Champlain turned quickly to another prince of the blood, Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé and duc d’Enghien, a nephew of Soissons and cousin to the young King Louis XIII. Condé was twenty-four years old in 1612 and very popular among a large circle of friends, but he was a difficult character and something of a rebel against members of his own royal family. Champlain and his advisers agreed that Condé could replace Soissons, and approaches were made to him. The prince de Condé had extravagant tastes, and a very expensive hobby of collecting highbred horses. He hoped that New France would be a source of income. Others at court may have wished that an involvement in America might keep him out of trouble in France.38
At Champlain’s urging, and with much help from his American circle at Court, this “prince of the blood” became viceroy of New France, and its lord protector. He never came to America, and quickly appointed Champlain his chief lieutenant, as did every viceroy who preceded or followed him, to the year 1635.
Condé drove a hard bargain. He demanded and received the title of Viceroy of New France—literally vice-king for North America. Champlain had another object in mind. He sought to obtain authority for a prince of the blood to act as ruler of New France with full powers to license all trade in that dominion, in hope of securing an income for the colony. He tells us that he “presented to His Majesty and to the Lords of his Council, a petition with articles praying that it would please him to issue articles and regulations for the control of this matter.” The young king agreed, and the queen regent did not object. Letters patent were issued on November 22, 1612, appointing Condé as viceroy with authority to license trade in the St. Lawrence Valley for a period of twelve years.39
Soissons and Condé were the first of many viceroys of New France who followed one another in swift succession. Most were kinsmen of the king; all bought and sold their offices in France. None went to Canada in the early seventeenth century. They had little knowledge of the huge area that they claimed to rule. The prince de Condé had no intention of living in America. On the same day that his letters of appointment came through, he appointed Cham plain as his “lieutenant pour la Nouvelle-France,” with very broad powers to run New France. Champlain accepted quickly, and extended thanks to Condé for “having supported us against all kinds of jealousies and challenges from ill-disposed people.”
Champlain immediately asked leaders in the seaports of western France to recognize Condé’s viceregal authority over New France. Angry protests came from the parlement in Rouen and from the merchants of Saint-Malo, who brought suit for free trade. The king compelled the parlement to drop its opposition, and ordered the Malouins to withdraw their suit. Unable to attack a prince of the blood, their wrath fell on Champlain. They presented memorials against him, urging Condé that Champlain was a “mere painter who went to Canada out of curiosity and discovered nothing; to send him out again would only contribute to his own glory and drain the royal treasury.”40
Condé stood by his lieutenant, and even expanded his powers. Lanctot writes that Condé gave Champlain “quasi-absolute authority throughout the whole country with power to establish settlements, promote land explorations and finally, to set up a financial and commercial association.”41 In turn, Champlain worked closely with the viceroy and defended him against many attacks. Champlain wrote, “These things hindered me greatly, and forced me to make three journeys to Rouen with orders from His Majesty.” He published the king’s commission in all the ports of Normandy. But it was one thing to gain a judgment in France, and another to enforce it in America.42
Champlain wrote that during these disputes it was not possible for him to do anything for the habitation at Quebec. The little settlement suffered, but it survived, and Champlain tried to stay in touch with events there.43 He also continued to work at exploration, even from a distance. In Paris, Champlain had conversations with Nicolas de Vignau, his young interpreter who had lived among the Algonquin. Vignau had returned to France, and he told Champlain that “the mer du nord” or northern sea could be reached in seventeen days from Sault-Saint-Louis by ascending the Ottawa River to a great lake which emptied into it. Champlain was dubious. He had formed a rough idea of the distances from his conversations with the Montagnais. As he thought about it, he began to distrust Vignau.44 He discussed Vignau’s report with his friends at court, Marshall Brissac, Chancellor Sillery, and President Jeannin. They advised Champlain that he “must go and see the thing himself.”45
