The coureurs de bois capture the imaginations of all who read about them. They were a gay, devil-may-care lot, completely lacking in fear, singing their songs which were sometimes sad, like the Lament of Cadieux (an early version of that well-known ballad), but generally rollicking and wild. They were true sons of the wilderness, having a love for the woods much more real than any emotion of which the stoic Indian was capable. They were mercurial in the extreme, sometimes kind and sometimes cruel, sometimes loyal and sometimes treacherous. They believed in countless superstitions. The northern lights were the marionettes to them, and they were convinced that the skies lighted up and danced because they, the bold vagabonds of the woods and waterways, were filling the evening sky with their songs. They believed in the legend of the loup-garou, the hound of the skies. It was a coureur de bois who bowed to the limp and decaying body of a criminal swinging in his cage and invited him to supper, and who was not disturbed when the spirit of the hanged man accepted the invitation, bringing his cage along with him—or so the story goes, a favorite one with the habitants.
But there was another side to the picture. Many of the coureurs de bois were wild and dissolute, addicted to drink and so loose in their morals that they had Indian mates wherever they went. They debauched the natives with brandy and then threw the profits away in drunken carousing in the towns. Having hair-trigger tempers, they fought among themselves with the fury of wildcats, and their ability to knock an opponent out with a well-directed kick to the head was proverbial.
All this has been forgotten. The dark side of the shield has been turned to the wall and the picture which remains is of the gay and courageous hunter sallying out to risk life and limb in the struggle for the conquest of the wilds. He will never be forgotten, this daring cavalier of the bark canoe, paddle in hand, his pack at his feet, his heart filled with high courage, a song on his lips.
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The King and his advisers tried to meet the challenge of the coureur de bois in many ways. The most successful—and the most picturesque, incidentally—was the establishment of fur fairs. The largest of the fairs was, naturally, at Montreal, the meeting place of the rivers.
Trade fairs were a device carried over from medieval days. In all European countries the cities and towns set aside two weeks when merchants from all parts brought their goods with them and set up booths wherever they could find space. It was very much like a carnival. Dancers, jugglers, magicians, and mummers followed in the wake of the merchants and entertained in the streets for the largesse of pennies. The town merchants were against the fairs because they took business away from them, but the citizens loved the institution and entered into the carnival spirit with a will.
The Montreal Fair was conducted on the same principle. The Indians came down the Ottawa in one huge flotilla, sometimes as many as four or five hundred canoes at once. All who witnessed the spectacle agreed that it was both exciting and frightening. The Indians were painted and feathered and, having always something of the actor in them, fully conscious of the drama of their arrival. There was much shouting and singing and quarreling as the seemingly endless canoes came in to the landing place just outside the town. Here they pitched their tents and set up their kettles.
In the meantime the town of Montreal took on a gala air. Merchants from all parts of the colony had brought their goods for barter and were occupying temporary booths along the muddy streets or backed up outside against the tree trunks of the palisade. No word of business was spoken until the customary ceremonies had been conducted with suitable solemnity. An official welcome was extended to the visitors on the open space known as La Commune between the town and the river. The governor would be there, seated in an armchair and attired in his most imposing raiment, a plumed hat on his head, a sword across his knees. The chiefs would seat themselves about him according to rank, and there would be much smoking of pipes and endless solemn oratory. Perhaps the Flemish Bastard, that golden-tongued spokesman, would come over the river from Caughnawaga, where he was growing old and fat in peaceful living with the Iroquois who had abandoned their own people and their beautiful lakes to settle down on the doorstep of the white men, and add his flowery passages to the glut of simile and metaphor.
As soon as the ceremony of welcome was over, the trading began. It lasted for three days, the braves being as deliberate in making up their minds to sell as they were in all other dealings. A sinister note soon crept in. The sale of brandy could not be curtailed, and the sounds of savage revelry would be heard along the riverbanks. When this phase of the fair began, the people of Montreal took to their houses. They locked the doors and clamped the windows tight. This was what had brought the Indians to the fair, the desire to feel the white man’s firewater racing through their veins. The intoxicated savages would strip off their scant articles of clothing and parade through the streets in bronze nakedness, brandishing their tomahawks and screeching their wildest woodland notes.
The coureurs de bois who had come with the Indians behaved as badly as their dusky-skinned friends, enjoying the drinking and fighting and showing just as much readiness to strip off their clothing for intoxicated parades of the town.
It might have been a wise thing if the King’s officers had put the maintenance of order for the duration in the hands of a special court as had always been done with the medieval fairs. In France there was an institution known as the Pied-poudre Court (the Court of the Dusty-footed Men), the name stemming from the fact that the proceedings were in the hands of the itinerant merchants themselves. On the visitors was laid all responsibility for the maintenance of law and order and the punishment of offenders. The same was done in England, where the name became corrupted to Pie-powder Courts. In course of time peddlers were called “pie-powders.”
