Chapter 3

The old house in which Joseph Brant died at Wellington Square, is still in existence, though it has been so covered in by modern improvements that no part of the original structure is outwardly visible. Mr. J. Simcoe Kerr, a son of Brant's daughter Elizabeth, continued to reside at the old homestead down to the time of his death in 1875. It has since been leased and refitted for a summer hotel, and is now known as "Brant House." The room in which the old chief was so unhappy as to slay his son is pointed out to visitors, with stains--said to be the original blood stains--on the floor. Among the historical objects in the immediate neighbourhood is a gnarled old oak nearly six feet in diameter at the base, known as "The Old Council Tree," from the fact that the chief and other dignataries of the Six Nations were wont to hold conferences beneath its spreading branches. Close by is a mound where lie the bodies of many of Brant's Indian contemporaries buried, native fashion in a circle, with the feet converging to a centre.

Thirty years ago, the wooden vault in which Brant's remains and those of his son John were interred had become dilapidated. The Six Nations resolved upon constructing a new one of stone, and re-interring the remains. Brant was a prominent member of the Masonic fraternity in his day, and the various Masonic lodges throughout the neighbourhood lent their aid to the Indians in their undertaking. The project was finally carried out on the twenty-seventh of November, 1850. There was an immense gathering at Mohawk village on the occasion, which is generally referred to as "Brant's second funeral." The Indians and whites vied with each other in doing honour to the memory of the departed chief. The remains were interred in a more spacious vault, over which a plain granite tomb was raised. The slab which covers the aperture contains the following inscription:

This Tomb Is erected to the memory of THAYENDANEGEA, or CAPT. JOSEPH BRANT, Principal Chief and Warrior of The Six Nations Indians, By his Fellow Subjects, Admirers of his Fidelity and Attachment to the British Crown. Born on the Banks of the Ohio River, 1742, died at Wellington Square, U.C., 1807.

It also contains the remains Of his son Ahyouwaighs, or CAPT. JOHN BRANT, who succeeded his father as TEKARIHOGEA, And distinguished himself In the war of 1812-15 Born at the Mohawk Village, U.C., 1794; Died at the same place, 1832. Erected 1850.

This sketch would be incomplete without some allusion to the project which was set in motion about six years ago, having for its object the erection of a suitable monument to the great Chief's memory. On the 25th of August, 1874, His Excellency, Lord Dufferin, in response to an invitation from the Six Nations, paid them a visit at their Council House, in the township of Tuscarora, a few miles below Brantford. He was entertained by the chiefs and warriors, who submitted to him, for transmission to England, an address to His Royal Highness Prince Arthur, who was enrolled an Honorary Chief of the Confederacy on the occasion of his visit to Canada in 1869. The address, after referring to Brant's many and important services to the British Crown, expressed the anxious desire of his people to see a fitting monument erected to his memory. Lord Dufferin transmitted the address, and received Prince Arthur's assurances of his approval of, and good will towards, the undertaking. A committee, consisting of many of the leading officials and residents of the Dominion, was at once formed, and a subscription list was opened at the Bank of British North America, at Brantford. A good many contributions have since come in, but the fund is still insufficient to enable the committee to carry out their project in a fitting manner. We have referred to the fact that no village is now in existence at Mohawk. The Indians have deserted the neighbourhood and taken up their quarters elsewhere. Brant's tomb by the old church, being in an out-of-the-way spot, remote from the haunts of men, has fallen a prey to the sacrilegious hands of tourists and others, who have shamefully mutilated it by repeated chippings of fragments which have been carried away as relics. It is proposed to place the new monument in the centre of Victoria Park, opposite the Court House, in Brentford, where it will be under the surveillance of the local authorities, and where there will be no danger of mutilation. That Brant's memory deserves such a tribute is a matter as to which there can be no difference of opinion, and the undertaking is one that deserves the hearty support of the Canadian people. We owe a heavy debt to the Indians; heavier than we are likely to pay. It does not reflect credit upon our national sense of gratitude that no fitting monument marks our appreciation of the services of those two great Indians, Brant and Tecumseh.

SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.

