Constant labor was required to get provisions from France, to barter with the Indians, and to extract a flow of food from farms in the colony. The French learned from the Indians how to hunt in the winter before the animals went away to bear their young, and struggled to master the intricate techniques of eeling in the fall. The cruelest season was always the early spring before the relief ships arrived, often not until June or even later.36 One year, for example, the supply ships were very late, and Champlain had only enough flour and cider to last until June 10. After it ran out, the colonists survived on migan, made from Indian corn and fish. The ships finally reached Quebec on July 10, a month after the provisions were gone. Hunger continued to be a problem in a land of plenty, but Champlain succeeded in preventing the worst ravages of malnutrition with much help from the Indians.37
Quebec was a raw and very rough frontier settlement. Merchants in trading companies and captains of ships in the St. Lawrence River cared little for the authority of a distant Crown. The king’s officers were unable to keep the peace along the full length of the great river. As in many new colonies, there was much crime—even assault and murder—and a growing concern among the habitants about the problems of order.
On August 18, 1621. Champlain and Father Le Bailiff called a general assembly of Frenchmen in Quebec, about sixty men altogether. Most of the colonists turned out, except officers of the trading company who stubbornly refused to acknowledge Champlain’s authority. This was not the first such assembly in Quebec. An earlier one had convened in 1616, but it had been organized by the Récollets and concerned itself mainly with religious questions.38 This one was a secular event led by the “principal French inhabitants,” who came together to “advise on the most proper means” to deal with “the ruin and desolation of all this country.”39
These gatherings were nothing like lawmaking assemblies in English colonies. The people of Quebec worked within the French tradition of the cahier général de doléances, a meeting to draw up a petition of grievances. The assembled group elected Le Bailiff as their deputy and resolved to send him to the king and the viceroy with a list of their complaints. In the manner of a cahier, it began with professions of faith and loyalty to the king. The petitions celebrated the country and its prospects for growth but expressed deep unhappiness about the lack of law, order, and security. They asked for a judicial system that would put an end to “robberies, murders, assassinations, lechery, and blasphemy.” They were worried about the English and the Iroquois, and wanted a strong fort with a garrison of fifty soldiers. And they asked that Champlain be given more money. They requested that Protestants should be kept out of the colony, a judgment that differed from the attitude of tolerance that Champlain favored. And they asked that schools be founded for Indian and French children. Altogether they demanded more control from above, not less as in the British colonies.
Le Baillif carried this petition to France, and the king in Council responded positively to the complaints. He ordered changes in the trading companies, supported the Récollets, strongly backed Champlain, gave him more money as the habitants had asked, and ordered the recruitment of families for New France. But he did not endorse the idea of assemblies and deputies for Quebec. No reference to this assembly appeared in any of Champlain’s writings. It is interesting that Champlain supported the assembly in Quebec but gave it no recognition in France. If he included it in any of his books, it was removed by censors in Paris. This early assembly was soon forgotten, except in the writings of some of the Récollet fathers and in the few manuscripts that found their way to the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.40
The assembly in Quebec was an advisory body of principal inhabitants. They met on the invitation of leaders to present grievances and submit a petition to the king, the viceroy, and the governor of Quebec. Even so, such meetings were not welcome in France. This was the road not taken in Quebec.
In 1621, Champlain also issued laws for New France, which appear to have been primarily of his own devising. He proclaimed them only in response to what he took to be urgent problems. He was, for example, troubled by two families who had been in New France for two years: one headed by a butcher, the other by a needle maker. They had settled on the land with the understanding that they would farm it. Champlain sent a commissioner to “examine what they had done.” He learned they “had not cleared a single yard of land, but simply gave themselves to hunting, fishing, sleeping and getting drunk in company with those who gave them the means to do so.” He decided to banish them from the colony. “I sent them back as useless creatures who cost more than they were worth,” he said.41
After the fact, Champlain issued edicts to legitimate his act. “To avoid troublesome disputes and keep all parties to their duty,” he wrote, “I thought right to make certain ordinances, which I caused to be published on the twelfth of September.”42 Historian John Dickinson observed that this “first Canadian legislation” was not enacted by an assembly or even by a council. It was framed by the will and judgment of one man. Scholars believe that Champlain issued other ordinances to regulate prices, proclaim holy days, prohibit the sale of liquor to the Indians, and preserve peace within the colonies. But no texts have as yet been found.43
To proclaim a law was one thing; to enforce it was quite another. Champlain had to maintain order among a turbulent set of colonists and neighbors in a disorderly and sometimes violent world. He had to keep peace between Catholics and Protestants, Indians and Europeans, soldiers and civilians, seamen and shopkeepers, farmers and traders, rival companies and royal officials. He had a distinctive way of dealing with these questions. When he faced a fundamental threat such as Duval’s conspiracy, the 1608 attempt to kill Champlain and seize the colony, he acted decisively and did not hesitate to use force when he thought it necessary. But in nearly all cases, Champlain preferred to reject force as a solution. He began by introducing a tone of reason, and sought the path of peace. First, he asked questions about what had actually happened, listened carefully to answers, and consulted with others in difficult cases. Then he tried to identify vital issues that could not be compromised without damage to the colony or to his larger purposes. Within that framework he tended to become a mediator in an effort to reconcile rival interests, resolve conflicts of principle, and harmonize different ideas of ethics and justice in a way that all parties could regard as just.
