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IMaps. plates, charts, etc.. mey be filmed at different reduction ratioa. Thoaa too lerge to be entirely included in one expoaura are filmed beginning in the upper left hand comer, left to right and top to bottom, aa many framea aa required. The following diagrama illustrate the method: Lea eartee. planchaa. tableaux, etc.. peuvent Atre filmAe A dee taux de rAductlon diff Arents. Lorsque le document eet trop grand pour Atre reproduit en un seul ciichA, il est filmA A partir da I'angia eupArieur gauche, de gauche A droite. et de haut en baa, an prenent le nombre d'Imegea nAcaeseira. Les diagrammea suivants illuatrent la mAthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 .»'.r THE HlSTORlgAL&SglENTlFlUOglETY OF MANITOBA. TRANSACTION No. 28 SEASON 1886-87. THE .FRENCH ELEMENT -IN THE- s^y Qanadian northwest, xq'^ TY "X LEWIS drumm0n;& PrieHt «»f th« Hociety nf Jkmuh. A Paper read before the Society on the Evening OF November 26th. 1886. SKortt F PRICE 25 CENTS. 1S.S7. re ^.#\ ^.' A PAGE OF HISTORY. - ^o THE FRENCH ELEMENT IN THE CANADIAN NORTHWEST. FBaFATORT NOTB. . ThAL'tBtokindiuggMtiona made di- reotly af tor the delirerj of Uiis leoture by Dr. Bryoe and Mr. Alex. MoArthor, it BOW appears oorreoted ap to datoand ■omewhat enlarged, thoagh the form of addreds U preeerved. In aniwer to lome of my friends, who laid they were amut- ed at my making common cause with my mother's race, aftor identifying myself with my father's race on St. Patrick's Day, I can bat say that I hay e no power nor wish to alter or extenuate the facts of my doable origin. My only regret is that I cannot claim kinship with that Anglo- Saxon race, which is at once the most cordially hated and the most sincerely ad- mired element in the modem world. THE LIOTCBS. Ladies and Gentuiiibn, — Allow me a word of apology at the oatset. Fifteen months in this great Northwest hardly juMtify a man in giving a lecture on any part of its history. The old inhabitants are the best authorities on the past life of a land where oral tradition has so much larger a share than it is wont to have in long-established centres of oivili- zatioii. Hence it was with great diffi- dence that I accepted the urgent and oft-repeated invitation of the President of so learned a body as the Historical Society Vm proved itself to be. His own wide and varied knowledge of this coun- try, his labors in the field of science and history, his familiarity with the lit- erary master - pieces of the past, all combined to make me fear that whatever I could say would be al- together too unworthy of an audience accustomed tohtc naostinterestinflclectures. But there was one consideration which determined me to yield to his kind en- treaty. The subject suggested by Dr. Bryce was * 'anything on the French peo- ple in the Northwest, their history, lang- uage, or mode of settlement." Nothing could be more congenial to me, seeing that my mother was a French Canadian, that for more than eight years I read and taught the Ancient Classics in French, and that circumstances have af- forded me unusual opportunitiesof study- ing the French race both in Europe and in America. I supoose the best prepar- ation for understanding the history of a ciolony is to belong to the race from which the colonists sprang. It is so hard for an outsider to enter into the feelings of men whose bleed is alien to his. Of course innate largeness of mind com- bined with travel may transf <>rm a strang- er into what Ulysses was, *'mauy-sided," so that he may be able to put himself into the very tame frame of mind as men 6f other nationolities ; but this is at best but an imitation, a substitute for the natural fellow-feeling that comes of hav- ing the same forefathers. Thus it hap- pens that men in whose veins the bloc d of two, three, or, as in my case, four races comaaingle, are by nature prepared to take an impartial view of the history of a mixed population such as onrs. Asa descendant of the early Frenoh settlers in Canada, I am prone to seizo on all the good points of the French ratw, while an admixture of Irish, Scotoh, and German blood effectually shields me from that in- ane prejudice against other nationalities which is the darling heritage of narrow minds. THE FIRST BXPL0BE;B8. Having premised this much, ladies and gentlemen, by way of bespeaking an in- dulgent hearing from you, I begin imme- diately with some important dates, and to understand the value of these dates I would just remind you that the Honor- able Hudson's Bay Company received its charter in 1676. How the company came into being we shall see presently. What I want to call your attention to now, is 2 the faot, that fourteen yean before the funoiM date of this ohurter, that ii, in 1666, while Oromwell wm still arbiter of England, Jean Bourdon, sometime ohief enpneer and prooureur of New France, is said to have penetrated as