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FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA.
PART FIRST.
PIONEERS OF FRANCE,
IN THE
NEW WORLD,
BY
FRANCIS PARKMAN,
AUTHOR OF “THE OREGON TRAIL,” AND “THE CONSPIRACY
OF PONTIAC.” .
REVISED, WITH ADDITIONS.
B O S T O N :
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1894.
Copyright, 1865,
BY FRANCIS PARKMAN.
Copyright, 1885,
BY FRANCIS PARKMAN.
Čámigersity 43rtgs:
John WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
TO THE MEMORY
OF
THEODORE PARKMAN, ROBERT GOULD SHAW,
AND HENRY WARE HALL,
SLAIN IN BATTLE,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED BY THEIR KINSMAN,
THE AUTHOR.
*
&
%
%
*
DREFATORY NOTE
TO THE TWENTY-FIFTH EDITION,
SINCE this book first appeared some new docu-
mentary evidence touching it has been brought to
light, and, during a recent visit to Florida, I have
acquired a more exact knowledge of the localities
connected with the French occupation of that re-
gion. This added information is incorporated in
the present edition, which has also received some
literary revision.
BosTON, September 16, 1885.
INTRODUCTION.
THE springs of American civilization, unlike
those of the elder world, lie revealed in the clear
light of History. In appearance they are feeble;
in reality; copious and full of force. Acting at
the sources of life, instruments otherwise weak
become mighty for good and evil, and men, lost
elsewhere in the crowd, stand forth as agents of
Destiny. In their toils, their sufferings, their con-
flicts, momentous questions were at stake, and
issues vital to the future world, - the prevalence
of races, the triumph of principles, health or dis-
ease, a blessing or a curse. On the obscure strife
where men died by tens or by scores hung ques-
tions of as deep import for posterity as on those
mighty contests of national adolescence where car-
nage is reckoned by thousands.
The subject to which the proposed series will
be devoted is that of “France in the New
World,” — the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy,

and Rome. to master a continent where, at this
hour, half a million of bayonets are vindicating
the ascendency of a re : – Feu-
dalism still strong in life, t h enveloped and
overborne by new-born Centralization; Monarchy
X INTRODUCTION.

in the flush of triumphant power; Rome, nerved
by disaster, springing with renewed vitality—from
‘asſes and corruption, and ranging the earth to
reconquer abroad what she had lost at home.
-Thèse banded powers, pushing into the wilderness
their indomitable soldiers and devoted priests,
unveiled the secrets of the barbarotis continent,
pierced the forests, traced and mapped out the
streams, planted their emblems, built their forts,
and claimed all as their own. New-Fräihee was
all head. Under king, noble, and Jesuit-the-lank,

lean body would not thrive. Even commerc ^e
º:*.
aspiſed to forest seigniories and hor *
retainers.
Aſong the borders of the sea an adverse power
was strengthening and widening, with slow but
steadfast growth, full of blood and muscle, – a
body without a head. Each had its strength, each
its weakness, each its own modes of vigorous life:
but the one was fruitful, the other barren ; the
one instinct with hope, the other darkening with
shadows of despair.
By name, local position, and character, one of
these communities of freemen stands forth as the
most conspicuous representative of this antago-
nism : — Liber &
and New France. The one—was the offspring of a
triumphant government; the other, of an oppressed
and fligitive peºple-the-eae, an unfineling cham-
pion of Koman Catholi 3 ov. .
à, Vanguard of the Reform. Each followed its nat-
cus

INTRODUCTION. Xi
ural laws of growth, and each came to its natural
result.TWITâtized—by-the-priñeiples—of its felin-
dation, the Puritan commonwealth grew apace.
New England—was pre-eminently the land of mate-
rial progress. Here the prize was within every
man's reach; patient industry need never doubt
its reward; nay, in defiance of the four Gospels,
assiduity in pursui ain was proj
rank of a duty, and thrift and godliness were
linked in equivocal wedlock. Politically she was

free; socially she suffered from that subtile and
searching oppression which the dominant Opinion
of a free community may exercise over the mem-
bers who compose it. As a wheles-she-grew upon
the gaze of the world, a signal example of expan-
salient anistriking forms of character which often
give a dramatič life to the āmīāls of nations far
jess prosperous—T-T

We turn-to-New France, and all is reversed,
Here was ttempt to crush under the exac-

*...*.* to stifle under the
curbs and trappings of a feudal monarchy, a people
º:º:*
whose schools were the forest and the sea, whose
tº ºn armºniº win ºvº, and
º;
But this fierce spirit had its vent. he story O
St, a STOI
Nº.
war — for so he Unders believed — with the
adversary of mankind himself war wiſh savage
ºrpºmmºnweallºwirwiſh
J.-4–T-- *-
xii INTRODUCTION.
the encroaching powers of Heresy and of England.
Her brave, unthinking people were stamped with
the soldier's virtues and the soldier's faults; and
in their leaders were displayed, on a grand and
novel stage, the energies, aspirations, and pas-
sions which belong to hopes vast and vague, ill-
restricted powers, and stations of command.
The growth of New England was a result of
the aggregate efforts of a busy multitude, each in
..º. º.º.º.
competence or wealth. The expansion of New
France was the achievement of a gigantic ambi-


tion striving to grasp a continent. It was a vain
attempt. Long and valiantly her chiefs upheld

their cause, leading to battle a vassal population,
warlike as themselves. Borne down by number
from without, wasted by corruption from within,
New France fell at last , and, out of her fall grew.
revolutions whose influence to this hour is felt.
through every nation of the eivilized—world-
The French dominion is a memory of the past;
and when we evoke its departed shades, they rise
upon us from their graves in strange, romantic
guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to
burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord
and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with
wild forms of Savage warriors, knit in close fellow-
ship on the same stern errand. A boundless vis-
io rows upon us ; an untamed continent ; vast
wastes of forest VETTTFETmountains Siſent in pri-


meval sleep ; river, lake, and glimmering pool;
wilderness Oceans mingling with the sky. Such
INTRODUCTION. xiii

Wa/S tº e ance conquered for Civ-
ilization. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade
of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and
fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in
antique learning, pale with the close breath of the
cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their
lives, ruled Savage hordes with a mild, parental
sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of
death. Men of courtly nurture, heirs to the polish
of a far-reaching ancestry, here, with their daunt-
less hardihood, put to shame the boldest sons of
toil.
This memorable but half-forgotten chapter in
the book of human life can be rightly read only
by lights numerous and widely scattered. The
earlier period of New France was prolific in a
class of publications which are often of much his-
toric value, but of which many are exceedingly
rare. The writer, however, has at length gained
access to them all. Of the unpublished records of
the colonies, the archives of France are of course
the grand deposit; but many documents of impor-
tant bearing on the subject are to be found scat-
tered in public and private libraries, chiefly in
France and Canada. The task of collection has
proved abundantly irksome and laborious. It has,
however, been greatly lightened by the action of
the governments of New York, Massachusetts, and
Canada, in collecting from Europe copies of docu-
ments having more or less relation to their own
history. It has been greatly lightened, too, by a
most kind co-operation, for which the writer owes
Xiv INTRODUCTION.
obligations too many for recognition at present,
but of which he trusts to make fitting acknowledg-
ment hereafter. Yet he cannot forbear to mention
the name of Mr. John Gilmary Shea of New York,
to whose labors this department of American his-
tory has been so deeply indebted, and that of the
Hon. Henry Black of Quebec. Nor can he refrain
from expressing his obligation to the skilful and
friendly criticism of Mr. Charles Folsom.
In this, and still more must it be the case in
succeeding volumes, the amount of reading applied
to their composition is far greater than the cita-
tions represent, much of it being of a collateral
and illustrative nature. This was essential to a
plan whose aim it was, while scrupulously and
rigorously adhering to the truth of facts, to ani-
mate them with the life of the past, and, so far as
might be, clothe the skeleton with flesh. If, at
times it may seem that range has been allowed to
fancy, it is so in appearance only ; since the mi-
nutest details of narrative or description rest. On
authentic documents or on personal observation.
Faithfulness to the truth of history involves far
more than a research, however patient and scrupu-
lous, into special facts. Such facts may be detailed
with the most minute exactness, and yet the nar-
rative, taken as a whole, may be unmeaning or
untrue. The narrator must seek to imbue himself
with the life and spirit of the time. He must
study events in their bearings near and remote ;
in the character, habits, and manners of those
who took part in them. He must himself be, as
INTRODUCTION. XV
it were, a sharer or a spectator of the action he
describes.
With respect to that special research which, if
inadequate, is still in the most emphatic sense in-
dispensable, it has been the writer's aim to exhaust
the existing material of every subject treated.
While it would be folly to claim success in such
an attempt, he has reason to hope that, so far at
least as relates to the present volume, nothing of
much importance has escaped him. With respect
to the general preparation just alluded to, he has
long been too fond of his theme to neglect any
means within his reach of making his conception
of it distinct and true.
To those who have aided him with information
and documents, the extreme slowness in the pro-
gress of the work will naturally have caused sur-
prise. This slowness was unavoidable. During
the past eighteen years, the state of his health has
exacted throughout an extreme caution in regard
to mental application, reducing it at best within
narrow and precarious limits, and often precluding
it. Indeed, for two periods, each of several years,
any attempt at bookish occupation would have
been merely suicidal. A condition of sight arising
from kindred sources has also retarded the work,
since it has never permitted reading or writing
continuously for much more than five minutes,
and often has not permitted them at all. A pre-
vious work, “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” was
written in similar circumstances.
The writer means, if possible, to carry the pres-
xvi INTRODUCTION.
ent design to its completion. Such a completion,
however, will by no means be essential as regards
the individual volumes of the series, since each
will form a separate and independent work. The
present volume, it will be seen, contains two dis-
timet and completed narratives. Some progress
has been made in others.
BOSTON, January 1, 1865.
C O N T E N T S.
HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.
PREFATORY NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
CIIAPTER I.
1512–1561.
EARLY SPAN ISII AIDVENTURE.
Spanish Voyagers. — Romance and Avarice. — Ponce de Leon. —
The Fountain of Youth and the River Jordan. — Discovery of
Florida. — Garay. — Ayllon. — Pamphilo de Narvaez. – His Fate.
— Hernando de Soto. — His Enterprise. — IIis Adventures. – His
Death. — Succeeding Voyagers. — Spanish Claim to Florida. —
English and French Claim. — Spanish Jealousy of France . . . 9
CHAPTER II.
1550–1558.
VII, LEGA GNON.
Spain in the Sixteenth Century. — France. — The Huguenots. –
The Court. – Gaspar de Coligny. — Priests and Monks. – Nicolas
Durand de Villegagnon. — His Exploits. – His Character. — His
Scheme of a Protestant Colony. — IIuguenots at Rio Janeiro. –
Despotism of Villegagnon. — Villegagnon and the Ministers. –
Polemics. – The Ministers expelled. — Their Sufferings. – Ruin
Of the Colony o ſº º e º e g g & tº & & e is © te & we e 20
CHAPTER III.
I 562, 1563.
J.E.AN RIBA UT.
A Sečond Huguenot Colony — Coligny, his Position. — The Hugue-
not Party, its motley Character. — The Puritans of Massachu-
setts. – Ribaut sails for Florida. —The River of May. — Hopes. –
h
xviii CONTENTS,
PAGE
Illusions. – The Sea Islands. – Port Royal. — Charlesfort. — Albert
and his Colony. — Frolic. — Adventure. —Improvidence. — Famine.
— Mutiny. — Barré takes Command. — A Brigantine built. —
Elorida abandoned. — Tempest. — Desperation. — Cannibalism . .
CHAPTER IV.
1564.
LAUDONNIRRE,
The New Colony. — René de Laudonnière. — The Peace of Amboise.
--- Satouriona. — The Promised Land. — Miraculous Longevity. —
Fort Caroline. — Native Tribes. – Ottigny explores the St. John’s.
— River Scenery. — The Thimagoas. – Conflicting Alliances. –
Indian War. — Diplomacy of Laudonnière. — Vasseur's Expedition.
- Battle and Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER V.
1564, 1565.
CONSF I RACY.
Discontent. — Plot of La Roquette. — Piratical Excursion.— Sedition.
— Illness of Laudonnière. — The Commandant put in Irons. –
Plan of the Mutineers. — Buccaneering. — Disaster and Repent-
ance. — The Ringleaders hanged. — Order restored . . . .
CHAPTER VI.
1564, 1565.
FAMINE. – WAIR... — SUCCOR.
La Roche Ferrière. — Pierre Gambie. — The King of Calos — Ro-
mantic Tales. – Ottigny’s Expedition. — Starvation. — Efforts to
escape from Florida. — Indians unfriendly. — Seizure of Outina. —
Attempts to extort Ransom. —Ambuscade. —Battle. — Desperation
of the French. — Sir John Hawkins relieves them. — Ribaut brings
Reinforcements. – Arrival of the Spaniards . . . © to 9 &
CHAPTER VII.
1565.
MENENIDEZ.
Spain. — Pedro Menendez de Avilés. – His Boyhood. — His Early
Career. — His Petition to the King. — Commissioned to conquer
33
48
68
CONTENTS. XIX
PAGE
Florida; — His Powers. — His Designs. – A New Crusade. —
Sailing of the Spanish Fleet. — A Storm. – Porto Rico. — Energy
of Menendez. — He reaches Florida. — Attacks Ribaut's Ships. –
Founds St. Augustine. — Alarm of the French. — Bold Decision
of Ribaut. — Defenceless Condition of Fort Caroline. — Ribaut
thwarted.—Tempest. — Menendez marches on the French Fort. —
His Desperate Resolution. — The Fort taken. — The Massacre. —
The Fugitives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER VIII.
1565.
MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS.
Menendez returns to St. Augustine. — Tidings of the French. —
Ribaut shipwrecked. — The March of Menendez. — He discovers
the French. —Interviews. – Hopes of Mercy. — Surrender of the
French. — Massacre. — Return to St. Augustine. — Tidings of
Ribaut's Party. — His Interview with Menendez. — Deceived and
betrayed. — Murdered. — Another Massacre. — French Accounts.
—Schemes of the Spaniards. – Survivors of the Carnage . . .
CHAPTER IX.
1565–1567.
CIHARLES IX. AND PHILIP II.
State of International Relations. – Complaints of Philip the Second.
— Reply of Charles the Ninth. — News of the Massacre. — The
French Court demands Redress. – The Spanish Court refuses it .
CHAPTER X.
1567–1574.
DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES.
His Past Life. — His Hatred of Spaniards. – Resolves on Vengeance.
— His Band of Adventurers. — His Plan divulged. — His Speech.
— Enthusiasm of his Followers. — Condition of the Spaniards. –
Arrival of Gourgues. – Interviews with Indians. – The Span-
iards attacked. — The First Fort carried. — Another Victory.
—The Final Triumph. — The Prisoners hanged. — The Forts
destroyed. — Sequel of Gourgues's Career. — Menendez. — His
96
131
Death . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
YX CONTENTS.
CHAMPILAIN ANT) HIS ASSOCIATES.
PAGE
PREFATORY NOTE & º º g w gº º e & tº & wº & J. g & º º 1 83
CHAPTER I.
1488–1543.
EARLY FRIEN CHI ADVENTURE IN NORTII AMERICA.
Traditions of French Discovery. — Cousin. — Normans, Bretons,
Basques. – Legends and Superstitions. – Francis the First. —
Verrazzano. — His Voyage to North America, – Jacques Cartier.
— His First Voyage. — Iſis Second Voyage. — Anchors at Quebec.
— Indian Masquerade. — Visits Hochelaga. — His Reception. —
Mont Royal. — Winter at Quebec. —- Scurvy.- Wonderful Cures.
— Kidnapping – Return to France. — Roberval. — Spanish Jeal-
ousy. — Cartier's Third Voyage. — Cap Rouge. — Roberval sails
for New France. — IIis Meeting with Cartier. — Marguerite and
the Isles of Demons. – Roberval at Cap Rouge. — His Severity.
— Ruin of the Colony. — His Death . . . . . . . . . . . 187
CHAPTER II.
1542–1604.
Y LA Roche. — cIIAMPLAIN. — DE MONTs.
French Fishermen and Fur Traders. Nºta Roche. — His Voyage. —
The Convicts of Sable Island. — Pontgravč and Chauvin. — Ta-
doussac. — Henry the Fourth. —Tranquillity restored in France.
– Samuel de Champlain. — He visits the West Indies and Mexico.
– His Character. — De Chastes and Champlain. — Champlain and
Pontgrave explore the St. Lawrence. — Death of De Chastes.—
De Monts. – His Acadian Schemes. – His Patent . . . . . .
2
2
9
CHAPTER III.
1604, 1605.
A CAIDIA OCC CPIET).
Catholic and Calvinist. — The Lost Priest. — Port Royal. — The
Colony of St. Croix. – Winter Miseries. – Explorations of
Champlain. — He visits the Coast of Massachusetts. – De Monts
at Port Royal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
CONTENTS. XXI
CHAPTER IV.
1605–1607.
LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN.
PAGE
De Monts at Paris. – Marc Lescarbot. — Rochelle. — A New Em-
barkation. — The Ship aground. — The outward Voyage. — Arri-
val at Port Royal. — Disappointment. — Voyage of Champlain. —
Skirmish with Indians. – Masquerade of Lescarbot. — Winter
Life at Port Royal. — L’Ordre de Bon-Temps. – Excursions. –
Spring Employments. – Hopes blighted. — Port Royal abandoned.
– Membertou. — Return to France . . . . . . . . . . . 258
CHAPTER V.
1610, 1611.
TIII, JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONIESS. 8-9
Schemes of Poutrincourt. — The Jesuits and the King. — The
Jesuits disappointed. — Sudden Conversions. – Indian Proselytes.
— Assassination of the King. — Biencourt at Court. — Madame de
Guercheville.—She resists the King's Suit. — Becomes a Devotee.
— Her Associates at Court. — She aids the Jesuits. – Biard and
Masse. — They sail for America. . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
CHAPTER VI.
1611, 1612.
JESUITS IN ACADIA,
The Jesuits arrive.—Collision of Powers Temporal and Spiritual.
— Excursion of Biencourt. — Father Masse. — His Experience as
a Missionary. — Death of Membertou. — Father Biard’s Indian
Studies. – Dissension.— Misery at Port Royal. — Grant to Madame
de Guercheville. – Gilbert du Thet. — Quarrels, — Anathemas, –
Truce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
CHAPTER VII.
1613.
LA SAUSSAY E. - AIRGALL,
Forlorn Condition of Poutrincourt. —Voyage of La Saussaye. —
Mount Desert. — St. Sauveur. — The Jesuit Colony. — Captain
Samuel Argall. — He attacks the French. — Death of Du Thet. —
I(navery of Argall. — St. Sauveur destroyed. — The Prisoners , 300
xxii CONTENTS.
CHAPTCR VIII.
1613–1615.
RUIN OF FIREN CH ACAIDIA.
PAGE
The Jesuits at Jamestown. — Wrath of Sir Thomas Dale. — Second
Expedition of Argall. — Port Royal demolished. — Equivocal
IPosture of the Jesuits. – Jeopardy of Father Biard. — Biencourt
and Argall. — Adventures of Biard and Quentin. — Sequel of
Argall's History. — Death of Poutrincourt. — The French will not
abandon Acadia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
CHAPTER IX.
1608, 1609.
CIIAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC.
A new Enterprise. — The St. Lawrence. — Conflict with Basques.
—Tadoussac. — The Saguenay. — Quebec founded. — Conspiracy.
— The Montagnais. – Winter at Quebec. —Spring. — Projects of
Exploration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
CHAPTER X.
1609.
I, AIKE CHAMPI, AIN.
Champlain joins a War Party. — Preparation. —War-Dance. —
Departure. — The River Richelieu. — The Rapids of Chambly.
— The Spirits consulted. — Discovery of Lake Champlain. —
Battle with the Iroquois. – Fate of Prisoners. — Panic of the
Victors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
CHAPTER XI.
1610–1612.
WAR. — TRADE. — DISCOVERY.
Champlain at Fontainebleau. — Champlain on the St. Lawrence. —
Alarm. — Battle. — Victory. — War Parties. – Rival Traders. —
Icebergs. – Adventurers. — Champlain at Montreal. – Return to
France. — Narrow Escape of Champlain. — The Comte de Sois-
sons — The Prince de Condé. — Designs of Champlain . . . . 353
CONTENTS. xxiii
CHAPTER XII.
1612, 1613.
THE IMPOSTOR VIGNA U.
Illusions. – A Path to the North Sea. — Champlain on the Ottawa.
— Forest Travellers. — The Chaudière. —Isle des Allumettes. –
Ottawa Towns. – Tessouat. — Indian Cemetery. — Feast. — The
Impostor exposed. – Return of Champlain. — False Alarm. —
Arrival at Montreal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER XIII.
H 615.
DISCOVERY OF LARE THURON.
Beligious Zeal of Champlain. — Récollet Friars. — St. Francis.--
The Franciscans. – The Friars in New France. — Dolbeau. — Le
Caron. — Policy of Champlain. — Missions. – Trade. — Explo-
ration. — War. — Le Caron on the Ottawa. — Champlain's Ex-
pedition. — He reaches Lake Nipissing. – Embarks on Lake
Huron. —The Huron Villages. – Meeting with Le Caron. — Mass
in the Wilderness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER XIV.
1615, 1616.
THE GREAT WAR PARTY.
Muster of Warriors. — Departure. — The River Trent. — Deer Hunt.
— Lake Ontario. — The Iroquois Town. — Attack. — Repulse. —
Champlain wounded. – Retreat. — Adventures of Étienne Brulé.
— Winter Hunt. — Champlain lost in the Forest. — Returns to
the Huron Villages. – Visits the Tobacco Nation and the Che-
veua Relevés. – Becomes Umpire of Indian Quarrels. – Returns
to Quebec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER XV.
1616–1627.
HOSTILE SECTS. — RIVAL INTEREST.S.
Quebec. — Condition of the Colonists. – Dissensions. – Montmo-
rency. — Arrival of Madame de Champlain. — Her History and
Character. — Indian Hostility. — The Monopoly of William and
Émery de Caen.—The Duc de Ventadour. —The Jesuits. –
PAGE
36?
384
393
xxiv. CONTENTS.
Their Arrival at Quebec. — Catholics and Heretics. – Com-
promises. – The Rival Colonies. – Despotism in New France and
in New England. — Richelieu. — The Company of the Hundred
Associates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER XVI.
1628, 1629.
THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC.
Revolt of Rochelle. — War with England. — David Kirke. — The
English on the St. Lawrence. — Alarms at Quebec. — Bold Atti-
tude of Champlain. — Naval Battle. — The French Squadron
destroyed. — Famine at Quebec. — Return of the English. —
Quebec surrendered. — Another Naval Battle. — Michel. — His
Quarrel with Brébeuf. — His Death. — Exploit of Daniel. —
Champlain at London . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER XVII.
1632–1635.
IDEATH OF CHAMPLAIN.
New France restored to the French Crown.— Motives for reclaiming
it. —- Caen takes Possession of Quebec. – Return of Jesuits. –
Arrival of Champlain. — Daily Life at Quebec. — Policy and
Religion. —Death of Champlain. — His Character. — Future of
New France . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INDEX ve º © s © © & o © o * e tº © & & © * > o & ©
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417
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HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA:-
WITH A
SKETCH OF HUGUENOT COLONIZATION IN BRAZIL.
HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.
THE story of New France opens with a tragedy.
The political and religious enmities which were
soon to bathe Europe in blood broke out with an
intense—and concentred avr & t wil
of Florida. It was under equi auspices that
Coligny a e rtisans essayed ild up a

Calvinist France in America, and the attempt was
met by all the forces of national rivalry, personal
interest, and religious hate.