With that mission in mind, Champlain decided to return to America in the late winter of 1613. On March 6, Champlain and Pont-Gravé sailed from Honfleur for New France. They reached the coast of Cape Breton by April 21, and made good time up the St. Lawrence River. As they approached Tadoussac, the Montagnais Indians “ran to their canoes and came to meet us.” Champlain contrived an experiment to study their reactions. “As soon as they came on board our ship they peered into each one’s face, and as I was not in sight, they asked, where was Monsieur de Champlain?” He kept his distance and was disguised. Then “one old Indian came to the corner where I was walking up and down,” and “taking me by the ear (for they suspected who I was) … saw the scar of the arrow wound which I had received at the defeat of the Iroquois. Then he cried out, and all the rest after him, with great demonstrations of joy, saying ‘your men are waiting for you.’”46
It had been another hard winter for the Montagnais. Champlain found them “so thin and ghastly that I did not recognize them.” He continued sadly, “As they approached they began to cry out for bread, saying they were famished.” Some of the French were dressing three geese and two rabbits and threw the entrails on deck. The Indians “like hungry beasts devoured them, contents and all.” Then they squatted down, “scraping off with their fingernails the tallow with which our ship had been greased and devoured it greedily.” Once again he helped them through a hard season.47
Champlain sailed on to Tadoussac harbor, where they dropped anchor on April 29, 1613. There he ran into another kind of trouble from unlicensed traders. Soon after he arrived, other trading ships began to appear. A vessel from Rouen came up on the same tide, and the next day, April 30, two more ships arrived from Saint-Malo. They had sailed before the King’s Commission had been published in France and were not aware of its terms. Champlain went aboard the ships and explained the situation. He wrote, “I read the King’s Commission and the injunction against violating it with the penalties therein set forth.” The Malouins replied that “being subjects and loyal servants of His Majesty they would obey his commands.” Champlain appears to have worked out an accommodation with the two Malouin captains, the sieur de la Mainerie and the sieur de La Tremblaye, and they found a peaceful solution. “After that,” he wrote, “I had His Majesty’s Arms and Commissions publicly posted up in the harbor, so that no one might pretend cause of ignorance.”
Champlain had a different sort of problem with some of the French captains. Complaints were brought to him about traders “who abused the Indians and treated them badly.” Here again Champlain worked not only to promote trade, but also to protect the Indians from unscrupulous traders. He was particularly anxious to stop any commerce in alcohol or firearms.48
While Champlain was sorting out these questions, the carpenters were out fitting two shallops for travel on the river. On May 2, the boats were ready and Champlain took one of them heading upstream toward Quebec. He started in bad weather and ran into a severe storm on the river. The wind was so violent that the shallop was dismasted—another desperate moment that brought him near death. “Had not God saved us,” he wrote, “we should all have been lost, as happened before our eyes to a shallop of Saint-Malo on its way to the island of Orléans.” They replaced the mast with a jury-rig, and reached Quebec on May 7.49
Champlain found the settlers “in good health, having been in no wise indisposed.” They reported that the winter had been mild and the river had not frozen. Spring was well advanced, “the trees were beginning to put forth their leaves, and t
he fields were turning bright with flowers.50 He remained at Quebec for a week. Then on the thirteenth he was off to the rapids at Montreal, where he arrived on the twenty-first. A trading barque was already there, bartering with small parties of Algonquin who were carrying their weapons and shields of wood and moose-hide. The Indians were cordial to Champlain, but reported trouble with the western Iroquois and also complained that many traders were not treating them well.51
He promised to assist them against the Iroquois, but told them that first he wanted to pass through their country on a voyage of exploration to the northwest. He asked them to help with three canoes and three guides. The Algonquin were not forthcoming. After much effort and many presents, Champlain was able to get two canoes and a single guide.52
