Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  Basques invented this 16th-century whaleboat, found intact by underwater archaeology off Labrador. Champlain thought that they were the best whalers in the world and learned much from them.

  A complex web of cultural relations had developed between Europeans and American Indians long before Champlain came to the new world. The northern coast acquired a unique trading language, a pidgin speech borrowed from many tongues. Much of it was Basque and Algonquian. A startling example is the word Iroquois. Linguists conclude that it was a complex coinage in the pidgin speech of the North American coast—a French understanding of an Algonquian version of two Basque words that meant “killer people.” The term was well established when Champlain became the first to publish it in 1603.21

  In the midst of this flourishing Atlantic trade, many French colonies had been planted during the sixteenth century. Every one of them failed. More than a few were epic disasters. Champlain was dismayed to discover that “so many navigations and explorations had been undertaken in vain, with so much labor and expense.”22 He studied their history with close attention. Why had they gone wrong? What errors had been made? How could one learn from that experience?

  His inquiry was a search for the cause of past failure, in the hope of future success. Mainly he was interested in the choices that leaders had made. Four of these failed ventures shaped his thinking in fundamental ways. Among them were efforts by Jacques Cartier in Canada (1534–43), Jean Ribault and René Goulaine de Laudonnière in Florida (1562–67), the marquis de la Roche on Sable Island (1597–1602), and Pierre de Chauvin at Tadoussac (1599–1600). Each of them taught Champlain a lesson about how not to found a colony.

  Champlain was especially interested in the career of Jacques Cartier, a seaman of Saint-Malo whose voyages laid the foundation for French claims in North America. Champlain read Cartier’s journals with respect and thought that he was “very knowledgeable and experienced in seamanship, as much as anyone in his time.”23 In 1534 Cartier crossed the Atlantic in the amazing time of two weeks and six days from France to Newfoundland. He explored the coast and entered the estuary of the St. Lawrence River. On the Gaspé Peninsula he found a summer camp of two hundred Laurentian Iroquois who had come down the river to catch tinker mackerel. Cartier treated the Indians brutally, kidnapped several, and took them captive to France.24

  Cartier made a second voyage in 1535. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River to Tadoussac, and continued to Île d’Orléans, Cap-Rouge, and the site of present-day Quebec. He sailed on, to the head of navigation on the river, where he found the large Indian town of Hochelaga near what is now Montreal. His men built a fort there, wintered over, and suffered severely from scurvy. The Indians gave them a remedy from the leaves of a tree they called annedda, but Cartier was shaken severely by that experience and returned to France. Once again he kidnapped Indians, including Donaconna, a powerful leader of the Laurentian Iroquois, and carried him and his sons back to France against their will. They were never seen again in Canada.25

  A third mission followed in 1542, led by Cartier and Jean François de la Roque, seigneur de Roberval. They came to Canada with three ships, and planted a settlement on Cap Rouge, near Quebec, where Cartier and Roberval thought they had discovered diamonds and gold. It turned out to be quartz and iron pyrites, and the disappointment gave rise to a French proverb, “false as a diamond from Canada.” The Laurentian Iroquois mistrusted the French, in large part because of Cartier’s cruel treatment of them. He and his men lied repeatedly to the Indians, kidnapped at least ten of them, and gained an evil reputation in America as “wonderful thieves” who would “steal everything they can carry off.”26

  Jacques Cartier’s discoveries were the source of French claims to North America. He explored the St. Lawrence River as far as Mont Real, but cruelly abused the Indians, and his settlements failed.

