This year, there was again great rejoicing in Montreal. Frontenac had planned to escort the Indians with their furs to Montreal from Michillimackinac, and he came to Montreal to witness their arrival with canoes plentifully filled with beaver skins, the escort being under Commandant de Louvigny. Frontenac was the hero of the hour. "It is impossible," says the Chronicle, "to conceive the joys of the people when they beheld these riches. Canada had awaited them for years. The merchants and the farmers were dying of hunger. Credit was gone and everybody was afraid that the enemy would waylay and seize this last resource of the country. Therefore, it was that none could find words strong enough to praise and bless him, by whose care all the wealth had arrived. Father of the people, Preserver of the Country, seemed terms too weak to express their gratitude." [147]
We are not writing the history of Canada or of Frontenac, consequently we must pass over much contemporary history of this period. But we may be rightfully concerned with the history of notable Montrealers then consolidating New France. During the latter administration of Frontenac, Montreal's sons reached the height of their careers. These latter were here, there, and everywhere, engaging in the struggle for mastery in the West or for that of Hudson's Bay, or of Newfoundland or lastly of Acadia—these four regions all coming under the government of Frontenac and each of them being largely influenced by the Canadian noblesse whose center was at Montreal.
In the West, on the banks of the Mississippi, among the Illinois, there were to be found men who had at one time or other made Montreal their headquarters, and who had taken their share in the discovery of the Great River and had founded posts and cities and colonies and had become the governors of provinces such as that of Louisiana, which from 1678 to 1754 was ruled by d'Iberville, de Bienville, La Motte-Cardillac, and de Vaudreuil. Men like La Salle, the sons of Charles Le Moyne, the Montreal interpreter, viz., d'Iberville, de Bienville, de Sérigny, de Chateauguay; de Tonti, du Luth, de la Forêt and others—a pleiad of illustrious Montreal names—men of courage and audacity—are not only captains of whom any city may be proud but they belong to the history of the Continent of North America. Their discoveries, their adventures, their exploits, oftentimes heroic, are recorded in the pages of history, dealing with regions stretching from Hudson's Bay and Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico.
CHATEAU DE LONGUEUIL
HUDSON BAY
It is often forgotten that Montreal is the Mother of the West. These men, living in a time of faith, hope, and romantic chivalry, held their lives in daily peril, exposed themselves to unheard of privations led on by the desire, for glory or for gain, of conquering the unknown and acquiring territories for their beloved France and for the expansion of Christendom. [148] Thus they rose above the ranks of mere soldiers of fortune, vulgar adventurers, or careless coureurs de bois. We are fascinated by the story of their wanderings accompanied by their Jesuit, Récollet or Sulpician chaplains, [149] to primeval forests and plains, over lofty mountain peaks and through deep dales, nowploring mines of copper or land on the Mississippi or restlessly crossing the mighty rivers and lakes in their birch bark canoes or their flat bottomed bateaux; now as hunters or fishermen, sometimes in want and disease, but always gay; now trading in skins or acting as captains of vessels of war, or as commanders defending their far off posts, or attacking the Iroquois or the rival English. An atmosphere of the marvelous and heroic surrounds these makers of Canada and creates in one the desire to relate their histories and their wanderings by land and water, in detail. Out of all these one family stands out preëminently—that of Charles Le Moyne, settled in Montreal since 1646. He was the father of eleven sons, of whom the third, Pierre Le Moyne, d'Iberville (born in Montreal in 1662), was the most famous. Others were de Longueuil, de Sérigny, de Maricourt, d'Assigny, Ste. Hélène, the two Chateauguays, the two Bienvilles and Antoine Le Moyne, who died young—types of the hardy Canadian noblesse.