far as the shores of Hudson's Bay, and to have taken possession of the neighboring ter- ritory in the name of Louis XIY. Five years later, but still nine years before the birth of the honorable oompany, Despres Oonture accompanied an expedi- tion sent out by D'Argenson, the then governor of Canada, with » view to find the northwest passage to Japan. This exploring party was composed of French Sentlemen under the guidance of the esuit fathers, Druillettes and Dabion. Not having succeeded in their quest, they returned to the east; but Couture started again in 1663 with five com- Enions, and safdy reached Hudson's y, where, to confirm the prior occupa- tion, he buried at the foot of a big tree, some say, a French flsc and a sword, others, the arms of the king engraved on a plate of copper enclosed in two sheets ofle' Who knows if the Hudson's B> r. 4iway may not soon dig up these reh. )fthe past? The only difficulty Would be to find the tree; the fact of it being a big one may help the search along a ooast where forest giants are rare. DK8 OHOSBUBBS' OAKBBB. The story of these two travellers be- longs to the domain of probable, not cer- tain Tkiots. In 1662, however, we come upon a well-known name, that of Des Groseliers, or Des Qroiseliers, as it is variously written. He is commonly rep- resented as a Huguenot adventurer more romarkable for restless bravery than for lovaltnr to any purtioular crown. We are told that he distributed his allegiance pret- ty equally between Louis XIY. and Charles IL As the Qrand Monarque made a oat's paw of the' easy-going Charles, so Des Groseliers seems to have fooled them both according to the impulse of his own convenience. This is the view the generality of books on the North- west, written in English, give us of his character. Some peonl* also pretend that he went to Hudson's Bay, through Rainy Lake, L iah journal, that be oould ever have ex- plored the Winnipeg country. As to the Ellis map, in whioh Dr. Bryce finds a ^'striking confirmation" and "conclusive evidence" of the Hudson's Bay Company's "intimate knowledge of the interior," the arrangement of its IsJces and riven is ridiculous enouKh to have been drawn from the Indians' fanciful tales; far from "indicating no knowledge of a route between Lake Superior and Lake of the Woodr," the map ahowa a river reaching from the lat- ter to within a hair's breadth of the former, so that the gap may be quite ac- cidental, and, at all eventa, taken in con- nection with the general inaccuracy of. the rest, does not furnish the ghost of an argument; and, finally, whatever in this odd little sketch map approaches the reality may very omUv have been bor- rowed from La Yerandrye's reports, be- cause it WM published fifteen years after his discoveries. THS OARBKR OF LA VEBANDRYB. How different is the fint authentic re- cord of an exploration here ! Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Verandrye, wm born at Three Riven on the 17th of Nov , 1686. Hu father, who WM then governor of the town, had emi- gnted from France; but, as both his mother and maternal grandmother were Oanadian bom, he can surely be claimed M a native. He early embraced the profession of arms, and at 24 years of a^e he fought so bravely againat the tar* rible Marlborough that ha wm left fer dead on the bloody field of Malplaqnat, pierced with nine wonnda. He recover- ed, and, returning to Oanada, he . -arried in 1712 a Oanadiim lady, the daughter of the Beignevr of He Dudm. The four sons that were the fruit of this marriage ultimately joined their father in the NorthwMt. The great object of thoM explorationa wm what had bean ferment- ing in the heads of all praotioal gaograph* en during well nigh tiro oenturlM and a half, the finding a waterway to the Pacific Ocean. Aa a baM of operations the government of New France had al- ready several poata echeloned towards the WMt One of thcM, un Lake Nipi- gon, north of the WMtem extremity of Lake Superior, had been confided to La Verandrye. "There he heard of a great river flowing into the ''Grand Ocean". The prevalence of such a groundloM rumor north o^ Lake Superior shows that no white man had ever m yet been near the Bed River Valley; oIm the French, who were all agog for the NorthwMt passage, would have been sure to hear of It, and would therefore have known that no river of the WMt, at IcMt for a long distance beyond Lake Superior, emptied into the Pacific Ocean. But the rumor WM there, and La Verandrye immediate- ly communicated it to Father de Oonor, who, M every learned man of the time would have done, gladly clutched at the proferred hope, and penuaded de Beauhamois, the then Governor ef Oanada, to let La Verandrye have 60 men and a missionary. The brave soldier wm poor and his only re- source WM the prospective profit of the fur trade, which proved to be more than precarious. However, nothing could damp his ardour. In 1731 he crossed Rainy