The advantage of this system was that the men who organized and conducted the fairs understood the quirks and fancies of those who came to sell the public their goods or to entertain. They could be counted on to curb the rabble of the fairs better than the stiff-necked magistrates of the towns. For Montreal to employ the Pied-poudre system would have been an interesting experiment. A colorful and effective bench of judges could most certainly have been set up: Dollier de Casson to represent the Sulpicians, his great shoulders nearly bursting out of his black robe, his broad face benign and yet alert with the need for curbing the excesses and ribaldries; Charles le Moyne to act for the citizens, with his fine, courageous face and his own hair hanging in long curls to his shoulders; one of the men from the woods, the holder of a congé, of course; a chief to act for the Indians.
Lacking this kind of guidance, the town fell into a chaotic condition as long as the fair lasted and for some time thereafter. The feudal courts, with their attorneys, clerks, and huissiers, could do nothing to check the drunkenness and madness in the streets.
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It must be clear at this point that the spirit of Montreal had changed. The deeply religious feeling of the early days had not been lost, but it was not as generally shared. There were few to maintain the chivalrous attitude of the Sieur de Maisonneuve and his first little band. Perhaps it was not with complete regret that the gallant governor received a letter from Quebec (this was in Tracy’s term), advising him that he should pay a visit to France “to look after his interests there.”
Maisonneuve had undoubtedly expected something of the kind to happen. The tension between red-coated Quebec and blue-coated Montreal had grown rather than diminished with the years. Never inclined to push for his rights and prerogatives as the Abbé Queylus had been, the Montreal governor had stood firmly for the autonomous position of Montreal. Another source of dissension had been Maisonneuve’s position on the brandy traffic. No consideration of expediency had been allowed to temper his actions. Selling brandy to the Indians was devil’s work, and he sought to suppress the traffic with every bit of his power. This made things difficult for the administrators in Quebec, who had been inclined from the start, with the exception of Bishop Laval, to ta
ke an elastic policy.
After notifying Maisonneuve of his decision, Tracy made an announcement which read in part: “Having permitted Monsieur de Maisonneuve, governor of Montreal, to make a journey to France for his own private affairs, we have judged we can make no better choice of a commander in his absence than the person of Sieur Dupuis, and this as long as we shall judge convenient.”
There was nothing temporary about this. Maisonneuve sailed for France at once and never came back. The people who crowded the shore to see him leave and who wept openly as the river barge pulled away from the wharf knew quite well they would never see their brave and gentle governor again. The gravity of his expression was a clear enough indication of his own feelings. His life’s work, performed in the shadow of the great cross he had raised on the crest of the mountain, was finished; no more would he hear the roar of the rapids, no longer observe the climaxes which ushered in the changes of season, no more carry the responsibility for defense against the red menace in the south. He knew that this was a last farewell.
There was tangible proof of this in the absence of the blue silk coverings draped over the well of the barge and the customary armchair in the prow. These marks of honor were meticulously adhered to when an official of high rank traveled on the St. Lawrence. The Sieur de Maisonneuve, it was only too clear, was making the journey as a private citizen.
The discharged governor was sixty-three when he returned to France. Having been in no position to watch his private affairs during the twenty-one years he served in Montreal, he was a poor man when confronted with the necessity of making a new life for himself. All he could afford was a very modest house at the Fossé St. Victor, with one servingman who acted as cook, valet, and general factotum. Here he lived for eleven years. It was a lean and dull existence. He seldom went out, and his thoughts dwelt constantly on the outpost town which owed its existence to him, the sturdy little community which had braved the Iroquois terror so long.
The people of Montreal heard very little of him. When Canadians returned to France, they sometimes paid him visits at the Fossé St. Victor, where they always received an eager welcome. It was a rare thing, however, for a colonist to visit the mother country, and so the news he gleaned in this way was meager and infrequent. The last intimate glimpse which history supplies of him, through a friendly and discerning eye, came from Marguerite Bourgeoys.
“He was lodged,” she wrote in describing her visit with him, “near the church of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine, and I arrived at his house rather late. Only a few days before he had constructed a cabin and furnished a little room after the Canadian fashion so as to entertain any persons who should come from Canada. I knocked on the door and he himself came down to open it, for he lived on the second floor with his servant, Louis Frins, and he opened the door for me with great joy.”
Marguerite Bourgeoys was lacking in discernment on one point. The brave old gentleman had not built his cabin for the reception of colonial visitors. They would not need a familiar background to keep them in countenance. It is clear enough that he desired this retreat for himself, so that he could sit there alone and feel himself again at the meeting place of the great rivers and perhaps recapture at odd moments the feeling of the brave old days.
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The determination of the King to keep the young men of New France at home to work the farms and raise large families did not stamp out the urge in the colony for expansion and discovery. If there had been nothing else to keep it alive, the spirit of the Jesuits would have done so. After the shock of the destruction of the Huron nation had been absorbed, they continued to cast farther afield for converts, as grimly determined as ever to banish Indian idolatry from the face of the American earth. It did not take long to establish themselves on the islands clustering in the waters connecting Lake Huron with that mighty inland sea which lay beyond and became known later as Lake Superior. Here Father Dablon conducted a mission at Ste. Marie du Sault (now Sault Ste. Marie) in a square enclosure of cedar logs with a house and a chapel. At the other end of Lake Superior a young Jesuit priest, Jacques Marquette, who was to win lasting fame later, had charge at La Pointe at the mission of St. Esprit.