The religious life of the colony continued to be a cause of friction. During the reign of Henri IV, as we have seen, the sieur de Mons and Champlain had adopted the king’s solution for New France: an established Catholic Church and a toleration of Protestants. They encouraged religious diversity and brought a Protestant minister as well as Catholic priests to Sainte-Croix and Port-Royal. That experiment was not successful.
The death of Henri IV had brought a change of policies in France and America. Marie de Medici and Louis XIII both maintained the Edict of Nantes, but gave more support to the Catholic Church and showed less tolerance of Protestants. Some of their ministers actively discouraged the presence of Protestants in New France. Yet many French merchants and seamen were Huguenots. This friction increased when Viceroy Montmorency brought in the Compagnie de Caën, led by Guillaume and Émery de Caën. Guillaume was Protestant and Émery was Catholic. Their traders and seamen were also of both faiths.
Champlain received strict instructions from France about Guillaume de Caën: “As to the exercise of his religion I was to tell him that he was not to practice it either on land or on sea, and as to anything further I was to use my own judgment.”44 Aboard ship in the St. Lawrence, de Caën was “accustomed to have his [Protestant] prayers in his cabin, at the stern of the vessel, while the Catholics were at their devotions in the bow.” In de Caën’s absence, his Catholic lieutenant Raymond de Ralde assumed command and insisted that the Catholics should “do their praying in the cabin, and the so-called Reformers should be in their proper place, and do theirs in the bow.” Champlain wrote that “on this point a great dispu
te arose.” It was settled only with the intervention of the Récollet fathers, who helped Champlain to keep the peace.45
Later the same issue exploded again. A Jesuit priest complained to Champlain that Protestant sailors “paid no attention to the restrictions,” and sang their psalms in such a way that “all the Indians could hear them from the shore.” Champlain allowed the sailors to keep singing. “There is no use talking to them,” he wrote wisely. “It is their great zeal for their faith that impels them.”46
Champlain always sought a solution to these problems in the spirit of Henri IV. He maintained the Catholic Church as an establishment but protected the right of Protestants to worship. He also worked out a series of flexible compromises that allowed both groups freedom of conscience, but asked them to exercise those rights in ways that did not offend others.
Other issues tested the limits of liberty of expression in New France, and Champlain responded in an unexpected way. He ordered the burning of a book in Quebec. It was called the Anti-Coton, an attack on Father Pierre Coton, the Jesuit confessor and friend of Henri IV, and an acquaintance of Champlain. The author suggested that the Jesuits, and Coton in particular, had a hand in the murder of Henri IV. His book passed from “room to room” and was reported to have been widely read in the settlement. Catholic priests demanded that the book be suppressed. Champlain ordered that it be burned. His primary motive was to keep the peace and to discourage attacks on others, rather than to repress heresy or punish dissent. But whatever the cause, the result set a precedent for restraints on liberty of speech and press in Quebec. In time these restrictions would multiply. The habitants of Canada were not encouraged to think of themselves as free people. In New France, limits on liberty and freedom were imposed by the will and judgment of an absolute ruler who was accountable only to another absolute ruler in Paris.
If liberty means the right to speak and worship freely, and if freedom means the right to vote and to trial by one’s peers, there was little liberty or freedom in Quebec. Its denial severely diminished the growth of New France. Had French authorities actively encouraged dissenters to settle in the new world, the history of North America might have been very different. The colonies of New France would have been more disorderly but also more dynamic, and much quicker to grow. But this was another road not taken in the history of New France.47
While Champlain dealt with these difficult problems, he also continued his policy in regard to the Indians. His approach was fundamentally different from that of the founders of New Spain and New England, and also from that of earlier French leaders such as Cartier. He never wanted to conquer or enslave the Indians, and never imagined that he could control them. Always he regarded them as people who were fully equal to Europeans in powers of mind, and thought them superior in some ways. There was much about their culture that he did not like. Champlain often repeated his belief that the North American Indians had neither faith nor law. But he admired their many strengths, treated them with respect, tried to learn from them—and they reciprocated.