Lake and built Fort St. Peter near where Fort Francis now atands, and in 1732 on the WMtern shore of the Lake of the Woods he erected Fort St. Charles. In 1733 he paddled down the mouth of the Winnipee River into the lake of that name. Vfe read that, after he had oroued a portion of the I&ke, he Moended a river that emptiM into the lake and built a fort 16 miles from its mouth. A glance at the map shows that, besides the Win- nipeg, no other river large enough to build a fort upon empties into this part of Lake Winnipeg except Red River. This fort must, then, have been some- where in the neighborhood of Selkirk. « -' Mr. B«nil«r in th« MriM of abU mtUoIm h« published iMt jmr in La Manitobft K' M tht rcMoni whv Hit OnuM of St. nifaoo, thinks this wm Fort Roago. On ths othsr h«nd jour distingnishsd ptssidsntf Dr. Brfos, in his Tslusble Sper on the Five Forts of Winnip«g,sd* oes many tsohnioel points in feTor of Fort Rouge having really been in that spot on the south bank of the Assiniboine, whioh is now oallsd Fort Rouge. When dootors differ, what oan amateurs like my- self do, but wait for further develop mentsi However, not to insist on the ar- gument that formerly the Assiniboine was supposed to «n>ptv into Lake Winnipeg, while the Red RiTer was merged in the . Assiniboine where now stands this oity of ours— an argument, the force of whioh Dr. Brjoe must fully reoognise, since he says in his "Manitoba" (p. 80) ; «'the ex- plorers ascend from Lake Winnipeg the river of the AMiniboels, now the Red River, the name Assiniboine having been since confined to a branch entering the Red River some forty five miles" higher up — there is just one little point made by Dr. Br} 4 an to which I would respect- fully deiuur. Speaking of one of the maps which he has reproduced in his paper, your learned Presidentsays : ** We again notice on the site of Fort Rouge, a fort marked and described as "Ancion Fort," 15 or 17 years having sufficed to E've it Its antiquity." Now to me, who ive spoken French from the craHle, "anoien" does not imply antiquity in this case ; it simply means **old" in the sei.se of "unused," "no longer used as a fort," "abandoned." For example, when the new college of St. Boniface was opend, the old building was immediately called *'le vieux" or "I'ancien college, " and it would have borne that name even if it had existed only one year before it ceased to be used as a college. But, if "ancien fort" means a fort that was abandoned, then the reasons given by Mr. Bevnier have their full weight in showing that LaVerandrye would not have abandoned such an advantageous position as that which the meeting of two rivers afforded, anr* therefore they would rather lead us to infer that the draughts- men who sketched these maps from hearsay and at a distance, were not sufficiently accurate, an inference which the striking divergence between the two maps of 1740 and 1760 would tend to confirm. However this may be, certain ', it is that in 1738 La Yerandrye's three I sons, under instructions from their father, made their way up the Assiniboine, whioh was then oalled AssiniboiUes, and built Fort de la Rsine, whioh meet people identify with Portage la Prairie. The five vears sinoe 1733 had been years of oruel grief and disappointment to La Verandrye, One of his sons had been killed by the Sioux ; his funds were ex- hausted; the trade in fura did not pros- per, beoause he oould only make it a seoondary object, exploration being the primarv one r his men would not follow him; the kik.,( would not help him ; and, meanwhile, he was harassed by govern- ment offloisls anxisus for results, and by shsreholders eager for the interest on their money. La Verandrye's only wealth was his fair fame, his hereditary ability, and the valor of his noble sens. On these he now determined to rest his hopes. I cannot detain you with the re- cital of all his efferta. Still, I must ssy a word ABOCT OMB BXPBDITIOll which has made two of his sons immortal. The eldbst and another who was styled "le chevalier," started with two other Canadians on the 29th of April, 1748. On New Year's Day of the following year they, the first among white men, sighted the eastern spurs of the Rooky Mountains of the North. Twelve days later they stood at the foot of these "Hontagnesde Pierres Brillantee," as they used to be oalled on account of the peculiarly daszl- ins sparkle of their summits in the sun- light. Here, alas! just when they ex- pected now at length to catch a glimpse of the blue ocean from those diszy heights, they were forced to turn back. The Bow Indians, who had volunteered to guide the four pale-faces to the land of the Serpent tribe,against whom the Bows were on the war-path, found the Serpent country abandoned, and, fancying that the Serpents had gone to the Bow ooiin- try to maasaore those that were left be- hind, they would not scale the moun- tains, and insisted on making