This striking passa our early history is
remarkable for ess and precision TO €
authorities that illustrate it. The incidents of the
Huguenot occupation of Florida are recorded by
eight eyewitnesses. Their evidence is marked by
an unusual accord in respect to essential facts, as
well as by a minuteness of statement which viv-
idly pictures the events described. The following
are the principal authorities consulted for the main
body of the narrative.
Ribauld, The Whole and True Discoverie of Terra
Florida. This is Captain Jean Ribaut's account of
his voyage to Florida in 1562. It was “prynted
at London,” “newly set forthe in Englishe,” in
4. HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.
1563, and reprinted by Hakluyt in 1582 in his
black-letter tract entitled Divers Voyages. It is
not known to exist in the Original French.
L’Histoire Notable de la Floride, mise en lumière
par M. Basanier (Paris, 1586). The most valua-
ble portion of this work consists of the letters of
René de Laudonnière, the French commandant in
Florida in 1564–65. They are interesting, and,
with necessary allowance for the position and pre-
judices of the writer, trustworthy.
Challeux, Discours de l’Histoire de la Floride
(Dieppe, 1566). Challeux was a carpenter, who
went to Florida in 1565. He was above sixty
years of age, a zealous Huguenot, and a philoso-
pher in his way. His story is affecting from its
simplicity. Various editions of it appeared under
various titles.
Le Moyne, Brevis Narratio eorum quae in Flo-
Tida America, Provincia Gallis acciderunt. Le
Moyne was Laudonnière's artist. His narrative
forms the Second Part of the Grands Voyages of
De Bry (Frankfort, 1591). It is illustrated by
numerous drawings made by the writer from
memory, and accompanied with descriptive letter-
press.
Coppie d'une Lettre venant de la Floride (Paris,
1565). This is a letter from one of the adven-
turers under Laudonnière. It is reprinted in the
Jºecueil de Pièces sur la Floride of Ternaux-Com-
pans. Ternaux also prints in the same volume a
narrative called Histoire mémorable du dernier
Voyage faict par le Capitaine Jean Ribaut. It is
HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA. 5
of no original value, being compiled from Laudon-
nière and Challeux.
Ume Requête du Roy, faite en forme de Com-
plainte (1566). This is a petition for redress to
Charles the Ninth from the relatives of the French
massacred in Florida by the Spaniards. It re-
counts many incidents of that tragedy.
La Reprinse de la Floride par le Cappitaine
Gourgue. This is a manuscript in the Biblio-
thèque Nationale, printed in the Recueil of Ter-
naux-Compans. It contains a detailed account
of the remarkable expedition of Dominique de
Gourgues against the Spaniards in Florida in
1567–68.
Charlevoix, in his Histoire de la Nouvelle France,
speaks of another narrative of this expedition in
manuscript, preserved in the Gourgues family.
A copy of it, made in 1831 by the Vicomte de
Gourgues, has been placed at the writer's disposal.
Popelinière, De Thou, Wytſleit, D'Aubigné, De
Laet, Brantôme, Lescarbot, Champlain, and other
writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
have told or touched upon the story of the Hugue-
nots in Florida; but they all draw their infor-
mation from one or more of the sources named
above.
Lettres et Papiers d'Estat du Sieur de Forquevaula,
(Bibliothèque Nationale). These include the cor-
respondence of the French and Spanish courts
concerning the massacre of the Huguenots. They
are printed by Gaffarel in his Histoire de la Flo-
wide Française.
6 HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.
The Spanish authorities are the following : —
Barcia, (Cardenas y Cano,) Ensayo Cronologico
para la Historia General de la Florida (Madrid,
1723). This annalist had access to original docu-
ments of great interest. Some of them are used
as material for his narrative, others are copied
entire. Of these, the most remarkable is that of
Solís de las Meras, Memorial de todas las Jorna-
das de la Conquista de la Florida.
Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Relacion
de la Jornada de Pedro Menendez de Aviles en
ld Florida (Documentos Inéditos del Archivo de
Indias, III. 441). A French translation of this
journal will be found in the Recueil de Pièces sur
la Floride of Ternaux-Compans. Mendoza was
chaplain of the expedition commanded by Menen-
dez de Avilés, and, like Solís, he was an eye-
witness of the events which he relates.
Pedro Menendez de Avilés, Siete Cartas escritas
al Rey, Años de 1565 y 1566, MSS. These are
the despatches of the Adelantado Menendez to
Philip the Second. They were procured for the
writer, together with other documents, from the
archives of Seville, and their contents are now
for the first time made public. They consist of
seventy-two closely written foolscap pages, and
are of the highest interest and value as regards
the present subject, confirming and amplifying
the statements of Solís and Mendoza, and giving
new and curious information with respect to the
designs of Spain upon the continent of North
America.
HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA. 7
It is unnecessary to specify the authorities for
the introductory and subordinate portions of the
narrative.
The writer is indebted to Mr. Buckingham
Smith, for procuring copies of documents from
the archives of Spain; to Mr. Bancroft, the his-
torian of the United States, for the use of the
Vicomte de Gourgues's copy of the journal de-
scribing the expedition of his ancestor against
the Spaniards; and to Mr. Charles Russell Lowell,
of the Boston Athenaeum, and Mr. John Langdon
Sibley, Librarian of Harvard College, for obliging
aid in consulting books and papers.
The portrait at the beginning of this volume is
a fac-simile from an old Spanish engraving, of
undoubted authenticity. This also was obtained
through the kindness of Mr. Buckingham Smith.
HUGUENOTS IN FLORIDA.
CHAPTER I.
1512–1561.
EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE.
SPANISH Voy AGERs. – ROMANCE AND AvARICE. — Ponce DE LEON.—
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH AND THE RIVER JorDAN. — FLORIDA
DISCOVERED. — PAMPHILO DE NARVAEz. — HERNANDO DE SOTO. —
HIS CAREER. – HIS DEATH. — SUCCEEDING Vox AGERs. – SPANISH
CLAIM TO FLORIDA. – SPANISH JEALOUsy of FRANCE.
TowARDs the close of the fifteenth century,
Spain achieved her final triumph over the infidels
of Granada, and made her name glorious through
all generations by the discovery of America. The
religious zeal and romantic daring which a long
course of Moorish wars had called forth were now
exalted to redoubled fervor. Every ship from the
New World came freighted with marvels which
put the fictions of chivalry to shame; and to the
Spaniard of that day America was a region of
wonder and mystery, of vague and magnificent
promise. Thither adventurers hastened, thirsting
for glory and for gold, and often mingling the
enthusiasm of the crusader and the valor of the
knight-errant with the bigotry of inquisitors and
the rapacity of pirates. They roamed over land
10 IEARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE. [1513
and sea; they climbed unknown mountains, sur-
veyed unknown oceans, pierced the Sultry intrica-
cies of tropical forests; while from year to year
and from day to day new wonders were unfolded,
new islands and archipelagoes, new regions of
gold and pearl, and barbaric empires of more than
Oriental wealth. The extravagance of hope and
the fever of adventure knew no bounds. Nor is
it surprising that amid such waking marvels the
imagination should run wild in romantic dreams;
that between the possible and the impossible the
line of distinction should be but faintly drawn, and
that men should be found ready to stake life and
honor in pursuit of the most insane fantasies.
Such a man was the veteran cavalier Juan Ponce
de Leon. Greedy of honors and of riches, he em-
barked at Porto Rico with three brigantines, bent
on schemes of discovery. But that which gave
the chief stimulus to his enterprise was a story,
current among the Indians of Cuba and Hispan-
iola, that on the island of Bimini, said to be one
of the Bahamas, there was a fountain of such vir-
tue, that, bathing in its waters, old men resumed
their youth." It was said, moreover, that on a
1 Herrera, Hist. General, Dec. I. Lib. IX. c. 11; De Laet, Novus Orbis,
Lib. I. c. 16; Garcilaso, Hist. de la Florida, Part I. Lib. I. c. 3; Gomara,
Hist. Gen, des Indes Occidentales, Lib. II. c. 10. Compare Peter Martyr,
De Rebus Oceanicis, Dec. VII. c. 7, who says that the fountain was in
Florida.
The story has an explanation sufficiently characteristic, having been
suggested, it is said, by the beauty of the native women, which none
could resist, and which kindled the fires of youth in the veins of age.
The terms of Ponce de Leon's bargain with the King are set forth in
the MS. Capitulacion con Juan Ponce sobre Biminy. He was to have
exclusive right to the island, settle it at his own cost, and be called Ade.
1528.] PONCE DE LEON. 11
neighboring shore might be found a river gifted
with the same beneficent property, and believed
by some to be no other than the Jordan." Ponce
de Leon found the island of Bimini, but not the
fountain. Farther westward, in the latitude of
thirty degrees and eight minutes, he approached
an unknown land, which he named Florida, and,
steering southward, explored its coast as far as
the extreme point of the peninsula, when, after
some farther explorations, he retraced his course
to Porto Rico. *
Ponce de Leon had not regained his youth, but
his active spirit was unsubdued.
Nine years later he attempted to plant a colony
in Florida; the Indians attacked him fiercely; he
was mortally wounded, and died soon afterwards
in Cuba.”
The voyages of Garay and Vasquez de Ayllon
threw new light on the discoveries of Ponce, and
the general outline of the coasts of Florida became
known to the Spaniards.” Meanwhile, Cortés had
conquered Mexico, and the fame of that iniquitous
but magnificent exploit rang through all Spain.
Many an impatient cavalier burned to achieve a
kindred fortune. To the excited fancy of the
lantado of Bimini; but the King was to build and hold forts there, send
agents to divide the Indians among the settlers, and receive first a tenth,
afterwards a fifth, of the gold.
* Fontanedo in Ternaux-Compans, Recueil sur la Floride, 18, 19, 42.
Compare Herrera, Dec. I. Lib. IX. c. 12. In allusion to this belief, the
name Jordan was given eight years afterwards by Ayllon to a river of
South Carolina.
* Hakluyt, Voyages, V. 333; Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, 5.
* Peter Martyr in Hakluyt, V. 333; De Laet, Lib. IV. c. 2.
12 EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE. [1528.
Spaniards the unknown land of Florida seemed
the seat of surpassing wealth, and Pamphilo de
Narvaez essayed to possess himself of its fancied
treasures. Landing on its shores, and proclaiming
destruction to the Indians unless they acknowl-
edged the sovereignty of the Pope and the Em-
peror," he advanced into the forests with three
hundred men. Nothing could exceed their suffer-
ings. Nowhere could they find the gold they came
to seek. The village of Appalache, where they
hoped to gain a rich booty, offered nothing but a
few mean wigwams. The horses gave out, and
the famished soldiers fed upon their flesh. The
men sickened, and the Indians unceasingly harassed
their march. At length, after two hundred and
eighty leagues” of wandering, they found them-
selves on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico,
and desperately put to sea in such crazy boats as
their skill and means could construct. Cold, dis-
ease, famine, thirst, and the fury of the waves,
melted them away. Narvaez himself perished,
and of his wretched followers no more than four
escaped, reaching by land, after years of vicissi-
tude, the Christian settlements of New Spain.”
1 Sommation aur Habitants de la Floride, in Ternaux-Compans, 1.
2 Their own exaggerated reckoning. The journey was probably from
Tampa Bay to the Appalachicola, by a circuitous route.
8 Narrative of Alvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, Second in command to
Narvaez, translated by Buckingham Smith. Cabeça de Vaca was one of
the four who escaped, and, after living for years among the tribes of
Mississippi, crossed the river Mississippi near Memphis, journeyed west-
ward by the waters of the Arkansas and Red River to New Mexico and
Chihuahua, thence to Cinaloa on the Gulf of California, and thence to
Mexico. The narrative is one of the most remarkable of the early
relations. See also Ramusio, III. 310, and Purchas, IV. 1499, where a
1539.] HERNANDO DE SOTO. 13
The interior of the vast country then compre-
hended under the name of Florida still remained
unexplored. The Spanish voyager, as his caravel
ploughed the adjacent seas, might give full scope
to his imagination, and dream that beyond the
long, low margin of forest which bounded his
horizon lay hid a rich harvest for some future
conqueror; perhaps a second Mexico with its royal
palace and sacred pyramids, or another Cuzco with
its temple of the Sun, encircled with a frieze of
gold. Haunted by such visions, the Ocean chivalry
of Spain could not long stand idle.
Hernando de Soto was the companion of Pizarro
in the conquest of Peru. He had come to America
a needy adventurer, with no other fortune than his
sword and target. But his exploits had given him
fame and fortune, and he appeared at court with
the retinue of a nobleman." Still, his active ener-
gies could not endure repose, and his avarice and
ambition goaded him to fresh enterprises. He
asked and obtained permission to conquer Florida.
While this design was in agitation, Cabeça de
Vaca, one of those who had survived the expedi-
tion of Narvaez, appeared in Spain, and for pur-
poses of his own spread abroad the mischievous
falsehood, that Florida was the richest country yet
discovered.” De Soto's plans were embraced with
portion of Cabeça de Vaca is given. Also, Garcilaso, Part I. Lib. I. c. 3;
Gomara, Lib. II. c. 11; De Laet, Lib. IV. c. 3; Barcia, Ensayo Crono-
logico, 19.
1 Relation of the Portuguese Gentleman of Elvas, c. 1. See Descobrimiento
da Florida, c. 1, and Hakluyt, V. 483.
* Relation of the Gentleman of Elvas, c. 2.
14 EARLY SPANISH AIDVENTURE. [1539.
enthusiasm. Nobles and gentlemen contended for
the privilege of joining his standard; and, setting
sail with an ample armament, he landed at the
Bay of Espiritu Santo, now Tampa Bay, in Florida,
with six hundred and twenty chosen men," a band
as gallant and well appointed, as eager in purpose
and audacious in hope, as ever trod the shores of
the New World. The clangor of trumpets, the
neighing of horses, the fluttering of pennons, the
glittering of helmet and lance, startled the ancient
forest with unwonted greeting. Amid this pomp
of chivalry, religion was not forgotten. The sacred
vessels and vestments with bread and wine for the
Eucharist were carefully provided; and De Soto
himself declared that the enterprise was under-
taken for God alone, and seemed to be the object
of His especial care.” These devout marauders
could not neglect the spiritual welfare of the
Indians whom they had come to plunder; and
besides fetters to bind, and bloodhounds to hunt
them, they brought priests and monks for the
saving of their souls.
The adventurers began their march. Their story
has been often told. For month after month and
year after year, the procession of priests and cava-
liers, crossbowmen, arquebusiers, and Indian cap-
tives laden with the baggage, still wandered on
1 Relation of Biedma, in Ternaux-Compans, 51. The Gentleman of
Blvas says in round numbers six hundred. Garcilaso de la Vega, who is
unworthy of credit, makes the number much greater.
* Letter from De Soto to the Municipality of Santiago, dated at the
Harbor of Espiritu Santo, 9 July, 1539. See Ternaux-Compans, Floride,
43.
1541.] ADVENTURES OF DE SOTO. 15
through wild and boundless wastes, lured hither
and thither by the ignisfatuus of their hopes.
They traversed great portions of Georgia, Ala-
bama, and Mississippi, everywhere inflicting and
enduring misery, but never approaching their
phantom El Dorado. At length, in the third year
of their journeying, they reached the banks of the
Mississippi, a hundred and thirty-two years before
its second discovery by Marquette. One of their
number describes the great river as almost half a
league wide, deep, rapid, and constantly rolling
down trees and drift-wood on its turbid current."
The Spaniards crossed over at a point above the
mouth of the Arkansas. They advanced westward,
but found no treasures, – nothing indeed but hard-
ships, and an Indian enemy, furious, writes one of
their officers, “as mad dogs.” “ They heard of a
country towards the north where maize could not
be cultivated because the vast herds of wild cattle
devoured it.” They penetrated so far that they
entered the range of the roving prairie tribes; for,
one day, as they pushed their way with difficulty
across great plains covered with tall, rank grass,
they met a band of Savages who dwelt in lodges of
skins sewed together, subsisting on game alone,
and wandering perpetually from place to place.”
Finding neither gold nor the South Sea, for both of
1 Portuguese Relation, c. 22. 2 Biedma, 95.
3 Portuguese Relation, c. 24. A still earlier mention of the bison
occurs in the journal of Cabeça de Vaca. Thevet, in his Singularités,
1558, gives a picture intended to represent a bison-bull. Coronado saw
this animal in 1540, but was not, as Some assert, its first discoverer.
4 Biedma, 91.
16 EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE. [1542.
which they had hoped, they returned to the banks
of the Mississippi.
De Soto, says one of those who accompanied
him, was a “stern man, and of few words.” Even
in the midst of reverses, his will had been law
to his followers, and he had sustained himself
through the depths of disappointment with the en-
ergy of a stubborn pride. But his hour was come.
He fell into deep dejection, followed by an attack
of fever, and soon after died miserably. To pre-
serve his body from the Indians, his followers
sank it at midnight in the river, and the sullen
waters of the Mississippi buried his ambition and
his hopes."
The adventurers were now, with few exceptions,
disgusted with the enterprise, and longed only to
escape from the scene of their miseries. After a
vain attempt to reach Mexico by land, they again
turned back to the Mississippi, and labored, with
all the resources which their desperate necessity
could suggest, to construct vessels in which they
might make their way to some Christian settle-
ment. Their condition was most forlorn. Few
of their horses remained alive; their baggage had
been destroyed at the burning of the Indian town
of Mavila, and many of the soldiers were without
armor and without weapons. In place of the gal-
lant array which, more than three years before,
had left the harbor of Espiritu Santo, a company
of sickly and starving men were laboring among
the Swampy forests of the Mississippi, some clad
* Portuguese Relation, c. 30.
1542–58.] GUIDO DE LAS BAZARES. 17
in skins, and some in mats woven from a kind of
wild vine."
Seven brigantines were finished and launched;
and, trusting their lives on board these frail vessels,
they descended the Mississippi, running the gant-
let between hostile tribes, who fiercely attacked
them. Reaching the Gulf, though not without
the loss of eleven of their number, they made sail
for the Spanish settlement on the River Panuco,
where they arrived safely, and where the inhab-
itants met them with a cordial welcome. Three
hundred and eleven men thus escaped with life,
leaving behind them the bones of their comrades
strewn broadcast through the wilderness.”
De Soto's fate proved an insufficient warning,
for those were still found who begged a fresh
commission for the conquest of Florida; but the
Emperor would not hear them. A more pacific
enterprise was undertaken by Cancello, a Domini-
can monk, who with several brother ecclesiastics
undertook to convert the natives to the true faith,
but was murdered in the attempt.” Nine years
later, a plan was formed for the colonization of
Florida, and Guido de las Bazares sailed to explore
the coasts, and find a spot suitable for the estab-
lishment." After his return, a squadron, com-
1 Portuguese Relation, c. 20. See Hakluyt, V. 515.
* I have followed the accounts of Biedma and the Portuguese of Elvas,
rejecting the romantic narrative of Garcilaso, in which fiction is hopelessly
mingled with truth.
* Relation of Beteta, Ternaux-Compans, 107; Documentos Inéditos,
XXVI. 340. Comp. Garcilaso, Part I. Lib. I. c. 3.
* The spirit of this and other Spanish enterprises may be gathered
2
18 EARLY SPANISH ADVENTURE. [1518–58.
manded by Angel de Villafañe, and freighted with
supplies and men, put to sea from San Juan d’Ul-
loa; but the elements were adverse, and the re-
sult was a total failure." Not a Spaniard had yet
gained foothold in Florida.
That name, as the Spaniards of that day under-
stood it, comprehended the whole country extend.
ing from the Atlantic on the east to the longitude
of New Mexico on the west, and from the Gulf of
Mexico and the River of Palms indefinitely north-
ward towards the polar sea.” This vast territory
was claimed by Spain in right of the discoveries of
Columbus, the grant of the Pope, and the various
expeditions mentioned above. England claimed it
from the following passage in an address to the King, signed by Dr. Pedro
de Santander, and dated 15 July, 1557 : —
“It is lawful that your Majesty, like a good shepherd, appointed by
the hand of the Eternal Father, should tend and lead out your sheep,
since the Holy Spirit has shown spreading pastures whereon are feeding
lost sheep which have been snatched away by the dragon, the Demon.
These pastures are the New World, wherein is comprised Florida, now
in possession of the Demon, and here he makes himself adored and re-
vered. This is the Land of Promise, possessed by idolaters, the Amorite,
Amalekite, Moabite, Canaanite. This is the land promised by the Eternal
Father to the faithful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy
Scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, and, by reason of their
idolatry and sin, to put them all to the knife, leaving no living thing save
maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their walls and
houses levelled to the earth.”
The writer then goes into detail, proposing to occupy Florida at vari-
ous points with from one thousand, to fifteen hundred colonists, found a
city to be called Philippina, also another at Tuscaloosa, to be called Caesa-
rea, another at Tallahassee, and another at Tampa Bay, where he thinks
many slaves could be had. Carta del Doctor Pedro de Santander.
* The papers relating to these abortive expeditions are preserved by
Ternaux-Compans. -
2 Garcilaso, Part I. Lib. I. c. 2; Herrera in Purchas, III. 868; De
Laet, Lib. IV. c. 13. Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, An. MDCXI., speaks
of Quebec as a part of Florida. In a map of the time of Henry II. of
France, all North America is named Terra Florida.
1541.] SPANISH JEAIOUSY. 19
in right of the discoveries of Cabot; while France
could advance no better title than might be derived
from the voyage of Verazzano and vague traditions
of earlier visits of Breton adventurers.
With restless jealousy Spain watched the domain
which she could not occupy, and on France espe-
cially she kept an eye of deep distrust. When,
in 1541, Cartier and Roberval essayed to plant a
colony in the part of ancient Spanish Florida now
called Canada, she sent spies and fitted out cara-
vels to watch that abortive enterprise." Her fears
proved just. Canada, indeed, was long to remain
a solitude; but, despite the Papal bounty gifting
Spain with exclusive ownership of a hemisphere,
France and Heresy at length took root in the
Sultry forests of modern Florida.
1 See various papers on this subject in the Coleccion de Varios Docu-
mentos of Buckingham Smith.
CHAPTER II.
1550–1558.
VILLEGAGNON.
SPAIN AND FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. — GASPAR DE Co.
LIGNY. — VILLEGAGNON.— HIS EARLY ExPLOITS. – HIs SCHEME
OF A PROTESTANT Colony. — HUGUENOTs AT Rio JANEIRo. —
POLEMICS. — TYRANNY OF WILLEGAGNON. — THE MINISTERs Ex-
PELLED. — THE COLONY RUINED.
IN the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain
was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and porten-
tous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow.
Her old feudal liberties were gone, absorbed in the
despotism of Madrid. A tyranny of monks and
inquisitors, with their swarms of spies and inform-
ers, their racks, their dungeons, and their fagots,
crushed all freedom of thought or speech ; and,
while the Dominican held his reign of terror and
force, the deeper Jesuit guided the mind from
infancy into those narrow depths of bigotry from
which it was never to escape. Commercial despot-
ism was joined to political and religious despotism.
The hands of the government were on every branch
of industry. Perverse regulations, uncertain and
ruinous taxes, monopolies, encouragements, prohi-
bitions, restrictions, cramped the national energy.
Mistress of the Indies, Spain swarmed with beg-
gars. Yet, verging to decay, she had an ominous
1550.] SPAIN AND FRANCE. 21
and appalling strength. Her condition was that
of an athletic man penetrated with disease, which
had not yet unstrung the thews and sinews formed
in his days of vigor. Philip the Second could com-
mand the service of warriors and statesmen devel-
oped in the years that were past. The gathered
energies of ruined feudalism were wielded by a
single hand. The mysterious King, in his den in
the Escorial, dreary and silent, and bent like a
scribe Over his papers, was the type and the cham-
pion of arbitrary power. More than the Pope him-
self, he was the head of Catholicity. In doctrine
and in deed, the inexorable bigotry of Madrid was
ever in advance of Rome.
Not so with France. She was full of life, – a
discordant and struggling vitality. Her monks
and priests, unlike those of Spain, were rarely
either fanatics or bigots; yet not the less did they
ply the rack and the fagot, and howl for heretic
blood. Their all was at stake : their vast power,
their bloated wealth, swere wrapped up in the an-
cient faith. Men were burned, and women buried
alive. All was in vain. To the utmost bounds
of France, the leaven of the Reform was working.
The Huguenots, fugitives from torture and death,
found an asylum at Geneva, their city of refuge,
gathering around Calvin, their great high-priest.
Thence intrepid colporteurs, their lives in their
hands, bore the Bible and the psalm-book to city,
hamlet, and castle, to feed the rising flame. The
scattered churches, pressed by a common dan-
ger, began to organize. An ecclesiastical republic
22 VILLEGAGNON. [1550
spread its ramifications through France, and grew
underground to a vigorous life, – pacific at the
outset, for the great body of its members were
the quiet bourgeoisie, by habit, as by faith, averse
to violence. Yet a potent fraction of the war-
like noblesse were also of the new faith ; and above
them all, pre-eminent in character as in station,
stood Gaspar de Coligny, Admiral of France.
The old palace of the Louvre, reared by the
“Roi Chevalier’ on the site of those dreary feudal
towers which of old had guarded the banks of
the Seine, held within its sculptured masonry the
worthless brood of Valois. Corruption and in-
trigue ran riot at the court. Factious nobles,
bishops, and cardinals, with no God but pleasure
and ambition, contended around the throne or the
sick-bed of the futile King. Catherine de Medicis,
with her stately form, her mean spirit, her bad
heart, and her fathomless depths of duplicity,
strove by every subtle art to hold the balance of
power among them. The bold, pitiless, insatiable
Guise, and his brother the Cardinal of Lorraine, the
incarnation of falsehood, rested their ambition on
the Catholic party. Their army was a legion of
priests, and the black swarms of countless monas-
teries, who by the distribution of alms held in
pay the rabble of cities and starving peasants on
the lands of impoverished nobles. Montmorency,
Condé, and Navarre leaned towards the Reform, -
doubtful and inconstant chiefs, whose faith weighed
light against their interests. Yet, amid vacilla-
tion, selfishness, weakness, treachery, one great
1541.] HIS EARLY EXPLOITS. 23
man was like a tower of trust, and this was Gas-
par de Coligny. g
Firm in his convictions, steeled by perils and
endurance, calm, sagacious, resolute, grave even to
severity, a valiant and redoubted soldier, Coligny
looked abroad on the gathering storm and read its
danger in advance. He saw a strange depravity
of manners; bribery and violence overriding jus-
tice ; discontented nobles, and peasants ground.
down with taxes. In the midst of this rottenness,
the Calvinistic churches, patient and stern, were
fast gathering to themselves the better life of the
nation. Among and around them tossed the surges
of clerical hate. Luxurious priests and libertine
monks saw their disorders rebuked by the grave
virtues of the Protestant zealots. Their broad
lands, their rich endowments, their vessels of silver
and of gold, their dominion over souls, — in itself
a revenue, – were all imperilled by the growing
heresy. Nor was the Reform less exacting, less
intolerant, or, when its hour came, less aggressive
than the ancient faith. The storm was thicken-
ing, and it must burst soon.
When the Emperor Charles the Fifth beleaguered
Algiers, his camps were deluged by a blinding tem-
pest, and at its height the infidels made a furious
sally. A hundred Knights of Malta, on foot, wear-
ing over their armor surcoats of crimson blazoned
with the white cross, bore the brunt of the assault.
Conspicuous among them was Nicolas Durand de
Villegagnon. A Moorish cavalier, rushing upon
him, pierced his arm with a lance, and wheeled to
24 WILLEGAGNON. [1554.
repeat the blow; but the knight leaped on the
infidel, stabbed him with his dagger, flung him
from his horse, and mounted in his place. Again,
a Moslem host landed in Malta and beset the Cité
Wotable. The garrison was weak, disheartened,
and without a leader. Willegagnon with six fol-
lowers, all friends of his own, passed under cover
of night through the infidel leaguer, climbed the
walls by ropes lowered from above, took command,
repaired the shattered towers, aiding with his own
hands in the work, and animated the garrison to
a resistance so stubborn that the besiegers lost
heart and betook themselves to their galleys. No
less was he an able and accomplished mariner,
prominent among that chivalry of the sea who
held the perilous verge of Christendom against the
Mussulman. He claimed other laurels than those
of the sword. He was a scholar, a linguist, a con-
troversialist, potent with the tongue and with the
pen, commanding in presence, eloquent and per-
suasive in discourse. Yet this Crichton of France
had proved himself an associate nowise desirable.
His sleepless intellect was matched with a spirit
as restless, vain, unstable, and ambitious, as it was
enterprising and bold. Addicted to dissent, and
enamored of polemics, he entered those forbidden
fields of inquiry and controversy to which the Re-
form invited him. Undaunted by his monastic
vows, he battled for heresy with tongue and pen,
and in the ear of Protestants professed himself
a Protestant. As a Commander of his Order, he
quarrelled with the Grand Master, a domineering
1554.] HIS PROJECTED COLONY. 25
Spaniard ; and, as Vice-Admiral of Brittany, he
was deep in a feud with the Governor of Brest."
Disgusted at home, his fancy crossed the seas.
He aspired to build for France and himself an
empire amid the tropical splendors of Brazil. Few
could match him in the gift of persuasion ; and
the intrepid seaman whose skill and valor had run
the gantlet of the English fleet, and borne Mary
Stuart of Scotland in safety to her espousals with
the Dauphin,” might well be intrusted with a
charge of moment so far inferior. Henry the
Second was still on the throne. The lance of
Montgomery had not yet rid France of that inflic-
tion. To win a share in the rich domain of the
New World, of which Portuguese and Spanish arro-
gance claimed the monopoly, was the end held by
Villegagnon before the eyes of the King. Of the
Huguenots, he said not a word. For Coligny he
had another language. He spoke of an asylum
for persecuted religion, a Geneva in the wilder-
ness, far from priests and monks and Francis of
I Villegagnon himself has left an account in Latin of the expedition
against Algiers under the title, Caroli V. Imperatoris Expeditio in Afri-
cam (Paris, 1542). Also, an account of the war at Malta, De Bello Me-
litensi (Paris, 1553).
He is the subject of a long and erudite treatise in Bayle, Dictionnaire
Historique. Notices of him are also to be found in Guérin, Navigateurs
Français, 162; Ib., Marins Illustres, 231 ; Lescarbot, Hist. de la Nouv.
France (1612), 146–217; La Popelinière, Les Trois Mondes, III. 2.
There are extant against him a number of Calvinistic satires, in prose
and verse, – L’Etrille de Nicolas Durand, - La Suffisance de Villegaignon,
— L’Espousette des Armoiries de Villegaignon, etc.
* This was in 1548. The English were on the watch, but Villegagnon,
by a union of daring and skill, escaped them, and landed the future Queen
of Scots, then six years old, in Brittany, whence she was carried to Paris
and affianced to the future Francis the Second.
26 VILLEGAGNON, [1555
Guise. The Admiral gave him a ready ear; if,
indeed, he himself had not first conceived the plan.
Yet to the King, an active burner of Huguenots,
Coligny too urged it as an enterprise, not for the
Faith, but for France. In secret, Geneva was
made privy to it, and Calvin himself embraced it
with zeal. The enterprise, in fact, had a double
character, political as well as religious. It was
the reply of France, the most emphatic she had
yet made, to the Papal bull which gave all the
western hemisphere to Portugal and Spain; and,
as if to point her answer, she sent, not French-
men only, but Protestant Frenchmen, to plant the
fleur-de-lis on the shores of the New World.
Two vessels were made ready, in the name of
the King. The body of the emigration was Hu-
guenot, mingled with young nobles, restless, idle,
and poor, with reckless artisans, and piratical sai-
lors from the Norman and Breton seaports. They
put to sea from Havre on the twelfth of July,
1555, and early in November saw the shores of
Brazil. Entering the harbor of Rio Janeiro, then
called Ganabara, Villegagnon landed men and
stores on an island, built huts, and threw up
earthworks. In anticipation of future triumphs,
the whole continent, by a strange perversion of
language, was called Antarctic France, while the
fort received the name of Coligny.
Villegagnon signalized his new-born Protestant-
ism by an intolerable solicitude for the manners
and morals of his followers. The whip and the
pillory requited the least offence. The wild and
1557.] HUGUENOTS AT RIO JANEIRO. 27
discordant crew, starved and flogged for a season
into submission, conspired at length to rid them-
selves of him ; but while they debated whether to
poison him, blow him up, or murder him and his
officers in their sleep, three Scotch soldiers, proba-
bly Calvinists, revealed the plot, and the vigorous
hand of the commandant crushed it in the bud.
But how was the colony to subsist 2 Their
island was too small for culture, while the main-
land was infested with hostile tribes, and threat-
ened by the Portuguese, who regarded the French
occupancy as a violation of their domain.
Meanwhile, in France, Huguenot influence, aided
by ardent letters sent home by Villegagnon in the
returning ships, was urging on the work. Nor
were the Catholic chiefs averse to an enterprise
which, by colonizing heresy, might tend to relieve
France of its presence. Another embarkation was
prepared, in the name of Henry the Second, under
Bois-Lecomte, a nephew of Villegagnon. Most of
the emigrants were Huguenots. Geneva sent a
large deputation, and among them several minis-
ters, full of zeal for their land of promise and their
new church in the wilderness. There were five
young women, also, with a matron to watch over
them. Soldiers, emigrants, and sailors, two hun-
dred and ninety in all, were embarked in three
vessels; and, to the sound of cannon, drums, fifes,
and trumpets, they unfurled their sails at Hon-
fleur. They were no sooner on the high seas than
the piratical character of the Norman sailors, in no
way exceptional at that day, began to declare itself.
28 VIII.EGAGNON. [1557.
They hailed every vessel weaker than themselves,
pretended to be short of provisions, and demanded
leave to buy them ; then, boarding the stranger,
plundered her from stem to stern. After a pas-
sage of four months, on the ninth of March, 1557,
they entered the port of Ganabara, and saw the
fleur-de-lis floating above the walls of Fort Coligny.
Amid salutes of cannon, the boats, crowded with
sea-worn emigrants, moved towards the landing.
It was an edifying scene when Villegagnon, in
the picturesque attire which marked the warlike
nobles of the period, came down to the shore to
greet the sombre ministers of Calvin. With hands
uplifted and eyes raised to heaven, he bade them
welcome to the new asylum of the faithful; then
launched into a long harangue full of Zeal and
unction." His discourse finished, he led the way
to the dining-hall. If the redundancy of spiritual
aliment had surpassed their expectations, the min-
isters were little prepared for the meagre provision
1 De Léry, Historia Navigationis in Brasiliam, (1586,) 43. De Léry
was one of the ministers. His account is long and very curious. His
work was published in French, in 1578 and 1611. The Latin version has
appeared under several forms, and is to be found in the Second Part of
De Bry, decorated with a profusion of engravings, including portraits of
a great variety of devils, with which, it seems, Brazil was overrun, con-
spicuous among whom is one with the body of a bear and the head of a
man. This ungainly fiend is also depicted in the edition of 1586. The
conception, a novelty in demonology, was clearly derived from ancient
representations of that singular product of Brazil, the sloth. In the curi-
ous work of André Thevet, Les Singularités de la France Antarctique,
autrement nommée Amérique, published in 1558, appears the portraiture
of this animal, the body being that “ d’un petit ours,” and the face that of
an intelligent man. Thevet, however, though a firm believer in devils of
all kinds, suspects nothing demoniacal in his sloth, which he held for
Some time in captivity, and describes as “une beste assez estrange.”
1557.] POLEMICS. 29
which awaited their temporal cravings; for, with
appetites whetted by the Sea, they found them-
selves seated at a board whereof, as one of them
complains, the choicest dish was a dried fish,
and the only beverage rain-water. They found
their consolation in the inward graces of the
commandant, whom they likened to the Apostle
Paul.
For a time all was ardor and hope. Men of
birth and station, and the ministers themselves,
labored with pick and shovel to finish the fort.
Every day exhortations, sermons, prayers, followed
in close succession, and Willegagnon was always
present, kneeling on a velvet cushion brought
after him by a page. Soon, however, he fell into
sharp controversy with the ministers upon points
of faith. Among the emigrants was a student of
the Sorbonne, one Cointac, between whom and the
ministers arose a fierce and unintermitted war of
words. Is it lawful to mix water with the wine
of the Eucharist 2 May the sacramental bread be
made of meal of Indian corn ? These and similar
points of dispute filled the fort with wranglings,
begetting cliques, factions, and feuds without
number. Villegagnon took part with the student,
and between them they devised a new doctrine,
abhorrent alike to Geneva and to Rome. The
advent of this nondescript heresy was the signal
of redoubled strife." The dogmatic stiffness of the
1 The history of these theological squabbles is given in detail in the
Histoire des Choses Mémorables advenues en la Terre du Brésil (Genève,
1561). The author was an eyewitness. De Léry also enlarges upon
them.
30 VIII.EGAGNON. [1557,
Geneva ministers chafed Willegagnon to fury. He
felt himself, too, in a false position. On one side
he depended on the Protestant, Coligny; on the
other, he feared the Court. There were Catholics
in the colony who might report him as an open
heretic. On this point his doubts were set at rest;
for a ship from France brought him a letter from
the Cardinal of Lorraine, couched, it is said, in
terms which restored him forthwith to the bosom
of the Church. Willegagnon now affirmed that
he had been deceived in Calvin, and pronounced
him a “frightful heretic.” He became despotic
beyond measure, and would bear no opposition.
The ministers, reduced nearly to starvation, found
themselves under a tyranny worse than that from
which they had fled.
At length he drove them from the fort, and
forced them to bivouac on the mainland, at the
risk of being butchered by Indians, until a vessel
loading with Brazil-wood in the harbor should be
ready to carry them back to France. Having
rid himself of the ministers, he caused three of
the more zealous Calvinists to be seized, dragged
to the edge of a rock, and thrown into the sea."
A fourth, equally obnoxious, but who, being a
tailor, could ill be spared, was permitted to live
on condition of recantation. Then, mustering
the colonists, he warned them to shun the here-
sies of Luther and Calvin; threatened that all
who openly professed those detestable doctrines
should share the fate of their three comrades;
* Histoire des Choses Mémorables, 44.
1557.] THE COLONY RUINED. 31
and, his harangue over, feasted the whole as-
sembly, in token, says the narrator, of joy and
triumph." -
Meanwhile, in their crazy vessel, the banished
ministers drifted slowly on their way. Storms fell
upon them, their provisions failed, their water-
casks were empty, and, tossing in the wilderness
of waves, or rocking on the long swells of subsid:
ing gales, they sank almost to despair. In their
famine they chewed the Brazil-wood with which
the vessel was laden, devoured every scrap of
leather, singed and ate the horn of lanterns,
hunted rats through the hold, and sold them to
each other at enormous prices. At length,
stretched on the deck, sick, listless, attenuated,
and scarcely able to move a limb, they descried
across the waste of sea the faint, cloud-like line
that marked the coast of Brittany. Their perils
were not past ; for, if we may believe one of them,
Jean de Léry, they bore a sealed letter from Ville-
gagnon to the magistrates of the first French port
at which they might arrive. It denounced them
as heretics, worthy to be burned. Happily, the
magistrates leaned to the Reform, and the malice
of the commandant failed of its victims.
Willegagnon himself soon sailed for France,
leaving the wretched colony to its fate. He pres-
ently entered the lists against Calvin, and engaged
him in a hot controversial war, in which, accord-
1 Histoire des Choses Mémorables, 46. Compare Barré, Lettres sur la
Navigation du Chevalier de Villegagnon (Paris, 1558). Original docu-
, ments concerning Villegagnon will be found in Gaffarel, Brésil Français.
Appendix.
32 VILLEGAGNON. [1558. ,
ing to some of his contemporaries, the knight
often worsted the theologian at his own weapons.
Before the year 1558 was closed, Ganabara fell a
prey to the Portuguese. They set upon it in force,
battered down the fort, and slew the feeble garri-
son, or drove them to a miserable refuge among
the Indians. Spain and Portugal made good their
claim to the vast domain, the mighty vegetation,
and undeveloped riches of “Antarctic France.”
CHAPTER III.
1562, 1563.
JEAN RIBAUT.
--~~
THE HUGUE NOT PARTY, ITS MOTLEY CHARACTER. – RIBAUT SAILs
FOR FLORIDA. – THE RIVER OF MAY. — HoPEs. – ILLUSIONs. –
PORT ROYAL. – CHARLESFORT. — FROLIC. — IMPROvIDENCE. –
FAMINE. – MUTINY. — FiORIDA ABANDoNED. — DESPERATION.—
CANNIBALISM.
IN the year 1562 a cloud of black and deadly
portent was thickening over France. Surely and
Swiftly she glided towards the abyss of the re-
ligious wars. None could pierce the future, per-
haps none dared to contemplate it : the wild rage
of fanaticism and hate, friend grappling with
friend, brother with brother, father with son ;
altars profaned, hearthstones made desolate, the
robes of Justice herself bedrenched with murder.
In the gloom without lay Spain, imminent and
terrible. As on the hill by the field of Dreux, her
veteran bands of pikemen, dark masses of organ-
ized ferocity, stood biding their time while the
battle surged below, and then swept downward to
the slaughter, — so did Spain watch and wait to
trample and crush the hope of humanity.
In these days of fear, a second Huguenot colony
sailed for the New World. The calm, stern man
who represented and led the Protestantism of
France felt to his inmost heart the peril of the
33
34 JEAN RIBAUT. |1562,
time. He would fain build up a city of refuge
for the persecuted sect. Yet Gaspar de Coligny,
too high in power and rank to be openly assailed,
was forced to act with caution. He must act, too,
in the name of the Crown, and in virtue of his
office of Admiral of France. A nobleman and a
soldier, — for the Admiral of France was no sea-
man, – he shared the ideas and habits of his
class; nor is there reason to believe him to have
been in advance of his time in a knowledge of the
principles of successful colonization. His scheme
promised a military colony, not a free common-
wealth. The Huguenot party was already a politi-
cal as well as a religious party. At its foundation
lay the religious element, represented by Geneva,
the martyrs, and the devoted fugitives who sang
the psalms of Marot among rocks and caverns.
Joined to these were numbers on whom the faith
sat lightly, whose hope was in commotion and
change. Of the latter, in great part, was the
Huguenot noblesse, from Condé, who aspired to
the crown,
“Ce petit homme tant joli,
Qui toujours chante, toujours rit,”
to the younger son of the impoverished seigneur
whose patrimony was his sword. More than this,
the restless, the factious, and the discontented, be-
gan to link their fortunes to a party whose tri-
umph would involve confiscation of the wealth of
the only rich class in France. An element of the
great revolution was already mingling in the strife
of religions.
$562.] SAILS FOR FLORIDA. 35
America was still a land of wonder. The an-
cient spell still hung unbroken over the wild, vast
world of mystery beyond the sea, – a land of ro-
mance, adventure, and gold.
Fifty-eight years later the Puritans landed on
the sands of Massachusetts Bay. The illusion was
gone, — the ignis fatuºus of adventure, the dream
of wealth. The rugged wilderness offered only a
stern and hard-won independence. In their own
hearts, and not in the promptings of a great leader
or the patronage of an equivocal government, their
enterprise found its birth and its achievement.
They were of the boldest and most earnest of
their sect. There were such among the French
disciples of Calvin ; but no Mayflower ever sailed
from a port of France. Coligny’s colonists were
of a different stamp, and widely different was
their fate.
An excellent seaman and stanch Protestant,
Jean Ribaut of Dieppe, commanded the expedi-
tion. Under him, besides sailors, were a band of
veteran soldiers, and a few young nobles. Em-
barked in two of those antiquated craft whose
high poops and tub-like proportions are preserved
in the old engravings of De Bry, they sailed from
Havre on the eighteenth of February, 1562. They
crossed the Atlantic, and on the thirtieth of April,
in the latitude of twenty-nine and a half degrees,
saw the long, low line where the wilderness of
waves met the wilderness of woods. It was the
coast of Florida. They soon descried a jutting
* Delaborde, Gaspard de Coligny, II, 14, 440.
36 JEAN RIBAUT. [1562,
point, which they called French Cape, perhaps one
of the headlands of Matanzas Inlet. They turned
their prows northward, coasting the fringes of
that waste of verdure which rolled in shadowy
undulation far to the unknown West.
On the next morning, the first of May, they
found themselves off the mouth of a great river.
Riding at anchor on a Sunny sea, they lowered
their boats, crossed the bar that obstructed the
entrance, and floated on a basin of deep and shel-
tered water, “boyling and roaring,” says Ribaut,
“ through the multitude of all kind of fish.” In-
dians were running along the beach, and out upon
the sand-bars, beckoning them to land. They
pushed their boats ashore and disembarked, - sai-
lors, soldiers, and eager young nobles. Corselet
and morion, arquebuse and halberd, flashed in the
sun that flickered through innumerable leaves, as,
kneeling on the ground, they gave thanks to God,
who had guided their voyage to an issue full of
promise. The Indians, seated gravely under the
neighboring trees, looked on in silent respect,
thinking that they worshipped the sun. “They be
all naked and of a goodly stature, mightie, and as
well shapen and proportioned of body as any peo-
ple in y” world; and the fore part of their body
and armes be painted with pretie deuised workes, of
Azure, red, and blacke, so well and SO properly as
the best Painter of Europe could not amende it.”
With their squaws and children, they presently
drew near, and, strewing the earth with laurel
boughs, sat down among the Frenchmen. Their
1562.] THE RIVER OF MAY. 37
visitors were much pleased with them, and Ribaut
gave the chief, whom he calls the king, a robe of
blue cloth, worked in yellow with the regal fleur-
de-lis.
But Ribaut and his followers, just escaped from
the dull prison of their ships, were intent on ad-
miring the wild scenes around them. Never had
they known a fairer May-day. The quaint old nar-
rative is exuberant with delight. The tranquil
air, the warm sun, woods fresh with young verdure,
meadows bright with flowers; the palm, the cypress,
the pine, the magnolia; the grazing deer ; herons,
curlews, bitterns, woodcock, and unknown water-
fowl that waded in the ripple of the beach ; cedars
bearded from crown to root with long, gray moss'