How did he do it? First, he spent time with them, sitting in councils, listening to speeches, inquiring about their customs, asking them to map the country on sheets of bark. Champlain wanted to learn what they knew. He also had a keen sense of their vital interests, and tried to construct alliances from which all parties had much to gain. Between 1620 and 1624, he also sent more young men to live among the Indians. Nicolas Marsolet went to the Montagnais in the Saguenay country; young Jean Nicollet and Jean Richer lived among the Nipissing. Brûlé and Du Vernay worked in Huronia, and Olivier Le Tardif dwelled among the Algonquin, to mention only a few. At one feast alone, the Algonquin nations of the upper St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers agreed to take eleven Frenchmen, each with his own Indian minder.48
There were many strains in these relations. In 1620, Champlain had a major problem with the Montagnais. From his earliest meeting in 1603, and for many years thereafter, they had been allies. But when Champlain returned to the colony in 1620 after a two-year absence, he perceived clear signs of growing distance, and even hostility. A major problem was trade in the lower St. Lawrence Valley. The Montagnais wanted to trade with ships of many nations. Champlain wrote, “We prevent other vessels from trading with them, and though on the other hand we give them the best possible treatment, this is the friendship they show us.” His first efforts at dealing with the problem were ill conceived. Champlain himself wrote that he “came down on them sharply.”49 The Montagnais were furious, and relations went from bad to worse. Champlain wrote: “We have no worse enemies than these Indians; for they say that if they were to kill off our men, other vessels would come, the owners of which would be greatly pleased, and that they would themselves be much better off than they are, owing to getting goods more cheaply from the Rochelais or the Basques. Among the Indians, the Montagnais are the only ones who talk in this fashion.”50
Relations sank so low, Champlain tells us, that some Montagnais began to plan a surprise attack on Quebec and Tadoussac, an event that would have changed the history of New France in a fundamental way. Somehow he dealt with it. He wrote only that “measures were taken” to nip the plan in the bud.51 Champlain immediately went to work repairing relations with the Montagnais. He gave them more trade privileges and better terms than interlopers could match. He also invited some of them to settle on cleared land and to add a little farming to their hunting and gathering economy. Champlain believed that part of the problem of the Montagnais was their extreme vulnerability to famine. They were a hunting and gathering people who maintained very little by way of food stocks. In their approach to survival, they were very different from other Indian nations such as the Huron and Iroquois and Saco, and others to the south.
Much of the Montagnais territory in the Saguenay Valley did not lend itself to agriculture. There was better land near Quebec on the southwestern range of their country. Champlain offered them seed stock and the use of open fields that the French had cleared. He told them if they could bring the land under cultivation, they could gather a crop of corn for their use, and “if they did so we would regard them as brothers.” Champlain did not wish to turn them entirely from hunting to farming, but to create a mixed economy of the sort that many Indian nations practiced in North America. His object was to improve their condition, encourage them to lay up something for the winter, and help them escape the terrible periods of hunger and starvation that he had witnessed.52
In the spring of 1622, Champlain supported a Montagnais captain he called Miristou, whose father had followed Anadabijou as a powerful chief. Champlain wrote that Miristou “had a very strong and special liking for the French” and “was ambitious of commanding and being the head of the band as his father had been.” Champlain helped Miristou gain power. In turn, Miristou paid him 105 beaver skins, and Champlain spent them to put on a great feast for the Montagnais. As a leader of his people, Miristou worked with Champlain to improve relations.53
Champlain tried throughout this period to make peace with the Iroquois, and with much success. He urged the Algonquin and Montagnais to “live at peace” with the Mohawk, and offered to help them. Some Indian leaders said they were “sick and tired of the wars they had, which lasted over fifty years,” since the mid-sixteenth century. “Their fathers had never been disposed to enter into a treaty, owing to the desire they had to wreak vengeance for the murder of relatives and friends who had been killed.”54
Champlain kept talking, and persuaded his Indian allies to send a peace mission to the Mohawk. A delegation of very brave Montagnais warriors went into Iroquois country, and they were well received. On June 6, 1622, two Mohawks came to talk with the St. Lawrence nations at Trois-Rivières and met Champlain at an Indian camp near Quebec. There was feasting and dancing. After he returned to Quebec, Champlain received a visit from the Iroquois negotiators, who had come “en pourparlers de paix; for peace negotiations.” The Mohawk dined with the French and Indian leaders, danced together once more,
and Champlain gave them another feast. It was all very hopeful. “Thus we made good progress,” Champlain wrote. “Voilà un bon acheminement.”55
But it would be the old story yet again. Many people of all nations wanted peace but a single person could start a war. Such a man was a Montagnais warrior called Simon by the French. Champlain wrote that “he seemed to have a kind of craze, a thing to which they are often subject, principally when against the will of all the captains and companions, they wish to make war against their enemies the Iroquois.”56 Just as peace talks were making progress, Simon announced that he would launch his own personal war on the entire Iroquois confederacy. The Montagnais leaders could not control him, and they asked Champlain to intervene and “cure him of his frenzy.” Champlain tried to reason with him, but Simon said that Iroquois were “worthless, that they were worse than dogs, and that the idea had consequently taken hold of him that he would never be satisfied until he had the head of one of them, and so he was resolved to go with three others on the warpath.” Champlain concluded that “he was obstinate and no remonstrance could move him,” so he dealt with him in another way. “I used threats to deter him,” Champlain said, and “he went off to his cabin in a meditative mood.” Whatever Champlain’s threat may have been, it worked. Simon decided on reflection not to go to war against the Iroquois, and the chiefs thanked Champlain for what he had done.57
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