haste home- wards. Whithout guides the twu La Verandryes and their companions were powerless. It is enough for our Canada that they reached the Rockies just 50 years before Sir Alex. Mackenzie and more than 60 years before the Americans, Lewis and Olark. This discovery completed the occupa- tion by France of all the north, the centre and west of this oontinent. It was a fit complement to the discoveries 8 of lUcqaetto mai LsMlle and Jolliet, of Ohftamonov Aod Draillette* andDablon — ^for it WM, M th«7 had all been, mtde for no mere loidid motiv9 of gMo, bnt for glory, either tempore! or etemel, and, like iti predeoeeaon, thu diaoovery waa made with next to no material reaouroes. Tact, prudence, dauntleaa valor, atraight- forwaid friendlineia to the Indian — these were the meana oaed ao auooenf oily by the French and OAnadian ezploren. An American writer haa noted the fiwt that the French miMionariea had carried Christianity as far as Sanlt Ste. Maria five years oetore BUio*; had spoken the good tidings to the Indians who were only six miles from Boston harbor. No doubt the Anglo Saxon race has since de> veloped a wonderful apirit of enterprise; but it is always backed by plenty of money, and generally plenty *of food. Engliah exploring expeditions are the Nasmyth steam-hammer cracking a nut — a T>Kt display of force, which must pre- vail; the French and Oanadic^ns in those days tracked the nut with nothing but their teeth; they faced journeys of thou- sands of miles amr'dst unknown savages with nothing but what they carried in their hands or on their backs. IHB HUDflON BAT OFFICIATE. It is thia contrast which explains an otherwise inexplicable fact. How came it to pass that the Hudson's Bay Oom- pany waited more than an entire century before they attempted to penetrate into the Winnipeg basin 1 Doubtless the ex- ploits of D'Iberville and the uncertain tenure of their forts for sixteen years afterwards must have kept them in hot water; but from the treai.y of Utrecht in 1713 they were free, and yet their own chronicle of their first arrival in this Red River region places it eighty years later, in 1793, 123 years after the Charter. They certainly were most anxious to push far inland. There are a number of let- ters from the managers in Bnglaud offer- ing special rewaids to those whu ohuuld go into the interior. Despatches were transmitted from heiMl(iuarters promis- ing pensions to the widows of the men who might fail in such expeditions. Once in a while, at long intervals, some brave fellow of the Kelsey or Hearne stamp would turnup;batmost of the com- pany's men were like Sandford,of whom Sergeant, governor of Charlton Island writes in answer to a letter from London offering speciid bounties: '^Neither Sandford nor any of your servants will travel up the country, although your honors have earnestly deaired it, and I pressed it upon (on the strength of) those proposals you have hinted(off ers of large rewards)." How can this supineness be explained? The answer, to my mind, ia simple enough. The hum-drum and comfortable life in the forts naturally led to a rooted distaste for the discom- forts, difficulties and dangers incide^it to a life of adventure such as that which the Canadian voyageurs readily embrac- ed. Some of these **courreurs des boia," as I have already pointed out, seem to have traded near James Bay even before La Verandrye discovered the Winnipeg plains, and after he bad explored this country, they were not slow to take ad- vantage of this new field of operations Thtty were in friendly communication with the Indians. They treated them on a footing of equdity. With that light- hearted bravery and cheerful fortitude which is so common among the descend- ants of the French they sought out the savage in his wigwam, they often spent the whole winter with him, bear- ing with all his rudeness and c»prioes,and winning their way to hi:* heart before they asked for his fur:. Sprung from a race which then was the acknowledged leader of European civilization, and which still is the cleverest and most ver- satile in the world, they carried with Ihei^ an hereditary polish which had filtered down tq the lowest strata of the Canadian people Quick to learn the Indian languages and the tricks df Indian life, fertile in expedients, they were loyal and warm-hearted to the core. They were not mere calculating machines or animated money-bags. lastesd of wait- ing for the sarage they met him on his own ground and began by making him presents of trinkets and tobacco, and not till they had put him in good humor did they broach the question of trade. On the other hand, the Hudson's Bay men weie utter strangers to the Indian and his mode of life. Far from daring to emulate the wondeiful ascendancy the French had won over these fickle tribes, they kept themselves blockaded within their f of^p . They were like interlopers encamped in a hostile region. We have