"I have sent merchandise to Montreal and on the advice of M. de Tracy I have added some ammunition from the king's stores to be distributed to the inhabitants. But in return I expect to receive from them wheat and vegetables, as well as elk skins, to make stronger canoes than those covered with birch bark."
Hearing of the preparation for war, an embassy from the three upper nations under Garacontié, the chief friendly to the French, met de Tracy at Quebec, bringing back with them Charles Le Moyne unscathed, and parleying for peace. But the two insolent lower tribes against whose marauderings the forts had been built, were still contumacious and to be punished presently.
By November, the forts were completed and the peace from Iroquois attacks was so secure that the body of Father Duperon, the old Jesuit missioner at Montreal, who had died at Chambly, was taken to Quebec to be buried. This same month, on November 24th, another Jesuit well known at Montreal, Simon Le Moyne, died at Cap de la Madeleine. He was a man of remarkable courage, tact and ability, and his name will ever be remembered in Canadian history as the first European recorded to have ascended the St. Lawrence River.
LE MOYNE MEMORIAL AT SALINA, NEW YORK
A greater sorrow than the imprisonment of Le Moyne was to afflict Montreal in the enforced departure of "its father, and very dear governor," who had served the colony for nearly twenty-four years, and was now to be a sacrifice to the centralizing policy of the new government, which had long looked with envy on the power of the seigneurs of Montreal to name their governor. The policy pursued by de Mézy, and temporarily checked, was now adopted by the Marquis de Tracy, with no uncertain significance.
The joy at the arrival of the troops, now turned to bitterness. The nature of de Maisonneuve's dismissal was conveyed in the appointment, on October 23d, of his successor. "Having permitted," ran de Tracy's letter, "M. de Maisonneuve, governor of Montreal, to make a journey to France for his own private affairs, we have judged that we can make no better choice for a commander in his absence than the person of Sieur Dupuis, and this as long as we shall judge convenient." Under the glove of velvet, can be seen the hand of iron.
This stroke of diplomacy, delicate enough in its way, cut deep enough to wound de Maisonneuve's friends. The charge of inefficiency was read into the veiled dismissal by Marguerite Bourgeoys, his faithful adviser. "He was ordered to return to France," says Sister Morin, "as being incapable of the place and rank of governor he held here; which I could scarcely have believed, had not Sister Bourgeoys assured me of it. He took the order as that of the will of God and crossed over to France, not to make complaint of the bad treatment he had received but to live simply and humbly, an unrecognized man."
De Maisonneuve was left a poor man; he had made no fortune in Canada, as others had done. He had contented himself with being the father of his people. His devotion and attachment to Montreal had stood in the way of his acceptance of the governor generalship. He left under a cloud, but his memory has been vindicated in the noble monument to him in the Place d'Armes of Montreal. There is hardly to be found a higher ideal of Christian knighthood in the whole history of our Canadian heroes.