huge Oaks smothering in the folds of enormous
grape-vines; — such were the objects that greeted
them in their roamings, till their new-discovered
land seemed “the fairest, fruitfullest, and pleas-
antest of al the world.”
They found a tree covered with caterpillars,
and hereupon the ancient black-letter says: “Also
there be Silke wormes in meruielous number, a
great deale fairer and better then be our silk
wormes. To bee short, it is a thing vnspeakable
to consider the thinges that bee seene there, and
shalbe founde more and more in this incomperable
lande.”"
* The True and Last Discoverie of Florida, made by Captain John
Ribault, in the Yeere 1562, dedicated to a great Nobleman in Fraunce,
and translated into Englishe by one Thomas Hackit. This is Ribaut's
journal, which seems not to exist in the original. The translation
is contained in the rare black-letter tract of Hakluyt called Divers Voy-
38 JEAN RIBAUT. [1562.
Above all, it was plain to their excited fancy
that the country was rich in gold and silver, tur-
quoises and pearls. One of these last, “as great
as an Acorne at yº least,” hung from the neck of
an Indian who stood near their boats as they re-
embarked. They gathered, too, from the signs of
their savage visitors, that the wonderful land of
Cibola, with its seven cities and its untold riches,
was distant but twenty days’ journey by water.
In truth, it was two thousand miles westward,
and its wealth a fable.
They named the river the River of May. It is
now the St. John’s. “And on the next morning,”
says Ribault, “we returned to land againe, accom-
panied with the Captaines, Gentlemen, and Soul-
diers, and others of our small troope, carrying with
us a Pillour or columne of harde stone, our king's
armes graved therein, to plant and set the same in
the enterie of the Porte ; and being come thither
we espied on the south syde of the Riuer a place
very fitte for that purpose upon a little hill com-
passed with Cypres, Bayes, Paulmes, and other
trees, with sweete smelling and pleasant shrubbes.”
Here they set the column, and then, again embark-
ing, held their course northward, happy in that
benign decree which locks from mortal eyes the
secrets of the future.
Next they anchored near Fernandina, and to a
ages, (London, 1582,) a copy of which is in the library of Harvard Col-
lege. It has been reprinted by the Hakluyt Society. The journal first
appeared in 1563, under the title of The Whole and True Discoverie of
Terra Florida (Englished The Florishing Land). This edition is of ex
treme rarity.
1562.] PORT ROYAL. 39
neighboring river, probably the St. Mary’s, gave
the name of the Seine. Here, as morning broke
on the fresh, moist meadows hung with mists, and
on broad reaches of inland waters which seemed
like lakes, they were tempted to land again, and
soon “espied an innumerable number of footesteps
of great Hartes and Hindes of a wonderfull great-
nesse, the steppes being all fresh and new, and
it seemeth that the people doe nourish them like
tame Cattell.” By two or three weeks of explo-
ration they seem to have gained a clear idea of
this rich semi-aquatic region. Ribaut describes it
as “a countrie full of hauens, riuers, and Ilands,
of such fruitfulnes as cannot with tongue be ex-
pressed.” Slowly moving northward, they named
each river, or inlet supposed to be a river, after
some stream of France, — the Loire, the Charente,
the Garonne, the Gironde. At length, opening be-
twixt flat and Sandy shores, they saw a commodious
haven, and named it Port Royal.
On the twenty-seventh of May they crossed the
bar where the war-ships of Dupont crossed three
hundred years later, passed Hilton Head, and held
their course along the peaceful bosom of Broad
River." On the left they saw a stream which they
named Libourne, probably Skull Creek; on the
right, a wide river, probably the Beaufort. When
they landed, all was solitude. The frightened
1 Ribaut thinks that the Broad River of Port Royal is the Jordan of
the Spanish navigator Vasquez de Ayllon, who was here in 1520, and gave
the name of St. Helena to a neighboring cape (Garcilaso, Florida del
Inca). The adjacent district, now called St. Helena, is the Chicora of the
old Spanish maps.
40 JEAN RIBAUT. [1562.
Indians had fled, but they lured them back with
knives, beads, and looking-glasses, and enticed two
of them on board their ships. Here, by feeding,
clothing, and caressing them, they tried to wean
them from their fears, thinking to carry them to
France, in obedience to a command of Catherine de
Medicis; " but the captive warriors moaned and
lamented day and night, and at length made their
escape. -
Ranging the woods, they found them full of
game, wild turkeys and partridges, bears and
lynxes. Two deer, of unusual size, leaped from
the underbrush. Cross-bow and arquebuse were
brought to the level; but the Huguenot captain,
“moved with the singular fairness and bigness of
them,” forbade his men to shoot.
Preliminary exploration, not immediate settle-
ment, had been the object of the voyage; but all
was still rose-color in the eyes of the voyagers,
and many of their number would gladly linger in
the New Canaan, Ribaut was more than willing
to humor them. He mustered his company on
deck, and made them a harangue. He appealed
to their courage and their patriotism, told them
how, from a mean origin, men rise by enterprise
and daring to fame and fortune, and demanded
who among them would stay behind and hold
Port Royal for the King. The greater part came
forward, and “with such a good will and joly
corage,” writes the commander, “as we had much
to do to stay their importunitie.” Thirty were
1 Laudonnière in Basanier, 14.
1562.] CHARLESFORT. 4]
chosen, and Albert de Pierria was named to com-
mand them.
A fort was begun on a small stream called the
Chenonceau, probably Archer's Creek, about six
miles from the site of Beaufort." They named it
Charlesfort, in honor of the unhappy son of Cath-
erine de Medicis, Charles the Ninth, the future
hero of St. Bartholomew. Ammunition and stores
were sent on shore, and on the eleventh of June,
with his diminished company, Ribaut again em-
barked and spread his sails for France.
From the beach at Hilton Head, Albert and his
companions might watch the receding ships, grow-
ing less and less on the vast expanse of blue,
dwindling to faint specks, then vanishing on the
pale verge of the waters. They were alone in
those fearful solitudes. From the north pole to
Mexico there was no Christian denizen but they.
The pressing question was how they were to
subsist. Their thought was not of subsistence,
but of gold. Of the thirty, the greater number
were soldiers and sailors, with a few gentlemen;
that is to say, men of the Sword, born within
the pale of nobility, who at home could neither
labor nor trade without derogation from their
rank. For a time they busied themselves with
finishing their fort, and, this done, set forth in
quest of adventures.
The Indians had lost fear of them. Ribaut had
enjoined upon them to use all kindness and gen-
1. No trace of this fort has been found. The old fort of which the
remains may be seen a little below Beaufort is of later date. -
42 JEAN RIBAUT. [1562
tleness in their dealing with the men of the
woods; and they more than obeyed him. They
were soon hand and glove with chiefs, warriors,
and squaws; and as with Indians the adage that
familiarity breeds contempt holds with peculiar
force, they quickly divested themselves of the
prestige which had attached at the outset to their
supposed character of children of the Sun. Good
will, however, remained, and this the colonists
abused to the utmost.
Roaming by river, swamp, and forest, they vis-
ited in turn the villages of five petty chiefs, whom
they called kings, feasting everywhere on hominy,
beans, and game, and loaded with gifts. One of
these chiefs, named Audusta, invited them to the
grand religious festival of his tribe. When they
arrived, they found the village alive with prepa-
ration, and troops of women busied in sweeping
the great circular area where the ceremonies were
to take place. But as the noisy and impertinent
guests showed a disposition to undue merriment,
the chief shut them all in his wigwam, lest their
Gentile eyes should profane the mysteries. Here,
immured in darkness, they listened to the howls,
yelpings, and lugubrious songs that resounded
from without. One of them, however, by some
artifice, contrived to escape, hid behind a bush,
and saw the whole solemnity; — the procession of
the medicine-men and the bedaubed and befeath-
ered warriors; the drumming, dancing, and stamp-
ing; the wild lamentation of the women as they
gashed the arms of the young girls with sharp
1562 ) INDIAN KINGS. 43
mussel-shells, and flung the blood into the air with
dismal outcries. A scene of ravenous feasting fol-
lowed, in which the French, released from durance,
were summoned to share. - -
After the carousal they returned to Charlesfort,
where they were soon pinched with hunger. The
Indians, never niggardly of food, brought them
supplies as long as their own lasted; but the har-
vest was not yet ripe, and their means did not
match their good-will. They told the French of
two other kings, Ouadé and Couexis, who dwelt
towards the south, and were rich beyond belief
in maize, beans, and squashes. The mendicant
colonists embarked without delay, and, with an
Indian guide, steered for the wigwams of these
potentates, not by the open sea, but by a perplex-
ing inland navigation, including, as it seems, Cali-
bogue Sound and neighboring waters. Reaching
the friendly villages, on or near the Savannah,
they were feasted to repletion, and their boat was
laden with vegetables and corn. They returned
rejoicing; but their joy was short. Their store-
house at Charlesfort, taking fire in the night,
burned to the ground, and with it their newly
acquired stock. Once more they set out for the
realms of King Ouadé, and once more returned
laden with supplies. Nay, the generous savage
assured them that, so long as his cornfields yielded
their harvests, his friends should not want.
How long this friendship would have lasted
may well be doubted. With the perception that
the dependants on their bounty were no demigods.
44 JEAN RIBAUT. [1562
but a crew of idle and helpless beggars, respect
would soon have changed to contempt, and con-
tempt to ill will. But it was not to Indian war-
clubs that the infant colony was to owe its ruin.
It carried within itself its own destruction. The
ill-assorted band of landsmen and sailors, sur-
rounded by that influence of the wilderness which
wakens the dormant Savage in the breasts of men,
soon fell into quarrels. Albert, a rude soldier,
with a thousand leagues of ocean betwixt him and
responsibility, grew harsh, domineering, and vio-
lent beyond endurance. None could question or
oppose him without peril of death. He hanged
with his own hands a drummer who had fallen
under his displeasure, and banished a soldier,
named La Chère, to a solitary island, three leagues
from the fort, where he left him to starve. For
a time his comrades chafed in smothered fury.
The crisis came at length. A few of the fiercer
spirits leagued together, assailed their tyrant, mur-
dered him, delivered the famished soldier, and
called to the command one Nicolas Barré, a man
of merit. Barré took the command, and thence-
forth there was peace.
Peace, such as it was, with famine, homesickness,
and disgust. The rough ramparts and rude build-
ings of Charlesfort, hatefully familiar to their
weary eyes, the sweltering forest, the glassy river,
the eternal silence of the lifeless wilds around
them, oppressed the senses and the spirits. They
dreamed of ease, of home, of pleasures across the
sea, of the evening cup on the bench before the
iš63.] A VESSEL BUILT. 45
cabaret, and dances with kind wenches of Dieppe.
But how to escape 7 A continent was their soli-
tary prison, and the pitiless Atlantic shut them in.
Not one of them knew how to build a ship ; but
Ribaut had left them a forge, with tools and iron,
and strong desire supplied the place of skill. Trees
were hewn down and the work begun. Had they
put forth to maintain themselves at Port Royal
the energy and resource which they exerted to es-
cape from it, they might have laid the corner-stone
of a solid colony.
All, gentle and simple, labored with equal zeal.
They calked the seams with the long moss which
hung in profusion from the neighboring trees;
the pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians
made for them a kind of cordage; and for sails
they sewed together their shirts and bedding. At
length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe
floated on the waters of the Chenonceau. They
laid in what provision they could, gave all that
remained of their goods to the Indians, embarked,
descended the river, and put to Sea. A fair wind
filled their patchwork sails and bore them from
the hated coast. Day after day they held their
course, till at length the breeze died away and a
breathless calm fell on the waters. Florida was
far behind ; France farther yet before. Floating
idly on the glassy waste, the craft lay motionless.
Their supplies gave out. Twelve kernels of maize
a day were each man’s portion; then the maize
failed, and they ate their shoes and leather jerkins.
The water barrels were drained, and they tried to
46 JEAN RIBAUT. |1563.
slake their thirst with brine. Several died, and
the rest, giddy with exhaustion and crazed with
thirst, were forced to ceaseless labor, bailing out
the water that gushed through every seam. Head-
winds set in, increasing to a gale, and the wretched
brigantine, with sails close-reefed, tossed among
the savage billows at the mercy of the storm. A
heavy sea rolled down upon her, and burst the
bulwarks on the windward side. The surges broke
Over her, and, clinging with desperate gripe to
spars and cordage, the drenched voyagers gave up
all for lost. At length she righted. The gale
subsided, the wind changed, and the crazy, water-
logged vessel again bore slowly towards France.
Gnawed with famine, they counted the leagues of
barren ocean that still stretched before, and gazed
On each other with haggard wolfish eyes, till a
whisper passed from man to man, that one, by his
death, might ransom all the rest. The lot was
cast and it fell on La Chère, the same wretched
man whom Albert had doomed to starvation on a
lonely island. They killed him, and with raven-
ous avidity portioned out his flesh. The hideous
repast sustained them till the land rose in sight,
when, it is said, in a delirium of joy, they could
no longer steer their vessel, but let her drift at the
will of the tide. A small English bark bore down
upon them, took them all on board, and, after
landing the feeblest, carried the rest prisoners to
Queen Elizabeth." f
1 For all the latter part of the chapter, the authority is the first of the
three long letters of René de Laudonnière, companion of Ribaut and his
1563.] FLORIDA ABANDONED. 47
Thus closed another of those scenes of woe whose
lurid clouds are thickly piled around the stormy
dawn of American history. It was the opening
act of a wild and tragic drama.
successor in command. They are contained in the Histoire Notable de la
Floride, compiled by Basanier, (Paris, 1586,) and are also to be found,
quaintly “done into English,” in the third volume of Hakluyt's great col-
lection. In the main, they are entitled to much confidence.
CHAPTER IV.
1564.
LAUDONNIERE,
THE NEW COLONY. — SATOURIONA. — THE PROMISED IAND. — MI-
RACULOUS LONGEVITY. — FORT CAROLINE. — NATIVE TRIBEs. -
OTTIGNY EXPLORES THE ST. JOHN’s. – THE THIMAGOA.s. – CON-
FLICTING ALLIANCES. – INDIAN WAR. — DIPLOMACY of LAUDON-
NIERE. —VAssBUR'S EXPEDITION.
ON the twenty-fifth of June, 1564, a French
squadron anchored a second time off the mouth of
the River of May. There were three vessels, the
smallest of sixty tons, the largest of one hundred
and twenty, all crowded with men. René de Lau-
donnière held command. He was of a noble race
of Poitou, attached to the house of Châtillon, of
which Coligny was the head; pious, we are told,
and an excellent marine officer. An engraving,
purporting to be his likeness, shows us a slender
figure, leaning against the mast, booted to the
thigh, with slouched hat and plume, slashed dou-
blet, and short cloak. His thin oval face, with
curled moustache and close-trimmed beard, wears
a somewhat pensive look, as if already shadowed
by the destiny that awaited him."
The intervening year since Ribaut's voyage had
been a dark year for France. From the peaceful
1 See Guérin, Navigateurs Français, 180. The authenticity of the por-
trait is doubtful.
º
1564.] THE NEW COLONY. wº 49
solitude of the River of May, that voyager returned
to a land reeking with slaughter. But the carni-
val of bigotry and hate had found a pause. The
Peace of Amboise had been signed. The fierce
monk choked down his venom; the soldier sheathed
his sword, the assassin his dagger; rival chiefs
grasped hands, and masked their rancor under
hollow smiles. The king and the queen-mother,
helpless amid the storm of factions which threat-
ened their destruction, smiled now on Condé, now
on Guise, – gave ear to the Cardinal of Lorraine,
or listened in secret to the emissaries of Theodore
Beza. Coligny was again strong at Court. He
used his opportunity, and solicited with success
the means of renewing his enterprise of coloni-
zation."
Men were mustered for the work. In name,
at least, they were all Huguenots; yet now, as
before, the staple of the projected colony was un-
sound: soldiers, paid out of the royal treasury,
hired artisans and tradesmen, with a swarm of
volunteers from the young Huguenot nobles, whose
restless swords had rusted in their scabbards since
the peace. The foundation-stone was forgotten.
There were no tillers of the soil. Such, indeed,
were rare among the Huguenots; for the dull
peasants who guided the plough clung with blind
tenacity to the ancient faith. Adventurous gen-
tlemen, reckless soldiers, discontented tradesmen,
all keen for novelty and heated with dreams of
wealth, – these were they who would build for
1 Delaborde, Gaspard de Coligny, II. 443.
4
50 LAUDONNIERE. [1564.
their country and their religion an empire beyond
the sea."
On Thursday, the twenty-second of June, Lau-
donnière saw the low coast line of Florida, and
entered the harbor of St. Augustine, which he
named the River of Dolphins, “ because that at
mine arrival I saw there a great number of Dol-
phins which were playing in the mouth thereof.”
Then he bore northward, following the coast till,
on the twenty-fifth, he reached the mouth of the
St. John's or River of May. The vessels an-
chored, the boats were lowered, and he landed
with his principal followers on the south shore,
near the present village of Mayport. It was the
very spot where he had landed with Ribaut two
years before. They were scarcely on shore when
they saw an Indian chief, “which having espied
us cryed very far off, Antipola, Antipola, and
being so joyful that he could not containe him-
selfe, he came to meet us accompanied with two
of his sonnes, as faire and mightie persons as
might be found in al the world. There was in
1 The principal authorities for this part of the narrative are Laudon-
nière and his artist, Le Moyne. Laudonnière's letters were published in
1586, under the title L’Histoire Notable de la Floride, mise en lumière par
M. Basanier. See also Hakluyt's Voyages, III. (1812). Le Moyne was
employed to make maps and drawings of the country. His maps are curi-
ously inexact. His drawings are spirited, and, with many allowances, give
useful hints concerning the habits of the natives. They are engraved in
the Grands Voyages of De Bry, Part II. (Frankfort, 1591). To each is
appended a “declaratio ‘’ or explanatory remarks. The same work con-
tains the artist's personal narrative, the Brevis Narratio. In the Recueil
de Pièces sur la Floride of Ternaux-Compans is a letter from one of the
adventurers.
* Second letter of Laudonnière; contemporary translation in Hak.
luyt, III.
1564.] SATOURIONA. 5T
their trayne a great number of men and women
which stil made very much of us, and by signes
made us understand how glad they were of our
arrivall. This good entertainment past, the Para-
coussy [chief] prayed me to goe see the pillar
which we had erected in the voyage of John
Ribault.” The Indians, regarding it with myste-
rious awe, had crowned it with evergreens, and
placed baskets full of maize before it as an
offering.
The chief then took Laudonnière by the hand,
telling him that he was named Satouriona, and
pointed out the extent of his dominions, far up
the river and along the adjacent coasts. One of
his sons, a man “perfect in beautie, wisedome,
and honest sobrietie,” then gave the French com-
mander a wedge of silver, and received some tri-
fles in return, after which the voyagers went back
to their ships. “I prayse God continually,” says
Laudonnière, “for the great love I have found in
these savages.”
In the morning the French landed again, and
found their new friends on the same spot, to the
number of eighty or more, seated under a shelter
of boughs, in festal attire of smoke-tanned deer-
skins, painted in many colors. The party then
rowed up the river, the Indians following them
along the shore. As they advanced, coasting the
borders of a great marsh that lay upon their left,
the St. John's spread before them in vast sheets
of glistening water, almost level with its flat,
sedgy shores, the haunt of alligators, and the re-
52 LAUDONNIf IRE. [1564
sort of innumerable birds. Beyond the marsh,
some five miles from the mouth of the river, they
saw a ridge of high ground abutting on the water,
which, flowing beneath in a deep, strong current,
had undermined it, and left a steep front of yel-
lowish sand. This was the hill now called St.
John's Bluff. Here they landed and entered the
woods, where Laudonnière stopped to rest while
his lieutenant, Ottigny, with a sergeant and a
few soldiers, went to explore the country. -
They pushed their way through the thickets till
they were stopped by a marsh choked with reeds,
at the edge of which, under a great laurel tree,
they had seated themselves to rest, overcome with
the summer heat, when five Indians suddenly ap-
peared, peering timidly at them from among the
bushes. Some of the men went towards them
with signs of friendship, on which, taking heart,
they drew near, and one of them, who was evi-
dently a chief, made a long speech, inviting the
strangers to their dwellings. The way was across
the marsh, through which they carried the lieu-
tenant and two or three of the soldiers on their
backs, while the rest circled by a narrow path
through the woods. When they reached the
lodges, a crowd of Indians came out “to receive
Our men gallantly, and feast them after their man-
ner.” One of them brought a large earthen vessel
full of spring water, which was served out to each
in turn in a wooden cup. But what most aston-
ished the French was a venerable chief, who assured
them that he was the father of five successive gen-
1564. I THE PROMISED LAND. 53
erations, and that he had lived two hundred and
fifty years. Opposite sat a still more ancient vet-
eran, the father of the first, shrunken to a mere
anatomy, and “seeming to be rather a dead car-
keis than a living body.” “Also,” pursues the
history, “his age was so great that the good man
had lost his sight, and could not speak one onely
word but with exceeding great paine.” In spite
of his dismal condition, the visitors were told that
he might expect to live, in the course of nature,
thirty or forty years more. As the two patriarchs
sat face to face, half hidden with their streaming
white hair, Ottigny and his credulous soldiers
looked from one to the other, lost in speechless
admiration. -
One of these veterans made a parting present
to his guests of two young eagles, and Ottigny
and his followers returned to report what they
had seen. Laudonnière was waiting for them on
the side of the hill, and now, he says, “I went
right to the toppe thereof, where we found nothing
else but Cedars, Palme, and Baytrees of so sover-
eigne odour that Baulme smelleth nothing like
in comparison.” From this high standpoint they
surveyed their Canaan. The unruffled river lay
before them, with its marshy islands overgrown
with sedge and bulrushes, while on the farther
side the flat, green meadows spread mile on mile,
veined with countless creeks and belts of torpid
water, and bounded leagues away by the verge
1 Laudonnière in Hakluyt, III. 388; Basanier, fol. 40; Coppie d'une
Lettre venant de la Floride, in Ternaux-Compans, Floride, 233.
54 LAUDONNIERE. [1564,
of the dim pine forest. On the right, the sea
glistened along the horizon, and on the left, the
St. John's stretched westward between verdant
shores, a highway to their fancied Eldorado.
“Briefly,” writes Laudonnière, “the place is so
pleasant that those which are melancholicke would
be inforced to change their humour.” -
On their way back to the ships they stopped
for another parley with the chief Satouriona, and
Laudonnière eagerly asked where he had got the
wedge of silver that he gave him in the morning.
The chief told him by signs, that he had taken it
in war from a people called Thimagoas, who lived
higher up the river, and who were his mortal ene-
mies; on which the French captain had the folly
to promise that he would join in an expedition
against them. Satouriona was delighted, and de-
clared that, if he kept his word, he should have
gold and silver to his heart's content.
Man and nature alike seemed to mark the bor-
ders of the River of May as the site of the new
colony; for here, around the Indian towns, the
harvests of maize, beans, and pumpkins promised
abundant food, while the river opened a ready
way to the mines of gold and silver and the
stores of barbaric wealth which glittered before
the dreaming vision of the colonists. Yet, the bet-
ter to satisfy himself and his men, Laudonnière
weighed anchor, and sailed for a time along the
neighboring coasts. Returning, confirmed in his
first impression, he set out with a party of offi-
cers and soldiers to explore the borders of the
1564.] A FORT BUILT. 55
chosen stream. The day was hot. The sun beat
fiercely on the woollen caps and heavy doublets
of the men, till at length they gained the shade
of one of those deep forests of pine where the
dead, hot air is thick with resinous odors, and the
earth, carpeted with fallen leaves, gives no sound
beneath the foot. Yet, in the stillness, deer leaped
up on all sides as they moved along. Then they
emerged into sunlight. A meadow was before
them, a running brook, and a wall of encircling
forests. The men called it the Vale of Laudon-
nière. The afternoon was spent, and the sun was
near its setting, when they reached the bank of the
river. They strewed the ground with boughs and
leaves, and, stretched on that sylvan couch, slept
the sleep of travel-worn and weary men.
They were roused at daybreak by sound of trum-
pet, and after singing a psalm they set themselves
to their task. It was the building of a fort, and
the spot they chose was a furlong or more above
St. John's Bluff, where close to the water was a
wide, flat knoll, raised a few feet above the marsh
and the river." Boats came up the stream with
laborers, tents, provisions, cannon, and tools. The
engineers marked out the work in the form of a
triangle ; and, from the noble volunteer to the
meanest artisan, all lent a hand to complete it.
1. Above St. John's Bluff the shore curves in a semicircle, along
which the water runs in a deep, strong current, which has half cut away
the flat knoll above mentioned, and encroached greatly on the bluff itself.
The formation of the ground, joined to the indications furnished by Lau-
donnière and Lemoyne, leave little doubt that the fort was built on
the knoll.
56 LAUDONNIERE. [1564
On the river side the defences were a palisade of
timber. On the two other sides were a ditch, and
a rampart of fascines, earth, and sods. At each
angle was a bastion, in One of which was the
magazine. Within was a spacious parade, around
it were various buildings for lodging and storage,
and a large house with covered galleries was built
on the side towards the river for Laudonnière and
his officers. In honor of Charles the Ninth the
fort was named Fort Caroline.
Meanwhile Satouriona, “lord of all that country,”
as the narratives style him, was seized with mis-
givings on learning these proceedings. The work
was scarcely begun, and all was din and confusion
around the incipient fort, when the startled French-
men saw the neighboring height of St. John's
swarming with naked warriors. Laudonnière set
his men in array, and for a season, pick and spade
were dropped for arquebuse and pike. The savage
chief descended to the camp. The artist Le Moyne,
who saw him, drew his likeness from memory, -a.
tall, athletic figure, tattooed in token of his rank,
plumed, bedecked with strings of beads, and gir-
dled with tinkling pieces of metal which hung from
the belt which formed his only garment." He
came in regal state, a crowd of warriors around
him, and, in advance, a troup of young Indians
armed with spears. Twenty musicians followed,
blowing hideous discord through pipes of reeds.”
while he seated himself on the ground “like a
1 Le Moyne, Tabulae VIII., XI.
* Le Moyne, Brevis Narratio.
1564.] NATIVE TRIBES, 57
monkey,” as Le Moyne has it in the grave Latin
of his Brevis Warratio. A council followed, in
which broken words were aided by signs and
pantomime; and a treaty of alliance was made,
Laudonnière renewing his rash promise to aid
the chief against his enemies. Satouriona, well
pleased, ordered his Indians to help the French
in their work. They obeyed with alacrity, and
in two days the buildings of the fort were all
thatched, after the native fashion, with leaves of
the palmetto. - -
These savages belonged to one of the confeder-
acies into which the native tribes of Florida were
divided, and with three of which the French came
into contact. The first was that of Satouriona,
and the second was that of the people called Thi-
magoas, who, under a chief named Outina, dwelt
in forty villages high up the St. John's. The third
was that of the chief, cacique, or paracoussy whom
the French called King Potanou, and whose domin-
ions lay among the pine barrens, cypress swamps,
and fertile hummocks westward and northwest-
ward of this remarkable river. These three con-
federacies hated each other, and were constantly at
war. Their social state was more advanced than
that of the wandering hunter tribes. They were
an agricultural people, and around all their vil-
lages were fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins.
The harvest was gathered into a public granary,
and they lived on it during three fourths of the
year, dispersing in winter to hunt among the
forests.
58 LAUDONNIERE. [1564
They were exceedingly well formed, the men,
or the principal among them, were tattooed on the
limbs and body, and in summer were nearly naked.
Some wore their straight black hair flowing loose
to the waist; others gathered it in a knot at the
crown of the head. They danced and sang about
the scalps of their enemies, like the tribes of the
North, and like them they had their “medicine-
men,” who combined the functions of physicians,
sorcerers, and priests. The most prominent fea-
ture of their religion was sun-worship.
Their villages were clusters of large dome-shaped
huts, framed with poles and thatched with pal-
metto leaves. In the midst was the dwelling of
the chief, much larger than the rest, and some-
times raised on an artificial mound. They were
enclosed with palisades, and, strange to say, some
of them were approached by wide avenues, artifi-
cially graded, and several hundred yards in length.
Traces of these may still be seen, as may also the
mounds in which the Floridians, like the Hurons
and various other tribes, collected at stated inter-
vals the bones of their dead.
Social distinctions were sharply defined among
them. Their chiefs, whose office was hereditary,
sometimes exercised a power almost absolute.
Each village had its chief, subordinate to the
grand chief of the confederacy. In the language
of the French narratives, they were all kings or
lords, vassals of the great monarch Satouriona,
Outina, or Potanou. All these tribes are now ex-
tinct, and it is difficult to ascertain with precision
rö64.] VOYAGE OF OTTIGNY. 59
their tribal affinities. There can be no doubt that
they were the authors of the aboriginal remains at
present found in various parts of Florida.
Having nearly finished the fort, Laudonnière
declares that he “would not lose the minute of an
houre without employing of the same in some ver-
tuous exercise,” and he therefore sent his Lieuten-
ant, Ottigny, to spy out the secrets of the interior,
and to learn, above all, “what this Thimagoa might
be, whereof the Paracoussy Satouriona had spoken
to us so often.” As Laudonnière stood pledged to
attack the Thimagoas, the chief gave Ottigny two
Indian guides, who, says the record, were so eager
for the fray that they seemed as if bound to a wed-
ding feast.
The lazy waters of the St. John's, tinged to
coffee-color by the exudations of the swamps,
curled before the prow of Ottigny’s sail-boat as
he advanced into the prolific wilderness which no
European eye had ever yet beheld. By his own
reckoning, he sailed thirty leagues up the river,
which would have brought him to a point not far
below Palatka. Here, more than two centuries
later, the Bartrams, father and son, guided their
skiff and kindled their nightly bivouac-fire; and
here, too, roamed Audubon, with his sketch-book
and his gun. It was a paradise for the hunter and
the naturalist. Earth, air, and water teemed with
life, in endless varieties of beauty and ugliness.
A half-tropical forest shadowed the low shores,
where the palmetto and the cabbage palm mingled
with the Oak, the maple, the cypress, the liquid-
6() LAUDONNIERE. [1564
ambar, the laurel, the myrtle, and the broad glis-
tening leaves of the evergreen magnolia. Here
was the haunt of bears, wild-cats, lynxes, cougars,
and the numberless deer of which they made their
prey. In the sedges and the mud the alligator
stretched his brutish length ; turtles with out-
stretched necks basked on half-sunken logs; the
rattlesnake Sumned himself on the sandy bank, and
the yet more dangerous moccason lurked under the
water-lilies in inlets and sheltered coves. The air
and the water were populous as the earth. The
river swarmed with fish, from the fierce and rest-
less gar, cased in his horny armor, to the lazy cat-
fish in the muddy depths. There were the golden
eagle and the white-headed eagle, the gray pelican
and the white pelican, the blue heron and the
white heron, the egret, the ibis, ducks of various
Sorts, the whooping crane, the black vulture, and
the cormorant; and when at Sunset the voyagers
drew their boat upon the strand and built their
camp-fire under the arches of the woods, the owls
whooped around them all night long, and when
morning came the sultry mists that wrapped the
river were vocal with the clamor of wild turkeys.
When Ottigny was about twenty leagues from
Fort Caroline, his two Indian guides, who were
always on the watch, descried three canoes, and in
great excitement cried, “Thimagoa Thimagoa ”
As they drew near, one of them Snatched up a
halberd and the other a sword, and in their fury
they seemed ready to jump into the water to get at
the enemy. To their great disgust, Ottigny per-
i564.] VOYAGE OF OTTIGNY. . 61
mitted the Thimagoas to run their canoes ashore
and escape to the woods. Far from keeping Lau-
donnière's senseless promise to fight them, he
wished to make them friends; to which end he
now landed with some of his men, placed a few
trinkets in their canoes, and withdrew to a dis.
tance to watch the result. The fugitives presently
returned, step by step, and allowed the French to
approach them ; on which Ottigny asked, by signs,
if they had gold or silver. They replied that they
had none, but that if he would give them one of
his men they would show him where it was to be
found. One of the soldiers boldly offered himself
for the venture, and embarked with them. As,
however, he failed to return according to agree-
ment, Ottigny, on the next day, followed ten leagues
farther up the stream, and at length had the good
luck to see him approaching in a canoe. He brought
little or no gold, but reported that he had heard of
a certain chief, named Mayrra, marvellously rich,
who lived three days’ journey up the river; and
with these welcoune tidings Ottigny went back to
Fort Caroline.
A fortnight later, an officer named Vasseur went
up the river to pursue the adventure. The fever
for gold had seized upon the French. As the vil-
lages of the Thimagoas lay between them and the
imagined treasures, they shrank from a quarrel,
and Laudonnière repented already of his promised
alliance with Satouriona. -
Wasseur was two days' sail from the fort, when
two Indians hailed him from the shore, inviting
62 . LAUDONNIFRE. [1564,
him to their dwellings. He accepted their guid-
ance, and presently saw before him the cornfields
and palisades of an Indian town. He and his fol-
lowers were led through the wondering crowd to
the lodge of Mollua, the chief, seated in the place
of honor, and plentifully regaled with fish and
bread. The repast over, Mollua made a speech.
He told them that he was one of the forty vassal
chiefs of the great Outina, lord of all the Thima-
goas, whose warriors wore armor of gold and silver
plate. He told them, too, of Potanou, his enemy,
“a man cruell in warre"; and of the two kings of
the distant Appalachian Mountains, Onatheaqua
and Houstaqua, “great lords and abounding in
riches.” While thus, with earnest pantomime and
broken words, the chief discoursed with his guests,
Wasseur, intent and eager, strove to follow his
meaning; and no sooner did he hear of these Ap-
palachian treasures than he promised to join Ou-
tina in war against the two potentates of the
mountains. Mollua, well pleased, promised that
each of Outina's vassal chiefs should requite their
French allies with a heap of gold and silver two
feet high. Thus, while Laudonnière stood pledged
to Satouriona, Wasseur made alliance with his
mortal enemy.
On his return, he passed a night in the lodge
of one of Satouriona’s chiefs, who questioned him
touching his dealings with the Thimagoas. Was-
seur replied that he had set upon them and put
them to utter rout. But as the chief, seeming as
as yet unsatisfied, continued his inquiries, the ser-
1564.] INDIAN WAR. 63
geant François de la Caille drew his sword, and,
like Falstaff, re-enacted his deeds of valor, pursu-
ing and thrusting at the imaginary Thimagoas, as
they fled before his fury. The chief, at length
convinced, led the party to his lodge, and enter-
tained them with a decoction of the herb called
Cassina.
Satouriona, elated by Laudonnière's delusive
promises of aid, had summoned his so-called vas-
sals to war. Ten chiefs and some five hundred
warriors had mustered at his call, and the forest
was alive with their bivouacs. When all was
ready, Satouriona reminded the French commander
of his pledge, and claimed its fulfilment, but got
nothing but evasions in return. He stifled his
rage, and prepared to go without his fickle ally.
A fire was kindled near the bank of the river,
and two large vessels of water were placed beside
it. Here Satouriona took his stand, while his
chiefs crouched on the grass around him, and
the savage visages of his five hundred warriors
filled the outer circle, their long hair garnished
with feathers, or covered with the heads and
skins of wolves, cougars, bears, or eagles. Satou-
riona, looking towards the country of his enemy,
distorted his features into a wild expression of
rage and hate; then muttered to himself; then
howled an invocation to his god, the Sun; then
besprinkled the assembly with water from One of
the vessels, and, turning the other upon the fire,
suddenly quenched it. “So,” he tried, “may the
blood of our enemies be poured out, and their
64 LAUDONNIERE. [1564.
lives extinguished ' ' and the concourse gave forth
an explosion of responsive yells, till the shores
resounded with the wolfish din."
The rites over, they set out, and in a few days
returned exulting, with thirteen prisoners and a
number of scalps. These last were hung on a pole
before the royal lodge, and when night came it
brought with it a pandemonium of dancing and
whooping, drumming and feasting.
A notable scheme entered the brain of Laudon-
nière. Resolved, cost what it might, to make a
friend of Outina, he conceived it to be a stroke of
policy to send back to him two of the prisoners.
In the morning he sent a soldier to Satouriona to
demand them. The astonished chief gave a flat re-
fusal, adding that he owed the French no favors,
for they had shamefully broken faith with him.
On this, Laudonnière, at the head of twenty soldiers,
proceeded to the Indian town, placed a guard at
the opening of the great lodge, entered with his
arquebusiers, and seated himself without ceremony
in the highest place. Here, to show his displeas-
ure, he remained in silence for half an hour. At
length he spoke, renewing his demand. For some
moments Satouriona made no reply; then he coldly
observed that the sight of so many armed men had
frightened the prisoners away. Laudonnière grew
peremptory, when the chief's son, Athore, went
out, and presently returned with the two Indians,
whom the French led back to Fort Caroline.”
1 Le Moyne makes the scene the subject of one of his pictures.
* Laudonnière in Hakluyt, III, 396.
1564.] VASSEUR'S EXPEDITION. 65
Satouriona, says Laudonnière, “was wonderfully
offended with this bravado, and bethought him-
selfe by all meanes how he might be revenged of
us.” He dissembled for the time, and presently
sent three of his followers to the fort with a gift
of pumpkins; though under this show of good-
will the outrage rankled in his breast, and he
never forgave it. The French had been unfortu-
nate in their dealings with the Indians. They
had alienated old friends in vain attempts to make
IlêW O]]6 S.
Wasseur, with the Swiss ensign Arlac," a ser-
geant, and ten soldiers, went up the river early
in September to carry back the two prisoners to
Outina. Laudonnière declares that they sailed
eighty leagues, which would have carried them far
above Lake Monroe; but it is certain that his reck-
oning is grossly exaggerated. Their boat crawled
up the lazy St. John’s, no longer a broad lake-
like expanse, but a narrow and tortuous stream,
winding between swampy forests, or through the
vast savanna, a verdant Sea of bulrushes and grass.
At length they came to a village called Mayarqua,
and thence, with the help of their oars, made their
way to another cluster of wigwams, apparently
on a branch of the main river. Here they found
Outina himself, whom, prepossessed with ideas of
feudality, they regarded as the suzerain of a host
of subordinate lords and princes, ruling over the
surrounding swamps and pine barrens. Outina
gratefully received the two prisoners whom Lau-
* So written by Laudonnière. The true name is probably Erlach.
5
66 LAUDONNIERE. {1564,
donnière had sent to propitiate him, feasted the
wonderful strangers, and invited them to join him
on a raid against his rival, Potanou. Laudonnière
had promised to join Satouriona against Outina,
and Vasseur now promised to join Outina against
Potanou, the hope of finding gold being in both
cases the source of this impolitic compliance. Was-
seur went back to Fort Caroline with five of the
men, and left Arlac with the remaining five to
fight the battles of Outina.
The warriors mustered to the number of some
two hundred, and the combined force of white
men and red took up their march. The wilder-
ness through which they passed has not yet quite
lost its characteristic features; the bewildering
monotony of the pine barrens, with their myriads
of bare gray trunks, and their canopy of peren-
nial green, through which a scorching Sun throws
spots and streaks of yellow light, here on an un-
dergrowth of dwarf palmetto, and there on dry
sands half hidden by tufted wire-grass, and dotted
with the little mounds that mark the burrows
of the gopher; or those Oases in the desert, the
“hummocks,” with their wild, redundant vegeta-
tion, their entanglement of trees, bushes, and vines,
their scent of flowers and song of birds; or the
broad sunshine of the savanna, where they waded
to the neck in grass; or the deep swamp, where,
out of the black and root-encumbered slough, rise
the huge buttressed trunks of the Southern cypress,
the gray Spanish moss drooping from every bough
and twig, wrapping its victims like a drapery of
1564.] VASSEUR'S EXPEDITION. . 67
tattered cobwebs, and slowly draining away their
life; for even plants devour each other, and play
their silent parts in the universal tragedy of
nature.
The allies held their way through forest, sa-
vanna, and swamp, with Outina’s Indians in the
front, till they neared the hostile villages, when
the modest warriors fell to the rear, and yielded
the post of honor to the Frenchmen.
An open country lay before them, with rough
fields of maize, beans, and pumpkins, and the pali-
sades of an Indian town. Their approach was
seen, and the warriors of Potanou swarmed out to
meet them ; but the sight of the bearded strangers,
the flash and report of the fire-arms, and the fall
of their foremost chief, shot through the brain by
Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they
fled within their defences. Pursuers and pursued
entered pell-mell together. The place was pillaged
and burned, its inmates captured or killed, and
the victors returned triumphant.
CHAPTER W
1564, 1565.
CONSEIRACY.
DISCONTENT. — PLOT OF LA ROQUETTE. – PIRATICAL ExCURSION.—
SEDITION. — ILLNESS OF LAUDONN1iRE. – OUTBREAK OF THE
MUTINY. —BUCCANEERING. — ORDER RESTORED.
IN the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature
France, cliques and parties, conspiracy and sedi-
tion, were fast stirring into life. Hopes had been
dashed, and wild expectations had come to naught.
The adventurers had found, not conquest and gold,
but a dull exile in a petty fort by a hot and sickly
river, with hard labor, bad fare, prospective fam-
ine, and nothing to break the weary sameness but
some passing canoe or floating alligator. Gath-
ered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and
inveighed against the commandant. Why are we
put on half-rations, when he told us that provision
should be made for a full year 2 Where are the
reinforcements and supplies that he said should
follow us from France 2 And why is he always
closeted with Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that
favorite, when we, men of blood as good as theirs,
cannot gain his ear for a moment 7
The young nobles, of whom there were many,
were volunteers, who had paid their own ex-
1564.] PLOT OF LA ROQUETTE. 69
penses in expectation of a golden harvest, and
they chafed in impatience and disgust. The reli-
gious element in the colony — unlike the former
Huguenot emigration to Brazil — was evidently
subordinate. The adventurers thought more of
their fortunes than of their faith ; yet there were
not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva
to complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers
had been sent with them. The burden of all
grievances was thrown upon Laudonnière, whose
greatest errors seem to have arisen from weak-
ness and a lack of judgment, — fatal defects in
his position.
The growing discontent was brought to a par-
tial head by One La Roquette, who gave out that,
high up the river, he had discovered by magic a
mine of gold and silver, which would give each
of them a share of ten thousand crowns, besides
fifteen hundred thousand for the King. But for
Laudonnière, he said, their fortunes would all be
made. He found an ally in a gentleman named
Genre, one of Laudonnière's confidants, who, while
still professing fast adherence to his interests, is
charged by him with plotting against his life.
“This Genre,” he says, “secretly enfourmed the
Souldiers that were already suborned by La RO-
quette, that I would deprive them of this great
gaine, in that I did set them dayly on worke, not
sending them on every side to discover the Coun-
treys; therefore that it were a good deede to dis-
patch mee out of the way, and to choose another
Captaine in my place.” The soldiers listened too
70 - CONSPIRACY. (1564,
well. They made a flag of an old shirt, which
they carried with them to the rampart when they
went to their work, at the same time wearing
their arms; and, pursues Laudonnière, “these gen-
tle Souldiers did the same for none other ende but
to have killed mee and my Lieutenant also, if by
chance I had given them any hard speeches.”
About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill,
and was confined to his quarters. On this, Genre
made advances to the apothecary, urging him to
put arsenic into his medicine; but the apothecary
shrugged his shoulders. They next devised a
scheme to blow him up by hiding a keg of gun-
powder under his bed; but here, too, they failed.
Hints of Genre's machinations reaching the ears
of Laudonnière, the culprit fled to the woods,
whence he wrote repentant letters, with full con-
fession, to his commander.
Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,
— the third, the Breton, remaining at anchor op-
posite the fort. The malcontents took the oppor-
tunity to send home charges against Laudonnière
of peculation, favoritism, and tyranny."
On the fourth of September, Captain Bourdet,
apparently a private adventurer, had arrived from
France with a small vessel. When he returned,
about the tenth of November, Laudonnière per-
suaded him to carry home seven or eight of the
malcontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his
sailors in their place. The exchange proved most
1 Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, 53; Laudonnière in Hakluyt, III, 400;
Basanier, 61.
1564.] SEDITION. 7|
disastrous. These pirates joined with others whom
they had won over, stole Laudonnière's two pin-
naces, and set forth on a plundering excursion to
the West Indies. They took a small Spanish
vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon com-
pelled by famine to put into Havana and give
themselves up. Here, to make their peace with
the authorities, they told all they knew of the
position and purposes of their countrymen at
