LA SALLE—DOLLIER DE CASSON—DE COURCELLES
A FEUDAL VILLAGE AND ITS YOUNG SEIGNEUR—LA SALLE'S JESUIT TRAINING—AN EX-JESUIT—THE SEIGNEURY OF ST. SULPICE—SOLD—THE FEVER FOR EXPLORATION—LA SALLE, DOLLIER DE CASSON AND GALINEE—SOLDIER OUTRAGES ON INDIANS—THE EXPEDITION TO LAKES ERIE AND ONTARIO—LA SALLE RETURNS—HIS SEIGNEURY NICKNAMED "LA CHINE"—THE SULPICIANS TAKE POSSESSION OF LAKE ERIE FOR LOUIS XIV—RETURN TO MONTREAL—DE GALINEE'S MAP—THE SUBSEQUENT EXPEDITION OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL, DE COURCELLES.
One of the feudal villages rising at this period was that now known as Lachine. Its original name was St. Sulpice. It was granted provisionally in 1667 as a fief to René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, a brother of M. Jean Cavelier, a young doctor in theology and a Sulpician who had joined the seminary at Montreal on September 7, 1666.
RENE-ROBERT CAVELIER DE LA SALLE
La Salle, as the former is known to us, became afterwards the celebrated discoverer of the Mississippi down to the sea and as a Montrealer deserves special notice here.
He was born at Rouen, November 21, 1643, and was educated at the Jesuit College there. In his fifteenth year he entered the Jesuit noviceship, on October 5, 1658. During the two years of noviceship, the père maître, or novice master, had a difficult task to train the impetuous, vigorous, impressionable, headstrong, exuberant, healthy youth of fifteen, to the calm regularity of obedience, and the soldierly, intellectual routine demanded by the Jesuit traditions; but it is just this type of strong character, so powerful for good, if brought under wise subjection, that the Jesuits love to mould; and so the young man was allowed to take the simple vows of Evangelical Poverty, Chastity and Obedience on October 10, 1660. The next two years he spent as a Jesuit scholastic at the Royal College of La Flèche studying philosophy and the physical sciences, showing ability in the latter courses. Instead of finishing the third year, the restless young man went out to teach as a Jesuit professor at Alençon for a year. He then resumed his delayed third year. From October, 1664, to October, 1665, he taught at Tours, and from 1665 to 1668 at Blois. In the September of 1666 he returned to La Flèche to study theology. He was then only twenty-three years of age, and had been promoted to the theology course seven or eight years ahead of the usual Jesuit course, because his inability to stay long in any one place and his want of success in a humdrum professorship for which he had no taste, and which was irritating to him and his students, forced his superiors to allow him to hurry through his studies, thinking doubtless that this ardent spirit might find congenial work in the distant mission fields with every facility for exercising his fiery zeal, with less restraint, and under less conventional circumstances than in France.
This resolution was brought about by Cavelier's own insistency in demanding immediately the foreign missions, in a letter of April 5th, written from Blois, to the general of the Jesuits, Jean Paul Oliva. The general on May 4, 1666, answered temporizingly to the young man, advising him to continue his studies and prepare himself usefully for the sacred ministry, and in the meantime maintain that most "perfect indifference," which is one of the most striking characteristics of the Jesuit philosophical training and has been subjected to so much criticism of praise or blame. To this Cavelier replied that he had still the same desire, but the general wrote that he could give no different reply. To understand Cavelier's nature he is described in the Jesuit informations of the time as "inquietus" and "scrupulosus," which words are very nearly English. Hardly had the theological studies at La Flèche commenced than he wrote to the general, on December 1, 1666, asking to be sent to Portugal for his studies. No doubt the restless Cavelier was undergoing a nervous strain of scrupulosity and doubt as to his fitness for religious and priestly life, and he thought that he could find peace of mind again in a change of scene. The general replied kindly, bidding him remain quietly in his own "Province," to conclude his studies, and after the third year of probational novitiate, which all Jesuits undergo after being ordained and before taking their final "solemn" vows, his zealous desire for the foreign missions would be satisfied.
This answer brought to a head Cavelier's doubts as to his fitness for the calmer repose of a studious life. On the one hand there were holding him his three simple vows, not lightly to be laid down, and to which he had been doubtless substantially faithful; on the other, he felt that his natural character was impelling him to a freer life than that of restrained self-sacrifice he had honourably tried to follow up. So that making use of the privilege of a Jesuit scholastic, not irrevocably bound to the Society till the taking of the last vows, and after laying his conscience open to his superior and not "hiding his moral infirmities," and probably exaggerating them, he applied, canonically, for his letters of release. By January 28th, in the year following, the final application was sent to Rome by the Jesuit rector of La Flèche, and on March 1st, the general, Jean Paul Oliva, wrote to the Jesuit provincial of France: "After a serious examination of the informations which you have sent us, we authorize you to accept the resignation of Robert Ignatius Cavelier, approved scholastic." Ignatius was a name taken by Cavelier on taking his simple vows in 1660 in admiration of Ignatius Loyola, the soldier saint and founder of the Society of Jesus.