Standing on the summit of one of the rocky eminences at the mouth of the Sagueuay, and looking back through the haze of two hundred and seventy-four years, we may descry two small sailing craft slowly making their way up the majestic stream which Jacques Cartier, sixty-eight years before, christened in honour of the grilled St. Lawrence. The vessels are of French build, and have evidently just arrived from France. They are of very diminutive size for an ocean voyage, but are manned by hardy Breton mariners for whom the tempestuous Atlantic has no terrors. They are commanded by an enterprising merchant-sailor of St. Malo, who is desirous of pushing his fortunes by means of the fur trade, and who, with that end in view, has already more than once navigated the St. Lawrence as far westward as the mouth of the Saguenay. His name is Pontgrave. Like other French adventurers of his time he is a brave and energetic man, ready to do, to dare, and, if need be, to suffer; but his primary object in life is to amass wealth, and to effect this object he is not over-scrupulous as to the means employed. On this occasion he has come over with instructions from Henry IV., King of France, to explore the St. Lawrence, to ascertain how far from its mouth navigation is practicable, and to make a survey of the country on its banks. He is accompanied on the expedition by a man of widely different mould; a man who is worth a thousand of such sordid, huckstering spirits; a man who unites with the courage and energy of a soldier a high sense of personal honour and a singleness of heart worthy of the Chevalier Bayard himself. To these qualities are added an absorbing passion for colonization, and a piety and zeal which would not misbecome a Jesuit missionary. He is poor, but what the poet calls "the jingling of the guinea" has no charms for him. Let others consume their souls in heaping up riches, in chaffering with the Indians for the skins of wild beasts, and in selling the same to the affluent traders of France. It is his ambition to rear the _fleur-de-lis_ in the remote wildernesses of the New World, and to evangelize the savage hordes by whom that world is peopled. The latter object is the most dear to his heart of all, and he has already recorded his belief that the salvation of one soul is of more importance than the founding of an empire. After such an exordium it is scarcely necessary to inform the student of history that the name of Pontgrave's ally is Samuel De Champlain. He has already figured somewhat conspicuously in his country's annals, but his future achievements are destined to outshine the events of his previous career, and to gain for him the merited title of "Father of New France."

He was born some time in the year 1567, at Brouage, a small seaport town in the Province of Saintonge, on the west coast of France. Part of his youth was spent in the naval service, and during the wars of the League he fought on the side of the King, who awarded him a small pension and attached him to his own person. But Champlain was of too adventurous a turn of mind to feel at home in the confined atmosphere of a royal court, and soon languished for change of scene. Ere long he obtained command of a vessel bound for the West Indies, where he remained more than two years. During this time he distinguished himself as a brave and efficient officer. He became known as one whose nature partook largely of the romantic element, but who, nevertheless, had ever an eye to the practical. Several important engineering projects seem to have engaged his attention during his sojourn in the West Indies. Prominent among these was the project of constructing a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama, but the scheme was not encouraged, and ultimately fell to the ground. Upon his return to France he again dangled about the court for a few months, by which time he had once more become heartily weary of a life of inaction. With the accession of Henry IV. to the French throne the long religious wars which had so long distracted the country came to an end, and the attention of the Government began to be directed to the colonisation of New France--a scheme which had never been wholly abandoned, but which had remained in abeyance since the failure of the expedition undertaken by the brothers Roberval, more than half a century before. Several new attempts were made at this time, none of which was very successful. The fur trade, however, held out great inducements to private enterprise, and stimulated the cupidity of the merchants of Dieppe, Rouen and St Malo. In the heart of one of them something nobler than cupidity was aroused. In 1603, M. De Chastes, Governor of Dieppe, obtained a patent from the King conferring upon him and several of his associates a monopoly of the fur trade of New France. To M. De Chastes the acquisition of wealth--of which he already had enough, and to spare--was a matter of secondary importance, but he hoped to make his patent the means of extending the French empire into the unknown regions of the far West. The patent was granted soon after Champlain's return from the West Indies, and just as the pleasures of the court were beginning to pall upon him. He had served under De Chastes during the latter years of the war of the League, and the Governor was no stranger to the young man's skill, energy, and incorruptible integrity. De Chastes urged him to join the expedition, which was precisely of a kind to find favour in the eyes of an ardent adventurer like Champlain. The King's consent having been obtained, he joined the expedition under Pontgrave, and sailed for the mouth of the St. Lawrence on the 15th of March, 1603. The expedition, as we have seen, was merely preliminary to more specific and extended operations. The ocean voyage, which was a tempestuous one, occupied more than two months, and they did not reach the St. Lawrence until the latter end of May. They sailed up as far as Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where a little trading-post had been established four years before by Pontgrave, and Chauvin. Here they cast anchor, and a fleet of canoes filled with wondering natives gathered round their little barques to sell peltries, and (unconsciously) to sit to Champlain for their portraits. After a short stay at Tadousac the leaders of the expedition, accompanied by several of the crew, embarked in a batteau and preceded up the river past deserted Stadacona to the site of the Indian village of Hochelaga, discovered by Jacques Cartier in 1535. The village so graphically described by that navigator had ceased to exist, and the tribe which had inhabited it at the time of his visit had given place to a few Algonquin Indians. Our adventurers essayed to ascend the river still farther, but found it impossible to make headway against the rapids of St. Louis, which had formerly presented an insuperable barrier to Cartier's westward progress. Then they retraced their course down the river to Tadousac, re-embarked on board their vessels, and made all sail for France. When they arrived there they found that their patron, De Chastes, had died during their absence, and that his Company had been dissolved. Very soon afterwards, however, the scheme of colonization was taken up by the Sieur de Monts, who entered into engagements with Champlain for another voyage to the New World. De Monts and Champlain set sail on the 7th of March, 1604, with a large expedition, and in due course reached the shores of Nova Scotia, then called Acadie. After an absence of three years, during which Champlain explored the coast as far southward as Cape Cod, the expedition returned to France. A good deal had been learned as to the topographical features of the country lying near the coast, but little had been done in the way of actual colonization. The next expedition was productive of greater results. De Monts, at Champlain's instigation, resolved to found a settlement on the shores of the St Lawrence. Two vessels were fitted up at his expense and placed under Champlain's command, with Pontgrave as lieutenant of the expedition, which put to sea in the month of April, 1608, and reached the mouth of the Saguenay early in June. Pontgrave began a series of trading operations with the Indians at Tadousac, while Champlain proceeded up the river to fix upon an advantageous site for the projected settlement. This site he found at the confluence of the St. Charles with the St. Lawrence, near the place where Jacques Cartier had spent the winter of 1535-6. Tradition tells us that when Cartier's sailors beheld the adjacent promontory of Cape Diamond they exclaimed, "_Quel bec_"--("What a beak!")--which exclamation led to the place being called _Quebec_. The most probable derivation of the name, however, is the Indian word _kebec_, signifying a strait, which might well have been applied by the natives to the narrowing of the river at this place. Whatever may be the origin of the name, here it was that Champlain, on the 3rd of July, 1608, founded his settlement, and Quebec was the name which he bestowed upon it. This was the first permanent settlement of Europeans on the American continent, with the exception of those at St. Augustine, in Florida, and Jamestown, in Virginia.