Fort Caroline, and thus was forged the thunder-
bolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little
colony. -
On a Sunday morning, François de la Caille"
came to Laudonnière's quarters, and, in the name
of the whole company, requested him to come
to the parade-ground. He complied, and issuing
forth, his inseparable Ottigny at his side, he saw
Some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and gentlemen
volunteers waiting before the building with fixed
and sombre countenances. La Caille, advancing,
begged leave to read, in behalf of the rest, a paper
which he held in his hand. It opened with pro-
testations of duty and obedience; next came com-
plaints of hard work, starvation, and broken
promises, and a request that the petitioners should
be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the
river, and cruise along the Spanish Main, in order
to procure provisions by purchase “ or otherwise.” ”
* La Caille, as before mentioned, was Laudonnière's sergeant. The
feudal rank of sergeant, it will be remembered, was widely different from
the modern grade so named, and was held by men of noble birth. Le
Moyne calls La Caille “Captain.”
* Le Moyne, Brevis Narratio.
72 CONSPIRACY. |1564.
In short, the flower of the company wished to turn
buccaneers.
Laudonnière refused, but assured them that, as
soon as the defences of the fort should be com-
pleted, a search should be begun in earnest for the
Appalachian gold mine, and that meanwhile two
small vessels then building on the river should be
sent along the coast to barter for provisions with
the Indians. With this answer they were forced
to content themselves; but the fermentation con-
tinued, and the plot thickened. Their spokesman,
La Caille, however, seeing whither the affair
tended, broke with them, and, except Ottigny,
Vasseur, and the brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only
officer who held to his duty.
A severe illness again seized Laudonnière, and
confined him to his bed. Improving their advan-
tage, the malcontents gained over nearly all the
best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one
Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le
Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up
a paper, to which sixty-six names were signed.
La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and
they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le
Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a
hint of the design from a friend; upon which he
warned La Caille, who escaped to the woods. It
was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty
men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the
commandant's door. Forcing an entrance, they
wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and
crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux,
1564.] MUTINY. 73
armed with steel cap and cuirass, held his arque-
buse to Laudonnière's throat, and demanded leave
to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The
latter kept his presence of mind, and remonstrated
with some firmness; on which, with Oaths and
menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him
in fetters, carried him out to the gate of the fort,
placed him in a boat, and rowed him to the ship
anchored in the river.
Two other gangs at the same time visited Ot-
tigny and Arlac, whom they disarmed, and ordered
to keep their rooms till the night following, on
pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, mean-
while, in disarming all the loyal soldiers. The
fort was completely in the hands of the conspira-
tors. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his
meditated West India cruise, which he required
Laudonnière to sign. The sick commandant, im-
prisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first
refused; but, receiving a message from the muti-
neers, that, if he did not comply, they would
come on board and cut his throat, he at length
yielded. -
The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to fin-
ish the two small vessels on which the carpenters
had been for some time at work. In a fortnight
they were ready for sea, armed and provided with
the King's cannon, munitions, and stores. Tren-
chant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join the
party. Their favorite object was the plunder of
a certain church on One of the Spanish islands,
which they proposed to assail during the midnight
74 CONSPIRACY. [1565.
mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be
achieved : first, a rich booty; secondly, the punish-
ment of idolatry; thirdly, vengeance on the arch-
enemies of their party and their faith. They set
sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who
remained, calling them greenhorns, and threaten-
ing condign punishment if, on their triumphant
return, they should be refused free entrance to
the fort."
They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate
Laudonnière was gladdened in his solitude by the
approach of his fast friends Ottigny and Arlac,
who conveyed him to the fort and reinstated him.
The entire command was reorganized, and new
officers appointed. The colony was wofully de-
pleted; but the bad blood had been drawn off, and
thenceforth all internal danger was at an end. In
finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to
replace those of which they had been robbed, and
in various intercourse with the tribes far and near,
the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of March,
when an Indian came in with the tidings that a
vessel was hovering off the coast. Laudonnière
sent to reconnoitre. The stranger lay anchored
at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish
brigantine, manned by the returning mutineers,
starving, downcast, and anxious to make terms.
Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific,
Laudonnière sent down La Caille, with thirty sol-
diers concealed at the bottom of his little vessel.
* Le Moyne, Brevis Narratio, Compare Laudonnière in Basanier,
fol. 63–66.
1565.] BUCCANEERING. 75
Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates
allowed her to come alongside; when, to their
amazement, they were boarded and taken before
they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woe-
begone, and drunk, they were landed under a
guard. Their story was soon told. Fortune had
flattered them at the Outset, and on the coast of
Cuba, they took a brigantine laden with wine and
stores. Embarking in her, they next fell in with
a caravel, which also they captured. Landing at
a village in Jamaica, they plundered and caroused
for a week, and had hardly re-embarked when
they met a small vessel having on board the gov-
ernor of the island." She made desperate fight,
but was taken at last, and with her a rich booty.
They thought to put the governor to ransom ;
but the astute official deceived them, and, on
pretence of negotiating for the sum demanded, -
together with “four or six parrots, and as many
monkeys of the sort called sanguins, which are
very beautiful,” and for which his captors had
also bargained, - contrived to send instructions
to his wife. Hence it happened that at daybreak
three armed vessels fell upon them, retook the
prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but
twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their
brigantine, fled out to sea. Among these was the
ringleader, Fourneaux, and also the pilot, Tren-
chant, who, eager to return to Fort Caroline,
whence he had been forcibly taken, succeeded
1 Laudonnière in Basanier, fol. 66, Le Moyne says that it was the
governor of Havana,
76 CONSBIRACY. [1565.
during the night in bringing the vessel to the
coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and con-
sternation of the pirates when they saw their
dilemma; for, having no provisions, they must
either starve or seek succor at the fort. They
chose the latter course, and bore away for the
St. John's. A few casks of Spanish wine yet re-
mained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternizing in
the common peril of a halter, joined in a last
carouse. As the wine mounted to their heads, in
the mirth of drink and desperation, they enacted
their own trial. One personated the judge, an-
other the commandant ; witnesses were called,
with arguments and speeches on either side.
“Say what you like,” said one of them, after
hearing the counsel for the defence; “but if Lau-
donnière does not hang us all, I will never call
him an honest man.”
They had some hope of getting provisions from
the Indians at the rmouth of the river, and then
putting to sea again; but this was frustrated by
La Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was
ealled near Fort Caroline, and all were found
guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sen-
tenced to be hanged. Q
“Comrades,” said one of the condemned, ap-
pealing to the soldiers, “will you stand by and see
us butchered ?”
“These,” retorted Laudonnière, “are no com-
rades of mutineers and rebels.”
At the request of his followers, however, he
commuted the sentence to shooting.
1565.] ORDER RESTORED, 77
A file of men, a rattling volley, and the debt
of justice was paid. The bodies were hanged on
gibbets, at the river's mouth, and Order reigned
at Fort Caroline.'
* The above is from Le Moyne and Laudonnière, who agree in essential
points, but differ in a few details. The artist criticises the commandant
freely. Compare Hawkins in Hakluyt, III. 614.
CHAPTER WI.
1564, 1565,
FAMINE. – WAR. — SUCCOR.
LA ROCHE FERRIERE. — PIERRE GAMBIE. — THE KING OF CALOS,
— OTTIGNY’s EXPEDITION.— STARVATION.— EFFORTS TO ESCAPE
FROM FLORIDA. – INDIANS UNFRIENDLY. — SEIzu RE OF OUTINA,
— ATTEMPTS TO EXTORT RANSOM. — AMIBUSCADE. – BATTLE. —
DESPERATION OF THE FRENCH. — SIR JOHN HAwixIN's RELIEVEs
THEM. – RIBAUT BRINGS REINFORCEMENTs. – ARRIVAL OF THE
SPANIARDS.
WHILE the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche
Ferrière had been sent out as an agent or emissary
among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold,
and restless, he pushed his way from town to
town, and pretended to have reached the myste-
rious mountains of Appalache. He sent to the
fort mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered
with choice furs, arrows tipped with gold, wedges
of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and other
trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named
Grotaut took up the quest, and penetrated to the
dominions of Hostaqua, who, it was pretended,
could muster three or four thousand warriors,
and who promised, with the aid of a hundred
arquebusiers, to conquer all the kings of the ad-
jacent mountains, and subject them and their
gold mines to the rule of the French. A hum-
bler adventurer was Pierre Gambie, a robust and
daring youth, who had been brought up in the
1564.] THE J JNG OF CALOS. 79
household of Coligny, and was now a soldier
under Laudonnière. The latter gave him leave
to trade with the Indians, – a privilege which
he used so well that he grew rich with his
traffic, became prime favorite with the chief of
the island of Edelano, married his daughter, and,
in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his
sway verged towards despotism, his subjects took
offence, and split his head with a hatchet.
During the winter, Indians from the neighbor-
hood of Cape Canaveral brought to the fort two
Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the
southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They
were clothed like the Indians, – in other words,
were not clothed at all, - and their uncut hair
streamed loose down their backs. They brought
strange tales of those among whom they had
dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on
whose domains they had been wrecked, a chief
mighty in stature and in power. In one of his
villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as
a hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from
Spanish wrecks on adjacent reefs and keys. The
monarch was a priest too, and a magician, with
power Över the elements. Each year he with-
drew from the public gaze to hold converse in
secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each
year he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards
whom the fortune of the sea had cast upon his
shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in
that of the River Caloosa. In close leagué with
him was the mighty Oathcaqua, dwelling near
80 FAMINE. — WAR. — SUCCOR. [1565.
Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden
of wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally.
But as the bride with her bridesmaids was jour-
neying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band,
they were assailed by a wild and warlike race,
inhabitants of an island called Sarrope, in the
midst of a lake, who put the warriors to flight,
bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness,
espoused them all, and, we are assured, “loved
them above all measure.”"
Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the
French fire-arms, begged for ten arquebusiers to
aid him on a new raid among the villages of
Potanou, again alluring his greedy allies by the
assurance, that, thus reinforced, he would con-
quer for them a free access to the phantom gold
mines of Appalache. Ottigny set forth on this
fool's errand with thrice the force demanded.
Three hundred Thimagoas and thirty Frenchmen
took up their march through the pine barrens.
Outina's conjurer was of the number, and had
wellnigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on Ot-
tigny’s shield, that he might not touch the earth,
with hideous grimaces, howlings, and contortions,
he wrought himself into a prophetic frenzy, and
proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to ad-
vance farther would be destruction.” Outina was
for instant retreat, but Ottigny’s sarcasms shamed
him into a show of courage. Again they moved
1 Laudonnière in Hakluyt, III. 406. Brinton, Floridian Peninsula,
thinks there is truth in the story, and that Lake Weir, in Marion County,
is the Lake of Sarrope. I give these romantic tales as I find them.
* This scene is the subject of Plate XII. of Le Moyne.
1565.] STARVATION. 81
forward, and soon encountered Potanou with all
his host." The arquebuse did its work; panic,
slaughter, and a plentiful harvest of scalps. But
no persuasion could induce Outina to follow up
his victory. He went home to dance round his
trophies, and the French returned disgusted to
Fort Caroline.
And now, in ample measure, the French began
to reap the harvest of their folly. Conquest, gold,
and military occupation had alone been their aims.
Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the
spade. Their stores were consumed, and the ex-
pected supplies had not come. The Indians, too,
were hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of
his enemies; and his tribesmen, robbed and mal-
treated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in their
miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle
neighbors, was their only hope.
May-day came, the third anniversary of the day
when Ribaut and his companions, full of delighted
anticipation, had first explored the flowery borders
of the St. John's. The contrast was deplorable;
for within the precinct of Fort Caroline a home-
sick, squalid band, dejected and worn, dragged
their shrunken limbs about the Sun-scorched area,
or lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the
shade of the barracks. Some were digging roots
in the forest, or gathering a kind of Sorrel upon
1 Le Moyne drew a picture of the fight (Plate XIII.). In the fore-
ground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with a gigantic savage, who,
with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the plumed helmet of his foe;
but the latter, with target raised to guard his head, darts under the arms
of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him with his sword.
6
82 FAMINE. — WAR. — SUCCOR. [1565.
the meadows. If they had had any skill in hunt-
ing and fishing, the river and the woods would
have supplied their needs; but in this point, as in
others, they were lamentably unfit for the work
they had taken in hand. “Our miserie,” says
Laudonnière, “was so great that one was found
that gathered up all the fish bones that he could
finde, which he dried and beate into powder to
make bread thereof. The effects of this hideous
famine appeared incontinently among us, for Our
bones eftsoones beganne to cleave so neere unto
the skinne, that the most part of the souldiers had
their skinnes pierced thorow with them in many
partes of their bodies.” Yet, giddy with weak-
ness, they dragged themselves in turn to the top
of St. John's Bluff, straining their eyes across the
sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.
Had Coligny left them to perish 2 or had some
new tempest of calamity, let loose upon France,
drowned the memory of their exile 2 In vain the
watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of
waters. A deep dejection fell upon them, - a
dejection that would have sunk to despair could
their eyes have pierced the future.
The Indians had left the neighborhood, but
from time to time brought in meagre supplies
of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers
at exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the
penalty of their extortion, they would not enter
the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river, be-
yond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come
out to them. “Oftentimes,” says Laudonnière,
o
1565.j EFEORTS TO ESCAPE. 83
“our poor soldiers were constrained to give away
the very shirts from their backs to get one fish.
If at any time they shewed unto the Savages the
excessive price which they tooke, these villaines
would answere them roughly and churlishly: If
thou make so great account of thy marchandise,
eat it, and we will eat our fish : then fell they out
a laughing, and mocked us with Open throat.”
The spring wore away, and no relief appeared.
One thought now engrossed the colonists, that
of return to France. Wasseur's ship, the Bre-
ton, still remained in the river, and they had
also the Spanish brigantine brought by the muti-
neers. But these vessels were insufficient, and
they prepared to build a new one. The energy
of reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted
frames. Some gathered pitch in the pine forests;
some made charcoal; some cut and sawed timber.
The maize began to ripen, and this brought some
relief; but the Indians, exasperated and greedy,
sold it with reluctance, and murdered two half-
famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in
the fields.
The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them
two victories. The result was a churlish message
and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an
invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief,
one Astina, the plunder of whose villages would
yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted.
Ottigny and Vasseur set out, but were grossly
deceived, led against a different enemy, and sent
back empty-handed and half-starved.
84 FAMINE. — WAR. — SUCCOR. [1565.
They returned to the fort, in the words of Lau-
donnière, “angry and pricked deepely to the quicke
for being so mocked,” and, joined by all their com-
rades, fiercely demanded to be led against Outina,
to seize him, punish his insolence, and extort from
his fears the supplies which could not be looked
for from his gratitude. The commandant was
forced to comply. Those who could bear the
weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to
the number of fifty, in two barges, and sailed up
the river under Laudonnière himself. Having
reached Outina’s landing, they marched inland,
entered his village, surrounded his mud-plastered
palace, seized him amid the yells and howlings of
his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats.
Here, anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a
supply of corn and beans as the price of his
I’a,]]SOIOl.
The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed
with red, came thronging from all his villages.
The forest along the shore was full of them ; and
the wife of the chief, followed by all the women
of the place, uttered moans and outcries from the
strand. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reason-
ing from their own instincts, they never doubted
that, after the price was paid, the captive would
be put to death.
Laudonnière waited two days, and then de-
scended the river with his prisoner. In a rude
chamber of Fort Caroline the sentinel stood his
guard, pike in hand, while before him crouched
the captive chief, mute, impassive, and brooding
1565.] THE CAPTIVE OUTINA. 85
on his woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen
as a hound on the scent of prey, tried, by great
offers, to bribe Laudonnière to give Outina into
his hands; but the French captain refused, treated
his prisoner kindly, and assured him of immediate
freedom on payment of the ransom.
Meanwhile his captivity was bringing grievous
affliction on his tribesmen; for, despairing of his
return, they mustered for the election of a new
chief. Party strife ran high. Some were for a
boy, his son, and some for an ambitious kinsman.
Outina chafed in his prison on learning these dis-
sensions; and, eager to convince his over-hasty
subjects that their chief still lived, he was so pro-
fuse of promises that he was again embarked and
carried up the river.
At no great distance from Lake George, a small
affluent of the St. John's gave access by water to
a point within six French leagues of Outina's prin-
cipal town. The two barges, crowded with sol-
diers, and bearing also the captive Outina, rowed
up this little stream. Indians awaited them at
the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish,
and piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose
liberation they promised an ample supply of corn.
As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonnière
yielded, released his prisoner, and received in his
place two hostages, who were fast bound in the
boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detach-
ment of arquebusiers, went to receive the promised
supplies, for which, from the first, full payment in
merchandise had been offered. On their arrival
86 IFAMINE. — WAR. — SUCCOR. |iš65.
at the village, they filed into the great central
lodge, within whose dusky precincts were gath-
ered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber,
forum, banquet-hall, and dancing-hall all in one,
the spacious structure could hold half the popula-
tion. Here the French made their abode. With
armor buckled, and arquebuse matches lighted,
they watched with anxious eyes the strange, dim
scene, half revealed by the daylight that streamed
down through the hole at the apex of the roof.
Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, with quivers
at their backs, and bows and arrows in their
hands, while groups, crouched in the shadow be-
yond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable vis-
ages, and malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came
in slowly, but warriors mustered fast. The vil-
lage without was full of them. The French offi-
cers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater
alacrity in collecting the promised ransom. The
answer boded no good : “Our women are afraid
when they see the matches of your guns burn-
ing. Put them out, and they will bring the corn
faster.”
Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they
learned that he was in one of the small huts ad-
jacent. Several of the officers went to him, com-
plaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The
kindness of his captors at Fort Caroline seemed to
have won his heart. He replied, that such was
the rage of his subjects that he could no longer
control them ; that the French were in danger;
and that he had seen arrows stuck in the ground
;565.j AMBUSCADE. – BATTLE. 87
by the side of the path, in token that war was
declared. The peril was thickening hourly, and
Ottigny resolved to regain the boats while there
was yet time.
On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the
morning, he set his men in order. Each shoulder-
ing a sack of corn, they marched through the rows
of huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out
betwixt the overlapping extremities of the palisade
that encircled the town. Before them stretched a
wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long,
flanked by a natural growth of trees, – one of
those curious monuments of native industry to
which allusion has already been made." Here
Ottigny halted and formed his line of march.
Arlac, with eight matchlock men, was sent in
advance, and flanking parties were thrown into
the woods on either side. Ottigny told his sol-
diers that, if the Indians meant to attack them,
they were probably in ambush at the other end
of the avenue. He was right. As Arlac's party
reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at
Once. The war-whoop rose, and a tempest of
stone-headed arrows clattered against the breast-
plates of the French, or, scorching like fire, tore
through their unprotected limbs. They stood firm,
and sent back their shot so steadily that several of
the assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or
three hundred in number, gave way as Ottigny
came up with his men.
They moved on for a quarter of a mile through
1 See ante, p. 58.
88 FAMINE. – WAR. — SUCCOR. [1565,
a country, as it seems, comparatively open, when
again the war-cry pealed in front, and three
hundred savages bounded to the assault. Their
whoops were echoed from the rear. It was the
party whom Arlac had just repulsed, and who,
leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing
on again with a ferocity restrained only by their
lack of courage. There was no panic among the
French. The men threw down their bags of corn,
and took to their weapons. They blew their
matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood
well to their work. The Indians, on their part,
showed good discipline after their fashion, and
were perfectly under the control of their chiefs.
With cries that imitated the yell of owls, the
scream of cougars, and the howl of wolves, they
ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows,
and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At
the sight of the levelled arquebuse, they dropped
flat on the ground. Whenever the French charged
upon them, sword in hand, they fled through the
woods like foxes; and whenever the march was
resumed, the arrows were showering again upon
the flanks and rear of the retiring band. As they
fell, the soldiers picked them up and broke them.
Thus, beset with swarming savages, the handful
of Frenchmen pushed slowly onward, fighting as
they went.
The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest
was silent again. Two of the French had been
killed and twenty-two wounded, several so se-
verely that they were supported to the boats with
Y565.1 FRIENDS OR FOES 2 89
the utmost difficulty. Of the corn, two bags only
had been brought off.
Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort
Caroline. The Indians had killed two of the car-
penters; hence long delay in the finishing of the
new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to
put to sea in the Breton and the brigantine. The
problem was to find food for the voyage; for now,
in their extremity, they roasted and ate Snakes, a
delicacy in which the neighborhood abounded.
On the third of August, Laudonnière, perturbed
and oppressed, was walking on the hill, when,
looking seaward, he saw a sight that sent a thrill
through his exhausted frame. A great ship was
standing towards the river's mouth. Then an-
other came in sight, and another, and another.
He despatched a messenger with the tidings to
the fort below. The languid forms of his sick
and despairing men rose and danced for joy, and
voices shrill with weakness joined in wild laugh-
ter and acclamation, insomuch, he says, “ that
one would have thought them to bee out of their
wittes.”
A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who
were the strangers ? Were they the friends so
long hoped for in vain 7 or were they Spaniards,
their dreaded enemies 2 They were neither. The
foremost ship was a stately one, of seven hundred
tons, a great burden at that day. She was named
the Jesus; and with her were three smaller ves-
sels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the Swallow.
Their commander was “a right worshipful and
90 FAMINE.—WAR.—SUCCOR [1565.
valiant knight,”—for so the record styles him, -
a pious man and a prudent, to judge him by the
Orders he gave his crew when, ten months before,
he sailed out of Plymouth : “Serve God daily,
love one another, preserve your victuals, beware
of fire, and keepe good companie.” Nor were
the crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for
the devout chronicler of the voyage ascribes their
deliverance from the perils of the sea to “the
Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to
perish.”
Who then were they, this chosen band, serenely
conscious of a special Providential care 2 They
were the pioneers of that detested traffic destined
to inoculate with its infection nations yet unborn,
the parent of discord and death, filling half a con-
tinent with the tramp of armies and the clash of
fratricidal swords. Their chief was Sir John Haw-
kins, father of the English slave-trade.
He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he
bought and kidnapped a cargo of slaves. These
he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of Hispaniola,
forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culve-
rin, to grant him free trade, and then to sign tes-
timonials that he had borne himself as became a
peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this
summary commerce, but distressed by the want
of water, he had put into the River of May to
obtain a supply.
Among the rugged heroes of the British marine,
Sir John stood in the front rank, and along with
Drake, his relative, is extolled as “a man borne
1565.] SIR JOHN HAWKINS. 91
for the honour of the English name. . . . Neither
did the West of England yeeld such an Indian
Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean peeres,
Hawkins and Drake.” So writes the old chroni-
cler, Purchas, and all England was of his thinking.
A hardy and skilful seaman, a bold fighter, a loyal
friend and a stern enemy, Overbearing towards
equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath
him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal and
avaricious, he buffeted his way to riches and fame,
and died at last full of years and honor. As for
the abject humanity stowed between the reek-
ing decks of the ship Jesus, they were merely in
his eyes so many black cattle tethered for the
market."
Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and
landed at Fort Caroline, accompanied, says Lau-
donnière, “with gentlemen honorably apparelled,
yet unarmed.” Between the Huguenots and the
English Puritans there was a double tie of sym-
pathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Span-
1 For Hawkins, see the three narratives in Hakluyt, III. 594; Pur-
chas, IV. 1177; Stow, Chron, 807; Biog. Britan., Art. Hawkins; Ander-
son, History of Commerce, I. 400.
He was not knighted until after the voyage of 1564–65; hence there
is an anachronism in the text. As he was held “to have opened a new
trade,” he was entitled to bear as his crest a “Moor ’’ or negro, bound
with a cord. In Fairbairn's Crests of Great Britain and Ireland, where it
is figured, it is described, not as a negro, but as a “naked man.” In
Burke's Landed Gentry, it is said that Sir John obtained it in honor of a
great victory over the Moors | His only African victories were in kid-
napping raids on negro villages. In Letters on Certain Passages in the Life
of Sir John Hawkins, the coat is engraved in detail. The “demi-Moor”
has the thick lips, the flat nose, and the wool of the unequivocal negro.
Sir John became Treasurer of the Royal Navy and Rear-Admiral, and
founded a marine hospital at Chatham.
92 FAMINE. – WAR. – SUCCOR. [1565.
iards. Wakening from their apathetic misery,
the starveling garrison hailed him as a deliv-
erer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced when he
learned their purpose to abandon Florida; for al-
though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid from
him the secret of their Appalachian gold mine,
he coveted for his royal mistress the possession of
this rich domain. He shook his head, however,
when he saw the vessels in which they proposed
to embark, and offered them all a free passage to
France in his own ships. This, from obvious
motives of honor and prudence, Laudonnière de-
clined, upon which Hawkins offered to lend or
sell to him one of his smaller vessels.
Laudonnière hesitated, and hereupon arose a
great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans
beset his chamber, threatening loudly to desert
him, and take passage with Hawkins, unless the
offer were accepted. The commandant accord-
ingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous
slaver, whose reputed avarice nowhere appears in
the transaction, desired him to set his own price ;
and, in place of money, took the cannon of the
fort, with other articles now useless to their late
owners. He sent them, too, a gift of wine and
biscuit, and supplied them with provisions for the
voyage, receiving in payment Laudonnière’s note;
“for which,” adds the latter, “untill this pres-
ent I am indebted to him.” With a friendly
leave-taking, he returned to his ships and stood
out to sea, leaving golden Opinions among the
grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.
:565.j ARRIVAL OF RIBAUT. 93
Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath
the horizon, the colonists bestirred themselves to
depart. In a few days their preparations were
made. They waited only for a fair wind. It
was long in coming, and meanwhile their troubled
fortunes assumed a new phase.
On the twenty-eighth of August, the two cap-
tains Wasseur and Verdier came in with tidings
of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was
Wild with excitement. Friends or foes, French or
Spaniards, succor or death ; — betwixt these were
their hopes and fears divided. On the following
morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the
river, bristling with weapons and crowded with
men in armor. The sentries on the bluff chal-
lenged, and received no answer. One of them
fired at the advancing boats, and still there was
no response. Laudonnière was almost defenceless.
He had given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and
only two field-pieces were left. They were lev-
elled at the foremost boats, and the word to fire
was about to be given, when a voice from among
the strangers called out that they were French,
commanded by Jean Ribaut.
At the eleventh hour, the long looked for suc-
cors were come. Ribaut had been commissioned
to sail with seven ships for Florida. A dis-
orderly concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed
with artisans and their families, and young no-
bles weary of a two years' peace, were mustered
at the port of Dieppe, and embarked, to the
number of three hundred men, bearing with
94 N AMINE. – WAR, - SUCCOR. [1565,
them all things thought necessary to a prosperous
colony.
No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colo-
nists saluted the new-comers with the cannon by
which a moment before they had hoped to blow
them out of the water. Laudonnière issued from
his stronghold to welcome them, and regaled them
with what cheer he could. Ribaut was present,
conspicuous by his long beard, an astonishment
to the Indians; and here, too, were officers, Old
friends of Laudonnière. Why, then, had they
approached in the attitude of enemies? The mys-
tery was soon explained ; for they expressed to
the commandant their pleasure at finding that
the charges made against him had proved false.
He begged to know more; on which Ribaut, tak-
ing him aside, told him that the returning ships
had brought home letters filled with accusations
of arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of
establishing an independent command, – accusa-
tions which he now saw to be unfounded, but
which had been the occasion of his unusual and
startling precaution. He gave him, too, a letter
from Admiral Coligny. In brief but courteous
terms, it required him to resign his command,
and requested his return to France to clear his
name from the imputations cast upon it.' Ribaut
warmly urged him to remain ; but Laudonnière
declined his friendly proposals.
Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded.
he soon fell ill again. A peasant woman attended
1 See the letter in Basanier, 102.
1565.] ARRIVAL OF THE SPANIARDS, 95
him, who was brought over, he says, to nurse
the sick and take charge of the poultry, and of
whom Le Moyne also speaks as a servant, but
who had been made the occasion of additional
charges against him, most offensive to the aus-
tere Admiral.
Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women
and children were sent on shore, feathered In-
dians mingled in the throng, and the borders
of the River of May swarmed with busy life.
“But, lo, how oftentimes misfortune doth search
and pursue us, even then when we thinke to
be at rest l” exclaims the unhappy Laudonnière.
Amidst the light and cheer of renovated hope,
a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the
east.
At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday,
the fourth of September, the crew of Ribaut’s
flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the bar,
saw a huge hulk, grim, with the throats of can-
non, drifting towards them through the gloom ;
and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air the
portentous banner of Spain.
CHAPTER VII.
1565.
MENENDEZ.
SPAIN. — PEDRO MENENDEZ DE Avi Lás. – HIs Boy HooD. — HIS
EARLY CAREER. – HIS PETITION TO THE KING. — ComMIssion ED
TO CONQUER FLORIDA. – HIS Powers. — HIs DESIGNS. – A NEW
CRUSADE. – SAILING OF THE SPANISH FLEET. — A STORM. –Porto
RICO. — ENERGY OF MENENDEz. – HE REACHEs FLORIDA. — AT-
TACKS RIBAUT's SHIPS. — Foun DS ST. AUGUSTINE. — ALARM OF
THE FRENCH. — BOLD DECISION OF RIBAUT. — DEFENCELESS
CONDITION OF FOR T CAROLINE. – RIBAUT THw ARTED. — TEMPEST.
— MENENDEZ MARCHES ON THE FRENCH ForT. — His DESPERATE
POSITION. — THE FORT TAKEN. — THE MAssACRE. — THE FUGI.
TIVES.
THE monk, the inquisitor, and the Jesuit were
lords of Spain, – sovereigns of her sovereign, for
they had formed the dark and narrow mind of
that tyrannical recluse. They had formed the
minds of her people, quenched in blood every
spark of rising heresy, and given over a noble
nation to a bigotry blind and inexorable as the
doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, ava-
rice, every passion of a rich, strong nature, potent
for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of that day
a scourge as dire as ever fell on man.
Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope,
and freedom pierced with vitalizing ray the clouds
and the miasma that hung so thick over the pros-
trate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a
foul image of decay and death. Kindled with
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1565.] SPAIN. 97
new life, the nations gave birth to a progeny of
heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth
century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain
was the citadel of darkness, – a monastic cell, an
inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce.
She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose
adamantine wall the waves of innovation beat in
vain." In every country of Europe the party of
freedom and reform was the national party, the
party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish
party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help.
Above all, it was so in France; and, while within
her bounds there was for a time some semblance
of peace, the national and religious rage burst
forth on a wilder theatre. Thither it is for us to
follow it, where, on the shores of Florida, the
Spaniard and the Frenchman, the bigot and the
Huguenot, met in the grapple of death.
In a corridor of his palace, Philip the Second
was met by a man who had long stood waiting his
approach, and who with proud reverence placed a
petition in the hand of the pale and sombre King.
The petitioner was Pedro Menendez de Avilés, one
of the ablest and most distinguished officers of
the Spanish marine. He was born of an ancient
Asturian family. His boyhood had been wayward,
ungovernable, and fierce. He ran off at eight
1 “Better a ruined kingdom, true to itself and its king, than one left
unharmed to the profit of the Devil and the heretics.” Correspondance
de Philippe II., cited by Prescott, Philip II., Book III. c. 2, note 36.
“A prince can do nothing more shameful, or more hurtful to himself,
than to permit his people to live according to their conscience.” The
Duke of Alva, in Davila, Lib, III. p. 341.
7
98. MENENDEZ. [1565.
years of age, and when, after a search of six
months, he was found and brought back, he ran
off again. This time he was more successful,
escaping on board a fleet bound against the Bar-
bary corsairs, where his precocious appetite for
blood and blows had reasonable contentment. A
few years later, he found means to build a small
vessel, in which he cruised against the corsairs
and the French, and, though still hardly more
than a boy, displayed a singular address and dar-
ing. The wonders of the New World now seized
his imagination. He made a voyage thither, and
the ships under his charge came back freighted
with wealth. The war with France was then at
its height. As captain-general of the fleet, he
was sent with troops to Flanders; and to their
prompt arrival was due, it is said, the victory of
St. Quentin. Two years later, he commanded the
iuckless armada which bore back Philip to his
native shore. On the way, the King narrowly
escaped drowning in a storm off the port of
Laredo. This mischance, or his own violence and
insubordination, wrought to the prejudice of Me-
mendez. He complained that his services were ill
repaid. Philip lent him a favoring ear, and de-
spatched him to the Indies as general of the fleet
and army. Here he found means to amass vast
riches; and, in 1561, on his return to Spain,
, charges were brought against him of a nature
which his too friendly biographer does not explain.
The Council of the Indies arrested him. He was
imprisoned and sentenced to a heavy fine; but,
1565.1 HIS PETITION TO THE KING. 99
gaining his release, hastened to court to throw
himself on the royal clemency." His petition
was most graciously received. Philip restored
his command, but remitted only half his fine, a
strong presumption of his guilt.
Menendez kissed the royal hand; he had another
petition in reserve. His son had been wrecked
near the Bermudas, and he would fain go thither
to find tidings of his fate. The pious King bade
him trust in God, and promised that he should be
despatched without delay to the Bermudas and to
Florida, with a commission to make an exact sur-
vey of the neighboring seas for the profit of future
voyagers; but Menendez was not content with
such an errand. He knew, he said, nothing of
greater moment to his Majesty than the conquest
and settlement of Florida. The climate was
healthful, the soil fertile; and, worldly advan-
tages aside, it was peopled by a race sunk in the
thickest shades of infidelity. “Such grief,” he
pursued, “seizes me, when I behold this multitude
of wretched Indians, that I should choose the
conquest and settling of Florida above all com-
mands, offices, and dignities which your Majesty
might bestow.” Those who take this for hypoc-
risy do not know the Spaniard of the sixteenth
century.
The King was edified by his zeal. An enter-
prise of such spiritual and temporal promise was
not to be slighted, and Menendez was empowered
* Barcia, (Cardenas y Cano,) Ensayo Cronologico, 57–64.
2 Ibid., 65.
100 MENENIDEZ. [1565,
to conquer and convert Florida at his own cost.
The conquest was to be effected within three
years. Menendez was to take with him five hun-
dred men, and supply them with five hundred
slaves, besides horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs.
Villages were to be built, with forts to defend
them ; and sixteen ecclesiastics, of whom four
should be Jesuits, were to form the nucleus of a
Floridan church. The King, on his part, granted
Menendez free trade with Hispaniola, Porto Rico,
Cuba, and Spain, the office of Adelantado of Flor-
ida for life, with the right of naming his succes-
sor, and large emoluments to be drawn from the
expected conquest."
The compact struck, Menendez hastened to his
native Asturias to raise money among his rela-
tives. Scarcely was he gone, when tidings reached
Madrid that Florida was already occupied by a col-
ony of French Protestants, and that a reinforce-
ment, under Ribaut, was on the point of Sailing
thither. A French historian of high authority
declares that these advices came from the Catholic
party at the French court, in whom every instinct
of patriotism was lost in their hatred of Coligny
and the Huguenots. Of this there can be little
doubt, though information also came about this
time from the buccaneer Frenchmen captured in
the West Indies. -
Foreigners had invaded the territory of Spain.
1 The above is from Barcia, as the original compact has not been
found. For the patent conferring the title of Adelantado, see Coleccion de
Varios Documentos, I. 13.
1565.] ATTITUDE OF FRANCE. 101
The trespassers, too, were heretics, foes of God,
and liegemen of the Devil. Their doom was fixed.
But how would France endure an assault, in time
of peace, on subjects who had gone forth on an en-
terprise Sanctioned by the Crown, and undertaken
in its name and under its commission ?
The throne of France, in which the corruption of
the nation seemed gathered to a head, was trem-
bling between the two parties of the Catholics
and the Huguenots, whose chiefs aimed at royalty.
Flattering both, caressing both, playing one against
the other, and betraying both, Catherine de Medi-
cis, by a thousand crafty arts and expedients of
the moment, sought to retain the crown on the
head of her weak and vicious son. Of late her
crooked policy had led her towards the Catholic
party, in other words the party of Spain; and
she had already given ear to the savage Duke of
Alva, urging her to the course which, seven years
later, led to the carnage of St. Bartholomew. In
short, the Spanish policy was in the ascendant,
and no thought of the national interest or honor
could restrain that basest of courts from aban-
doning by hundreds to the national enemy those
whom it was itself meditating to immolate by
thousands." It might protest for form's sake, or
to quiet public clamor; but Philip of Spain well
knew that it would end in patient submission.
a *.
1 The French Jesuit Charlevoix says: “On avoit donné à cette ex-
pédition tout l’air d’une guerre Sainte, entreprise contre les Hérétiques de
concert avec le Roy de France.” Nor does Charlevoix seem to doubt this
complicity of Charles the Ninth in an attack on his own subjects.
102 MENENIDEZ. [1565.
Menendez was summoned back in haste to the
Spanish court. His force must be strengthened.
Three hundred and ninety-four men were added
at the royal charge, and a corresponding number
of transport and supply ships. It was a holy war,
a crusade, and as such was preached by priest and
monk along the western coasts of Spain. All the
Biscayan ports flamed with zeal, and adventurers
crowded to enroll themselves; since to plunder
heretics is good for the soul as well as the purse,
and broil and massacre have double attraction
when promoted into a means of salvation. It
was a fervor, deep and hot, but not of celestial
kindling ; nor yet that buoyant and inspiring zeal
which, when the Middle Age was in its youth and
prime, glowed in the souls of Tancred, Godfrey,
and St. Louis, and which, when its day was long
since past, could still find its home in the great
heart of Columbus. A darker spirit urged the
new crusade, – born not of hope, but of fear, slav-
ish in its nature, the creature and the tool of des-
potism ; for the typical Spaniard of the sixteenth
century was not in strictness a fanatic, he was
bigotry incarnate.
Heresy was a plague-spot, an ulcer to be erad-
icated with fire and the knife, and this foul
abomination was infecting the shores which the
Vicegerent of Christ had given to the King of
Spain, and which the Most Catholic King had
given to the Adelantado. Thus would countless
heathen tribes be doomed to an eternity of flame,
and the Prince of Darkness hold his ancient sway
1565.] HIS PROJECTS. I03
unbroken ; and for the Adelantado himself, the
vast outlays, the vast debts of his bold Floridan
venture would be all in vain, and his fortunes be
wrecked past redemption through these tools of
Satan. As a Catholic, as a Spaniard, and as an
adventurer, , is course was clear.
The Wor signed him was prodigious. He
was inves ith power almost absolute, not
merely over the peninsula which now retains the
name of Florida, but over all North America, from
Labrador to Mexico; for this was the Florida of
the old Spanish geographers, and the Florida des-
ignated in the commésion of Menendez. It was a
continent which he was to conquer and occupy out
of his own purse. The impoverished King con-
tracted with his daring and ambitious subject to
win and hold for him the territory of the future
United States and British Provinces. His plan,
as afterwards exposed at length in his letters to
Philip the Second, was, first, to plant a garrison
at Port Royal, and next to fortify strongly on
Chesapeake Bay, called by him St. Mary's. He
believed that adjoining this bay was an arm of
the sea, running northward and eastward, and
communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence,
thus making New England, with adjacent dis-
tricts, an island. His proposed fort on the Chesa-
peake, securing access, by this imaginary passage,
to the seas of Newfoundland, would enable the
Spaniards to command the fisheries, on which both
the French and the English had long encroached,
to the great prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubt-