  In the summer of 1543, the two leaders Cartier and Roberval abandoned their own colony and returned to France, leaving thirty settlers without a leader. Champlain was taken aback by their behavior, and wrote sadly, “Little by little this enterprise dwindled to nothing for the lack of necessary attention.” Thereafter, François I died in 1547, Cartier perished of the plague in 1557, and Roberval was killed in the wars of religion. French colonizing in the St. Lawrence Valley was abandoned for many years.27

  Champlain asked himself why Jacques Cartier’s voyages did not lead to a permanent French settlement. He answered that Cartier himself had caused the failure by losing faith in his own enterprise: he “was so dissatisfied with this voyage and with the great ravages of scurvy, whereof most of his men died, that, when spring came, he returned to France very sad and grieved at this loss.”28 Champlain observed that Cartier mistakenly thought that the “mal de scorbut” was a “mal de terre” in North America. He came to the false conclusion that “the air was contrary to our constitution,” and gave it up. “And so,” Champlain wrote, Cartier lost heart and “the enterprise was fruitless.” Here was the reason. “To tell the truth,” Champlain continued, “those who are in charge of explorations are often the very people who cause a laudable project to be abandoned … that is why this undertaking failed.” Cartier also alienated the Indians by treating them in a brutal and treacherous way—another fatal mistake.29

  Champlain also studied the calamitous history of French colonizing ventures in Florida, where Jean Ribault had led two ships to the St. Johns River and built a settlement in 1562. Champlain’s short history of this venture became another catalogue of fatal errors. The leaders did not bring enough provisions and failed to clear lands for planting. Discipline collapsed. When an officer ordered a man hanged for “some slight offence,” others rose in rebellion. Some built a small barque and tried to sail home, but they had nothing to eat and were reduced to cannibalism. Champlain concluded that the venture had been “badly directed in every way.”30

  Another effort followed in 1564, under Captain René Laudonnière and Ribault. Here again Champlain found “grave defects and shortcomings” in their leadership. They brought “provisions for only ten months” and tried to clear land for tillage, but were unable to bring in a crop in time to help. Food ran out, and the colonists lived on roots that they found in the forest. There was much “disorder and disobedience,” in Champlain’s words.31 Ribault decided to attack the Spaniards, against the advice of other leaders. Champlain observed: “It is a stubborn man’s trait to wish always to have his own way without consultation.”32 The Spanish struck back with great cruelty, crushed the settlement, and executed some of the settlers. In an escalating cycle of violence and retribution, the French settlement collapsed. Here again Champlain thought the cause of failure was erratic leadership and a failure to prepare.33

  The worst of these disasters was the failed French colony at Sable Island on the outer edge of the fishing banks. After the Peace of Vervins, Henri IV sponsored colonizing ventures by an eccentric character with the exotic name of Troilus du Mesgoùez, marquis de la Roche-Helgomarche. In 1597, La Roche sent a fishing expedition to Sable Island. The voyage appears to have been a commercial success. The following year, Henri IV gave La Roche letters patent to plant a colony in North America. The king later contributed 12,000 écus to the enterprise.

  The project instantly ran into difficulty. Few people volunteered for the expedition—a persistent problem in French colonization. La Roche was forced to conscript beggars and vagabonds. He persuaded Royal officials to sell him criminals who had been condemned to death and were given the choice of America or execution.

  La Roche hired a captain named Thomas Chéf-d’Hostel and ordered him to land the colonists on Sable Island. A worse location could scarcely be imagined. It was a desolate crescent of sand on the outer edge of the Grand Bank, a hundred miles from the coast, swept by fierce gales and shrouded in dense Atlantic fog.34 In 1599, La Roche’s sixty colonists were put ashore with a leader named Commandant Querbonyer and a small party of soldiers to keep order. La Roche supplied materials for shelt
ers and a storehouse, stayed for a short time, and then sailed home.35 He promised to send supply ships every year, and kept his word in 1600 and 1601. The ships returned on schedule, but the colony did not flourish, and La Roche lost support in France. In 1602 the settlers rose in mutiny, murdered the officers in their sleep, and looted the storehouse. La Roche learned what had happened from passing fishermen, and suspended the annual supply ship. The colonists lived precariously on fish, seals, and wild cattle left on the island by a Spanish ship. Sable Island lacked wood or stone, and the settlers were soon living “like foxes underground.” As supplies dwindled they made war on one another. In a few years, most were dead. A ship found eleven survivors with gaunt faces, matted hair, and sealskin suits and took them back to France.36