It meant a dangerously small expedition, but Champlain was determined to push forward into the interior of the country. He planned to go up the St. Lawrence River to the “River of the Algonquins,” today’s Ottawa River, and to follow it to the northwest. Again he met the young interpreter Vignau, who repeated his story that he had been to Hudson Bay and back in seventeen days, and had seen the remains of a British ship there. Champlain had read an account of Henry Hudson’s voyage of 1612, published that year in Amsterdam. He knew that Hudson’s men had sailed into the great bay that bore his name, had wintered as far south as 53 degrees of north latitude, and had lost some ships there. But it was a very long way from Montreal. Champlain was suspicious of young Vignau’s account, and told him bluntly that “if he was telling a lie he was putting a rope around his neck.” The young Frenchman swore it was true.53
On May 27, 1613, Champlain and Vignau set off from Montreal with another interpreter named Thomas, an Algonquin guide, and two more French men. Their canoes rode low in the water, heavily laden with provisions, weapons, trade goods, and the tools of exploration. It was slow going, and the weather turned against them. They were a full day traveling from Île Sainte-Hélène to the great rapids, and then portaged around the rapids—which was “no small labor,” Champlain wrote. Above the rapids they entered the great Lake of the Two Mountains, where the Ottawa River flowed in from the north. The countryside was beautiful and fertile, but there was a sense of danger in it. Onondaga and Oneida war parties were active in this region. Every night Champlain and his companions made camp on a defensible island, built a barricade, and kept a strong watch until morning. Those precautions added greatly to the time and labor of their journey.
From the lake they turned north into the Ottawa River. Champlain took a sun line and estimated their latitude at 45 degrees 18 minutes, which was remarkably accurate. It told Champlain that the “North Sea” or Hudson Bay was at least five hundred miles away in a direct line, and farther by river. Clearly Vignau’s estimate of time and distance was wrong.54
As they moved northwest on the Ottawa River they met many more rapids and passed some of them by “hard paddling,” others by portage. In a few places the banks of the river were so rugged that they could advance only by “tracking” or dragging their canoes by “cords” through the turbulent water. This was dangerous work. Champlain was tracking his canoe with a cord wrapped tightly round his hand. Suddenly the current caught his boat and spun it into deep water. Champlain fell between two rocks. The canoe pulled at the cord with a force so strong that, in his words, it nearly cut off his hand. “I cried aloud to God and began to pull my canoe toward me, when it was sent back to me by an eddy such as occurs in these rapids…. I nearly lost my life,” he wrote, “and having escaped, I gave praise to God, beseeching him to preserve us.”55
The other Frenchmen suffered terribly and “several times were nearly lost” as they slowly learned the art of white-water canoeing with the “dexterity … needed to pass these rapids, in order to avoid the eddies and shoals that occur in them.” Champlain observed, “his the Indians do with the very greatest skill, seeking byways and safe passages which they recognize at a glance.”56
The next day they passed through a lake and met fifteen canoes of an Algonquin nation that Champlain called the Quenongebin. He wrote that they were “astonished to see me in that country with so few Frenchmen and only one Indian.” hey saluted each other “after the manner of the country,” and Champlain invited them to stop and talk. He told them that he wished to push on through their country to meet other Indian nations. They strongly discouraged him, saying that the country became even more difficult. He asked for a guide and offered to give them a Frenchman as a hostage in return. They agreed. Many things were being settled at the same time in this brief exchange.57
Champlain’s party pressed on and came to another river, “very beautiful and wide,” with banks covered with “fine open woods.” Upstream were an Algonquin people known as the Ouescharini. He called them the Petite nation. The French continued on, through many rapids and falls, and found themselves in a very beautiful lake many miles long, the lac des Chats. Here he met a nation he called “Matou-Ouescarini,” today’s Madawaska nation. He was amazed by huge stands of cedar, but noted that the lake was surrounded by pines that had been “all burned down by the Indians.”58