104. MENENDEZ. [1565,
less, too, these inland waters gave access to the
South Sea, and their occupation was necessary to
prevent the French from penetrating thither; for
that ambitious people, since the time of Cartier,
had never abandoned their schemes ºf seizing this

portion of the dominions of the g of Spain.
Five hundred soldiers and one red sailors
must, he urges, take possession, w t delay, of
Port Royal and the Chesapeake."
Preparation for his enterprise was pushed with
furious energy. His whole force, when the several
squadrons were united, amounted to two thousand
six hundred and forty-six pºrsons, in thirty-four
vessels, one of which, the San Pelayo, bearing Me-
mendez himself, was of nine hundred and ninety-
six tons’ burden, and is described as one of the
finest ships afloat.” There were twelve Francis-
cans and eight Jesuits, besides other ecclesiastics;
and many knights of Galicia, Biscay, and the
Asturias took part in the expedition. With a
slight exception, the whole was at the Adelan-
tado's charge. Within the first fourteen months,
1 Cartas escritas al Rey por el General Pero Menendez de Avilés.
These are the official despatches of Menendez, of which the originals are
preserved in the archives of Seville. They are very voluminous and
minute in detail. Copies of them were obtained by the aid of Bucking-
ham Smith, Esq., to whom the writer is also indebted for various other
documents from the same source, throwing new light on the events
described. Menendez calls Port Royal “ St. Elena,” a name afterwards
applied to the sound which still retains it. Compare Historical Magazine,
IV. 320.
2 This was not so remarkable as it may appear. Charnock, History of
Marine Architecture, gives the tonnage of the ships of the Invincible Ar-
mada. The flag-ship of the Andalusian squadron was of fifteen hundred
and fifty tons; several were of about twelve hundred.
1865. SAILS FROM CADIZ. 105
according to his admirer, Barcia, the adventure
cost him a million ducats."
Before the close of the year, Sancho de Arcini-
ega was commissioned to join Menendez with an
additional force of fifteen hundred men.”
Red-hot with a determined purpose, the Ade-
lantado would brook no delay. To him, says the
chronicler, every day seemed a year. He was
eager to anticipate Ribaut, of whose designs and
whose force he seems to have been informed to
the minutest particular, but whom he hoped to
thwart and ruin by gaining Fort Caroline before
him. With eleven ships, therefore, he sailed from
Cadiz, on the twenty-ninth of June, 1565, leaving
the smaller vessels of his fleet to follow with what
speed they might. He touched first at the Cana-
ries, and on the eighth of July left them, steering
for Dominica. A minute account of the voyage
has come down to us, written by Mendoza, chap-
lain of the expedition, a somewhat dull and illiter-
ate person, who busily jots down the incidents of
1 Barcia, 69. The following passage in one of the unpublished letters
of Menendez seems to indicate that the above is exaggerated : “Your
Majesty may be assured by me, that, had I a million, more or less, I
would employ and spend the whole in this undertaking, it being so greatly
to [the glory of] God our Lord, and the increase of our Holy Catholic
Faith, and the service and authority of your Majesty; and thus I have
offered to our Lord whatever He shall give me in this world, [and what-
ever] I shall possess, gain, or acquire shall be devoted to the planting of
the Gospel in this land, and the enlightenment of the natives thereof, and
this I do promise to your Majesty.” This letter is dated Il September,
1565.
* Año de 1565. Nombramiento de Capitan-General de la Armada des.
timada para yr di la Provincia de la Florida al Socorro del General
Pero Menendez de Avilés, hecho por Su Magestad al Capitan Sancho de
Arciniega.
106 MENENIDEZ. [1565.
each passing day, and is constantly betraying,
with a certain awkward simplicity, how the cares
of this world and of the next jostle each other
in his thoughts.
On Friday, the twentieth of July, a storm fell
upon them with appalling fury. The pilots lost
their wits, and the sailors gave themselves up to
their terrors. Throughout the night, they beset
Mendoza for confession and absolution, a boon
not easily granted, for the seas swept the crowded
decks with cataracts of foam, and the shriekings
of the gale in the rigging overpowered the ex-
hortations of the half-drowned priest, Cannon,
cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard,
and the chests of the sailors would have followed,
had not the latter, in spite of their fright, raised
such a howl of remonstrance that the order was
revoked. At length day dawned. Plunging, reel-
ing, half under water, quivering with the shock
of the seas, whose mountain ridges rolled down
upon her before the gale, the ship lay in deadly
peril from Friday till Monday noon. Then the
storm abated ; the sun broke out ; and again she
held her course."
They reached Dominica on Sunday, the fifth of
August. The chaplain tells us how he went on
shore to refresh himself; how, while his Italian
servant washed his linen at a brook, he strolled
along the beach and picked up shells; and how
1 Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, Relacion de la Jornada de
Pedro Menendez, printed in Coleccion de Documentos Inéditos, III. 441
(Madrid, 1865). There is a French translation in the Floride of Ternaux,
Compans. Letter of Menendez to the King, 13 August, 1565.
1565.] REACHES PORTO RICO. I07
he was scared, first, by a prodigious turtle, and
next by a vision of the cannibal natives, which
caused his prompt retreat to the boats.
On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of
Porto Rico, where they found two ships of their
squadron, from which they had parted in the
storm. One of them was the San Pelayo, with
Menendez on board. Mendoza informs us, that
in the evening the officers came on board the ship
to which he was attached, when he, the chaplain,
regaled them with sweetmeats, and that Menen-
dez invited him not only to supper that night,
but to dinner the next day, “for the which I
thanked him, as reason was,” says the gratified
churchman.
Here thirty men deserted, and three priests also
ran off, of which Mendoza bitterly complains, as
increasing his own work. The motives of the
clerical truants may perhaps be inferred from a
worldly temptation to which the chaplain himself
was subjected. “I was offered the service of a
chapel where I should have got a peso for every
mass I said, the whole year round; but I did not
accept it, for fear that what I hear said of the
other three would be said of me. Besides, it is
not a place where one can hope for any great
advancement, and I wished to try whether, in
refusing a benefice for the love of the Lord, He
will not repay me with some other stroke of for-
tune before the end of the voyage ; for it is my
aim to serve God and His blessed Mother.””
* Mendoza, Relacion de la Jornada de Pedro Menendez.
108 MENENIDEZ. [1565,
The original design had been to rendezvous at
Havana, but with the Adelantado the advantages
of despatch outweighed every other consideration.
He resolved to push directly for Florida. Five of
his scattered ships had by this time rejoined com-
pany, comprising, exclusive of Officers, a force of
about five hundred soldiers, two hundred sailors,
and one hundred colonists." Bearing northward,
he advanced by an unknown and dangerous course
along the coast of Hayti and through the intri-
cate passes of the Bahamas. On the night of
the twenty-sixth, the San Pelayo struck three
times on the shoals; “but,” says the chaplain,
“inasmuch as our enterprise was undertaken for
the sake of Christ and His blessed Mother, two
heavy seas struck her abaft, and set her afloat
again.”
At length the ships lay becalmed in the Bahama
Channel, slumbering on the glassy sea, torpid with
the heats of a West Indian August. Menendez
called a council of the commanders. There was
doubt and indecision. Perhaps Ribaut had al-
ready reached the French fort, and then to attack
the united force would be an act of desperation.
Far better to await their lagging comrades. But
the Adelantado was of another mind ; and, even
had his enemy arrived, he was resolved that he
should have no time to fortify himself.
“It is God’s will,” he said, “that our victory
should be due, not to our numbers, but to His all-
powerful aid. Therefore has He stricken us with
1 Letter of Menendez to the King, 11 September, 1565.
1565.] REACHES FLORIDA. - 109
1
tempests, and scattered Our ships.”" And he gave
his voice for instant advance.
There was much dispute; even the chaplain
remonstrated ; but nothing could bend the iron
will of Menendez. Nor was a sign of celestial
approval wanting. At nine in the evening, a
great meteor burst forth in mid-heaven, and, blaz-
ing like the sun, rolled westward towards the
coast of Florida.” The fainting spirits of the cru-
saders were revived. Diligent preparation was
begun. Prayers and masses were said ; and, that
the temporal arm might not fail, the men were
daily practised on deck in shooting at marks, in
order, says the chronicle, that the recruits might
learn not to be afraid of their guns.
The dead calm continued. “We were all very
tired,” says the chaplain, “and I above all, with
praying to God for a fair wind. To-day, at about
two in the afternoon, He took pity on us, and sent
us a breeze.” ” Before night they saw land, - the
faint line of forest, traced along the watery hori-
zon, that marked the coast of Florida. But where,
in all this vast monotony, was the lurking-place
of the French 7 Menendez anchored, and sent a
captain with twenty men ashore, who presently
found a band of Indians, and gained from them
the needed information. He stood northward,
till, on the afternoon of Tuesday, the fourth of
September, he descried four ships anchored near
1 Barcia, 70.
* Mendoza, Relacion: “Nos mostró Nuestro Señor un misterio en el
cielo,” etc.
8 Mendoza, Relacion.
110 MENENDEZ. [1565.
the mouth of a river. It was the river St. John's,
and the ships were four of Ribaut's squadron.
The prey was in sight. The Spaniards prepared
for battle, and bore down upon the Lutherans;
for, with them, all Protestants alike were branded
with the name of the arch-heretic. Slowly, before
the faint breeze, the ships glided on their way;
but while, excited and impatient, the fierce crews
watched the decreasing space, and when they were
still three leagues from their prize, the air ceased
to stir, the sails flapped against the mast, a black
cloud with thunder rose above the coast, and the
warm rain of the South descended on the breath-
less sea. It was dark before the wind stirred
again and the ships resumed their course. At
half-past eleven they reached the French. The
San Pelayo slowly moved to windward of Ribaut's
flag-ship, the Trinity, and anchored very near her.
The other ships took similar stations. While these
preparations were making, a work of two hours,
the men labored in silence, and the French, throng-
ing their gangways, looked on in equal silence.
“Never, since I came into the world,” writes the
chaplain, “did I know such a stillness.”
It was broken at length by a trumpet from
the deck of the San Pelayo. A French trumpet
answered. Then Menendez, “with much cour-
tesy,” says his Spanish eulogist, inquired, “Gen-
tlemen, whence does this fleet come 2''
“From France,” was the reply.
“What are you doing here 2° pursued the Ade.
lantado.
1565.] ENCOUNTERS THE FRENCH. III
“Bringing soldiers and supplies for a fort which
the King of France has in this country, and for
many others which he soon will have.”
“Are you Catholics or Lutherans ?”
Many voices cried out together, “Lutherans,
of the new religion.” Then, in their turn, they
demanded who Menendez was, and whence he
C&I (162.
He answered : “I am Pedro Menendez, General
of the fleet of the King of Spain, Don Philip the
Second, who have come to this country to hang
and behead all Lutherans whom I shall find by
land or sea, according to instructions from my
King, so precise that I have power to pardon
none; and these commands I shall fulfil, as you
will see. At daybreak I shall board your ships,
and if I find there any Catholic, he shall be well
treated ; but every heretic shall die.” "
The French with one voice raised a cry of wrath
and defiance.
“Pedro Menendez os lo pregunta, General de esta Armada del Rei
de España Don Felipe Segundo, qui viene à esta Tierra a ahorcar, y
degollar todos los Luteranos, que hallare en ella, y en el Mar, segun la
Instruccion, que trae de mi Rei, que estan precisa, que me priva de
la facultad de perdonarlos, y la cumplire en todo, como lo vereis luego
que amanezca, que entrare en vuestros Navios, y si hallare algun Ca-
tolico, le haré buen tratamiento; pero el que fuere Herege, morira.”
Barcia, 75.
The following is the version, literally given, of Menendez himself: —
“I answered them : ‘Pedro Menendez, who was going by your Majes-
ty’s command to this coast and country in order to burn and hang the
Lutheran French who should be found there, and that in the morning I
would board their ships to find out whether any of them belonged to that
people, because, in case they did, I could not do otherwise than execute
upon them that justice which your Majesty had ordained.’” Letter of
Menendez to the King, 11 September, 1565.
112 MENENIDEZ. ..[1565.
“If you are a brave man, don’t wait till day.
Come on now, and see what you will get !”
And they assailed the Adelantado with a shower
of scoffs and insults.
Menendez broke into a rage, and gave the Order
to board. The men slipped the cables, and the
sullen black hulk of the San Pelayo drifted down
upon the Trinity. The French did not make good
their defiance. Indeed, they were incapable of
resistance, Ribaut with his soldiers being ashore
at Fort Caroline. They cut their cables, left their
anchors, made sail, and fled. The Spaniards fired,
the French replied. The other Spanish ships had
imitated the movement of the San Pelayo; “but,”
writes the chaplain, Mendoza, “these devils are
such adroit sailors, and manoeuvred so well, that
we did not catch one of them.” Pursuers and
pursued ran out to sea, firing useless volleys at
each other.
In the morning Menendez gave over the chase,
turned, and, with the San Pelayo alone, ran back
1 Mendoza, Relacion.
The abovo account is that of Barcia, the admirer and advocate of Me-
nendez. A few points have been added from Mendoza, as indicated by the
citations. One statement of Barcia is omitted, because there can be little
doubt that it is false. He says, that, when the Spanish fleet approached,
the French opened a heavy fire on them. Neither the fanatical Mendoza,
who was present, nor the French writers, Laudonnière, Le Moyne, and
Challeux, mention this circumstance, which, besides, can scarcely be
reconciled with the subsequent conduct of either party. Mendoza differs
from Barcia also in respect to the time of the attack, which he places
“at two hours after sunset.” In other points his story tallies as nearly
as could be expected with that of Barcia. The same may be said of
Challeux and Laudonnière. The latter says, that the Spaniards, before
attacking, asked after the French officers by name, whence he infers that
they had received very minute information from France.
1565.] FOUNDS ST, ALJGUSTINE. 113
for the St. John's. But here a welcome was pre-
pared for him. He saw bands of armed men
drawn up on the beach, and the smaller vessels
of Ribaut's squadron, which had crossed the bar
several days before, anchored behind it to oppose
his landing. He would not venture an attack,
but, steering southward, sailed along the coast till
he came to an inlet which he named San Agustin,
the same which Laudonnière had named the River
of Dolphins.
Here he found three of his ships already de-
barking their troops, guns, and stores. Two offi-
cers, Patiño and Vicente, had taken possession of
the dwelling of the Indian chief Seloy, a huge
barn-like structure, strongly framed of entire
trunks of trees, and thatched with palmetto
leaves.' Around it they were throwing up in-
trenchments of fascines and sand, and gangs of
negroes were toiling at the work. Such was the
birth of St. Augustine, the oldest town of the
United States.
On the eighth, Menendez took formal posses-
sion of his domain. Cannon were fired, trumpets
sounded, and banners displayed, as he landed in
state at the head of his officers and nobles. Men-
doza, crucifix in hand, came to meet him, chant-
ing Te Deum laudamus, while the Adelantado and
all his company, kneeling, kissed the crucifix, and
the assembled Indians gazed in silent wonder.”
1 Compare Hawkins, Second Voyage. He visited this or some similar
structure, and his journalist minutely describes it.
* Mendoza, Relacion.
8
}T 4 MENENIDEZ. [[565,
Meanwhile the tenants of Fort Caroline were
not idle. Two or three soldiers, strolling along
the beach in the afternoon, had first seen the Span-
ish ships, and hastily summoned Ribaut. He came
down to the mouth of the river, followed by an
anxious and excited crowd ; but, as they strained
their eyes through the darkness, they could see
nothing but the flashes of the distant guns. At
length the returning light showed, far out at sea,
the Adelantado in hot chase of their flying com-
rades. Pursuers and pursued were soon out of
sight. The drums beat to arms. After many
hours of suspense, the San Pelayo reappeared,
hovering about the mouth of the river, then
bearing away towards the south. More anxious
hours ensued, when three other sail came in sight,
and they recognized three of their own returning
ships. Communication was opened, a boat's crew
landed, and they learned from Cosette, one of the
French captains, that, confiding in the speed of
his ship, he had followed the Spaniards to St. Au-
gustine, reconnoitred their position, and seen them
land their negroes and intrench themselves."
Laudonnière lay sick in bed in his chamber at
Fort Caroline when Ribaut entered, and with him
La Grange, Sainte Marie, Ottigny, Yonville, and
other officers. At the bedside of the displaced
commandant, they held their council of war.
Three plans were proposed : first, to remain where
they were and fortify themselves; next, to push
1 Laudonnière in Basanier, 105. Le Moyne differs in a few trifling
details.
1565.] DECISION OF RIBAUT. 115
overland for St. Augustine and attack the invad-
ers in their intrenchments; and, finally, to embark
and assail them by sea. The first plan would
leave their ships a prey to the Spaniards; and so,
too, in all likelihood, would the second, besides
the uncertainties of an overland march through
an unknown wilderness. By sea, the distance
was short and the route explored. By a sudden
blow they could capture or destroy the Spanish
ships, and master the troops on shore before rein-
forcements could arrive, and before they had time
to complete their defences."
Such were the views of Ribaut, with which,
not unnaturally, Laudonnière finds fault, and Le
Moyne echoes the censures of his chief. And yet
the plan seems as well conceived as it was bold,
lacking nothing but success. The Spaniards,
stricken with terror, owed their safety to the
elements, or, as they say, to the special interpo-
sition of the Holy Virgin. Menendez was a leader
fit to stand with Cortés and Pizarro; but he was
matched with a man as cool, skilful, prompt, and
daring as himself. The traces that have come
down to us indicate in Ribaut one far above the
common stamp, — “a distinguished man, of many
high qualities,” as even the fault-finding Le Moyne
* Ribaut showed Laudonnière a letter from Coligny, appended to
which were these words: “Captaine Jean Ribaut : En fermant ceste
lettre i'ay eu certain aduis, comme dom Petro Melandes se part d’Espagne,
pour aller a la coste de la Nouvelle Fräce: Vous regarderez de n'endurer
qu'il n'entrepreine sur nous, non plus qu’il veut que nous n'entreprenions
sureux.” Ribaut interpreted this into a command to attack the Span:
iards. Laudonnière, 106.
116 MENENDEZ. [1565.
calls him ; devout after the best spirit of the Re-
form ; and with a human heart under his steel
breastplate.
La Grange and other officers took part with
Laudonnière, and opposed the plan of an attack
by sea; but Ribaut's conviction was unshaken,
and the order was given. All his own soldiers
fit for duty embarked in haste, and with them
went La Caille, Arlac, and, as it seems, Ottigny,
with the best of Laudonnière's men. Even Le
Moyne, though wounded in the fight with Outi-
na's warriors, went on board to bear his part in
the fray, and would have sailed with the rest had
not Ottigny, seeing his disabled condition, Ordered
him back to the fort.
On the tenth, the ships, crowded with troops,
set sail. Ribaut was gone, and with him the bone
and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant
watched his receding sails with dreary forebod-
ing, — a foreboding which seemed but too just,
when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than
the Indians had ever known," howled through the
forest and lashed the ocean into fury. Most for-
lorn was the plight of these exiles, left, it might
be, the prey of a band of ferocious bigots more
terrible than the fiercest hordes of the wilderness;
and when night closed on the stormy river and
the gloomy waste of pines, what dreams of terror
may not have haunted the helpless women who
crouched under the hovels of Fort Caroline !
The fort was in a ruinous state, with the pali-
1 Laudonnière, 107.
1565.] FORT CAROLINE DEFENCELESS. 117
sade on the water side broken down, and three
breaches in the rampart. In the driving rain,
urged by the sick Laudonnière, the men, be-
drenched and disheartened, labored as they could
to strengthen their defences. Their muster-roll
shows but a beggarly array. “Now,” says Lau-
donnière, “let them which have bene bold to say
that I had men ynough left me, so that I had
meanes to defend my selfe, give eare a little now
Vnto mee, and if they have eyes in their heads, let
them see what men I had.” Of Ribaut's follow-
ers left at the fort, only nine or ten had weapons,
while only two or three knew how to use them.
Four of them were boys, who kept Ribaut's dogs,
and another was his cook. Besides these, he had
left a brewer, an old crossbow-maker, two shoe-
makers, a player on the spinet, four valets, a car-
penter of threescore, — Challeux, no doubt, who
has left us the story of his woes, – with a crowd
of women, children, and eighty-six camp-follow-
ers." To these were added the remnant of Lau-
donnière's men, of whom seventeen could bear
arms, the rest being sick or disabled by wounds
received in the fight with Outina.
Laudonnière divided his force, such as it was,
into two watches, over which he placed two offi-
cers, Saint Cler and La Vigne, gave them lanterns
for going the rounds, and an hour-glass for setting
the time; while he himself, giddy with weakness
and fever, was every night at the guard-room.
1 The muster-roll is from Laudonnière, Hakluyt's translation is in
COrrect.
118 MENENDEZ. {1565.
It was the night of the nineteenth of September,
the season of tempests; floods of rain drenched the
sentries on the rampart, and, as day dawned on
the dripping barracks and deluged parade, the
storm increased in violence. What enemy could
venture out on such a night º' La Vigne, who had
the watch, took pity on the Sentries and on him-
self, dismissed them, and went to his quarters.
He little knew what human energies, urged by
ambition, avarice, bigotry, and desperation, will
dare and do.
To return to the Spaniards at St. Augustine.
On the morning of the eleventh, the crew of one
of their smaller vessels, lying outside the bar,
with Menendez himself on board, saw through the
twilight of early dawn two of Ribaut's ships close
upon them. Not a breath of air was stirring.
There was no escape, and the Spaniards fell on
their knees in supplication to Our Lady of Utrera,
explaining to her that the heretics were upon
them, and begging her to send them a little wind.
“Forthwith,” says Mendoza, “one would have
said that Our Lady herself came down upon the
vessel.” A wind sprang up, and the Spaniards
found refuge behind the bar. The returning day
showed to their astonished eyes all the ships of
Ribaut, their decks black with men, hovering off
the entrance of the port ; but Heaven had them
in its charge, and again they experienced its pro-
1 Mendoza, Relacion. Menendez, too, imputes the escape to divine
interposition. “Our Lord permitted by a miracle that we should be
saved.” Letter of Menendez to the King, 15 October, 1565.
1565.] HIS IDESPERATE RESOLUTION. 119
tecting care. The breeze sent by Our Lady of
Utrera rose to a gale, then to a furious tempest ;
and the grateful Adelantado saw through rack
and mist the ships of his enemy tossed wildly
among the raging waters as they struggled to
gain an offing. With exultation in his heart, the
skilful seaman read their danger, and saw them in
his mind's eye dashed to utter wreck among the
sand-bars and breakers of the lee shore.
A bold thought seized him. He would march
overland with five hundred men, and attack Fort
Caroline while its defenders were absent. First
he ordered a mass, and then he called a council.
Doubtless it was in that great Indian lodge of
Seloy, where he had made his headquarters; and
here, in this dim and smoky abode, nobles, officers,
and priests gathered at his summons. There were
fears and doubts and murmurings, but Menendez
was desperate; not with the mad desperation that
strikes wildly and at random, but the still white
heat that melts and burns and Seethes with a
steady, unquenchable fierceness. “Comrades,” he
said, “the time has come to show our courage and
our zeal. This is God’s war, and we must not
flinch. It is a war with Lutherans, and we must
wage it with blood and fire.” "
But his hearers gave no response. They had
not a million of ducats at stake, and were not
ready for a cast so desperate. A clamor of re-
monstrance rose from the circle. Many voices,
1 “A sangre fuego.” Barcia, 78, where the speech is given at
& y § 5 p 8
length.
120 MENENIDEZ. | 1565.
that of Mendoza among the rest, urged waiting
till their main forces should arrive. The excite-
ment spread to the men without, and the swarthy,
black-bearded crowd broke into tumults mounting
almost to mutiny, while an officer was heard to
say that he would not go on such a hare-brained
errand to be butchered like a beast. But noth-
ing could move the Adelantado. His appeals or
his threats did their work at last ; the confusion
was quelled, and preparation was made for the
march.
On the morning of the seventeenth, five hun-
dred arquebusiers and pikemen were drawn up
before the camp. To each was given six pounds
of biscuit and a canteen filled with wine. Two
Indians and a renegade Frenchman, called Fran-
çois Jean, were to guide them, and twenty Bis-
cayan axemen moved to the front to clear the
way. Through floods of driving rain, a hoarse
voice shouted the word of command, and the sul-
len march began.
With dismal misgiving, Mendoza watched the
last files as they vanished in the tempestuous for-
est. Two days of suspense ensued, when a messen-
ger came back with a letter from the Adelantado,
announcing that he had nearly reached the French
fort, and that on the morrow, September the twen-
tieth, at sunrise, he hoped to assault it. “May
the Divine Majesty deign to protect us, for He
knows that we have need of it,” writes the scared
chaplain ; “the Adelantado's great zeal and cour-
age make us hope he will succeed, but, for the
:565.j MARCHES ON FORT CAROLINE. 121
good of his Majesty's service, he ought to be a little
less ardent in pursuing his schemes.”
Meanwhile the five hundred pushed their march,
now toiling across the inundated Savannas, waist-
deep in bulrushes and mud; now filing through
the open forest to the moan and roar of the storm-
racked pines; now hacking their way through
palmetto thickets; and now turning from their
path to shun some pool, quagmire, cypress swamp,
or “hummock,” matted with impenetrable bushes,
brambles, and vines. As they bert before the
tempest, the water trickling from the rusty head-
piece crept clammy and cold betwixt the armor
and the skin; and when they made their wretched
bivouac, their bed was the spongy soil, and the
exhaustless clouds their tent."
The night of Wednesday, the nineteenth, found
their vanguard in a deep forest of pines, less than
a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low hills
which extended in its rear, and formed a continua-
tion of St. John's Bluff. All around was one great
morass. In pitchy darkness, knee-deep in weeds
and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack
of sleep, drenched to the skin, their provisions
spoiled, their ammunition wet, and their spirit
chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups,
cursing the enterprise and the author of it. Me-
nendez heard Fernando Perez, an ensign, say
aloud to his comrades: “This Asturian Corito,
who knows no more of war on shore than an ass,
* I have examined the country on the line of march of Menendez. In
many places it retains its original features.
122 MENENIDEZ. |1565
has betrayed us all. By God, if my advice had
been followed, he would have had his deserts the
day he set out on this cursed journey !”.'
The Adelantado pretended not to hear.
Two hours before dawn he called his officers
about him. All night, he said, he had been pray-
ing to God and the Virgin.
“Señores, what shall we resolve on ? Our am-
munition and provisions are gone. Our case is
desperate.” ” And he urged a bold rush on the
fort.
But men and officers alike were disheartened
and disgusted. They listened coldly and sullenly;
many were for returning at every risk; none were
in the mood for fight. Menendez put forth all his
eloquence, till at length the dashed spirits of his
followers were so far revived that they consented
to follow him.
All fell on their knees in the marsh ; then, ris-
ing, they formed their ranks and began to advance,
guided by the renegade Frenchman, whose hands,
to make sure of him, were tied behind his back.
Groping and stumbling in the dark among trees,
roots, and underbrush, buffeted by wind and rain,
and lashed in the face by the recoiling boughs
which they could not see, they soon lost their way,
fell into confusion, and came to a stand, in a mood
1 “Como nos trae vendidos este Asturiano Corito, que no sabe de
Guerra de Tierra, mas que un Jumento ” etc. Barcia, 79. Corito is a
nickname given to the inhabitants of Biscay and the Asturias.
* “Ved aora, Señores, què determinacion tomarèmos, hallandonos can-
sados, perdidos, sin Municiones ni Comida, ni esperança de remediar-
nos ? " Barcia, 79.
1565.] THE FRENCH FORT TAKEN, 123
more savagely desponding than before. But soon
a glimmer of returning day came to their aid, and
showed them the dusky sky, and the dark columns
of the surrounding pines. Menendez Ordered the
men forward on pain of death. They obeyed, and
presently, emerging from the forest, could dimly
discern the ridge of a low hill, behind which, the
Frenchman told them, was the fort. Menendez,
with a few officers and men, cautiously mounted
to the top. Beneath lay Fort Caroline, three bow-
shots distant ; but the rain, the imperfect light,
and a cluster of intervening houses prevented his
seeing clearly, and he sent two officers to recon-
noitre. As they descended, they met a solitary
Frenchman. They knocked him down with a
sheathed sword, wounded him, took him prisoner,
kept him for a time, and then stabbed him as
they returned towards the top of the hill. Here,
clutching their weapons, all the gang stood in
fierce expectancy.
“Santiago ” cried Menendez. “At them
God is with us! Victory !”.' And, shouting
their hoarse war-cries, the Spaniards rushed down
the slope like starved wolves.
Not a sentry was on the rampart. La Vigne,
the officer of the guard, had just gone to his quar-
ters; but a trumpeter, who chanced to remain,
saw, through sheets of rain, the swarm of assail-
ants sweeping down the hill. He blew the alarm,
and at the summons a few half-naked soldiers ran
wildly out of the barracks. It was too late.
1 Barcia, 80.
124 MENENIDEZ. [1565.
Through the breaches and over the ramparts the
Spaniards came pouring in, with shouts of “San-
tiago | Santiago ’’
Sick men leaped from their beds. Women and
children, blind with fright, darted shrieking from
the houses. A fierce, gaunt visage, the thrust of
a pike, or blow of a rusty halberd, – such was the
greeting that met all alike. Laudonnière Snatched
his sword and target, and ran towards the prin-
cipal breach, calling to his soldiers. A rush of
Spaniards met him ; his men were cut down
around him ; and he, with a soldier named Bar-
tholomew, was forced back into the yard of his
house. Here stood a tent, and, as the pursuers
stumbled among the cords, he escaped behind
Ottigny's house, sprang through the breach in the
western rampart, and fled for the woods."
Le Moyne had been one of the guard. Scarcely
had he thrown himself into a hammock which was
slung in his room, when a savage shout, and a
wild uproar of shrieks, outcries, and the clash of
weapons, brought him to his feet. He rushed by
two Spaniards in the door-way, ran behind the
guard-house, leaped through an embrasure into
the ditch, and escaped to the forest.”
Challeux, the carpenter, was going betimes to
his work, a chisel in his hand. He was old, but
pike and partisan brandished at his back gave
wings to his flight. In the ecstasy of his terror,
he leaped upward, clutched the top of the palisade,
and threw himself over with the agility of a boy.
1 Laudonnière, 110 ; Le Moyne, 24. 2 Le Moyne, 25.
1565.] THE FUGITIVES. 125
He ran up the hill, no one pursuing, and, as he
neared the edge of the forest, turned and looked
back. From the high ground where he stood, he
could see the butchery, the fury of the conquer-
ors, and the agonizing gestures of the victims.
He turned again in horror, and plunged into the
woods." As he tore his way through the briers
and thickets, he met several fugitives escaped like
himself. Others presently came up, haggard and
wild, like men broken loose from the jaws of
death. They gathered together and consulted.
One of them, known as Master Robert, in great
repute for his knowledge of the Bible, was for re-
turning and surrendering to the Spaniards. “They
are men,” he said ; “perhaps, when their fury is
over, they will spare our lives; and, even if they
kill us, it will only be a few moments’ pain. Better
so, than to starve here in the woods, or be torn to
pieces by wild beasts.” "
The greater part of the naked and despairing
company assented, but Challeux was of a different
mind. The old Huguenot quoted Scripture, and
called the names of prophets and apostles to wit-
ness, that, in the direst extremity, God would not
abandon those who rested their faith in Him.
Six of the fugitives, however, still held to their
desperate purpose. Issuing from the woods, they
descended towards the fort, and, as with beating
hearts their comrades watched the result, a troop
of Spaniards rushed out, hewed them down with
swords and halberds, and dragged their bodies to
* Challeux in Ternaux-Compans, 272. 2 Ibid., 275.
126 MENENIDEZ. [1565.
the brink of the river, where the victims of the
massacre were already flung in heaps.
Le Moyne, with a soldier named Grandchemin,
whom he had met in his flight, toiled all day through
the woods and marshes, in the hope of reaching the
small vessels anchored behind the bar. Night found
them in a morass. No vessel could be seen, and the
soldier, in despair, broke into angry upbraidings
against his companion, — saying that he would
go back and give himself up. Le Moyne at first
opposed him, then yielded. But when they drew
near the fort, and heard the uproar of savage
revelry that rose from within, the artist's heart
failed him. He embraced his companion, and the
soldier advanced alone. A party of Spaniards
came out to meet him. He kneeled, and begged
