Part 6

[1] We have to acknowledge our obligations for most valuable information in the following pages, first, to our distinguished friend Col. Cockburn, of the Royal Artillery, long resident in Canada; next, to Hugh Murray, Esq., F.R.S.E. for extracts from his most admirable work on that country; to the Author of “Backwoods of America,” and to many writers, both old and modern, including Charlevoix, Adair, Colden, La Potherie, Rogers, Champlain, Heriot, M^{c}Gregor, Raynal, Talbot, Hall, and others. From the inconvenience of making these acknowledgments in every instance, we return our thanks simply in this note, and embody the information simply as it comes, without further mark or comment.

CHAP. II.

THE DISCOVERY AND SETTLEMENT OF CANADA.

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Having given, from the best authority, the condition and characteristics of the aboriginal tribes of America, we go on briefly to enumerate the prominent events in the first stage of discovery and civilization. Those who read the curious picture we have been enabled to present, in the foregoing pages, of a nation almost, we may say, recently sprung to light, and who now look into the singular events of the first civilized history of the land they possessed, will have materials for a comparison between these and the lovely pictures on the other pages of the work, such as, for force of contrast and interest, is not often presented.

The Italian adventurers, John, and his sons Sebastian, Louis, and Sanchez Cabot, who received a commission on the 5th of March, 1495, from Henry VII. of England, to discover what Columbus was in search of, a north-west passage to the East Indies or China, (or, as the latter named country was then called, _Cathay_,) claim the honour of having been the first discoverers of Canada. The adventurers sailed in 1497 with six ships, and early in June of the same year, discovered Newfoundland; whence continuing a westerly course, they reached the continent of North America, which the Cabots coasted (after exploring the gulf of St. Lawrence) as far north as 67° 50' N. lat. They returned to England in August, 1497, but although Sebastian subsequently performed three voyages to the New World, no settlement was effected on its shores.

In 1500, Gaspar Cortereal, a Portuguese gentleman, visited the coast, and pursued the track of Sir John Cabot (who was knighted by our sovereign); but Cortereal and his brothers accomplished nothing further than the kidnapping of several of the natives, whom they employed and sold as slaves. In 1502 Hugh Elliot and Thomas Ashurst, merchants of Bristol, with two other gentlemen, obtained a patent from Henry VIII. to establish colonies in the countries lately discovered by Cabot: but the result of the permission granted is not known. In 1527 an expedition was fitted out by Henry VIII. by the advice of Robert Thorne, a merchant of Bristol, for the purpose of discovering a north-west passage to the East Indies; one of the ships attempting which was lost.

Francis I. of France, piqued at the discoveries of Spain and Portugal, and having his ambition roused by the monopolizing pretensions of these two powers to the possessions in the New World, authorized the fitting out of an expedition, the command of which he gave to Verrazzano, a Florentine, who on his second voyage discovered Florida, and thence sailing back along the American coast to the 50° of lat. took formal possession of it for his royal master, and called it _La Nouvelle France_. On Verrazzano’s return to Europe in 1525, without gold or silver or valuable merchandize, he was at first coldly received, but, it is said, subsequently sent out with more particular instructions and directions to open a communication with the natives; in endeavouring to fulfil which, he lost his life in a fray with the Indians. This, however, is denied; and it is asserted that the capture of Francis I. at the battle of Pavia in 1525, prevented him from further exploring the coast, and that he returned to his native country and died in obscurity.

When the government ceased to follow up the result of Verrazzano’s formal acquisition of Canada, the Frenchmen of St. Maloes commenced a successful fishery at Newfoundland, which so early as 1517 had fifty ships, belonging to the English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, employed in the cod-fishery on its banks. _Jacques Cartier_, a native of St. Maloes, engaged in the Newfoundland fishery, took the lead in exploring at his own risk the northern coasts of the new hemisphere.

This bold and experienced navigator at last received a commission from his sovereign, Francis I., and left St. Maloes on the 20th of April, 1534, with two vessels of sixty tons each; arrived at Newfoundland on the 10th of May, remained there ten days, and then sailed to the northward, passing through the straits of Bellisle; changed his course somewhat to the southward, traversed the great gulf of St. Lawrence, (already known to Europeans,) and, in the month of July, arrived in the _Bay of Chaleurs_, which he so named on account of its heat. On the 24th of July, Cartier was at Gaspé, where he erected a cross, surmounted by a _fleur-de-lis_, and on the 25th of July sailed for France with two native Indians.

The enterprising character of his royal master induced him to despatch Cartier in the following year with three larger vessels, and a number of young gentlemen as volunteers. The ships rendezvoused at Newfoundland, and in August sailed up the St. Lawrence, so called from its being discovered on the 10th day of that month, being the festival of the saint of that name.