On the advice of their guides, Champlain and his men left the Ottawa River and followed another line of advance through a chain of lakes with very hard portages. On one of these portages, while they were struggling through a tangle of fallen timber and “suffering more from the mosquitoes than their loads,” Champlain lost his small traveling astrolabe. It would be found in 1867 near Green Lake in Ontario. Today it is preserved as a national treasure in the Canadian Museum of Civilization on the banks of the river that Champlain explored on this journey in 1613.59
They paddled on to Muskrat Lake, where they met yet another Algonquin nation, with a chief named Nibachis, who was “astonished that we had been able to pass the rapids and bad trails.” He said to his companions, “They must have fallen from the clouds,” for “he did not know how we had been able to get through, when those who live in the country had great difficulty in coming along such difficult trails.” Nibachis had heard of Champlain, and he said that the journey convinced him “I was everything the other Indians had told him.” Here was more evidence that Champlain’s reputation was spreading rapidly from one Indian nation to another. His reputation traveled even more widely in North America than did the man himself.60
Champlain told Nibachis through an interpreter that he was “in the country to assist them in their wars,” and that he “wished to push on to see other chiefs for the same purpose.” They agreed to help, and gave Champlain and his men some food. They smoked tobacco and made an alliance. After this tabagie, Nibachis led Champlain across Muskrat Lake, and then by easy beaten trails to a much larger body of water that today is called Allumette Lake.61
Here lived a great Algonquin war chief named Tessoüat, whose fame rivaled that of Champlain in the St. Lawrence Valley. They had first met in the tabagie at Tadoussac in 1603, and Champlain wrote that Tessoüat was “astonished to see me, telling us that he thought I was a ghost and that he could not believe his eyes.” The old chief took him to today’s Morrison Island in the middle of Allumette Lake. Lacking his astrolabe, Champlain reckoned its latitude at 47 degrees with less than his usual accuracy. It is in fact 45:48 degrees north. One wonders how he could have reckoned it at all, perhaps by an improvised instrument of wood and string.62
Champlain used this small brass traveling astrolabe (dated 1603) to calculate his latitude by a noon sun-sight. It was suspended from a plumb line to measure the angle of elevation. In 1613, he lost it in the Ottawa Valley. It was found by a farmboy in 1867, with a rusty chain, bowls in copper cases, and two silver goblets with coats of arms that were melted and sold.
Champlain asked Tessoüat why they lived on such poor soil when fertile ground lay to the south. He said they were safe here. Champlain told them that he planned to build a fort and plough the land near Montreal, below the great rapids on the St. Lawrence. “When they heard this,” he wrote, “they gave a great shou
t of approval” and said they would come and live nearby, thinking “their enemies would do them no harm whilst we were with them.” Tessoüat welcomed Champlain with still another tabagie on Morrison Island. They had a great feast, and then the young warriors withdrew and the older men smoked tobacco for a long time. Champlain told them he wanted to visit another nation called the Nebicerini (or Nipissing) who lived on today’s Lake Nipissing, and asked for the use of four canoes. The island Indians said the Nebicerini were a nation of wizards who killed people with magic, and Champlain would not be safe among them. Champlain persisted, pointing to his interpreter and saying that Nicolas de Vignau had been there.
To his amazement the Indians responded with an explosion of anger. Tessoüat called Vignau a liar to his face and said, “If you visited those tribes it was in your sleep, and every night you slept beside me and my children.” They refused to allow Champlain to go farther, allegedly for his own protection, and offered to deal with Vignau themselves. “Give him to us,” Tessoüat said, “and we promise he will tell no more lies.” Champlain protected Vignau, gave up his plan to go farther, and prepared to return south. Before he left, Champlain erected a cross of white cedar with the arms of France and asked the Algonquin to protect it. On June 10, he started home again with an escort of Tessoüat and his sons and warriors, who were suddenly friendly again. One suspects that the Indians were protecting the sources of their fur trade, much as other nations had done. Champlain was careful not to challenge them.63
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