for his life. He was answered by a death-blow ;
and the horrified Le Moyne, from his hiding-place
in the thicket, saw his limbs hacked apart, stuck
on pikes, and borne off in triumph."
Meanwhile, Menendez, mustering his followers,
had offered thanks to God for their victory; and
this pious butcher wept with emotion as he re-
counted the favors which Heaven had showered
upon their enterprise. His admiring historian
gives it in proof of his humanity, that, after the
rage of the assault was spent, he ordered that
women, infants, and boys under fifteen should
thenceforth be spared. Of these, by his own ac-
count, there were about fifty. Writing in October
to the King, he says that they cause him great
1 Le Moyne, 26
1565.] FEROCITY OF THE SPANIARDS. 127
anxiety, since he fears the anger of God should he
now put them to death in cold blood, while, on the
other hand, he is in dread lest the venom of their
heresy should infect his men.
A hundred and forty-two persons were slain in
and around the fort, and their bodies lay heaped
together on the bank of the river. Nearly opposite
was anchored a small vessel, called the Pearl, com-
manded by Jacques Ribaut, son of the Admiral.
The ferocious soldiery, maddened with victory and
drunk with blood, crowded to the water's edge,
shouting insults to those on board, mangling the
corpses, tearing out their eyes, and throwing them
towards the vessel from the points of their dag-
gers." Thus did the Most Catholic Philip cham-
pion the cause of Heaven in the New World.
It was currently believed in France, and, though
no eyewitness attests it, there is reason to think
it true, that among those murdered at Fort Caro-
line there were some who died a death of peculiar
ignominy. Menendez, it is affirmed, hanged his
prisoners on trees, and placed over them the in-
Scription, “I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as
to Lutherans.” " -
* “ . . . . car, arrachans les yeux des morts, les fichoyent au bout des
dagues, et puis auec cris, heurlemens & toute gaudisserie, les iettoyent
contre nos François vers l’eau.” Challeux, (1566,) 34.
“Ils arrachèrent les yeulx qu'ils avoient meurtris, et les aiant fichez a
la poincte de leurs dagues faisoient entre eulx à qui plus loingles jetteroit.”
Prévost, Reprinse de la Floride. This is a contemporary MS. in the
Bibliothèque Nationale, printed by Ternaux-Compans in his Recueil. It
will be often cited hereafter.
* Prévost in Ternaux-Compans, 357; Lescarbot, (1612,) I. 127; Charle.
voix, Nouvelle France, (1744,) I. 81; and nearly all the French secondary
128 MENENDEZ. [1565.
The Spaniards gained a great booty in armor,
clothing, and provisions. “Nevertheless,” says
the devout Mendoza, after closing his inventory
of the plunder, “the greatest profit of this victory is
the triumph which Our Lord has granted us, whereby
His holy Gospel will be introduced into this coun-
try, a thing so needful for saving so many souls
from perdition.” Again he writes in his journal,
“We Owe to God and His Mother, more than to
human strength, this victory over the adversaries
of the holy Catholic religion.”
To whatever influence, celestial or other, the ex-
ploit may best be ascribed, the victors were not
yet quite content with their success. Two small
French vessels, besides that of Jacques Ribaut, still
lay within range of the fort. When the storm had
a little abated, the cannon were turned on them.
One of them was sunk, but Ribaut, with the others,
escaped down the river, at the mouth of which
several light craft, including that bought from the
English, had been anchored since the arrival of his
father's squadron.
While this was passing, the wretched fugitives
were flying from the scene of massacre through a
tempest, of whose persistent violence all the nar-
ratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved,
half naked, - for most of them had escaped in
their shirts, – they pushed their toilsome way
amid the ceaseless wrath of the elements. A few
sought refuge in Indian villages; but these, it is
writers. Barcia denies the story. How deep the indignation it kindled
in France will appear hereafter.
1565.] THE FUGITIVES. 129
said, were afterwards killed by the Spaniards.
The greater number attempted to reach the ves-
sels at the mouth of the river. Among the latter
was Le Moyne, who, notwithstanding his former
failure, was toiling through the mazes of tangled
forests, when he met a Belgian soldier, with the
woman described as Laudonnière's maid-servant,
who was wounded in the breast; and, urging their
flight towards the vessels, they fell in with other
fugitives, including Laudonnière himself. As they
struggled through the salt marsh, the rank sedge
cut their naked limbs, and the tide rose to their
waists. Presently they descried others, foiling like
themselves through the matted vegetation, and
recognized Challeux and his companions, also in
quest of the vessels. The old man still, as he tells
us, held fast to his chisel, which had done good
service in cutting poles to aid the party to cross
the deep Creeks that channelled the morass. The
united band, twenty-six in all, were cheered at
length by the sight of a moving sail. It was the
vessel of Captain Mallard, who, informed of the
massacre, was standing along shore in the hope of
picking up some of the fugitives. He saw their
signals, and sent boats to their rescue; but such
was their exhaustion, that, had not the sailors,
wading to their armpits among the rushes, borne
them out on their shoulders, few could have es-
caped. Laudonnière was so feeble that nothing
but the support of a soldier, who held him upright
in his arms, had saved him from drowning in the
marsh.
9
130 MENENDEZ. [1565.
On gaining the friendly decks, the fugitives
counselled together. One and all, they sickened
for the sight of France.
After waiting a few days, and saving a few
more stragglers from the marsh, they prepared to
sail. Young Ribaut, though ignorant of his fa-
ther's fate, assented with something more than
willingness; indeed, his behavior throughout had
been stamped with weakness and poltroonery. On
the twenty-fifth of September they put to sea in
two vessels; and, after a voyage the privations of
which were fatal to many of them, they arrived,
one party at Rochelle, the other at Swansea, in
Wales.
CHAPTER VIII.
1565.
MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS.
MENENDEz RETURNS TO ST. AUGUSTINE. — TIDINGS OF THE FRENCH.
— RIBAUT SHIPw RECKED. — THE MARCH OF MENENDEz. — HE
Discovers THE FRENCH. — INTERVIEws. – HoPES OF MERCY. —
SURRENDER OF THE FRENCH. — MASSACRE. — RETURN TO ST. AU-
CUSTINE. — TLDINGS OF RIBAUT's PARTY. — HIS INTERVIEw witH
º AND BETRAYED. — MURDERED. — ANOTHER
MAssACRE. — FRENCH ACCOUNTs. – SCHEMES OF THE SrAslands-
SURVIvors OF THE CARN AGE.
IN suspense and fear, hourly looking seaward
for the dreaded fleet of Jean Ribaut, the chaplain
Mendoza and his brother priests held watch and
ward at St. Augustine in the Adelantado’s ab-
sence. Besides the celestial guardians whom they
ceased not to invoke, they had as protectors Bar-
tholomew Menendez, the brother of the Adelan-
tado, and about a hundred soldiers. Day and
night they toiled to throw up earthworks and
strengthen their position.
A week elapsed, when they saw a man running
towards them, shouting as he ran.
Mendoza went to meet him.
“Victory ! victory !” gasped the breathless
messenger. “The French fort is ours I’’ And
he flung his arms about the chaplain's neck."
“To-day,” writes the priest in his journal,
* Mendoza, Relacion.
132 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. 11565.
“Monday, the twenty-fourth, came our good gen-
eral himself, with fifty soldiers, very tired, like all
those who were with him. As soon as they told
me he was coming, I ran to my lodging, took a
new cassock, the best I had, put on my surplice,
and went out to meet him with a crucifix in
my hand; whereupon he, like a gentleman and a
good Christian, kneeled down with all his follow-
ers, and gave the Lord a thousand thanks for the
great favors he had received from Him.”
In solemn procession, with four priests in front
chanting Te Deum, the victors entered St. Augus-
time in triumph.
On the twenty-eighth, when the weary Adelan-
tado was taking his siesta under the sylvan roof
of Seloy, a troop of Indians came in with news
that quickly roused him from his slumbers. They
had seen a French vessel wrecked on the coast
towards the south. Those who escaped from her
were four or six leagues off, on the banks of a
river or arm of the sea, which they could not
cross."
Menendez instantly sent forty or fifty men in
boats to reconnoitre. Next, he called the chap-
lain, – for he would fain have him at his elbow
to countenance the deeds he meditated, - and,
with him, twelve soldiers, and two Indian guides,
embarked in another boat. They rowed along
the channel between Anastasia Island and the
main shore; then they landed, struck across the
1 Mendoza, Relacion; Solís in Barcia, 85; Letter of Menendez to the
King, 18 October, 1565.
1565.] WRECK OF THE FRENCH. I33
island on foot, traversed plains and marshes,
reached the sea towards night, and searched along
shore till ten o’clock to find their comrades who
had gone before. At length, with mutual joy,
the two parties met, and bivouacked together on
the sands. Not far distant they could see lights.
These were the camp-fires of the shipwrecked
French.
To relate with precision the fortunes of these
unhappy men is impossible; for henceforward the
French narratives are no longer the narratives of
eyewitnesses.
It has been seen how, when on the point of
assailing the Spaniards at St. Augustine, Jean
Ribaut was thwarted by a gale, which they hailed
as a divine interposition. The gale rose to a tem-
pest of strange fury. Within a few days, all the
French ships were cast on shore, between Matanzas
Inlet and Cape Canaveral. According to a letter
of Menendez, many of those on board were lost;
but others affirm that all escaped but a captain,
La Grange, an officer of high merit, who was
washed from a floating mast." One of the ships
was wrecked at a point farther northward than
the rest, and it was her company whose camp-
fires were seen by the Spaniards at their bivouac
on the sands of Anastasia Island. They were
endeavoring to reach Fort Caroline, of the fate
of which they knew nothing, while Ribaut with
the remainder was farther southward, struggling
through the wilderness towards the same goal
1 Challeux, (1566,) 46.
134 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565.
What befell the latter will appear hereafter. Of
the fate of the former party there is no French
record. What we know of it is due to three
Spanish eyewitnesses, Mendoza, Doctor Solís de las
Meras, and Menendez himself. Solís was a priest,
and brother-in-law to Menendez. Like Mendoza,
he minutely describes what he saw, and, like him,
was a red-hot zealot, lavishing applause on the
darkest deeds of his chief. But the principal
witness, though not the most minute or most
trustworthy, is Menendez, in his long despatches
sent from Florida to the King, and now first
brought to light from the archives of Seville, –
a cool record of unsurpassed atrocities, inscribed
on the back with the royal indorsement, “Say to
him that he has done well.”
When the Adelantado saw the French fires in
the distance, he lay close in his bivouac, and sent
two soldiers to reconnoitre. At two o'clock in
the morning they came back, and reported that it
was impossible to get at the enemy, since they
were on the farther side of an arm of the sea
(Matanzas Inlet). Menendez, however, gave or-
ders to march, and before daybreak reached the
hither bank, where he hid his men in a bushy
hollow. Thence, as it grew light, they could
discern the enemy, many of whom were search-
ing along the sands and shallows for shell-fish,
for they were famishing. A thought struck Me-
nendez, an inspiration, says Mendoza, of the Holy
Spirit." He put on the clothes of a sailor, entered
* “Nuestro buen General, alumbrado por el Espíritu Santo, dixo,” etc.
1565.] INTERVIEWS WITH MENENDEZ. 135
a boat which had been brought to the spot, and
rowed towards the shipwrecked men, the better to
learn their condition. A Frenchman swam out to
meet him. Menendez demanded what men they
Were.
“Followers of Ribaut, Viceroy of the King of
France,” answered the swimmer.
“Are you Catholics or Lutherans ?”
“All Lutherans.”
A brief dialogue ensued, during which the Ade-
lantado declared his name and character, and the
Frenchman gave an account of the designs of
Ribaut, and of the disaster that had thwarted
them. He then swam back to his companions,
but soon returned, and asked safe conduct for his
captain and four other gentlemen, who wished to
hold conference with the Spanish general. Me-
nendez gave his word for their safety, and, return-
ing to the shore, sent his boat to bring them over.
On their landing, he met them very courteously.
His followers were kept at a distance, so disposed
behind hills and among bushes as to give an ex-
aggerated idea of their force, — a precaution the
more needful, as they were only about sixty in
number, while the French, says Solís, were above
two hundred. Menendez, however, declares that
they did not exceed a hundred and forty. The
French officer told him the story of their ship-
wreck, and begged him to lend them a boat to aid
them in crossing the rivers which lay between
them and a fort of their King, whither they were
making their way.
136 |MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565
Then came again the ominous question, –
“Are you Catholics or Lutherans ?”
“We are Lutherans.”
“Gentlemen,” pursued Menendez, “your fort is
taken, and all in it are put to the sword.” And,
in proof of his declaration. he caused articles plun-
dered from Fort Caroline to be shown to the un-
happy petitioners. He then left them, and went
to breakfast with his officers, first ordering food to
be placed before them. Having breakfasted, he
returned to them.
“Are you convinced now,” he asked, “that
what I have told you is true 7"
The French captain assented, and implored him
to lend them ships in which to return home.
Menendez answered, that he would do so will-
ingly if they were Catholics, and if he had ships
to spare, but he had none. The supplicants then
expressed the hope, that at least they and their
followers would be allowed to remain with the
Spaniards till ships could be sent to their relief,
since there was peace between the two nations,
whose kings were friends and brothers.
“All Catholics,” retorted the Spaniard, “I will
befriend; but as you are of the New Sect, I hold
you as enemies, and wage deadly war against you ;
and this I will do with all cruelty [crueldad] in
this country, where I command as Viceroy and
Captain-General for my King. I am here to plant
the Holy Gospel, that the Indians may be en-
lightened and come to the knowledge of the Holy
Catholic faith of Our Lord Jesus Christ, as the
1565. INTERVIEWS WITE MENENDEZ. 137
Roman Church teaches it. If you will give up
your arms and banners, and place yourselves at
my mercy, you may do so, and I will act towards
you as God shall give me grace. Do as you will,
for other than this you can have neither truce nor
friendship with me.” º
Such were the Adelantados words, as reported
by a bystander, his admiring brother-in-law; and
that they contain an implied assurance of mercy
has been held, not only by Protestants, but by
Catholics and Spaniards º The report of Menendez
himself is more brief, and suficiently equivocal.
“ I answered, that they could give up their arms
and place themselves under my mercy, — that I
should do with them what our Lord should Order;
and from that I did not depart, nor would I, unless
God our Lord should otherwise inspire.Ӽ
1 “... . . . mas, que por ser ellos de la Nueva Secta, los tenia por Enemi
gos, è tenia con ellos Guerra, à sangre, è fuego; è que esta la haria con
toda crueldad à los que hallase en aquella Mar, è Tierra, donde era Virrei,
è Capitan General por su Rei; è que iba à plantar el Santo Evangelio en
aquella Tierra, para que fuesen alumbrados los Indios, è viniesen al cono-
cimiento de la Santa Fè Catolica de Jesu Christo N. S. como lo dice, è
canta la Iglesia Romana; è que si ellos quieren entregarle las Vanderas,
è las Armas, è ponerse en su Misericordia, lo pueden hacer, para que
el haga de ellos lo que Dios le diere de gracia, ô que hogan lo que qui-
sieren, que otras Treguas, ni Amistades no avian de hacer con el.”
Solís, 86.
2 Salazar, Crisis del Ensayo, 23; Padre Felipe Briet, Amales,
º “Respondíles, que las armas me podia rendir y ponerse debaxo de
mi gracia para que Yo hiciese dellos aquello que Nuestro Señor me orde-
nase, y de aquí no me sacó, ní sacára si Dios Nuestro Señor no espirára
en mi otra cosa. Y ansi se fué con esta respuesta, y se vinieron y me
entregaron las armas, y hiceles amarrar las manos atras y pasarlos à.
cuchillo, . . . . Parecióme que castigarlos desta manera se servia Dios
Nuestro Señor, y V. Magº, para que adelante nos dexen mas libres esta
mala seta para plantar el evangelio en estas partes.” Carta de Pedra
Menendez á su Magestad, Fuerte de S” Agustin, 15 Octubre, 1565.
138 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS, [1565.
One of the Frenchmen recrossed to consult with
his companions. In two hours he returned, and
offered fifty thousand ducats to secure their lives;
but Menendez, says his brother-in-law, would give
no pledges. On the other hand, expressions in
his own despatches point to the inference that a
virtual pledge was given, at least to certain indi-
viduals.
The starving French saw no resource but to
yield themselves to his mercy. The boat was
again sent across the river. It returned laden
with banners, arquebuses, swords, targets, and
helmets. The Adelantado ordered twenty soldiers
to bring over the prisoners, ten at a time. He
then took the French officers aside behind a ridge
of sand, two gunshots from the bank. Here, with
courtesy on his lips and murder at his heart, he
said: —
“Gentlemen, I have but few men, and you are
so many that, if you were free, it would be easy
for you to take your satisfaction on us for the
people we killed when we took your fort. There-
fore it is necessary that you should go to my
camp, four leagues from this place, with your
hands tied.”"
Accordingly, as each party landed, they were
led out of sight behind the sand-hill, and their
hands tied behind their backs with the match-
1 “Señores, yo tengo poca Gente, e no mui conocida, e Vosotros sois
muchos e andando Sueltos, facil cosa Os seria satisfaceros de Nosotros,
por la Gente que OS degollamos quando ganamos el Fuerte; e ansi es
menester, que con las manos atras, amarradas, marcheis de aqui a quatro
Leguas, donde yo tengo mi Real.” Solís, 87.
1565.] BUTCHERY. I39
cords of the arquebuses, though not before each
had been supplied with food. The whole day
passed before all were brought together, bound
and helpless, under the eye of the inexorable Ade-
lantado. But now Mendoza interposed. “I was
a priest,” he says, “and had the bowels of a man.”
He asked that, if there were Christians — that is to
say, Catholics — among the prisoners, they should
be set apart. Twelve Breton sailors professed
themselves to be such ; and these, together with
four carpenters and calkers, “ of whom,” writes
Menendez, “I was in great need,” were put on
board the boat and sent to St. Augustine. The
rest were ordered to march thither by land.
The Adelantado walked in advance till he came
to a lonely spot, not far distant, deep among the
bush-covered hills. Here he stopped, and with his
cane drew a line in the sand. The sun was set
when the captive Huguenots, with their escort,
reached the fatal goal thus marked out. And now
let the curtain drop ; for here, in the name of
Heaven, the hounds of hell were turned loose, and
the savage soldiery, like wolves in a sheepfold,
rioted in slaughter. Of all that wretched com-
pany, not one was left alive.
“I had their hands tied behind their backs,”
writes the chief criminal, “ and themselves put to
the knife. It appeared to me that, by thus chas-
tising them, God our Lord and your Majesty were
served; whereby in future this evil sect will leave
us more free to plant the Gospel in these parts.” "
1 For the original, see ante, note 3, p. 137.
140 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565
Again Menendez returned triumphant to St.
Augustine, and behind him marched his band of
butchers, steeped in blood to the elbows, but still
unsated. Great as had been his success, he still
had cause for anxiety. There was ill news of his
fleet. Some of the ships were lost, others scat-
tered, or lagging tardily on their way. Of his
whole force, less than a half had reached Florida,
and of these a large part were still at Fort Caro-
line. Ribaut could not be far off; and, whatever
might be the condition of his shipwrecked com-
pany, their numbers would make them formidable,
unless taken at advantage. Urged by fear and
fortified by fanaticism, Menendez had well begun
his work of slaughter; but rest for him there was
none; a darker deed was behind.
On the tenth of October, Indians came with the
tidings that, at the spot where the first party of
the shipwrecked French had been found, there
was now another party still larger. This murder-
loving race looked with great respect on Menendez
for his wholesale butchery of the night before, —
an exploit rarely equalled in their own annals of
massacre. On his part, he doubted not that Ribaut
was at hand. Marching with a hundred and fifty
men, he crossed the bush-covered sands of Anas-
tasia Island, followed the strand between the
thickets and the sea, reached the inlet at mid-
night, and again, like a savage, ambushed himself
on the bank. Day broke, and he could plainly see
the French on the farther side. They had made
a raft, which lay in the water ready for crossing
1565.] RIBAUT MEETS MENENIDEZ. 141
Menendez and his men showed themselves, when,
forthwith, the French displayed their banners,
Sounded drums and trumpets, and set their sick
and starving ranks in array of battle. But the
Adelantado, regardless of this warlike show, or-
dered his men to seat themselves at breakfast,
while he with three officers walked unconcernedly
along the shore. His coolness had its effect. The
French blew a trumpet of parley, and showed a
white flag. The Spaniards replied. A French-
man came out upon the raft, and, shouting across
the water, asked that a Spanish envoy should be
Sent Over.
“You have a raft,” was the reply; “come your-
selves.”
An Indian canoe lay under the bank on the
Spanish side. A French sailor swam to it, pad-
dled back unmolested, and presently returned,
bringing with him La Caille, Ribaut's sergeant-
major. He told Menendez that the French were
three hundred and fifty in all, and were on their
way to Fort Caroline; and, like the officers of the
former party, he begged for boats to aid them in
crossing the river.
“My brother,” said Menendez, “go and tell your
general, that, if he wishes to speak with me, he
may come with four or six companions, and that
I pledge my word he shall go back safe.” "
La Caille returned ; and Ribaut, with eight gen-
tlemen, soon came over in the canoe. Menendez
met them courteously, caused wine and preserved
1 Solís, 88.
142 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565.
fruits to be placed before them, -he had come
well provisioned on his errand of blood, - and
next led Ribaut to the reeking Golgotha, where,
in heaps upon the sand, lay the corpses of his
slaughtered followers. Ribaut was prepared for
the spectacle ; La Caille had already seen it ; but
he would not believe that Fort Caroline was taken
till a part of the plunder was shown him. Then,
mastering his despair, he turned to the conqueror.
“What has befallen us,” he said, “may one day
befall you.” And, urging that the kings of France
and Spain were brothers and close friends, he
begged, in the name of that friendship, that the
Spaniard would aid him in conveying his followers
home. Menendez gave him the same equivocal
answer that he had given the former party, and
Ribaut returned to consult with his officers. After
three hours of absence, he came back in the canoe,
and told the Adelantado that some of his people
were ready to surrender at discretion, but that
many refused.
“They can do as they please,” was the reply.
In behalf of those who surrendered Ribaut offered
a ransom of a hundred thousand ducats.
“It would much grieve me,” said Menendez,
“not to accept it ; for I have great need of it.”
Ribaut was much encouraged. Menendez could
scarcely forego such a prize, and he thought, says
the Spanish narrator, that the lives of his follow-
ers would now be safe. He asked to be allowed
the night for deliberation, and at sunset recrossed
the river. In the morning he reappeared among
1565.] ANOTHER BUTCHERY. 143
the Spaniards, and reported that two hundred of
his men had retreated from the spot, but that the
remaining hundred and fifty would surrender."
At the same time he gave into the hands of Me-
mendez the royal standard and other flags, with
his sword, dagger, helmet, buckler, and the Official
seal given him by Coligny. Menendez directed an
officer to enter the boat and bring over the French
by tens. He next led Ribaut among the bushes
behind the neighboring sand-hill, and ordered his
hands to be bound fast. Then the scales fell from
the prisoner's eyes. Face to face his fate rose up
before him. He saw his followers and himself en-
trapped, – the dupes of words artfully framed to
lure them to their ruin. The day wore on ; and,
as band after band of prisoners was brought over,
they were led behind the sand-hill out of sight
from the farther shore, and bound like their gen-
eral. At length the transit was finished. With
bloodshot eyes and weapons bared, the Spaniards
closed around their victims.
“Are you Catholics or Lutherans ? and is there
any one among you who will go to confession ?”
Ribaut answered, “I and all here are of the
Reformed Faith.” *
And he recited the Psalm, “ Domine, memento
me.” ”
“We are of earth,” he continued, “ and to earth
we must return ; twenty years more or less can
1 Solís, 89. Menendez speaks only of seventy.
* “L’auteur a woulu dire apparenment, Memento Domine David. D'ail.
leurs Ribaut la récita sans doute en Français, a la manière des Prote
stans.” Hist Gen. des Voyages, XIV. 446.
144 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565
matter little ; ’’’ and, turning to the Adelantado,
he bade him do his will.
The stony-hearted bigot gave the signal; and
those who will may paint to themselves the horrors
of the scene.
A few, however, were spared. “I saved,” writes
Menendez, “the lives of two young gentlemen of
about eighteen years of age, as well as of three
others, the fifer, the drummer, and the trumpeter;
and I caused Juan Ribao [Ribaut] with all the
rest to be put to the knife, judging this to be ne-
cessary for the service of God our Lord and of
your Majesty. And I consider it great good for-
tune that he [Juan Ribao] should be dead, for the
King of France could effect more with him and
five hundred ducats than with other men and five
thousand, and he would do more in one year than
another in ten, for he was the most experienced
sailor and naval commander known, and of great
skill in this navigation of the Indies and the coast
of Florida. He was, besides, greatly liked in
England, in which kingdom his reputation was
such that he was appointed Captain-General of all
the English fleet against the French Catholics in
the war between England and France some years
ago.” ”
1 “Dijo; que de Tierra eran, y que en Tierra se avian de bolver; e
veinte Años mas, o menos, todo era una Cuenta.” Solís, 89.
* “Salvé la vida a dos mozos Caballeros de hasta 18 afios, y a otros tres,
que eran Pifano, Atambor y Trompeta, y a Juan Rivao con todos los demas
hice pasar a cuchillo, entendiendo que ansi convenia al servicio de Dios
Nuestro Señor, y de V. Mag. y tengo por muy principal Suerte que este
sea muerto, porque mas hiciera el Rey de Francia con el con 500 ducados,
que con otros con 5000, y mas hiciera el en un ańo que otro en diez, porque
1565.1 FRENCEH ACCOUNTS. 145
Such is the sum of the Spanish accounts, – the
self-damning testimony of the author and abettors
of the crime; a picture of lurid and awful color-
ing ; and yet there is reason to believe that the
truth was darker still. Among those who were
spared was one Christophe le Breton, who was
carried to Spain; escaped to France, and told his
story to Challeux. Among those struck down in
the butchery was a sailor of Dieppe, stunned and
left for dead under a heap of corpses. In the
night he revived, contrived to draw his knife, cut
the cords that bound his hands, and made his way
to an Indian village. The Indians, not without
reluctance, abandoned him to the Spaniards, who
sold him as a slave ; but, on his way in fetters to
Portugal, the ship was taken by the Huguenots,
the sailor set free, and his story published in the
narrative of Le Moyne. When the massacre was
known in France, the friends and relatives of the
victims sent to the King, Charles the Ninth, a
vehement petition for redress; and their memorial
recounts many incidents of the tragedy. From
these three sources is to be drawn the French
version of the story. The following is its sub-
stance.
Famished and desperate, the followers of Ribaut
were toiling northward to seek refuge at Fort
era el mas pratico marinero y cosario que se sabia, y muy diestro en esta
Navigacion de Indias y costa de la Florida, y tan amigo en Inglaterra que
tenia en aquel Reyno tanta reputacion que fué nombrado por Capitan Gene-
ral de toda el Armada Inglesa contra los Catolicos de Francia estos años
pasados habiendo guerra entre Inglaterra y Francia.” Carta de Pedro
Menendez di su Magestad, Fuerte de Sº Agustin, 15 de Octubre, 1565.
10
146 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565,
Caroline, when they found the Spaniards in their
path. Some were filled with dismay ; others, in
their misery, almost hailed them as deliverers.
La Caille, the sergeant-major, crossed the river.
Menendez met him with a face of friendship, and
protested that he would spare the lives of the
shipwrecked men, sealing the promise with an
oath, a kiss, and many signs of the cross. He
even gave it in writing, under seal. Still, there
were many among the French who would not
place themselves in his power. The most credu-
lous crossed the river in a boat. As each succes-
sive party landed, their hands were bound fast at
their backs; and thus, except a few who were
set apart, they were all driven towards the fort,
like cattle to the shambles, with curses and scurri-
lous abuse. Then, at sound of drums and trum-
pets, the Spaniards fell upon them, striking them
down with, swords, pikes, and halberds." Ribaut
vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his
oath. By his order, a soldier plunged a dagger
into the French commander's heart ; and Ottigny,
who stood near, met a similar fate. Ribaut’s
1 Here the French accounts differ, Le Moyne says that only a drum-
mer and a fifer were spared; Challeux, that carpenters, artillerymen, and
others who might be of use, were also saved, – thirty in all. Le Moyne
speaks of the massacre as taking place, not at St. Augustine, but at
Fort Caroline, a blunder into which, under the circumstances, he might
naturally fall.
“. . . . aimsi comme on feroit Vn trouppeau de bestes leguel on chasse-
roit à la boucherie, lors a son de phiffres, tabourins et trompes, la hardiesse
de ces furieux Espagnols se desbende sur ces poures François lesquels
estoyent liez et garottez: la c'estoit a qui donneroit le plus beau cousp
de picque, de hallebarde et d'espée,” etc. Challeux, from Christophe
le Breton.
1565 | FRENCH ACCOUNTS. I47
beard was cut off, and portions of it sent in a
letter to Philip the Second. His head was hewn
into four parts, one of which was displayed on the
point of a lance at each corner of Fort St. Augus-
time. Great fires were kindled, and the bodies of
the murdered burned to ashes."
Such is the sum of the French accounts. The
charge of breach of faith contained in them was
believed by Catholics as well as Protestants, and
it was as a defence against this charge that the
narrative of the Adelantado’s brother-in-law was
published. That Ribaut, a man whose good sense
and courage were both reputed high, should have
submitted himself and his men to Menendez with-
out positive assurance of safety, is scarcely credi-
ble ; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a
bigot so savage in heart and so perverted in con-
science would act on the maxim, current among
certain casuists of the day, that faith ought not to
be kept with heretics.
It was night when the Adelantado again en-
tered St. Augustine. There were some who
blamed his cruelty; but many applauded. “Even
1 Une Requête au Roy, faite en forme de Complainte par les Femmes
veufces, petits Enfans orphelins, et autres leurs Amis, Parents et Alliez de
ceux qui ont été cruellement envahis par les Espagnols en la France Antharc-
tique dite la Floride. This is the petition to Charles the Ninth. There
are Latin translations in De Bry and Chauveton. Christophe le Breton
told Challeux the same story of the outrages on Ribaut's body. The
Requête au Roy affirms that the total number of French killed by the
Spaniards in Florida in 1565 was more than nine hundred. This is no
doubt a gross exaggeration.
Prévost, a contemporary, Lescarbot, and others, affirm that Ribaut's
body was flayed, and the skin sent to Spain as a trophy. This is denied
by Barcia.
148 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565.
if the French had been Catholics,” — such was
their language, – “he would have done right,
for, with the little provision we have, they would
all have starved ; besides, there were so many of
them that they would have cut our throats.”
And now Menendez again addressed himself to
the despatch, already begun, in which he recounts
to the King his labors and his triumphs, a delib-
erate and business-like document, mingling nar-
ratives of butchery with recommendations for
promotions, commissary details, and petitions for
supplies; enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of
encroachment which his successful generalship had
brought to naught. The French, he says, had
planned a military and naval depot at Los Mar-
tires, whence they would make a descent upon
Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce de Leon,
whence they could threaten Vera Cruz. They had
long been encroaching on Spanish rights at New-
foundland, from which a great arm of the sea —
doubtless meaning the St. Lawrence — would give
them access to the Moluccas and other parts of the
East Indies. He adds, in a later despatch, that by
this passage they may reach the mines of Zacate-
cas and St. Martin, as well as every part of the
South Sea. And, as already mentioned, he urges
immediate occupation of Chesapeake Bay, which,
by its supposed water communication with the St.
Lawrence, would enable Spain to vindicate her
rights, control the fisheries of Newfoundland, and
thwart her rival in vast designs of commercial
and territorial aggrandizement. Thus did France
1565.] TUGITIVE FRENCH. 149
and Spain dispute the possession of North America
long before England became a party to the strife."
Some twenty days after Menendez returned to
St. Augustine, the Indians, enamored of carnage,
and exulting to see their invaders mowed down,
came to tell him that on the coast Southward, near
Cape Canaveral, a great number of Frenchmen
were intrenching themselves. They were those
of Ribaut's party who had refused to surrender.
Having retreated to the spot where their ships
had been cast ashore, they were trying to build
a vessel from the fragments of the wrecks.
In all haste Menendez despatched messengers to
Fort Caroline, – named by him San Mateo, -
ordering a reinforcement of a hundred and fifty