  La Roche was thought to be “a man of the best intentions,” but among all the many colonial disasters in North America, Sable Island was one of the worst. Champlain studied its history and concluded that the enterprise had two fatal flaws, one in America and the other in Europe. He believed that the marquis de la Roche had chosen a bad site because he had “no knowledge of the land” and “did not have the place explored and examined carefully by someone with experience.” At the same time he was unable to protect his base in France. Champlain noted that “envious people” intrigued against the colony, turned the king against the enterprise, and destroyed “the good will felt by his Majesty.” It was a lesson he would not forget.37

  Champlain also studied yet another recent failure. It had been led by Pierre de Chauvin, sieur de Tonnetuit, a Huguenot from Dieppe and a successful fur trader in the St. Lawrence Valley. Champlain described him as “a man very expert in navigation, and a captain who had served the king in past wars.”38 In 1599, Henri IV commissioned Chauvin to plant a colony in the St. Lawrence Valley, with a monopoly of the fur trade for ten years. The following year he assembled a fleet of four ships. Sailing with him as an observer was a nobleman from Saintonge, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons. The result was yet another disaster, which Champlain attributed to errors of judgment by Chauvin himself. The first mistake was in the recruitment of settlers and leaders. Chauvin insisted that “there would be none but Calvinist ministers,” but the settlers were Catholic. The result was deep division and constant strife.39

  That mistake in France was compounded by others in America. The most serious error in Champlain’s opinion was in the choice of a site. The sieur de Mons wanted to move further up the St. Lawrence River, but Chauvin insisted on settling downstream at the Saguenay River, a major center for the fur trade. Champlain wrote that the location was “one of the most disagreeable and barren in the whole country.” It was also one of the coldest. “The cold is so great,” he added, that “if there is an ounce of cold forty leagues up the river, there will be a pound of it here.”40

  The colonists were not given supplies to see them through the winter, which Champlain found to be a common failing in early settlements. Worst of all, the leaders departed before winter set in, and left sixteen colonists living under the same roof, “with a few commodities.” The settlers ran out of food, and suffered terribly from illness. Only five survived the winter, by abandoning the colony and living on the charity of the Indians.41

  Champlain concluded that the cause of all these problems was a total failure of leadership, government, and discipline. He wrote that Chauvin’s colony was “like the Court of King Pétaud,” referring to an old French folk saying about “the court of King Pétaud, where everyone is master.” The name Pétaud derived from peto, or beggar. Champlain added, “idleness and laziness along with diseases that seized them unawares, reduced them to such desperate straits that they were forced to give themselves up to the Indians who charitably took them in.”42

  This failed colony had one constructive result. Its leaders brought two young Montagnais Indians back to France. They were not kidnapped, but came willingly with the support of their chiefs to learn French and study the culture. They were treated well and survived the illnesses of the old world. Later they would return to North America with consequences of high importance for New France, as we shall see.

  From this long record of failure, Champlain drew many lessons. First was the necessity of detailed planning. In the ventures that failed he found too little serious preparation, “too much table talk,” and too many fantastic schemes. “Filling the mind with illusions,” he concluded, “is not the way to carry out with honor the work of exploration.”43

  A second lesson was the importance of careful exploration before settlement. He wrote, “it is of little use to run to distant lands and go to inhabit them, without first exploring them and living there at least an entire year, to learn about the quality of the land and the diversity of the seasons, in order afterward to lay the foundation of a colony.” Champlain observed, “Most colonizers and travellers do not do this, and are content to see the coasts and the elevations of the lands in passing, without staying there.” He believed that only the evidence of first-hand experience could be trusted. In particular, it is a common mistake “to believe that everything follows the rule that exists in the latitude of the places where they live, and it is in this that they find themselves greatly mistaken.”44

  A third lesson was about order and authority. These many French disasters persuaded Champlain that a successful colony must have unity and strict discipline. The Florida fiascos were evidence that leaders must work together and harmonize their purposes. The disaster at Tadoussac showed clearly that they must establish a system of firm and just authority. Champlain was not a believer in what we understand as liberty or equality. He believed in order and subordination, and he drew the same conclusion from the disorders in France during the sixteenth century.