Cartier anchored off Quebec, then called Stadaconna, and the abode of an Indian chief called Donnaconna. After leaving his ships secure, he pursued his route in the pinnace and two boats, until, on the third of October, he reached an island in the river, with a lofty mountain, which he named _Mont Royal_, now called Montreal. After losing many of his followers by scurvy, during his wintering at Stadaconna, which he named St. Croix, Cartier returned to France in 1536, carrying off by force Donnaconna, two other chiefs, and eight natives. The French court, finding there was no gold and silver to be had, paid no further attention to _La Nouvelle France_, or Canada, until the year 1540, when Cartier, after much exertion, succeeded in getting a royal expedition fitted out under the command of François de la Roque, Seigneur de Roberval, who was commissioned by Francis I. as viceroy and lieutenant-general in Canada, Hochelaga, or Montreal.

Roberval despatched Cartier to form a settlement, which he did at St. Croix harbour on the 23d of August, 1541, but suddenly left it early in the ensuing year. The viceroy himself arrived in Canada in July, 1542, where he built a fort, and wintered about four leagues above the Isle of Orleans (first called the Isle of Bacchus); but for want of any settled plans, in consequence of the scurvy, and the insurrections and deadly hostility of the Indians, owing to Cartier’s having carried off Donnaconna and his attendants (who had all perished in France), little was accomplished.[2]

Roberval’s attention was soon after called from Canada, to serve his sovereign in the struggle for power so long waged with Charles V. of Spain; and Jacques Cartier, ruined in health and fortune, died in France soon after his arrival there. Roberval on the death of Francis I. embarked again for Canada in 1549, with his gallant brother Achille, and a numerous train of enterprising young men; but having never afterwards been heard of, they are supposed to have perished at sea.

In 1576, Martin Frobisher was sent out by Queen Elizabeth with three ships on discovery, when Elizabeth’s Foreland, and the Straits which bear his own name, were discovered. Frobisher mistaking _mica_ or _talc_ for gold ore, brought quantities of it to England, and was despatched by some merchants with three ships in the following year, to seek for gold, and to explore the coast of Labrador and Greenland, with the view of discovering a north-west passage to India. He returned without any other success than 200 tons of the supposed gold ore, and an Indian man, woman, and child.

In 1578 Martin Frobisher again sailed for the American continent with no fewer than fifteen ships in search of gold, to the ruin of many adventurers, who received nothing but mica instead of gold ore; the fact, however, shows the speculative avidity of mercantile adventurers at that period.

For fifty years France paid no attention to Canada, and the few settlers or their descendants left by Cartier or Roberval were unheeded and unsuccoured; but in 1598 the taste for colonial adventure revived, and Henry IV. appointed the Marquis de la Roche his lieutenant-general in Canada, with power to partition discovered lands into seigniories and fiefs, to be held under feudal tenure, and as a compensation for military services when required. La Roche fitted out but one vessel, and unfortunately reinforced his crew with forty malefactors from the prisons. It is sufficient here to state that Sable Island, a barren sand bank, and a rude part of Acadia (now called Nova Scotia), were first settled on and afterwards abandoned; and that to private enterprise, rather than to royal decree, the French nation were at last indebted for a permanent and profitable colonisation in Canada. M. Pontgrave, a merchant of St. Malo, who had distinguished himself by making several profitable fur voyages to Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay river, engaged as an associate M. Chauvin, a naval officer who obtained from Henry IV. in 1600 a commission, granting him an exclusive trade with Canada, and other privileges. Chauvin associated other persons with him in his enterprise, and made two successful trading voyages to Tadoussac, where the Indians gave the most valuable furs in exchange for mere trifles. Chauvin died in 1603, but Commander De Chatte, or De Chaste, governor of Dieppe, founded a company of merchants at Rouen, to carry on the fur trade on an extensive scale; an armament was equipped under Pontgrave, and a distinguished naval officer named Samuel Champlain, who sailed up the St. Lawrence as far as Sault St. Louis in 1603. On the death of Chauvin, which happened in the ensuing year, Pierre Dugast Sieur de Monts, a Calvinist and gentleman of the bedchamber to Henry IV. received a patent conferring on him the exclusive trade and government of the territories situate between 40° and 54° of lat.; and although of the reformed religion, the Sieur was enjoined to convert the native Indians to the Roman Catholic tenets. De Monts continued the Company founded by his predecessors, and fitted out an expedition in 1604 of four vessels, two of which were destined for Acadia, then an object of attraction. Suffice it to say, that trading ports were established at several places: the fur trade prosperously carried on; the Acadian colony neglected; and Quebec made the capital of the future New France, founded by Samuel Champlain on the 3d July, 1608. The various Indian tribes contiguous to the new settlement, namely, the Algonquins, the Hurons, &c. who were at war with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, solicited and obtained the aid of the French. Champlain taught them the use of fire-arms, which the Iroquois also acquired from their English friends in the adjacent territory; and hence began the ruinous wars, which have ended in the nearly total extermination of the Indians of the North American continent, wherever they have come in contact with the Europeans and their descendants. But little success attended the first colonization on the banks of the St. Lawrence; in 1622, fourteen years after its establishment, Quebec had not a population exceeding fifty souls.[3] The mischievous policy of making religion (and that of the Jesuit caste) a part of the colonial policy, long hampered the French settlers; and to remedy the distressed condition of the colony, the commerce of Canada, heretofore vested in the hands of one or two individuals, was transferred in 1627 to a powerful association, called the _Company of a hundred Partners_, composed of clergy and laity, under the special management of the celebrated Cardinal Richelieu. The primary object of the Company was the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith, by means of zealous Jesuits; the secondary, an extension of the fur trade, of commerce generally, and the discovery of a route to the Pacific Ocean and to China, through the great rivers and lakes of New France.