men. In a few days they came. He added some
of his own soldiers, and, with a united force of
two hundred and fifty, set out, as he tells us, on
the second of November. A part of his force went
by sea, while the rest pushed southward along the
shore with such merciless energy that several men
dropped dead with wading night and day through
the loose sands. When, from behind their frail
defences, the French saw the Spanish pikes and
partisans glittering into view, they fled in a panic,
1 Amid all the confusion of his geographical statements, it seems clear
that Menendez believed that Chesapeake Bay communicated with the St.
Lawrence, and thence with Newfoundland on the one hand, and the South
Sea on the other. The notion that the St. Lawrence would give access
to China survived till the time of La Salle, or more than a century. In
the map of Gastaldi, made, according to Kohl, about 1550, a belt of water
connecting the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic is laid down. So also in
the map of Ruscelli, 1561, and that of Martines, 1578, as well as in that
of Michael Lok, 1582. In Munster's map, 1545, the St. Lawrence is
rudely indicated, with the words, “Per hoc fretü iter ad Molucas.”
150 MASSACRE OF THE HERETICS. [1565.
and took refuge among the hills. Menendez sent
a trumpet to summon them, pledging his honor
for their safety. The commander and several
others told the messenger that they would sooner
be eaten by the savages than trust themselves to
Spaniards; and, escaping, they fled to the Indian
towns. The rest surrendered; and Menendez
kept his word. The comparative number of his
own men made his prisoners no longer dangerous.
They were led back to St. Augustine, where, as
the Spanish writer affirms, they were well treated.
Those of good birth sat at the Adelantado's table,
eating the bread of a homicide crimsoned with the
slaughter of their comrades. The priests essayed
their pious efforts, and, under the gloomy menace
of the Inquisition, some of the heretics renounced
their errors. The fate of the captives may be
gathered from the indorsement, in the hand-
writing of the King, on One of the despatches of
Menendez. »
“Say to him,” writes Philip the Second, “that,
as to those he has killed, he has done well; and as
to those he has saved, they shall be sent to the
galleys.” "
1 There is an indorsement to this effect on the despatch of Menendez
of 12 December, 1565. A marginal note by the copyist states that it is in
the well-known handwriting of Philip the Second. Compare the King's
letter to Menendez, in Barcia, 116. This letter seems to have been
written by a secretary in pursuance of a direction contained in the
indorsement, — “Esto será bien escribir luego a Pero Menendez,”— and
highly commends him for the “justice he has done upon the Lutheran
corsairs.”
CHAPTER IX.
1565–1567.
CHARLES IX. AND PHILIP II.
STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. – COMPLAINTS OF PHILIP THE
SECOND. — REPLY OF CHARLES THE NINTH. — NEws of THE MAS-
SACRE. —THE FRENCH COURT DEMANDS REDRESS. —TIIE SPANISH
Court REFUSES IT.
THE state of international relations in the six-
teenth century is hardly conceivable at this day.
The Puritans of England and the Huguenots of
France regarded Spain as their natural enemy,
and on the high seas and in the British Channel
they joined hands with godless freebooters to rifle
her ships, kill her sailors, or throw them alive
into the sea. Spain on her side seized English
Protestant sailors who ventured into her ports, and
burned them as heretics, or consigned them to a
living death in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
Yet in the latter half of the century these mu-
tual Outrages went on for years while the nations
professed to be at peace. There was complaint,
protest, and Occasional menace, but no redress,
and no declaration of war.
Contemporary writers of good authority have
said that, when the news of the massacres in
Florida reached the court of France, Charles the
Ninth and Catherine de Medicis submitted to the
152 CHARLES IX. AND PHILIP II. [1566,
insult in silence; but documents lately brought to
light show that a demand for redress was made,
though not insisted on. A cry of horror and exe-
cration had risen from the Huguenots, and many
even of the Catholics had echoed it ; yet the per-
petrators of the crime, and not its victims, were
the first to make complaint. Philip the Second re-
sented the expeditions of Ribaut and Laudonnière
as an invasion of the American domains of Spain,
and ordered D’Alava, his ambassador at Paris, to
denounce them to the French King. Charles, thus
put on the defensive, replied, that the country in
question belonged to France, having been discov-
ered by Frenchmen a hundred years before, and
named by them Terre des Bretons." This alludes
to the tradition that the Bretons and Basques
visited the northern coasts of America before the
voyage of Columbus. In several maps of the six-
teenth century the region of New England and
the neighboring states and provinces is set down
as Terre des Bretons, or Tierra de los Bretones,”
and this name was assumed by Charles to ex-
tend to the Gulf of Mexico, as the name of Florida
was assumed by the Spaniards to extend to the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, and even beyond it.” Philip
* Note de Charles IX. en réponse a celle de l'Ambassadeur d’Espagne, in
Gaffarel, Floride, 413.
* See, for example, the map of Ruscelli, 1561.
* “Il y a plus de cent ans a esté ledict pais appellé la terre des Bretons
en laquelle est comprins l'endroit que les Espaignols s'attribuent, leguel
ils ont baptizé du nom qu'ils ont woulu [Florida].” Forqueraulic au Roy,
16 Mars, 1566. Forquevaulx was French ambassador at Madrid.
“Nous ne pretendons rien que conserver une terre quia esté descouverte
et possédée par des François, comme le nom de la terre aux Bretons le
tesmoigne encore.” Catherine de Médicis & Forquevaulx, 30 Dec., 1585.
:566.] DEMANDS OF PHILIP. 153
spurned the claim, asserted the Spanish right to
all Florida, and asked whether or not the follow-
ers of Ribaut and Laudonnière had gone thither
by authority of their King. The Queen Mother,
Catherine de Medicis, replied in her son's behalf,
that certain Frenchmen had gone to a country
called Terre aux Bretons, discovered by French
subjects, and that in so doing they had been
warned not to encroach on lands belonging to the
King of Spain. And she added, with some spirit,
that the Kings of France were not in the habit
of permitting themselves to be threatened."
Philip persisted in his attitude of injured inno-
cence; and Forquevaulx, French ambassador at
Madrid, reported that, as a reward for murder-
ing French subjects, Menendez was to receive the
title of Marquis of Florida. A demand soon fol-
lowed from Philip, that Admiral Coligny should be
punished for planting a French colony on Spanish
ground, and thus causing the disasters that ensued.
It was at this time that the first full account of
the massacres reached the French court, and the
Queen Mother, greatly moved, complained to the
Spanish ambassador, saying that she could not
persuade herself that his master would refuse rep-
aration. The ambassador replied by again throw-
ing the blame on Coligny and the Huguenots, and
Catherine de Medicis returned that, Huguenots
or not, the King of Spain had no right to take
upon himself the punishment of French subjects.
Forquevaulx was instructed to demand redress at
i Catherine de Médicis a Forquevaulx, 20 Jan., 1566.
154 CHARLES IX. AND PHILIP II. [1566,
Madrid, but Philip only answered that he was very
sorry for what had happened," and again insisted
that Coligny should be punished as the true cause
of it.
Forquevaulx, an old soldier, remonstrated with
firmness, declared that no deed so execrable had
ever been committed within his memory, and de-
manded that Menendez and his followers should
be chastised as they deserved. The King said that
he was sorry that the sufferers chanced to be
Frenchmen, but, as they were pirates also, they
ought to be treated as such. The ambassador re-
plied, that they were no pirates, since they bore
the commission of the Admiral of France, who in
naval affairs represented the King ; and Philip
closed the conversation by saying that he would
speak on the subject with the Duke of Alva. This
was equivalent to refusal, for the views of the
Duke were well known ; “and so, Madame,” writes
the ambassador to the Queen Mother, “there is no
hope that any reparation will be made for the
aforesaid massacre.” ”
On this, Charles wrote to Forquevaulx : “It
is my will that you renew your complaint, and
insist urgently that, for the sake of the union and
friendship between the two crowns, reparation be
made for the wrong done me and the cruelties
committed on my subjects, to which I cannot sub-
mit without too great loss of reputation.” ” And,
1 “Disant avoir Santi grand desplaisir du faict advenu; voilà tout,
Sire.” Forquevaula au Roy, 9 Avril, 1566.
* Forquevaula, a Catherine de Médicis, 9 Avril, 1566.
8 Charles IX, a Forquevaula, 12 Mai, 1566.
2567.] HUMILLATION OF CHARLES. 155
jointly with his mother, he ordered the ambassa-
dor to demand once more that Menendez and his
men should be punished, adding, that he trusts
that Philip will grant justice to the King of
France, his brother-in-law and friend, rather than
pardon a gang of brigands. “On this demand,”
concludes Charles, “the Sieur de Forquevaulx
will not fail to insist, be the answer what it may,
in order that the King of Spain shall understand
that his Majesty of France has no less spirit than
his predecessors to repel an insult.”.” The am-
bassador fulfilled his commission, and Philip re-
plied by referring him to the Duke of Alva. “I
have no hope,” reports Forquevaulx, “ that the
Duke will give any satisfaction as to the massacre,
for it was he who advised it from the first.”” A
year passed, and then he reported that Menendez
had returned from Florida, that the King had
given him a warm welcome, and that his fame as
a naval commander was such that he was regarded
as a sort of Neptune.”
In spite of their brave words, Charles and the
Queen Mother tamely resigned themselves to the
affront, for they would not quarrel with Spain.
To have done so would have been to throw them-
selves into the arms of the Protestant party, adopt
the principle of toleration, and save France from
the disgrace and blight of her later years. France
was not so fortunate. The enterprise of Florida
* Mémoire envoyé par Charles IX. et Catherine de Medicis a Forque.
vaula, 12 Mai, 1566.
* Forquevaulic au Roy, Août (?), 1566.
* Forquevaula au Roy, Juillet, 1567. Ibid., 2 Août, 1567.
156 CHARLES IX. AND PHILIP II. [1567,
was a national enterprise, undertaken at the na-
tional charge, with the royal commission, and
under the royal standard; and it had been crushed
in time of peace by a power professing the closest
friendship. Yet Huguenot influence had prompted
and Huguenot hands executed it. That influence
had now ebbed low ; Coligny’s power had waned ;
Charles, after long vacillation, was leaning more
and more towards the Guises and the Catholics,
and fast subsiding into the deathly embrace of
Spain, for whom, at last, on the bloody eve of
St. Bartholomew, he was to become the assassin
of his own best subjects."
In vain the relatives of the slain petitioned him
for redress; and had the honor of the nation
rested in the keeping of its King, the blood of
hundreds of murdered Frenchmen would have
cried from the ground in vain. But it was not
to be so. Injured humanity found an avenger,
and outraged France a champion. Her chivalrous
annals may be searched in vain for a deed of more
romantic daring than the vengeance of Dominique
de Gourgues.
1 Lettres et Papiers d’Estat du Sieur de Forquevaulic, Ambassadeur du
Roy très-Chrestien Charles Neufviesme, printed by Gaffarel in his Histoire
de la Floride Française.
CHAPTER X.
1567–1583.
DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES.
HIS EARLY LIFE. – HIs HATRED of SPANIARDS. — RESOLVES ON VEN
GEANCE. — HIs BAND OF ADVENTURERS. — HIS PLAN DIVULGED. –
HIs SPEECH. — ENTHUSIASM OF HIS FOLLOWERS. — CONDITION OF
THE SPANIARDS. – ARRIVAL OF GOURGUES. – INTERVIEWS WITH
INDIANs. – THE SPANIARDS ATTACKED. — THE FIRST FORT CAR-
RIED.— ANOTHER VICTORY..— THE FINAL TRIUMPH.— THE PRISON-
ERs HANGED. — THE FORTs DESTROYED. — SEQUEL OF GOURGUES’s
CAREER. — MENENDEz. — HIS DEATH.
THERE was a gentleman of Mont-de-Marsan,
Dominique de Gourgues, a soldier of ancient birth
and high renown. It is not certain that he was
a Huguenot. The Spanish annalist calls him a
“terrible heretic”;' but the French Jesuit, Charle-
voix, anxious that the faithful should share the
glory of his exploits, affirms that, like his ances-
tors before him, he was a good Catholic.” If so,
his faith sat lightly upon him; and, Catholic or
heretic, he hated the Spaniards with a mortal hate.
Fighting in the Italian wars, – for from boyhood
he was wedded to the sword, – he had been taken
prisoner by them near Siena, where he had sig-
1 Barcia, 133.
* Charlevoix, Nouvelle France, I. 95. Compare Guérin, Navigateurs
Français, 200. One of De Gourgues's descendants, the Vicomte A. de
Gourgues, has recently (1861) written an article to prove the Catholicity
of his ancestor.
158 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1567.
nalized himself by a fiery and determined bravery.
With brutal insult, they chained him to the oar as
a galley slave." After he had long endured this
ignominy, the Turks captured the vessel and car-
ried her to Constantinople. It was but a change
of tyrants; but, soon after, while she was on a
cruise, Gourgues still at the Oar, a galley of the
knights of Malta hove in sight, bore down on her,
recaptured her, and set the prisoner free. For
several years after, his restless spirit found em-
ployment in voyages to Africa, Brazil, and regions
yet more remote. His naval repute rose high,
but his grudge against the Spaniards still rankled
within him ; and when, returned from his rov-
ings, he learned the tidings from Florida, his hot
Gascon blood boiled with fury. -
The honor of France had been foully stained,
and there was none to wipe away the shame. The
faction-ridden King was dumb. The nobles who
surrounded him were in the Spanish interest.”
Then, since they proved recreant, he, Dominique
de Gourgues, a simple gentleman, would take
upon him to avenge the wrong, and restore the
dimmed lustre of the French name.” He sold his
inheritance, borrowed money from his brother,
1 Lescarbot, Nouvelle France, I. 141 ; Barcia, 133.
* It was at this time that the Duc de Montpensier was heard to say,
that, if his heart was opened, the name of Philip would be found written
in it. Ranke, Civil Wars, I. 337.
* “El, encendido en el Celo de la Honra de Su Patria, avia determinado
gastar su Hacienda en aquella Empresa, de que no esperaba mas fruto,
que vengarse, para eternigar su Fama.” Barcia, 134. This is the state-
ment of an enemy. A contemporary manuscript preserved in the Gourgues
family makes a similar statement.
#567.] HIS EXPEDITION. I59
who held a high post in Guienne," and equipped
three small vessels, navigable by sail or oar. On
board he placed a hundred arquebusiers and eighty
sailors, prepared to fight on land, if need were.”
The noted Blaise de Montluc, then lieutenant for
the King in Guienne, gave him a commission to
make war on the negroes of Benin, – that is, to
kidnap them as slaves, an adventure then held
honorable.”
His true design was locked within his own
breast. He mustered his followers, – not a few
of whom were of rank equal to his own, – feasted
them, and, on the twenty-second of August, 1567,
sailed from the mouth of the Charente. Off Cape
Finisterre, so violent a storm buffeted his ships
that his men clamored to return ; but Gourgues's
spirit prevailed. He bore away for Africa, and,
landing at the Rio del Oro, refreshed and cheered
them as he best might. Thence he sailed to Cape
Blanco, where the jealous Portuguese, who had a
1 “ . . . era Presidente de la Generalidad de Guiena.” Barcia, 133.
Compare Mezeray, Hist. of France, 701. There is repeated mention of
him in the Memoirs of Montluc.
2 De Gourgues MS. Barcia says two hundred; Basanier and Lescar-
bot, a hundred and fifty.
8 De Gourgues MS. This is a copy, made in 1831, by the Vicomte de
Gourgues, from the original preserved in the Gourgues family, and writ-
ten either by Dominique de Gourgues himself, or by some person to whom
he was intimately known. It is, with but trifling variations, identical
with the two narratives entitled La Reprinse de la Floride, preserved in
the Bibliothèque Impériale. One of these bears the name of Robert
Prévost, but whether as author or copyist is not clear. M. Gaillard, who
carefully compared them, has written a notice of their contents, with
remarks. The Prévost narrative has been printed entire by Ternaux-
Compans in his collection. I am indebted to Mr. Bancroft for the use of
the Vicomte de Gourgues's copy, and Gaillard's notice.
160 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. |1567.
fort in the neighborhood, set upon him three negro
chiefs. Gourgues beat them off, and remained
master of the harbor; whence, however, he soon
voyaged onward to Cape Verd, and, steering west-
ward, made for the West Indies. Here, advancing
from island to island, he came to Hispaniola,
where, between the fury of a hurricane at sea
and the jealousy of the Spaniards on shore, he
was in no small jeopardy; — “the Spaniards,”
exclaims the indignant journalist, “who think
that this New World was made for nobody but
them, and that no other living man has a right
to move or breathe here ! ” Gourgues landed,
however, obtained the water of which he was in
need, and steered for Cape San Antonio, at the
western end of Cuba. There he gathered his fol-
lowers about him, and addressed them with his
fiery Gascon eloquence. For the first time, he told
them his true purpose, inveighed against Spanish
cruelty, and painted, with angry rhetoric, the
butcheries of Fort Caroline and St. Augustine.
“What disgrace,” he cried, “if such an insult
should pass unpunished ' What glory to us if
we avenge it! To this I have devoted my for-
tune. I relied on you. I thought you jealous
enough of your country’s glory to sacrifice life
itself in a cause like this. Was I deceived 2 I
will show you the way; I will be always at
your head; I will bear the brunt of the danger.
Will you refuse to follow me?”"
1 The De Gourgues M.S., with Prévost and Gaillard, give the speech
in substance, Charlevoix professes to give a part in the words of the
1568.] POSITION OF THE SPANIARDS. 16]
At first his startled hearers listened in silence;
but soon the passions of that adventurous age
rose responsive to his words. The combustible
French nature burst into flame. The enthu-
siasm of the soldiers rose to such a pitch, that
Gourgues had much ado to make them wait till
the moon was full" before tempting the perils of
the Bahama Channel. His time came at length.
The moon rode high above the lonely sea, and,
silvered in its light, the ships of the avenger
held their course.
Meanwhile, it had fared ill with the Spaniards
in Florida; the good will of the Indians had van-
ished. The French had been obtrusive and vexa-
tious guests; but their worst trespasses had been
mercy and tenderness compared to the daily out-
rage of the new-comers. Friendship had changed
to aversion, aversion to hatred, and hatred to
open war. The forest paths were beset; strag-
glers were cut off; and woe to the Spaniard who
should venture after nightfall beyond call of the
outposts." -
Menendez, however, had strengthened himself
in his new conquest. St. Augustine was well for-
tified ; Fort Caroline, now Fort San Mateo, was
repaired; and two redoubts, or small forts, were
thrown up to guard the mouth of the River of
May, - one of them near the present lighthouse
at Mayport, and the other across the river on
speaker : “J’ai compté sur vous, je vous ai cru assez jaloux de la gloire
de votre Patrie, pour lui sacrifier jusqu’à votre vie en une occasion de cette
importance; me suis-je trompé ! ” etc.
1 Barcia, 100–130.
11
I62 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. {:568.
Fort George Island. Thence, on an afternoon in
early spring, the Spaniards saw three sail steer-
ing northward. They suspected no enemy, and
their batteries boomed a salute. Gourgues's ships
replied, then stood out to sea, and were lost in the
shades of evening.
They kept their course all night, and, as day
broke, anchored at the mouth of a river, the St.
Mary's, or the Santilla, by their reckoning fifteen
leagues north of the River of May. Here, as it
grew light, Gourgues saw the borders of the sea
thronged with Savages, armed and plumed for
war. They, too, had mistaken the strangers for
Spaniards, and mustered to meet their tyrants at
the landing. But in the French ships there was
a trumpeter who had been long in Florida, and
knew the Indians well. He went towards them
in a boat, with many gestures of friendship; and
no sooner was he recognized, than the naked
crowd, with yelps of delight, danced for joy along
the sands. Why had he ever left them 2 they
asked; and why had he not returned before ?
The intercourse thus auspiciously begun was ac-
tively kept up. Gourgues told the principal chief,
— who was no other than Satouriona, Once the
ally of the French, – that he had come to visit
them, make friendship with them, and bring them
presents. At this last announcement, so grateful
to Indian ears, the dancing was renewed with
double zeal. The next morning was named for
a grand council, and Satouriona sent runners to
summon all Indians within call; while Gourgues,
1568.] MEETING WITH INDIANS. I63
for safety, brought his vessels within the mouth
of the river.
Morning came, and the woods were thronged
with warriors. Gourgues and his soldiers landed
with martial pomp. In token of mutual confi-
dence, the French laid aside their arquebuses, and
the Indians their bows and arrows. Satouriona
came to meet the strangers, and seated their com-
mander at his side, on a wooden stool, draped
and cushioned with the gray Spanish moss. Two
old Indians cleared the spot of brambles, weeds,
and grass; and, when their task was finished,
the tribesmen took their places, ring within ring,
standing, sitting, and crouching on the ground, –
a dusky concourse, plumed in festal array, waiting
with grave visages and intent eyes. Gourgues
was about to speak, when the chief, who, says the
narrator, had not learned French manners, antici-
pated him, and broke into a vehement harangue,
denouncing the cruelty of the Spaniards.
Since the French fort was taken, he said, the
Indians had not had one happy day. The Span-
iards drove them from their cabins, stole their
corn, ravished their wives and daughters, and
killed their children; and all this they had en-
dured because they loved the French. There was
a French boy who had escaped from the massacre
at the fort; they had found him in the woods;
and though the Spaniards, who wished to kill
him, demanded that they should give him up,
they had kept him for his friends.
“Look!” pursued the chief, “here he is ”—
164 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1568.
and he brought forward a youth of sixteen. named
Pierre Debré, who became at once of the great-
est service to the French, his knowledge of the
Indian language making him an excellent inter-
preter." .
Delighted as he was at this outburst against
the Spaniards, Gourgues did not see fit to display
the full extent of his satisfaction. He thanked the
Indians for their good-will, exhorted them to con-
tinue in it, and pronounced an ill-merited eulogy
on the greatness and goodness of his King. As
for the Spaniards, he said, their day of reckoning
was at hand; and, if the Indians had been abused
for their love of the French, the French would be
their avengers. Here Satouriona forgot his dig-
nity, and leaped up for joy.
“What l” he cried, “will you fight the Span-
iards 2 ” ”
“I came here,” replied Gourgues, “only to re-
connoitre the country and make friends with you,
and then go back to bring more soldiers; but,
when I hear what you are suffering from them, I
wish to fall upon them this very day, and rescue
you from their tyranny.” All around the ring a
clamor of applauding voices greeted his words.
“But you will do your part,” pursued the
Frenchman ; “you will not leave us all the
honor.”
1 De Gourgues MS.; Gaillard MS; Basanier, 116; Barcia, 134.
* “. . . siles rois et leurs sujects avoient esté maltraictez en haine
des François que aussi seroient-ils vengez parles François-mesmes. Com-
ment 3 dist Satirona, tressaillant d’aise, vouldriez-vous bien faire la guerre
aux Espaignols.” De Gourgues M.S.
1568.] EAGERNESS OF THE INDIANS. 165
“We will go,” replied Satouriona, “ and die
with you, if need be.”
“Then, if we fight, we ought to fight at once.
How soon can you have your warriors ready to
march 2 ''
The chief asked three days for preparation.
Gourgues cautioned him to secrecy, lest the Span-
iards should take alarm.
“Never fear,” was the answer; “we hate them
more than you do.” "
Then came a distribution of gifts, – knives,
hatchets, mirrors, bells, and beads, – while the
warrior rabble crowded to receive them, with
eager faces and Outstretched arms. The distribu-
tion over, Gourgues asked the chiefs if there was
any other matter in which he could serve them.
On this, pointing to his shirt, they expressed a
peculiar admiration for that garment, and begged
each to have One, to be worn at feasts and coun-
cils during life, and in their graves after death.
Gourgues complied ; and his grateful confederates
were soon stalking about him, fluttering in the
spoils of his wardrobe.
1 The above is a condensation from the original narrative, of the
style of which the following may serve as an example: “Le cappi-
taine Gourgue qui avoit trouvé ce qu'il chercheoit, les loué et remercie
grandement, et pour battre le fer pendant qu'il estoit chault leur dist:
Voiremais si nous woullons leur faire la guerre, il fauldroit que ce fust
incontinant. Dans combien de temps pourriez-vous bien avoir assemblé
voz gens prets a marcher ? Dans trois jours dist Satirona, nous et nos
subjects pourrons nous rendre icy, pour partir avec vous. Et ce pendant,
(dist le cappitaine Gourgue,) vous donnerez bon ordre que le tout soit
tenu Secrect : affin que les Espaignols n'en puissent sentir le vent. Ne
vous Soulciez, dirent les rois, nous leur woullons plus de mal que vous,”
etc., etc.
166 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1568.
To learn the strength and position of the Span-
iards, Gourgues now sent out three Scouts; and
with them went Olotoraca, Satouriona’s nephew, a
young brave of great renown.
The chief, eager to prove his good faith, gave
as hostages his only surviving son and his favorite
wife. They were sent on board the ships, while
the Indians dispersed to their encampments, with
leaping, stamping, dancing, and whoops of jubi-
lation.
The day appointed came, and with it the Savage
army, hideous in war-paint, and plumed for battle.
The woods rang back their songs and yells, as
with frantic gesticulation they brandished their
war-clubs and vaunted their deeds of prowess.
Then they drank the black drink, endowed with
mystic virtues against hardship and danger; and
Gourgues himself pretended to swallow the nau-
Seous decoction."
These ceremonies consumed the day. It was
evening before the allies filed off into their forests,
and took the path for the Spanish forts. The
French, on their part, were to repair by sea to the
rendezvous. Gourgues mustered and addressed his
* The “black drink” was, till a recent period, in use among the
Creeks. It is a strong decoction of the plant popularly called cassina, or
uupon tea. Major Swan, deputy agent for the Creeks in 1791, thus de-
scribes their belief in its properties: “that it purifies them from all sin,
and leaves them in a state of perfect innocence; that it inspires them with
an invincible prowess in war; and that it is the only solid cement of
friendship, benevolence, and hospitality.” Swan's account of their mode
of drinking and ejecting it corresponds perfectly with Le Moyne's picture
in De Bry. See the United States government publication, History,
Condition, and Prospects of Indian Tribes, V. 266
1568.] ADVANCES TO THE ATTACK. 167
men. It was needless: their ardor was at fever
height. They broke in upon his words, and de-
manded to be led at once against the enemy.
François Bourdelais, with twenty sailors, was left
with the ships, and Gourgues affectionately bade
him farewell. -
“If I am slain in this most just enterprise,” he
said, “I leave all in your charge, and pray you to
carry back my soldiers to France.”
There were many embracings among the ex-
cited Frenchmen, – many sympathetic tears from
those who were to stay behind, - many messages
left with them for wives, children, friends, and
mistresses; and then this valiant band pushed
their boats from shore." It was a hare-brained
venture, for, as young Debré had assured them,
the Spaniards on the River of May were four hun-
dred in number, secure behind their ramparts.”
Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the Oar.
They glided slowly by the sombre shores in the
shimmering moonlight, to the sound of the mur-
muring surf and the moaning pine trees. In the
gray of the morning, they came to the mouth of a
river, probably the Nassau; and here a northeast
wind set in with a violence that almost wrecked
their boats. Their Indian allies were waiting on
* “Cecy attendrist fort le cueur de tous, et mesmement des mariniers
qui demeuroient pour la garde des navires, lesquels ne peurent contenir
leurs larmes, et fut ceste départie plaine de compassion d'ouïr tant
d’adieux d'une part et d’aultre, et tant de charges et recommendations
de la part de ceulx qui s'en alloient a leurs parents et amis, et a leurs
femmes et alliez au cas qu'ils ne retournassent.” Prévost, 337.
* De Gourgues MS Basanier, 117; Charlevoix, I. 99.
168 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1568.
the bank, but for a while the gale delayed their
crossing. The bolder French would lose no time,
rowed through the tossing waves, and, landing
safely, left their boats, and pushed into the forest.
Gourgues took the lead, in breastplate and back-
piece. At his side marched the young chief Olo-
toraca, with a French pike in his hand; and the
files of arquebuse-men and armed sailors followed
close behind. They plunged through swamps,
hewed their way through brambly thickets and
the matted intricacies of the forests, and, at five
in the afternoon, almost spent with fatigue and
hunger, came to a river or inlet of the sea," not
far from the first Spanish fort. Here they found
three hundred Indians waiting for them.
Tired as he was, Gourgues would not rest. He
wished to attack at daybreak, and with ten arque-
busiers and his Indian guide he set out to recon-
noitre. Night closed upon him. It was a vain task
to struggle on, in pitchy darkness, among trunks
of trees, fallen logs, tangled vines, and swollen
streams. Gourgues returned, anxious and gloomy.
An Indian chief approached him, read through the
darkness his perturbed look, and offered to lead
him by a better path along the margin of the sea.
Gourgues joyfully assented, and ordered all his
men to march. The Indians, better skilled in wood-
craft, chose the shorter course through the forest.
The French forgot their weariness, and pressed
on with speed. At dawn they and their allies met
1 Talbot Inlet Compare Sparks, American Biography, 2d Ser., VII
128.
1568.] THE FIRST SPANISH FORT. I69
on the bank of a stream, probably Sister Creek,
beyond which, and very near, was the fort. But
the tide was in, and they tried in vain to cross.
Greatly vexed, - for he had hoped to take the
enemy asleep, — Gourgues withdrew his soldiers
into the forest, where they were no sooner en-
sconced than a drenching rain fell, and they had
much ado to keep their gun-matches burning. The
light grew fast. Gourgues plainly saw the fort,
the defences of which seemed slight and unfinished.
He even saw the Spaniards at work within. A fe-
verish interval elapsed, till at length the tide was
out, — so far, at least, that the stream was fordable.
A little higher up, a clump of trees lay between it
and the fort. Behind this friendly screen the pas-
sage was begun. Each man tied his powder-flask
to his steel cap, held his arquebuse above his head
with one hand, and grasped his sword with the
other. The channel was a bed of oysters. The
sharp shells cut their feet as they waded through.
But the farther bank was gained. They emerged
from the water, drenched, lacerated, and bleeding,
but with unabated mettle. Gourgues set them in
array under cover of the trees. They stood with
kindling eyes, and hearts throbbing, but not with
fear. Gourgues pointed to the Spanish fort, seen
by glimpses through the boughs. “Look!” he
said, “there are the robbers who have stolen this
land from Our King; there are the murderers who
have butchered our countrymen l’” With voices
1 “ . . . . et, leur monstrant le fort qu'ils pouvoient entrevepir a
travers les arbres, voilà (dist il) les volleurs qui ont vollé ceste terre a
170 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1568.
eager, fierce, but half suppressed, they demanded
to be led on.
Gourgues gave the word. Cazenove, his lieu-
tenant, with thirty men, pushed for the fort gate;
he himself, with the main body, for the glacis. It
was near noon ; the Spaniards had just finished
their meal, and, says the narrative, “were still
picking their teeth,” when a startled cry rang in
their ears : —
“To arms 1 to arms | The French are coming !
the French are coming !” Q
It was the voice of a cannoneer who had that
moment mounted the rampart and seen the as-
sailants advancing in unbroken ranks, with heads
lowered and weapons at the charge. He fired his
cannon among them. He even had time to load
and fire again, when the light-limbed Olotoraca
bounded forward, ran up the glacis, leaped the
unfinished ditch, and drove his pike through the
Spaniard from breast to back. Gourgues was now
on the glacis, when he heard Cazenove shouting
from the gate that the Spaniards were escaping on
that side. He turned and led his men thither at a
run. In a moment, the fugitives, sixty in all, were
enclosed between his party and that of his lieuten-
ant. The Indians, too, came leaping to the spot.
Not a Spaniard escaped. All were cut down but a
few, reserved by Gourgues for a more inglorious
end." -
nostre Roy, voilà les meurtriers qui ont massacré nos françois.” De
Gourgues M.S. Compare Charlevoix, I. 100.
1 Barcia's Spanish account agrees with the De Gourgues MS., except
in a statement of the former that the Indians had formed an ambuscade
into which the Spaniards fell.
1568.ſ THE SECONID SPANISH FORT. 17|
Meanwhile the Spaniards in the other fort, on
the opposite shore, cannonaded the victors with-
out ceasing. The latter turned four captured guns
against them. One of Gourgues's boats, a very
large One, had been brought along-shore, and, en-
tering it with eighty soldiers, he pushed for the far-
ther bank. With loud yells, the Indians leaped into
the river, which is here about three fourths of a
mile wide. Each held his bow and arrows aloft in
One hand, while he swam with the other. A panic
seized the garrison as they saw the savage multi-
tude. They broke out of the fort and fled into the
forest. But the French had already landed; and,
throwing themselves in the path of the fugitives,
they greeted them with a storm of lead. The ter-
rified wretches recoiled; but flight was vain. The
Indian whoop rang behind them, and war-clubs
and arrows finished the work. Gourgues's utmost
efforts saved but fifteen, not out of mercy, but from
a refinement of vengeance."
The next day was Quasimodo Sunday, or the
Sunday after Easter. Gourgues and his men re-
mained quiet, making ladders for the assault on