seen how Ff Marest spoke of them in 1694 as good natured merchants who knew little or nothing of the value or use of tire arms. They don't seem to have made much advance in the next fifty thi nei \ 9 yean. From 1710 to 1750 the initruo- tioni from the head office repeatedly en- join npon their ohief faoton to lee that their men learn, from the Indiana if neoeiaary, how to kill the wild Ifeeae that flew oyer their forts in auoh immense flooks. The home authorities were at a lou to understand — and small wonder that they should be— how it was that the men oould not shoot these birds. The ease with which La Perouse cap- tured the two forta. Prince of Wales and York, in 1782, shows how difficult it must have been to rouse the dormant spirit of the Hudson Bay officials. True, there were only 39 men in Prince of Wales fort; but they had 42 o«nnon and plenty o f ammunition. They surrendered with- out a struggle, the British Ask was lew- ered and a table cloth from the Govern or's table hoisted in its stead. York Fort also capitulated without firiuK a gun, though a successful resistance might have been made against the French troops who were harassed with marching through thickets and bogs in which most of them had left their shoes. Mean- while the company's ship, which was lying at anchor in the roads, prudently sha^d her course for Bugland, unper- ceived by the three French vesseb. We are told that La Perouse's politeness, humanity and kindness won him the affection of all the company's officers, and helped to oonaole the comfort-loving victims of this facile victory. The fact is the OBGANIZATION OV TUB COBfPANY was too wooden, too much on the London counting-house plan. There was no spontaneity, no adjusting of means to an altered environment, nothing of what Mr. Parkman calis "that pliant and plas- tic temper which (in the French) forms so m \rked a contrast to the stubborn spirit of tibe Englishman." (Conspiracy of Pontiao, vol I , p. 77- ) With a' view to isolating their officials, the company forbade their entering an Indian lodge. At least one man was flogged for lighting his pipe at an Indian's tent. The factors feared the interior as a land of un- known dangers. Terrible stories were circulated to keep up this fear of the In- diana and of the French. Minute in- structions were given to the men to pro- tect themselves, especially in winter. Scouts were tu reconnoitre every day, and, did they not return by night- fall, everything was to be get ready for a siege. At all times the cannons were to be in order, and all obstruotioBs that might impede the view from the fort were to be cleared airay. Oae of the governors, having kidnapped a young In- dian, began to instruct him and to pre- pare him for baptism, hoping that he might one day be an ambassador to the tribes of the interior, and thus meet the wishes of the General Oourt in England. But as soon as the General Oourt got wind of this, it ordered the governor to take away the books from this little sav- age and let him grow up in ignorance. It would seem that the mounting wave of dread had crossed the Atlantic; that child one day might instruct his tribe and teach them to rise against the English in favor of the French. How seldom the Hudson Bay officials attempted any such conquests to the gospel may be gathered from a rather sly remark made by Mat- thew Serjeant, one of their employees. He says he has heard Indians pray in French but never in English. Once, seeing an Indian kneel down, he asked him why he did that. " I don't know," was the answer, **but some French trad- ers who came here used to do so, and they told me tiiat If I knelt down and raised my eyes to heaven every night, I should be saved from danger in the end." This same Matthew Serjeant's favorite methods are hardly commend- able on the score of morality. " In the opinion of the witness," we read in the report of 1749, ** if they would give to every Indian leader a g^lon of brandy, and for e\er} Indian of t he nation of the Poets a gallon and a half, it would in- duce the nation to come down and conse- quently enlarge the trade.'* When the choice was to be made between two classes of men so diametrically different, it was only natural that the Indian de- termined to sell his fun* to the French and Oanadians who were near him, who were friends and brothers, rather than travel away up to the Hudson's Bay forts, there to be stiffly received by a man who spoke to him through a wicket, and whose manner seemed to say : Be off as soon as you have been fleeced. Some indeed of the Indians used to saunter into the shore -bound forts; but they were of ten dressed in French clothes, and they had, as a general rule, nothing but the refuse which the French would not take, or the skins that were too bulky for canoe trans- port. Year after year the General Oourt wrote urging upon the factors the need of 10 other fun than beaver and otter, which