This Company held Canada or New France, with the extensive privileges of a feudal seigniory under the king, to whom were owing fealty and homage, and the presentation of a crown of gold at every new accession to the throne. With the right of soil, a monopoly of trade was granted, the king reserving for the benefit of all his subjects only the cod and whale fisheries in the gulf and coast of St. Lawrence; and to such colonists as might not be servants of the Company, was secured the right of trading with the Indians for _peltries_ (skins), it being understood that on pain of confiscation they should bring all their beaver skins to the factors of the Company, who were bound to purchase them at 40 sous a-piece. Under the new system, “protestants and other heretics,” as well as Jews, were entirely excluded from the colony, and a Jesuit corps was to be supported by the Company. Thus monopoly and bigotry went hand in hand, and no auspicious Providence attended the efforts of such a selfish and fanatic project.

The very first vessels despatched by the new religio-commercial-company for Quebec, were captured by the English. In 1628, a squadron of English vessels, under the command of Sir David Kertk, a French refugee, visited Tadoussac, and destroyed the houses and cattle about Cape Tourmente; Kertk and his little band next proceeded to Gaspé bay, where he met M. de Roquemont, one of the hundred partners, commanding a squadron of vessels, freighted with emigrant families, and all kinds of provisions. Roquemont was provoked to a battle, and lost the whole of his fleet, provisions, &c.; and the last hope of the colony of Quebec was blasted by the shipwreck of two Jesuit missionaries, on the coast of Nova Scotia, in a vessel laden with provisions for the starving colonists, who were now reduced to an allowance of five ounces of bread per day. Kertk, reinforced by some more English vessels, commanded by his two brothers, sent them up the St. Lawrence, when they easily captured Quebec on the 20th July, 1629: and, on the 20th October, Champlain arrived at Plymouth, on his return to France, most of his countrymen having, however, remained in Canada. While Quebec was being captured by Kertk and his English squadron, peace was under ratification between England and France; and, in 1632, (the latter power having previously opened a negotiation with England,) Quebec, Acadia, (Nova Scotia,) and Isle Royal, (Cape Breton,) were ceded to France, and Champlain resumed the government of Canada. The Jesuits, with their accustomed zeal, commenced anew their efforts; and from this period to the final British conquest in 1760, a rivalship and growing hostility, partly religious and partly commercial, took place between the French and English settlers in North America, which were evinced by mutual aggressions, while profound peace existed between their respective sovereigns in Europe.

A minute detail of local occurrences would be out of place in a work of this nature; it may be sufficient to say, that from this period, (1674,) when the population, embracing converted Indians, did not exceed eight thousand, the French settlement in Canada continued to increase, and as it rose in power, and assumed offensive operations on the New England frontier, the jealousy of the British colonists became roused, and both parties, aided alternately by the Indians, carried on a destructive and harassing border warfare. And here it may not be amiss to observe, how much the progress of the British colonists in New York, New England, &c., and the prosperity of the French in Canada, were influenced during successive years by the strength and moral character of their respective sovereigns. I may allude, for instance, to the licentious reign of Louis XV., and the vigorous administration of William III., during whose governments the progress of their respective colonies was retarded or advanced by the example or stimulus afforded by the mother country; thus demonstrating how much, under a monarchy, the character and happiness of nations are influenced by the principles and habits of their rulers.

