Count Frontenac / Makers of Canada, Volume 3

by William Dawson LeSueur

As regards the conversion of the savage tribes, it can hardly be claimed that any of these missions were very successful. All authorities agree that it was extremely difficult to impress the Indian mind with the truths of Christianity, or with the idea of any absolute and exclusive theology. The Indian was quite ready to accept the missionary's version of the origin of the world, provided the missionary would reciprocate and accept his decidedly different version. Each, he held, was good in its place; a little variety in these matters did no harm. He had little or no sense of sin, for he did not recognize that the things he did were wrong, and when threatened with the terrors of a future world, he simply said that he did not believe the "master of life" could hate anybody. At the same time he was quite prepared to join in religious services if requested, and seemed even to enjoy the ceremonial. He believed in unlimited charity to relatives and friends, but could not be got to admit the duty of forgiving enemies. An Indian who had been informed that in France many died of want, while others of the same nation had food and substance of all kinds in the greatest profusion, was scandalized beyond measure. He was affected much as we should be by some dark tale of cruelty and superstition from a far-off heathen land. And to think that people of whom such things could be told were sending missionaries to him, to enjoin upon him, among other things, the duty of charity![23]

But if the missionaries made comparatively little headway in the matter of actual conversions, it is impossible to doubt that they exerted a general influence for good upon the tribes to whom they ministered. This may fairly be inferred from the moral authority they exercised and the security and respect they enjoyed. They were themselves men of pure lives and disinterested motives; and so far they personally recommended the doctrines they preached. To some extent also they taught the savages various useful arts of life. Frontenac specially commends the Montreal Seminary for their efforts to civilize the Indians of their missions who, under their instruction, had taken to raising domestic animals, swine, poultry, etc., and to cultivating wheat as well as native grains. The Abbé Verreau, on the other hand, is inclined to hold that the attempts made, at the urgent demand of the French government, to civilize as well as christianize the Indians are accountable, in part at least, for the general failure of the missions. "We all know now," he says, "what has been the result of so much effort and so much outlay of money. Two or three poor villages inhabited by unhappy creatures who have added our vices to their own deficiencies, without having adopted any of our better qualities. That is all that remains of the Abenaquis, the Hurons, and the Iroquois."[24] The reflection is a sad one, and the abbé feels it, for he speaks further of the painful mystery of the disappearance of these children of the forest. Truly does the poet say that "God fulfils Himself in many ways," yet none the less the surviving white man may well feel some misgiving when he thinks of all his past dealings with his red brother.

CHAPTER VII

GOVERNORSHIP OF M. DE LA BARRE

1682 TO 1685

The successors of Frontenac and Duchesneau received their appointments in the month of May 1682, and arrived at Quebec towards the end of the following September. They were, respectively, a military officer named Lefebvre de la Barre who had served with some distinction in the West Indies; and a man of whose previous career little or nothing is known, one M. Jacques de Meulles. If the fault of Frontenac had been the assumption of too much state and dignity, and the exercise of too much self-will, the fault of La Barre was that he possessed too little dignity and extremely little firmness of character. The recall of Frontenac had practically been one more triumph for the ecclesiastical authorities, who caused it to be understood that, if Duchesneau had also been recalled, it was simply to save Frontenac from too open humiliation. La Barre prudently determined, therefore, from the first not to come into collision with the clergy, whatever else he might do. On the other hand the Abbé Dudouyt writing from Paris, enjoins prudence on the bishop, lest "it should seem as if he could not keep on good terms with anybody." With such dispositions on both sides, it is not surprising that, during the whole of La Barre's administration his relations with the church were extremely harmonious. The Abbé Gosselin says that he and Meulles "revived the happy times of the highly Christian administration of M. de Tracy." The king, however, did not view the situation with equal approval; the despatches of the period show that he thought that deference to the views of the clergy was being carried too far.

We have seen that, towards the close of Frontenac's administration, the Indian situation was again becoming critical. The arrangement patched up by him in the month of August was far from being of a very solid character; and when La Barre assumed the reins of government he found a widespread feeling of insecurity as to the continuance of peace. He thought it prudent, therefore, to summon, as Frontenac had done previously, a conference of persons specially competent to advise on the Indian question. The meeting took place on the 10th of October at Quebec, before Frontenac had left the country. He might, therefore, have attended it, had he chosen; and we cannot help feeling surprised that he did not. The general opinion expressed by those who took part in the deliberations was that the Iroquois were planning hostilities, and that the king should be asked to send out more troops. La Barre wrote home to this effect; but the same vessel that bore his despatch carried the returning ex-governor, who, on arriving in France, seems to have made it his business to throw cold water on the appeal for help. It was doubtless to Frontenac's interest to represent that he had left the country in a peaceful and secure condition; but his conduct would appear in a better light had he gone before the conference at Quebec, and there explained, in the presence of those possessing local information, why he considered that there was no danger. La Barre could then in writing to the government have given his reasons and those of his advisers for dissenting from the ex-governor's views, and the latter could honourably have made his own representations to the court. As it was, the man who had ceased to be responsible was allowed to thwart the policy of the actual administrator on whom the whole responsibility for the safety of the country rested. La Barre is not a man who attracts our admiration or sympathy, but, in this matter at least, it is difficult to feel that he received fair treatment.

Remembering all the trouble there had been between the former governor and the intendant, La Barre hastens to inform the court that he and Meulles are on the very best of terms. As they had scarcely been two months in the country when this despatch was written, the announcement seems a little hasty. Meulles on his part does not make any such statement, and his letters of the following and subsequent years show that he had not formed a very high opinion of his superior officer. He complains that the meetings of the Sovereign Council are held in the governor's own antechamber, amid the noise of servants going and coming and the clatter of the guards in an adjoining room. The minister takes no notice of this; and a year later Meulles returns to the charge, stating that the governor held the meetings "in his own chimney corner where his wife, his children and his servants were always in the way." The intendant was a man of business, and liked to see things done in a business-like way. If he did not admire the disorderly methods of the governor, neither did he approve of the dilatory methods of the council. When matters were brought before him for adjudication he dealt with them promptly; and, in his desire to save delays, he disposed of some cases which the council considered as falling within its sole jurisdiction. Frontenac, it will be remembered, had packed off young d'Auteuil, who had been nominated by Duchesneau as attorney-general, to France to justify, if he could, the conduct he had been pursuing. The youth had come back a full-fledged attorney-general, and at once fell foul of the intendant, accusing him of exceeding his powers. Meulles was a prudent man and contrived to make his peace with the council. M. Lorin says there was probably as much real dissension as in Frontenac's time, but that it was hushed up. There is no evidence of this. Some dissension there may have been; but La Barre was not as fiery as Frontenac, nor was Meulles as intriguing as Duchesneau. The same elements of discord were, therefore, not present.