were almost the only ones they could get. All the most valuable peltiy passed through French hands. AFTKR THK 00NQX7BST. We have now reached the date of the English conquest of Canada. The next sixty years are replete with incident and adventure, into the details of which I would fain enter; but the limits of this lecture and of your patience, ladies and gentlemen, do not allow of my giving more than a few sketches of salient feat- uies in the history of the French element in the Northwest. I will therefore quote a brief summary of this period which I find in Oapt. O. Mercer Adam's * 'Can- adian Northwest," published last year. Having shown how the Rooky Mountains, the Assiniboine and Saskatchewan dis- tricts, the Upper Mississippi and other parts of the continent had been covered by the operations of the French traders and discoverers, he adds: **In short, the whole country was probed and made known to the outer world by the enter- prise of the French and the French Can- adians. As a consequence, any maps of the interior that were at all trustworthy were those of the French; the charts of the English, until long after the con- quest, were ludicrously inaccurate. Hence the opposition to the assumptions of the Hudson's Bay Company, and the hostile rivalry which it engendered. After the conquest, it is true, the French for a time abandoned their western possessions; but the old trading habit returned, stimulated by the sturdy Scotch and the organization of the Canadian *Nor'- Westers.' TheFrench Canadian and the half-breed eagerly entered the employ- ment of the Northwest Fur Company" — which was "entirely a Canadian venture, a private joint stock company, composed of French, Scottish, and, to some extent, half-beed traders, organized in 1783." While the H. B. shares sank very low, this new company was rapidly coining money. "Long and unweariedly" did the French Canadian and the half-breed '^ork in its interests. "For a time no other race or class of men could have been more serviceable to the company. They were inured to hardships; they were at home in the woods; their relations with the Indians were of the happiest; and tbey were never homesick, or out of humor with their surroundings. Fur- thermore, they were always loyal to the company." Here I beg to interpolate an important remark. In the lon|( run the Northwest Company behaved m a most atrocious manner towards the Colonists. This seems to be the growing verdict of history. But to get to that verdict much evidence pro and con has to be weighed. A gentleman who has published interesting sketches of this period tells me that it took him years of research before he was convinced that, in the conflicts of the early part of this century the Nor'- Westers were the chief oflfenders. Now, if the case is so intricate to one who studies it without prejudice or passion, the French Cana- dians cannot surely be blamed for their fidelity to the masters who were, of course, careful to give the deepest pos- sible color of justice to their violent pro- ceedings. Capt. Adams centinues: "With zest did they enter into the feuds be- tween THK N. W. CO. and its rival, the H. B. C, which had finally awakened from its lethargy" "and with equal zest did they tidte up their masters' unfortunate quarrel with Lord Selkirk and his colony. * * In thece engagements forts were fired and fur depots destroyed. For a time hostilities were keen and continuous, and on both sides ruinous. Finally, the Hudson Bays and Nor'- westers coalesced; and from 1821 the amalgamated corporations traded under the old English title and charter ef the Hudson's Bay Company. This coalition of the Nor'- Westers with its English rival gave great strength to the united company. It brought it an accession of capable traders and intelli* gent voyageurs and discoverers." A OBITIOISM OF TASXXAS. "Intelligent," "capable," "loyal," "in- ured to hardships"; these adjectives of Capt. Adam's sum up his view of the French element in the Northwest some 70 years i^o. Mr. Parkman thinks dif- ferently. Contrasting the Canadian voy- ageur with the English colonist, that brU- liant writer says : "In every quality of efficiency and strength, the Canadian fell miserably below his rival ; but in all that pleases the eye and interests the imagination, he far surpassed him. Buoy- ant and gay, like his ancestry of France, he made the frozen wilderness ring with merriment, answered the surly howling of l\e pine forest with peals of laughter, and warmed with revelry the groan- ing ice of the St. Lawrence. Careless and thoughtless he lived ^ ( * Ki' 11 % 9 AU happy in the midst of poverty, oontent if he oould bat gain the msani to fill hit tobaooo pouoh, and decorate the cap of hie mittreu with a ribbon." (Con- spiraoy of Pontiao, vol. I, p. 48 ) A.nd ao on for page upon page, the piotureaqne- neaa inoreasing as the truth deoreases For Blr. Parkeaan belongs to a