Champlain's first attempts at settlement, as might be expected, were of a very primitive character. He erected rude barracks, and cleared a few small patches of ground adjacent thereto, which he sowed with wheat and rye. Perceiving that the fur trade might be turned to good account in promoting the settlement of the country, he bent his energies to its development. He had scarcely settled his little colony in its new home ere he began to experience the perils of his quasi-regal position. Notwithstanding the patent of monopoly held by his patron, on the faith of which his colonization scheme had been projected, the rights conferred by it began to be infringed by certain traders who came over from France and instituted a system of traffic with the natives. Finding the traffic exceedingly profitable, these traders ere long held out inducements to some of Champlain's followers. A conspiracy was formed against him and he narrowly escaped assassination. Fortunately, one of the traitors was seized by remorse, and revealed the plot before it had been fully carried out. The chief conspirator was hanged, and his accomplices were sent over to France, where they expiated their crime at the galleys. Having thus promptly suppressed the first insurrection within his dominions, Champlain prepared himself for the rigours of a Canadian winter. An embankment was formed above the reach of the tide, and a stock of provisions was laid in sufficient for the support of the settlement until spring. The colony, inclusive of Champlain himself, consisted of twenty-nine persons. Notwithstanding all precautions, the scurvy broke out among them during the winter. Champlain, who was endowed with a vigorous constitution, escaped the pest, but before the advent of spring the little colony was reduced to only nine persons. The sovereign remedy which Cartier had found so efficacious in a similar emergency was not to be found. That remedy was a decoction prepared by the Indians from a tree which they called _Auneda_--believed to have been a species of spruce--but the natives of Champlain's day knew nothing of the remedy, from which he concluded that the tribe which had employed it on behalf of Cartier and his men had been exterminated by their enemies.