For many years the French in Canada made head against the assaults of their less skilful, but more persevering neighbours, owing to the active cooperation and support which the Canadians received from their Indian allies, whom the British were by nature less adapted for conciliating; but at length the latter, seeing the necessity for native cooperation, conciliated the favour of the aborigines, and turned the tide of success in their own favour. The hostilities waged by the Indians were dreadful. Setting little value on life, they fought with desperation, and gave no quarter; protected by the natural fastnesses of their country, they chose in security their own time for action, and when they had enclosed their enemies in a defile, or amidst the intricacies of the forest, the war-whoop of the victor and the death-shriek of the vanquished were almost simultaneously heard; and while the bodies of the slain served for food to the savage, the scalped head of the white man was a trophy of glory, and a booty of no inconsiderable value to its possessor. The Canadians themselves sometimes experienced the remorseless fury of their Indian forces. On the 26th of July, 1688, Le Rat, a chief of the Huron tribe, mortified by the attempt of the French commanders to negotiate a peace with the Iroquois, or Five Nations, without consulting the wishes of their Huron allies, urged his countrymen, and even stimulated the Iroquois, to aid him in an attack on Montreal. The colonists were taken by surprise, a thousand of them slain, and the houses, crops, and cattle on the island destroyed. Charlevais, in his history of _La Nouvelle France_, says of the Indians, “Ils ouvrirent le sein des femmes enceintes pour en arracher le fruit qu’elles portoient; ils mirent des enfans tous vivant à la broche, et contraignirent les mères de les tourner pour les faire rôtir!” The French, reinforced from Europe, sent a strong force in February, 1690, who massacred the greater part of the unresisting inhabitants of Shenectaday. According to Colden, (p. 78,) the Indians whom the French took prisoners in the battle at Shenectaday, were _cut into pieces and boiled to make soups for the Indian allies who accompanied the French!_ Such were the desolating effects of European colonization on the continent of America, equalling, in fact, as regards the destruction of human life, the miseries inflicted by the Spaniards on the more peaceful and feeble Indians of the West India islands.

The massacre of the Indians at Shenectaday by the French had the effect of inducing the Iroquois and other nations to become more closely attached to the English, and the French were compelled to act on the defensive, and keep within their own territory. Our countrymen at Albany were at first so much alarmed at the determined hostility of the French, that they prepared to abandon the territory; but, at this crisis, the New England colonists came to an understanding, and formed a coalition for their mutual defence. Commissioners were sent to New York, and a mission despatched to London, explaining their views, and soliciting aid towards the successful completion of the naval and military expedition which was planned against the French settlements in Canada, in 1690.

What a signal change had taken place in the views and relative position of the parties, when, but a few years after, those very colonists sent to France, whose dominion in Canada they had been the chief instruments in annihilating, for succour and support in their war of independence against Great Britain!

The plan of attack on Canada by the New England colonists, which they fitted out at an expense of £150,000 (a heavy one to them at this period), was twofold—1st, by land, and inland navigation on the southern frontier of the French; and 2d, by a fleet, under Sir W. Phipps, with a small army on board, which was sent round by sea from Boston to attack Quebec. The force of the English was undisciplined; it consisted of colonists who were stimulated by deadly resentment to avenge the murder of their numerous relatives and friends, who had been slain by the French and their Indian allies. Quebec was formally summoned by Sir W. Phipps to surrender, and bravely defended by the Sieur de Frontenac, who compelled his foes to return to Boston with considerable loss in ships and men, owing to the delay and bad management of the commander, who, had he persevered in his efforts, would undoubtedly have starved out the garrison. The attack on Quebec by land had, without waiting for cooperating with the fleet, previously failed; so that the French were thus enabled to meet and defeat their enemies in detail, a policy which a good general, when assailed by superior numbers, will usually adopt.

The French, feeling secure in their dominions, pushed forward their outposts with vigour by means of the fur-traders, and more than ever alarmed the contiguous English colonists, who now became daily convinced of the impossibility of both nations remaining as rivals on the same continent; the French seeking dominion by military power and conquest, the English by an extension of the arts of peace, aided by a liberal spirit. The latter, therefore, resolved on using every possible means for the total expulsion of their Gallic neighbours from Canada, who refused the offer made to them to remain pacific while the mother countries were at war. The main object of Frontenac was to take possession of every point calculated to extend the dominion of France, to cut off the English from the fur-trade, and, finally, to hem them in between the Highlands of Nova Scotia and the Alleghany mountains. He began by checking the incursions of the Iroquois, whom he weakened so much by destructive warfare, and hemmed so closely in by a judicious distribution of military stations or forts, as to prevent them ever after from making an impression on Canada, such as they had been wont to produce. Frontenac’s next step was the preparation, in 1697, of a large armament to cooperate with a strong force from France, which was destined for the conquest of New York; but while the brave and active Canadian Governor was preparing to take the field, the news arrived of the treaty of peace between France and England, concluded at Ryswick, 11th of September, 1697, much to the dissatisfaction of Frontenac.