aohool of historians with whom truth is quite a secondary consideration. Gibbon with his pompous show of scholarly knowl- edge was their leader; Macualay's neatly balanced sentence and startling anti- thetical effects made them popular ; Froude's rich word-painting continued to share this popularity until he had the misfortune to drop down into the arena of living, present facta in hia Oceana, when a New Zealander held him up to scorn as a describer of things that are not; and now Mr. Parkman's historical romances still are paramount among the profanum vulgua in America, though his aecond-rate poetical prose aeema to have damaged him in England. Such hiatoriea are made to aell,and they do ao remarkably well, even as regarcU thoae that buy them. The writers give plenty of facts) only they group them in their own way. Facts, no doubt, are the basis •i history; but the truth of history depends on the way you see them. If I long to see a dear friend, it would be a mockery to show me his foot or his hand, or to let me see his face all blackened, scarred and begrimed. But the histori- es school I am speaking of does not hesitate to sacrifice facts themselves to the balance of a sentence or to the ideal consistency of the view they have evolved from their inner consciousness. They know that the vast majority of their readers being but half educated, will take it for granted that such fascinating descriptions must be correct. How oould Mr. Parkman deny to the Canadian voyageura efficiency and strenffth? We have seen that they were so efficient as to make the North- west company a terror to the Hudson Bay Company; ao strong as to be "inured to har^.shiDB" beyond any of their fellow- trappers. Owing to the French Can- adian's persuasive aacendancy over the Indiana, and to the general in- fluence of the French element, the Northweat Company obliged all ita aervanta to apeak French, and, when it imparted aome lad from Scotland, it took care to make him learn the language in aome prieat'a or farmer'a houae in Lower Canada. Hence it hap- pened that, while the Hudson Bays were known as **leB Anglais," the Northwest- ers were called *'les Franoais." Either Mr. Parkman was not aware of these facts, and yet he is famous for his his- torical documents; or he has chuckled over his skill in patting a man on the back with ene hand while he slaps him in the face with the other, and then we had better leave him to the judgment of pos- terity. But there is one question on which no such remote decision need be waited for. IVIr. Parkman gives his readers to r nder- atand that the number of French-Can- adian half-breeda about the middle of laat century was very considerable. "The French," he says, "became savages. Hundreds betook themselves to the forest never to return. These overflowings of French civilization were merged in the waste of barbarism,as a river is lost in the sands of the desert. The wandering Frenchman chose a wife or a concubine among his Indian friends : and, in a few generations, scarcely a tribe of the west was f reefrom an infusion of Celtic blood. " Conspiracy of Pontiac, Vol. I. p. 78. True to his pet process of generalizing widely from the most slender particulars, Mr. Parkman favors us with one word only that looks like something definite. He aaya "hundreda" of Frenchmen be- came aavagea and had half-breed children. Now "hundreda" muat im- ply two or three hundred at least. True, this passage occurs in a chapter de- voted to a general view of French, Eng- lish and Indians during the ceatury and a half between 1608 and 1763, and conse- quently the "hundreds'' may be scattered over all this period of 156 years and over all the immense region then occupied by the French. If so, the general proposi- tion that the French who lived with the Indians became savages themselves really means that those who did lapse into bar- barism were proportionately very few, on an average about two every year in all the north, west and southwest of this conti- nent; and this would be exactly the re- verse of what the author sets himself to prove. Evidently this cannot be his meaning. The very next paragraph indi- cates that the Northwest is the country he had specially in his mind ; for it begins with these words: ''The fur trade engen- dered a peculiar class of men, known oy the appropriate name of bushrangers, or *courreurs de boia.' * * Many of n them, ihakinx looM every tie of blood and kindred, identified themielvee with the Indiaiu, and ■ank into utter barbariam." The ooUeoiive term ** many, " oouneoted with the "hundred*" above, neoeuarily implies a large number, say a couple of hundred, who must have left at least as many half-breed families 'behind them In the teeth of this fantastic estimate, I do not hesitate to affirm that neither llr. Parkr m4u nor anybody else can establish, even on probable grounds, the existence of ten French half-breed families in the