With spring, succours and fresh immigrants arrived from France, and new vitality was imported into the little colony. Soon after this time, Champlain committed the most impolitic act of his life. The Hurons, Algonquins and other tribes of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, resolved upon taking the war-path against their enemies, the Iroquois, or Five Nations--the boldest, fiercest, and most powerful confederacy known to Indian history. Champlain, ever since his arrival in the country, had done his utmost to win the favour of the natives with whom he was brought more immediately into contact, and he deemed that by joining them in opposing the Iroquois, who were a standing menace to his colony, he would knit the Hurons and Algonquins to the side of the King of France by permanent and indissoluble ties. To some extent he was right, but he underestimated the strength of the foe, an alliance with whom would have been of more importance than an alliance with all the other Indian tribes of New France. Champlain cast in his lot with the Hurons and Algonquins, and accompanied them on their expedition against their enemies. By so doing he invoked the deadly animosity of the latter against the French for all time to come. He did not forsee that by this one stroke of policy he was paving the way for a subsequent alliance between the Iroquois and the English.

On May 28th, 1609, in company with his Indian allies, he started on the expedition, the immediate results of which were so insignificant--the remote results of which were so momentous. The war-party embarked in canoes, ascended the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Richelieu--then called the River of the Iroquois--and thence up the latter stream to the lake which Champlain beheld for the first time, and which until that day no European eye had ever looked upon. This picturesque sheet of water was thenceforward called after him, and in its name his own is still perpetuated. The party held on their course to the head waters of the lake, near to which several Iroquois villages were situated. The enemy's scouts received intelligence of the approach of the invaders, and advanced to repel them. The opposing forces met in the forest on the south-western shore, not far from Crown point, on the morning of the 30th of July. The Iroquois, two hundred in number, advanced to the onset. "Among them," says Mr. Parkman, "could be seen several chiefs, conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some bore shields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of armour made of tough twigs, interlaced with a vegetable fibre, supposed by Champlain to be cotton. The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for their champion, and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. He did so, and advancing before his red companions-in-arms stood revealed to the astonished gaze of the Iroquois, who, beholding the warlike apparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. But his arquebuse was levelled; the report startled the woods, a chief fell dead, and another by his side rolled among the bushes. Then there arose from the allies a yell which, says Champlain, would have drowned a thunderclap, and the forest was full of whizzing arrows. For a moment the Iroquois stood firm, and sent back their arrows lustily; but when another and another gunshot came from the thickets on their flank they broke and fled in uncontrollable terror. Swifter than hounds, the allies tore through the bushes, in pursuit. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the panic flight. The arquebuse had done its work. The victory was complete." The victorious allies, much to the disgust of Champlain, tortured their prisoners in the most barbarous fashion, and returned to Quebec, taking with them fifty Iroquois scalps. Thus was the first Indian blood shed by the white man in Canada. The man who shed it was a European and a Christian, who had not even the excuse of provocation. This is a matter worth bearing in mind when we read of the frightful atrocities committed by the Iroquois upon the whites in after years. Champlain's conduct on this occasion seems incapable of defence, and it was certainly a very grave error, considered simply as an act of policy. The error was bitterly and fiercely avenged, and for every Indian who fell on the morning of that 30th of July, in this, the first battle fought on Canadian soil between natives and Europeans, a tenfold penalty was exacted. "Thus did New France rush into collision with the redoubted warriors of the Five Nations. Here was the beginning, in some measure doubtless the cause, of a long succession of murderous conflicts, bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn. Champlain had invaded the tiger's den; and now, in smothered fury the patient savage would lie biding his day of blood."

Six weeks after the performance of this exploit, Champlain, accompanied by Pontgrave, returned to France. Upon his arrival at court he found De Monts there, trying to secure a renewal of his patent of monopoly, which had been revoked in consequence of loud complaints on the part of other French merchants who were desirous of participating in the profits arising from the fur trade. His efforts to obtain a renewal proving unsuccessful, De Monts determined to carry on his scheme of colonization unaided by royal patronage. Allying himself with some affluent merchants of Rochelle, he fitted out another expedition and once more despatched Champlain to the New World. Champlain, upon his arrival at Tadousac, found his former Indian allies preparing for another descent upon the Iroquois, in which undertaking he again joined them; the inducement this time being a promise on the part of the Indians to pilot him up the great streams leading from the interior, whereby he hoped to discover a passage to the North Sea, and thence to China and the Indies. In this second expedition he was less successful than in the former one. The opposing forces met near the confluence of the Richelieu and St. Lawrence Rivers, and though Champlain's allies were ultimately victorious, they sustained a heavy loss, and he himself was wounded in the neck by an arrow. After the battle, the torture-fires were lighted, as was usual on such occasions, and Champlain for the first time was an eye-witness to the horrors of cannibalism.