consisting mainly of the correspondence of Frontenac and Duchesneau with the court, render it difficult to arrive at a positive conclusion. The matter will be discussed in the following chapter; meanwhile let us briefly note the further development of the coureur de bois question to the end of Frontenac's first administration.