Northwest in the middle of last century. At present I must rest with this categori- cal denial. The subject is too important to be handled without carefully collated statistics. These are accumulating in my hands, and will furnish matter at some future date for a paper in which I shdll prove by facta and figures that the num- ber of French half-breeds in the North- west as late as the beginning of this century has been vastly exacgerated by the generality of historians. THB VOYAOBTTBS' MORAUTY. A word about the morality of the aver- age Canadian *' voyageur des pays d'en haut." It were absurd to pretend that he was a saint. Far from it. All I do maintain is that he was certainly not more immoral, probably much lers so, than traders of other nations, and that he did not give up his faith in Christian- ity. The proof of this last assertion is that when the Catholic Missionaries re newed in this century the hunt for savage souls which had been cut short 46 years before by the suppression of the Society of Jesus, they found everywhere from St. Boniface to the MoKenzie River, the seed of the faith sown in many Indian or haUbreed families by the ap- parently reckless Canadian. Careless he may be about amassing a fortune — and who can prove that he is wrong if he sees no .earthly utility and much unearthly danger in a life of anxious drudgery that ends in death) — but he is seldom careless about the mam chance. Bishop Proyen- cher used to tell the story of a man named Tourangeau, who had married a half- breed pagan of Lake Athabasca. Through a mistaken spirit of non interference he had never spoken to her of religion. But one day she heard a man named Morin reading about hell from the New Testa- ment, and making comments on what he read. She asked for further information, which so startled her that she could not sleep that night, and when her hosband returned from a few days' hunt she begged him to tell her if he really had known all these years that there is a hell. "Of course I knew it all along," said he, "and it u to avoid that place that you see me pray morning and evening." She gave him no peace until he promised to take her to St. Boniface, where MonsaigneurProvencher then was Thus, thanks to the good words of Antoine Morin, who not only read his Bible but understood it, she and her husband travelled 1,800 miles that they might not be eternally lost. THB PIBBT WHITB WOMAN. Meanwhile an event had taken place which was to have a lasting influence on the French element in the Northwest. In the summer of 1806 the fint white wo- man came to the Red River. Her hus- band, J. B. LajAinoniere, after five years spent in the Northwest, hid retnrned to Maskinonge, in the Three Rivera dis- trict, to visit his family. There he fell in love with Marie Anne Gktboury and married her on the 21st of April, 1806. About a fortnight after the wedding, this brave Canadian woman consented to ac- company her lord without any prospect of ever coming back. To an imagination that can reconstruct the status of this country eighty yean ago, the fint of her sex who thus went into lifelong exile is little, if at all, short of a heroine. Her adventures in the prairie whither she followed her husband for many yean, her sterling piety throughout her whole life, her hair-breadth escapes from Indians, from a buffalo stampede, from Fort Douglas after the sanguinary conflict in whidi Gov. Semple and 20 of his men were killed, would furnish forth matter for a thrilling novel. Fr. Da- gast's biography of Mme. Lajimoniere gives the unvarnished truth. I cannot dwell upon its chief points here. Suffice it to say that she lived till the age of 96 at St. Boniface, that her eldest daughter, Mme. Petrin, the first white woman born in this country, is still living and was eighty last Twelfth Night (1887), that there have come into the world 632 children, grandchildren, great grand- children, and great great-grandchildren of Madame Lajimoniere, that about 500 of these descendants are still living in Canada, and that most of the families sprung from her, number from 12 to 18 children each. #• * ^*> *li 18 f- • els a man to dislike an- other beca'iV4 his nationality is difbrent, is just as odious to me in a French Cana- dian as in anyone else. I wish thr« Scotch and the Irish and the English to get the credit of all their good qualitiea; ut I want them to respect the claims of others, too. By all means let each race cherish its traditions; only let us be care- ful not to attack one another. No race is faultless; but if each race admires in the other the qualities it lacks itself, we shall develop a true patriotic spirit that will blenl us into one harmonious nation. Social contact and intermarriages be- tween different races that are one in faith would tend to break down the bar- riers of unreasoning prejudice, and to make us "Great a people heart to heart." > ^J "vr^ ^ 4 t <»J 'iT^ .<.' 'i<.