This latter point was important, because here the pathetic remnants of the Hurons fleeing from the Iroquois had settled down. Existing in indolence and sloth, they hoped that they were safe at last. They had been joined by some bands of Ottawas who had left the country of the turbulent river for the same reason.
Here the scattered tribes were free of the hostile attentions of the Iroquois, but they were still to learn a bitter lesson. The men of the Long House were not the only aggressors in the redskin world. Out of the West there came suddenly a band of Sioux, who have been called the Iroquois of the Plains. Father Marquette led his terrified flock in a hasty race across the waters of the great lake. They took up their quarters on the channel islands, “the earthly paradise,” according to Father Dablon, and here they were free for a brief spell from the deadly pincers of the Iroquois on one side and the Sioux on the other.
Another name comes into the story of the West at the same time. Louis Joliet had studied for the priesthood but had not completed his vows and was now devoting himself to the fur trade. He had been deputed by Talon to locate the copper mines, of which so many fabulous stories were being told, and had made a journey to Lake Superior for the purpose. On his return he encountered the man who was destined to become the greatest of all French explorers, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle. This strange and fascinating figure had come to the colony in 1666 and had established a fur-trading post a few miles from the shelter of Montreal. This was for him no more than a pastime, a method of filling in time until he could begin to put into operation the resplendent plans which filled his head for the conquest of the continent; in which plans both Marquette and Joliet would play important parts.
It was impossible for the King and his advisers to ignore this impulse which animated the French-Canadian people, and it was decided finally to take official possession of the lands of the West. Daumont St.-Lusson was sent to perform the duty with a handful of men, including one of the boldest of the adventurers, named Nicolas Perrot, who went along as interpreter. A great conference was held with the Indians at the fort which Father Dablon had set up at Ste. Marie de Sault.
There was much oratory and smoking of peace pipes, and in the end St.-Lusson raised a large wooden cross on the highest point of land while the Frenchmen sang the Vexilla Regis with intense zeal. A second post was then planted close at hand with a metal plate containing the royal arms. St.-Lusson stepped to the front and in a sonorous voice declared that possession had been taken of all the lands and waters of the West in the name of the Most Christian King of France and Navarre.
The Indians stood in silent clumps or sprawled uneasily on the ground, suspecting what this was all about and not liking it at all.
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In addition to those whose names have been mentioned, there were many other French Canadians who were achieving a share of greatness in the exploration of the wilderness. In the forefront was Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut, who has been called the King of the Woodsmen. Little is known about him in his early years. The barest of statistics: born at St.-Germain-en-Laye, of the Reformed faith, became an officer in the King’s bodyguard, and came to Canada to join some relatives in 1676, going first to Three Rivers. In the later stages of his career he held many important posts, being at various times commandant of the forts at Lachine, Cataraqui, and Mackinac. He died in 1709. He was a man of such honesty and fairness that he never had any trouble with the Indian tribes he encountered, and of such great courage that one of his sayings may be accepted as the true measure of the man: “I fear not death, only cowardice and dishonor.”
His main achievement was the opening up of the country west and south of Lake Superior, although the honor of being first on the ground cannot be accorded him. Before he reached Canada those two stormy petrels, Radisson and Grosei
lliers, had been over this ground briefly, although they are sometimes said to have been the first to trace out the source of the Mississippi. It was in 1680 that Du Lhut, with a party of four Frenchmen and one Indian guide, spied out the land of the Brulé River and the St. Croix. He established a trading post at the mouth of the Pigeon River, and because of this the city which was founded there later was named Duluth in his honor.
During the next ten years he remained in the West, engaged in further explorations and in trading with the Indians. One of his most noteworthy feats was a peace meeting between the warring Sioux and Assiniboin tribes which was so successful that they remained friends and were the allies of the French in the wars with the Iroquois which broke out in the years 1684 and 1687. His last years were spent in the East, in the relative peace of the fort which Frontenac established at Cataraqui, now Kingston, Ontario.
The Relations speak of Nicolas Perrot as “one of the most prominent among the early voyageurs,” thus placing him as one of the men of official standing and not among the irresponsible coureurs de bois. Perrot was a man of humble degree, born in the year 1644, in the colony, in all probability, for by the year 1660 he went into the employ of the Jesuits as an engagé. He remained with them until the year 1665, when he removed to the Sulpicians.
The character of Perrot has been presented in various lights, but there can be no doubt that he possessed in an extraordinary degree the power to win and hold the confidence of the Indians. It was due to his efforts that the tribes gathered in such numbers at Ste. Marie du Sault to meet St.-Lusson. Having a glib control of several Indian languages, he went to Green Bay on Lake Michigan to urge attendance at the ceremony arranged for the spring. He was received there with every mark of favor. The Miamis put on a tribal game for his special benefit. It was played with long sticks curved at one end to contain a webbing of catgut, and the object of the game was to keep possession of the ball. This rugged contest gave the Indians a chance to display their agility and their speed and was seen on many occasions thereafter. The French coined for it the name of La Crosse. In a very much improved form it became the national sport of Canada.
The White and the Gold Page 37