  There were logistical lessons as well. To maintain order and peace in colonies, an ample supply of food was an important key. Nearly all of the failed colonies had suffered from a shortage of provisions. This problem required capital, foresight, and very careful planning.

  Religious policy was another issue. Champlain concluded from the wreck of the Chauvin settlement that religion in the colony should be modeled on Henry IV’s solution for France. He believed that New France should have one official religion, and it should be Roman Catholic but it should extend toleration to other faiths. He strongly opposed persecution and sectarian strife.

  And he was very mindful of the Indians. The experiences of Cartier, Roberval, Laudonnière, Ribault, and Chauvin all demonstrated that the indigenous people must be treated with humanity and respect. A major effort should be made to establish a rapport by straight words and equitable dealing.

  Finally it was clear to Champlain that colonies often failed because of events at home. He noted that “envious people” in France intrigued against colonial ventures. The trouble came from rival merchants, competing seaports, jealous courtiers, and representatives of foreign powers. The most powerful opponent of settlement in New France was the king’s chief minister, the duc de Sully, who thought that colonies were a distraction from business at home, and tried to turn the king against them. De Mons and Champlain believed that Sully had been bribed by Dutch merchants, but his dislike of New France rose fundamentally from an idea of national interest. There was a debate in France during the reign of Henri IV between leaders who favored domestic reform and others who supported expansion abroad. It was similar in some ways to the debates in Victorian England between imperialists and Little Englanders, and to struggles in the United States over foreign policy in the twentieth century.

  New France had enemies at Court. Most powerful was the due de Sully, the King’s chief minister, who insisted that nothing good could come from settlements above the 40th parallel (the latitude of Philadelphia). Witnesses testified that Sully took Dutch bribes to oppose French colonies.

  In each of these conflicts there was also a middle way. Centrists and moderates favored a mediating position: a forward foreign policy and progressive reform at home. This was the policy of British leaders s
uch as Pitt the Elder and Winston Churchill, and Americans including Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and the “wise men” in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. It was also the choice of Henri IV in France. In 1602, he favored reform at home and expansion abroad, and believed that each of these two policies could reinforce the other.

  Champlain also believed that a key to success in America was a continued effort to rally support in France, particularly at the court of Henri IV, where the good will of the king was absolutely necessary to the enterprise. He wrote that “kings are often deceived by those in whom they have confidence.” Much of his career was an ongoing effort to promote a new France in the old world.45

  * * *

  In 1602, an opportunity suddenly came to the friends of New France. That year, Chauvin forfeited his monopoly of fur trading in the St. Lawrence. Orders were issued from court in 1602, commanding two eminent figures to take the problem in hand. One of these men was the sieur de la Cour, president of the Parlement of Normandy. The other was the sieur de Chaste, Vice Admiral of the Navy, and an officer of high distinction. The two Royal Commissioners proposed to authorize two trading ventures: one for the merchants of Rouen in Normandy; the other for traders from Saint-Malo. In return for special trading privileges, each group was required to contribute one-third of the cost of founding a permanent colony in New France.

  The king agreed, and appointed Aymar de Chaste as overall commander of the entire enterprise.46 Today he is largely forgotten—the most obscure of all the major figures in the founding of New France. He did not come to America and was in command of the colonial enterprise for a very short period, but he played a pivotal role in the history of New France and in the career of Samuel Champlain.