Fort San Mateo. Meanwhile the whole forest was
in arms, and, far and near, the Indians were wild
with excitement. They beset the Spanish fort till
not a soldier could venture out. The garrison,
aware of their danger, though ignorant of its ex-
tent, devised an expedient to gain information;
* It must be admitted that there is a strong savor of romance in the
French narrative. The admissions of the Spanish annalist prove, how-
ever, that it has a broad basis of truth.
172 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1568.
and one of them, painted and feathered like an In-
dian, ventured within Gourgues's outposts. He
himself chanced to be at hand, and by his side
walked his constant attendant, Olotoraca. The
keen-eyed young Savage pierced the cheat at a
glance. The spy was seized, and, being examined,
declared that there were two hundred and sixty
Spaniards in San Mateo, and that they believed the
French to be two thousand, and were so frightened
that they did not know what they were doing.
Gourgues, well pleased, pushed on to attack
them. On Monday evening he sent forward the
Indians to ambush themselves on both sides of the
fort. In the morning he followed with his French-
men; and, as the glittering ranks came into view,
defiling between the forest and the river, the Span-
iards opened on them with culverins from a pro-
jecting bastion. The French took cover in the
woods with which the hills below and behind the
fort were densely overgrown. Here, himself un-
seen, Gourgues could survey the whole extent of
the defences, and he presently descried a strong
party of Spaniards issuing from their works, cross-
ing the ditch, and advancing to reconnoitre. On
this, he sent Cazenove, with a detachment, to sta-
tion himself at a point well hidden by trees on the
flank of the Spaniards, who, with strange infatua-
tion, continued their advance. Gourgues and his
followers pushed on through the thickets to meet
them. As the Spaniards reached the edge of the
Open ground, a deadly fire blazed in their faces,
and, before the smoke cleared, the French were
j568.] FORT SAN MATEO TAKEN. [73
among them, sword in hand. The survivors would
have fled; but Cazenove's detachment fell upon
their rear, and all were killed or taken.
When their comrades in the fort beheld their
fate, a panic seized them. Conscious of their own
deeds, perpetrated on this very spot, they could
hope no mercy, and their terror multiplied im-
measurably the numbers of their enemy. They
abandoned the fort in a body, and fled into the
woods most remote from the French. But here a
deadlier foe awaited them ; for a host of Indians
leaped up from ambush. Then rose those hideous
war-cries which have curdled the boldest blood
and blanched the manliest cheek. The forest
warriors, with savage ecstasy, wreaked their long
arrears of vengeance, while the French hastened
to the spot, and lent their swords to the slaughter.
A few prisoners were saved alive ; the rest were
slain; and thus did the Spaniards make bloody
atonement for the butchery of Fort Caroline."
But Gourgues's vengeance was not yet appeased.
Hard by the fort, the trees were pointed out to
him on which Menendez had hanged his captives,
and placed over them the inscription, “Not as to
Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans.”
Gourgues ordered the Spanish prisoners to be
led thither.
* This is the French account. The Spaniard Barcia, with greater
probability, says that some of the Spaniards escaped to the hills. With
this exception, the French and Spanish accounts agree. Barcia ascribes
the defeat of his countrymen to an exaggerated idea of the enemy's force.
The governor, Gonzalo de Villaroel, was, he says, among those who es-
caped. I have purposely preserved in the narrative the somewhat exalted
tone of the original French account.
174 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1568,
“Did you think,” he sternly said, as the pallid
wretches stood ranged before him, “that so vile a
treachery, so detestable a cruelty, against a King
so potent and a nation so generous, would go un-
punished 2 I, one of the humblest gentlemen
among my King's subjects, have charged myself
with avenging it. Even if the Most Christian
and the Most Catholic Kings had been enemies,
at deadly war, such perfidy and extreme cruelty
would still have been unpardonable. Now that
they are friends and close allies, there is no name
vile enough to brand your deeds, no punishment
sharp enough to requite them. But though you
cannot suffer as you deserve, you shall suffer all
that an enemy can honorably inflict, that your
example may teach others to observe the peace
and alliance which you have so perfidiously vio-
lated.” "
They were hanged where the French had hung
before them ; and over them was nailed the in-
scription, burned with a hot iron on a tablet of
pine, “Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors,
Robbers, and Murderers.”
Gourgues's mission was fulfilled. To occupy
1 “. . . . Mais encores que vous ne puissiez endurer la peine que vous
avez méritée, il est besoin que vous enduriez celle que l'ennemy vous
peult donner honnestement: affin que par vostre exemple les autres ap-
preignent a garder la paix et alliance que si meschamment et malheu-
reusement vous avez violée. Cela dit, ils sont branchez aux mesmes
arbres oil ils avoient penduz les François.” De Gourgues M.S.
2 “Je ne faicts cecy comme a Espaignolz, n'y comme à Marannes;
mais comme a traistres, volleurs, et meurtriers.” De Gourgues M.S.
Maranne, or Marane, was a word of reproach applied to Spaniards. It
seems originally to have meant a Moor. Michelet calls Ferdinand of
Spain “ce vieux Marane aware.” The Spanish Pope, Alexander the
1568.] THE FORTS DESTROYED. 175
the country had never been his intention ; nor was
it possible, for the Spaniards were still in force at
St. Augustine. His was a whirlwind visitation,
— to ravage, ruin, and vanish. He harangued
the Indians, and exhorted them to demolish the
fort. They fell to the work with eagerness, and
in less than a day not one stone was left on
another."
Gourgues returned to the forts at the mouth of
the river, destroyed them also, and took up his
march for his ships. It was a triumphal proces-
sion. The Indians thronged around the victors
with gifts of fish and game; and an old woman
declared that she was now ready to die, since she
had seen the French once more.
The ships were ready for sea. Gourgues bade
his disconsolate allies farewell, and nothing would
content them but a promise to return soon. Be-
fore embarking, he addressed his own men : —
“My friends, let us give thanks to God for the
success He has granted us. It is He who saved us
from tempests; it is He who inclined the hearts
of the Indians towards us ; it is He who blinded
the understanding of the Spaniards. They were
four to one, in forts well armed and provisioned.
Our right was our only strength; and yet we have
conquered. Not to our own swords, but to God
Sixth, was always nicknamed Le Marame by his enemy and successor,
Rovere. -
On returning to the forts at the mouth of the river, Gourgues hanged
all the prisoners he had left there. One of them, says the narrative, con-
fessed that he had aided in hanging the French.
! “Ilz feirent telle diligence qu’en moings d’ung jour ilz ne laissèrent
pierre sur pierre.” De Gourgues M.S.
176 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. 11568.
Only, we owe our victory. Then ſet us thank
Him, my friends; let us never forget His favors;
and let us pray that He may continue them, sav-
ing us from dangers, and guiding us safely home.
Let us pray, too, that He may so dispose the
hearts of men that our perils and toils may find
favor in the eyes of Our King and of all France,
since all we have done was done for the King's
service and for the honor of our country.” "
Thus Spaniards and Frenchmen alike laid their
reeking swords on God's altar.
Gourgues sailed on the third of May, and, gaz-
ing back along their foaming wake, the adven-
turers looked their last on the scene of their
exploits. Their success had cost its price. A
few of their number had fallen, and hardships
still awaited the survivors. Gourgues, however,
reached Rochelle on the day of Pentecost, and
the Huguenot citizens greeted him with all honor.
At court it fared worse with him. The King,
still obsequious to Spain, looked on him coldly
and askance. The Spanish minister demanded
his head. It was hinted to him that he was
not safe, and he withdrew to Rouen, where he
found asylum among his friends. His fortune
was gone ; debts contracted for his expedition
weighed heavily on him ; and for years he lived
in obscurity, almost in misery.
At length his prospects brightened. Elizabeth
of England learned his merits and his misfortunes,
1 De Gourgues MS. The speech is a little condensed in the trans.
lation.
1888. HIS DEATH. 177
and invited him to enter her service. The King,
who, says the Jesuit historian, had always at heart
been delighted with his achievement,' openly re-
stored him to favor ; while, some years later, Don
Antonio tendered him command of his fleet, to
defend his right to the crown of Portugal against
Philip the Second Gourgues, happy once more to
cross swords with the Spaniards, gladly embraced
this offer; but in 1583 on his way to join the Por-
tuguese prince, he died at Tours of a sudden ill-
ness.” The French mourned the loss of the man
who had wiped a blot from the national scutcheon,
and respected his memory as that of one of the best
captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous
patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are
worthy of honor, then is such a tribute due to
Dominique de Gourgues, slave-catcher and half-
pirate as he was, like other naval heroes of that
wild age.
Romantic as was his exploit, it lacked the ful-
ness of poetic justice, since the chief offender
escaped him. While Gourgues was sailing to-
wards Florida, Menendez was in Spain, high in
favor at court, where he told to approving ears
how he had butchered the heretics. Borgia, the
sainted General of the Jesuits, was his fast friend;
and two years later, when he returned to Amer-
ica, the Pope, Paul the Fifth, regarding him as
an instrument for the conversion of the Indians,
1 Charlevoix, Nouvelle France, I. 105.
2 Basanier, 123; Lescarbot, 141 ; Barcia, 137; Gaillard, Notice des
Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi.
12
178 DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES. [1574.
wrote him a letter with his benediction." He re-
established his power in Florida, rebuilt Fort San
Mateo, and taught the Indians that death or flight
was the only refuge from Spanish tyranny. They
murdered his missionaries and spurned their doc-
trine. “The Devil is the best thing in the
world,” they cried ; “we adore him ; he makes
men brave.” Even the Jesuits despaired, and
abandoned Florida in disgust.
Menendez was summoned home, where fresh
honors awaited him from the Crown, though, ac-
cording to the somewhat doubtful assertion of
the heretical Grotius, his deeds had left a stain
upon his name among the people.” He was given
command of the armada of three hundred sail
and twenty thousand men, which, in 1574, was
gathered at Santander against England and Flan-
ders. But now, at the height of his fortunes,
his career was abruptly closed. He died sud-
denly, at the age of fifty-five. Grotius affirms
that he killed himself; but, in his eagerness to
point the moral of his story, he seems to have
overstepped the bounds of historic truth. The
Spanish bigot was rarely a suicide ; for the rites
of Christian burial and repose in consecrated
ground were denied to the remains of the self-
murderer. There is positive evidence, too, in a
codicil to the will of Menendez, dated at San-
tander on the fifteenth of September, 1574, that
he was on that day seriously ill, though, as the
1 “Carta de San Pio V. a Pedro Menendez,” Barcia, 139.
* Grotius, Annales, 63.
1574.] DEATH OF MENENDEZ. 179
instrument declares, “ of sound mind.” There is
reason, then, to believe that this pious cut-throat
died a natural death, crowned with honors, and
soothed by the consolations of his religion."
It was he who crushed French Protestantism in
America. To plant religious freedom on this
western soil was not the mission of France. It
was for her to rear in northern forests the ban-
ner of absolutism and of Rome; while among
the rocks of Massachusetts England and Calvin
fronted her in dogged opposition. -
Long before the ice-crusted pines of Plymouth
had listened to the rugged psalmody of the Puri-
tan, the solitudes of Western New York and the
stern wilderness of Lake Huron were trodden by
the iron heel of the soldier and the sandalled foot
of the Franciscan friar. France was the true
pioneer of the Great West. They who bore the
fleur-de-lis were always in the van, patient, daring,
indomitable. And foremost on this bright roll of
forest chivalry stands the half-forgotten name of
Samuel de Champlain.
1 For a copy of portions of the will, and other interesting papers con-
cerning Menendez, I am indebted to Buckingham Smith, Esq., whose
patient and zealous research in the archives of Spain has thrown new
light on Spanish North American history.
There is a brief notice of Menendez in De la Mota's History of the Order
of Santiago, (1599,) and also another of later date written to accompany
his engraved portrait. Neither of them conveys any hint of suicide.
Menendez was a Commander of the Order of Santiago.
SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN
AND
HIS ASSOCIATES :
WITH A
VIEW OF EARLIER FRENCH ADVENTURE IN AMERICA,
ANID THE
LEGENDS OF THE NORTHERN COASTS.
CHAMPLAIN AND HIS ASSOCIATES.
SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN has been fitly called the
Father of New France. UIn him were embodied
her religious zeal and romantic spirit of adven-
ture. Before the close of his career, purged of
heresy, she took the posture which she held to the
day of her death, – in One hand the crucifix, in
the other the sword. His life, full of significance,
is the true beginning of her eventful history.
In respect to Champlain, the most satisfactory
authorities are his own writings. These consist
of the journal of his voyage to the West Indies
and Mexico, of which the original is preserved at
Dieppe; the account of his first voyage to the
St. Lawrence, published at Paris, in 1604, under
the title of Des Sauvages ; a narrative of subse-
quent adventures and explorations, published at
T'aris in 1613, 1615, and 1617, under the title of
Voyage de la Nouvelle France ; a narrative of
still later discoveries, published at Paris in 1620
and 1627; and, finally, a compendium of all his
previous publications, with much additional mat-
ter, published in quarto at Paris in 1632, and illus-
trated by a very curious and interesting map.
184 CHAMPLAIN AND HIS ASSOCIATES.
Next in value to the writings of Champlain are
those of his associate, Lescarbot, whose Histoire de
la Nouvelle France is of great interest and author-
ity as far as it relates the author's personal expe-
rience. The editions here consulted are those of
1612 and 1618. The Muses de la Vouvelle France,
and other minor works of Lescarbot, have also
been examined.
The Etablissement de la Foy of Le Clerc is of
great value in connection with the present subject,
containing documents and extracts from documents
not elsewhere to be found. It is of extreme rarity,
having been suppressed by the French government
soon after its appearance in 1691.
The Histoire du Canada of Sagard, the Première
Mission des Jésuites of Carayon, the curious Rela-
tion of the Jesuit Biard, and those of the Jesuits
Charles Lalemant, Le Jeune, and Brebeuf, together
with two narratives — one of them perhaps writ-
ten by Champlain — in the eighteenth and nine-
teenth volumes of the Mercure Français, may also
be mentioned as among the leading authorities of
the body of this work. Those of the introductory
portion need not be specified at present.
Of manuscripts used, the principal are the Bref
JDiscours of Champlain, or the journal of his voy-
age to the West Indies and Mexico; the Grand
Insulaire et Pilotage d’André Thevet, an ancient
and very curious document, in which the Super-
stitions of Breton and Norman fishermen are re-
counted by one who shared them ; and a variety
of official papers, obtained for me through the
CHAMPILAIN AND HIS ASSOCIATES. T85
agency of Mr. B. P. Poore, from the archives of
France.
I am indebted to G. B. Faribault, Esq., of
Quebec, and to the late Jacques Viger, Esq., of
Montreal, for the use of valuable papers and mem-
oranda ; to the Rev. John Cordner, of Montreal,
for various kind acts of co-operation; to Jared
Sparks, LL.D., for the use of a copy of Le Clerc's
Etablissement de la Foy; to Dr. E. B. O'Calla-
gham, for assistance in examining rare books in
the State Library of New York; to John Carter
Brown, Esq., and Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, for
the use of books from their admirable collections;
while to the libraries of Harvard College and of
the Boston Athenaeum I owe a standing debt of
gratitude.
The basis of descriptive passages was supplied
through early tastes and habits, which long since
made me familiar with most of the localities of
the narrative.
SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN.
CHAPTER I.
1488–1543.
FARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE IN NORTH AMERICA.
TRADITIONS OF FRENCH DISCOVERY. — Norm ANs, BRETONs, BASQUES.
— LEGENDS AND SUPERSTITIONS. — VERRAzzANo. — JACQUES CAR-
TIER. — QUEBEC. — HoCHELAGA.— WINTER MISERIES. – ROBER:
VAL. — THE ISLES OF DEMONS. — THE COLONISTS OF CAP ROUGE.
WHEN America was first made known to Eu-
rope, the part assumed by France on the borders
of that new world was peculiar, and is little recog-
nized. While the Spaniard roamed sea and land,
burning for achievement, red-hot with bigotry and
avarice, and while England, with soberer steps
and a less dazzling result, followed in the path of
discovery and gold-hunting, it was from France
that those barbarous shores first learned to serve
the ends of peaceful commercial industry.
A French writer, however, advances a more am-
bitious claim. In the year 1488, four years before
the first voyage of Columbus, America, he main-
tains, was found by Frenchmen. Cousin, a navi-
gator of Dieppe, being at sea off the African coast,
was forced westward, it is said, by winds and cur-
rents to within sight of an unknown shore, where
188 IEARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. [1492.
he presently descried the mouth of a great river.
On board his ship was one Pinzon, whose conduct
became so mutinous that, on his return to Dieppe,
Cousin made complaint to the magistracy, who
thereupon dismissed the offender from the mari-
time service of the town. Pinzon went to Spain,
became known to Columbus, told him the discov-
ery, and joined him on his voyage of 1492."
To leave this cloudland of tradition, and ap-
proach the confines of recorded history. The Nor-
mans, offspring of an ancestry of conquerors, –
the Bretons, that stubborn, hardy, unchanging
race, who, among Druid monuments changeless as
themselves, still cling with Celtic obstinacy to the
thoughts and habits of the past, — the Basques,
that primeval people, older than history, - all fre-
1 Mémoires pour servir à l’Histoire de Dieppe; Vitet, Histoire de Dieppe,
226; Gaffarel, Brésil Français, 1. Compte-rendu du Congrès International
des Américanistes, I. 398–414; Guérin, Navigateurs Français, 47: Estance-
lin, Navigateurs Normands, 332. This last writer's research to verify the
tradition was vain. The bombardment of 1694 nearly destroyed the ar-
chives of Dieppe, and nothing could be learned from the Pinzons of Palos.
Yet the story may not be quite void of foundation. In 1500, Cabral was
blown within sight of Brazil in a similar manner. Herrera (Hist. General,
Dec. I. Lib. I. c. 3) gives several parallel instances as having reached the
ears of Columbus before his first voyage. Compare the Introduction to
Lok's translation of Peter Martyr, and Eden and Willes, History of Tra-
vayles, fol. 1; also a story in the Journal de l’Amérique (Troyes, 1709), and
Gomara, Hist. Gen. des Indes Occidentales, Lib. I. c. 13. These last, how-
ever, are probably inventions.
In the Description des Costes de la Mer Océane, a manuscript of the
seventeenth century, it is said that a French pilot of St. Jean de Luz first
discovered America: “Il fut le premier jeté en la coste de l’Amérique
par une violente tempeste, laissa son papier journal, communiqua la route
qu'il avoit faite à Coulon, chez qui il mourut.” See Monteil, Trauté de
Matériaux Manuscrits, I. 340. The story is scarcely worth the mention.
Harrisse (Les Cortereal, 27) thinks there is reason to believe that the Por-
tuguese reached the American continent as early as 1474, or even ten
years earlier
1504.] NEWFOUNDLAND. 189
quented from a very early date the cod-banks of
Newfoundland. There is some reason to believe
that this fishery existed before the voyage of Cabot,
in 1497; there is strong evidence that it began
as early as the year 1504;” and it is well estab-
1 “Terra haec ob lucrosissimam piscationis utilitatem summa littera-
rum memoria a Gallis adiri solita, & ante mille sexcentos annos frequen-
tari solita est.” Postel, cited by Lescarbot, I. 237, and by Hornot, 260.
“De toute mémoire, & des plusieurs siècles noz Diepois, Maloins,
Rochelois, & autres mariniers du Havre de Grace, de Honfleur & autres
lieux, font les voyages ordinaires en ces pais-la pour la pècherie des
Moruès.” Lescarbot, I. 236.
Compare the following extracts : —
“Les Basques et les Bretons sont depuis plusieurs siècles les seuls qui
se soient employés à la péche de balaines et des molues; et il est fort re-
marquable que S. Cabot, decouvrant la côte de Labrador, y trouva le nom
de Bacallos, qui signifie des Molues en langue des Basques.” M.S. in the
Royal Library of Versailles.
“Quant au nom de Bacalos, il est de l'imposition de nos Basques, les-
quels appellent une Moruč, Bacaillos, & a leur imitation nos peuples de la
Nouvelle France ont appris a nommer aussi la Morué Bacaillos, quoy-
qu’en leur langage le nom propre de la morué Soit Apegé.” Lescarbot,
I. 237.
De Laet also says, incidentally (p. 39), that “Bacalaos” is Basque for
a codfish. I once asked a Basque gentleman the name for a codfish in
his language, and he at once answered Baccalaos. The word has been
adopted by the Spaniards.
“Sebastian Cabot himself named those lands Baccalaos, because that
in the seas thereabout he found so great multitudes of certain bigge fishes,
much like unto Tunies (which the inhabitants call Baccalaos), that they
sometimes stayed his shippes.” Peter Martyr in Hakluyt, III. 30; Eden
and Willes, 125.
If, in the original Basque, Baccalaos is the word for a codfish, and if
Cabot found it in use among the inhabitants of Newfoundland, it is hard
to escape the conclusion that Basques had been there before him.
This name Baccalaos is variously used by the old writers. Cabot gave
it to the continent, as far as he coasted it. The earliest Spanish writers
give it an application almost as comprehensive. On Wytſleit's map
(1597) it is confined to Newfoundland and Labrador; on Ramusio's
(1556), to the southern parts of Newfoundland; on Lescarbot's (1612),
to the island of Cape Breton; on De Laet's (1640), to a small island east
of Newfoundland.
2 Discorso d’un gran Capitano di Mare Francese, Ramusio, III. 423.
Ramusio does not know the name of the “gran capitano,” but Estancelin
190 EARLY FRIENCH AIDVENTURE. [1527.
lished that, in 1517, fifty Castilian, French, and
Portuguese vessels were engaged in it at Once ;
while in 1527, on the third of August, eleven
sail of Norman, one of Breton, and two of Portu-
guese fishermen were to be found in the Bay of
St. John."
From this time forth, the Newfoundland fishery
was never abandoned. French, English, Spanish,
and Portuguese made resort to the Banks, always
jealous, often quarrelling, but still drawing up
treasure from those exhaustless mines, and bear-
ing home bountiful provision against the season
of Lent.
On this dim verge of the known world there
were other perils than those of the waves. The
rocks and shores of those sequestered seas had, so
thought the voyagers, other tenants than the seal,
the walrus and the screaming sea-fowl, the bears
proves him to have been Jean Parmentier, of Dieppe. From internai
evidence, his memoir was written in 1539, and he says that Newfoundland
was visited by Bretons and Normans thirty-five years before. “Britones
et Normani anno a Christo nato M,CCCCC, IIII has terras invenère.”
Wytſleit, Descriptions Ptolemaicae Augmentum, 185. The translation of
Wytſleit (Douay, 1611) bears also the name of Antoine Magin. It is
cited by Champlain as “Niflet & Antoine Magin.” See also Ogilby,
America, 128; Forster, Voyages, 431; Baumgartens, I. 516; Biard, Rela-
tion, 2.; Bergeron, Traité de la Navigation, c. 14.
1 Herrera, Dec. II. Lib. V. c. 3; Letter of John Rut, dated St. John’s,
3 August, 1527, in Purchas, III. 809.
The name of Cape Breton, found on the oldest maps, is a memorial of
these early French voyages. Cartier, in 1534, found the capes and bays
of Newfoundland already named by his countrymen who had preceded
him. In 1565, Charles IX. of France informed the Spanish ambassador
that the coast of North America had been discovered by French subjects
more than a hundred years before, and is therefore called “Terre aux
Bretons.” Papiers d’Estat de Forquevaulic, in Gaffarel, Floride, 413.
Navarrete's position, that the fisheries date no farther back than 1540,
is wholly untenable.
1500–1550.] THE ISLES OF DEMONS. 191
which stole away their fish before their eyes,” and
the wild natives dressed in seal-skins. Griffins —
so ran the story—infested the mountains of Labra-
dor.” Two islands, north of Newfoundland, were
given over to the fiends from whom they derived
their name, the Isles of Demons. An old map
pictures their occupants at length, devils rampant,
with wings, horns, and tail.” The passing voyager
heard the din of their infernal Orgies, and woe to
the sailor or the fisherman who ventured alone
into the haunted woods.” “True it is,” writes the
old cosmographer Thevet, “ and I myself have
heard it, not from one, but from a great number
of the sailors and pilots with whom I have made
many voyages, that, when they passed this way,
they heard in the air, on the tops and about the
masts, a great clamor of men's voices, confused
and inarticulate, such as you may hear from the
crowd at a fair or market-place; whereupon they
well knew that the Isle of Demons was not far
off.” And he adds, that he himself, when among
1 “The Beares also be as bold, which will not spare at midday to take
your fish before your face.” Letter of Anthonie Parkhurst, 1578, in Hak-
luyt, III. 170.
* Wytſleit, 190; Gomara, Lib. I. c. 2.
* See Ramusio, III. Compare La Popelinière, Les Trois Mondes,
II. 25.
4 Le Grand Insulaire et Pilotage d’André Thevet, Cosmographe du Roy
(1586). I am indebted to G. B. Faribault, Esq., of Quebec, for a copy
of this curious manuscript. The islands are perhaps those of Belle Isle
and Quirpon. More probably, however, that most held in dread, “pour
autant que les Demons y font terrible tintamarre,” is a small island near
the northeast extremity of Newfoundland, variously called, by Thevet, Isle
de Fiche, Isle de Roberval, and Isle des Démons. It is the same with
the Isle Fichet of Sanson, and the Fishot Island of some modern maps,
A curious legend connected with it will be given hereafter.
192 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. [1506–1518.
the Indians, had seen them so tormented by these
infernal persecutors, that they would fall into his
arms for relief; on which, repeating a passage of
the Gospel of St. John, he had driven the imps of
darkness to a speedy exodus. They are comely to
look upon, he further tells us, yet, by reason of
their malice, that island is of late abandoned, and
all who dwelt there have fled for refuge to the
main."
While French fishermen plied their trade along
these gloomy coasts, the French government spent
its energies on a different field. The vitality of
the kingdom was wasted in Italian wars. Milan
and Naples offered a more tempting prize than
the wilds of Baccalaos.” Eager for glory and for
plunder, a swarm of restless nobles followed their
knight-errant King, the would-be paladin, who,
misshapen in body and fantastic in mind, had yet
the power to raise a storm which the lapse of
generations could not quell. Under Charles the
Eighth and his successor, war and intrigue ruled
the day; and in the whirl of Italian politics there
was no leisure to think of a new world.
Yet private enterprise was not quite benumbed.
In 1506, one Denis of Honfleur explored the Gulf
of St. Lawrence; * two years later, Aubert of
Dieppe followed on his track; * and in 1518, the
1 Thevet, Cosmographie (1575), II. c. 5. A very rare book. I am
indebted to Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan for copies of the passages in it relating
to subjects within the scope of the present work. Thevet here contradicts
himself in regard to the position of the haunted island, which he places at
60° north latitude.
2 See ante, p. 189, note 1.
* Parmentier in Ramusio, III, 423; Estancelin, 42–222. 4 Ibid.
1515.] VEF.RAZZANO. 193
Baron de Léry made an abortive attempt at set-
tlement on Sable Island, where the cattle left by
him remained and multiplied." .
The crown passed at length to Francis of An-
goulême. There were in his nature seeds of
nobleness, – seeds destined to bear little fruit.
Chivalry and honor were always on his lips; but
Francis the First, a forsworn gentleman, a des-
potic king, vainglorious, selfish, sunk in debauch-
eries, was but the type of an era which retained
the forms of the Middle Age without its soul, and
added to a still prevailing barbarism the pestilen-
tial vices which hung fog-like around the dawn
of civilization. Yet he esteemed arts and letters,
and, still more, coveted the éclat which they could
give. The light which was beginning to pierce
the feudal darkness gathered its rays around his
throne. Italy was rewarding the robbers who
preyed on her with the treasures of her knowledge
and her culture; and Italian genius, of whatever
stamp, found ready patronage at the hands of
Francis. Among artists, philosophers, and men
of letters enrolled in his service stands the hum-
bler name of a Florentine navigator, John Wer-
I’8,778,1] O.
He was born of an ancient family, which could
boast names eminent in Florentine history, and
of which the last survivor died in 1819. He has
been called a pirate, and he was such in the same
sense in which Drake, Hawkins, and other valiant
sea-rovers of his own and later times, merited the
1 Lescarbot, I, 22; De Laet, Novus Orbis, 39; Bergeron, c. 15.
13
194 EARLY FRIENCH. A.DVENTURE. [1524,
name; that is to say, he would plunder and kill a
Spaniard on the high seas without waiting for a
declaration of war.
The wealth of the Indies was pouring into the
coffers of Charles the Fifth, and the exploits of
Cortés had given new lustre to his crown. Fran-
cis the First begrudged his hated rival the glories
and profits of the New World. He would fain
have his share of the prize; and Verrazzano, with
four ships, was despatched to seek out a passage
westward to the rich kingdom of Cathay.
Some doubt has of late been cast on the reality
of this voyage of Verrazzano, and evidence, mainly
negative in kind, has been adduced to prove the
story of it a fabrication; but the difficulties of
incredulity appear greater than those of belief,
and no ordinary degree of scepticism is required
to reject the evidence that the narrative is essen-
tially true."
Towards the end of the year 1523, his four
ships sailed from Dieppe; but a storm fell upon
him, and, with two of the vessels, he ran back in
distress to a port of Brittany. What became of
the other two does not appear. Neither is it clear
why, after a preliminary cruise against the Span-
iards, he pursued his voyage with one vessel alone,
a caravel called the Dauphine. With her he made
for Madeira, and, on the seventeenth of January,
1524, set sail from a barren islet in its neighbor-
hood, and bore away for the unknown world. In
forty-nine days they neared a low shore, not far
1 See note, end of chapter.
1624.] VERRAZZANO. 195
from the site of Wilmington in North Carolina,
“a newe land,” exclaims the voyager, “never be-
fore seen of any man, either auncient or mod-
erne.” Verrazzano steered southward in search
of a harbor, and, finding none, turned northward
again. Presently he sent a boat ashore. The in-
habitants, who had fled at first, soon came down
to the strand in wonder and admiration, pointing
out a landing-place, and making gestures of friend-
ship. “These people,” says Verrazzano, “goe
altogether naked, except only certain skinnes of
beastes like unto marterns [martens], which they
fasten onto a narrowe girdle made of grasse,
They are of colour russet, and not much unlike
the Saracens, their hayre blacke, thicke, and not
very long, which they tye togeather in a knot
behinde, and weare it like a taile.””
He describes the shore as consisting of small
low hillocks of fine sand, intersected by creeks
and inlets, and beyond these a country “full of
Palme [pine I trees, Bay trees, and high Cypresse
trees, and many other sortes of trees, vnknowne
in Europe, which yeeld most sweete sauours, farre
from the shore.” Still advancing northward, Ver-
razzano sent a boat for a supply of water. The
surf ran high, and the crew could not land ; but
an adventurous young sailor jumped overboard
and swam shoreward with a gift of beads and
trinkets for the Indians, who stood watching him.
His heart failed as he drew near ; he flung his gift
1 Hakluyt's translation from Ramusio, in Divers Voyages (1582).
2 Ibid.
196 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. [1524,
among them, turned, and struck out for the boat.
The surf dashed him back, flinging him with vio-
lence on the beach among the recipients of his
bounty, who seized him by the arms and legs, and,
while he called lustily for aid, answered him with
outcries designed to allay his terrors. Next they
kindled a great fire, — doubtless to roast and de-
vour him before the eyes of his comrades, gazing
in horror from their boat. On the contrary, they
carefully warmed him, and were trying to dry his
clothes, when, recovering from his bewilderment,
he betrayed a strong desire to escape to his friends;
whereupon, “with great love, clapping him fast
about, with many embracings,” they led him to
the shore, and stood watching till he had reached
the boat.
It only remained to requite this kindness, and
an opportunity soon Occurred ; for, coasting the
shores of Virginia or Maryland, a party went on
shore and found an old woman, a young girl, and
several children, hiding with great terror in the
grass. Having, by various blandishments, gained
their confidence, they carried off one of the chil-
dren as a curiosity, and, since the girl was comely,
would fain have taken her also, but desisted by
reason of her continual screaming.
Verrazzano's next resting-place was the Bay of
New York. Rowing up in his boat through the
Narrows, under the steep heights of Staten Island,
he saw the harbor within dotted with canoes of
the feathered natives, coming from the shore to
welcome him. But what most engaged the eyes
1524.] VERRAZZANO. 197
of the white men were the fancied signs of mineral
wealth in the neighboring hills.
Following the shores of Long Island, they came
to an island, which may have been Block Island,
and thence to a harbor, which was probably that
of Newport. Here they stayed fifteen days, most
courteously received by the inhabitants. Among
others appeared two chiefs, gorgeously arrayed in
painted deer-skins, – kings, as Verrazzano calls
them, with attendant gentlemen ; while a party
of squaws in a canoe, kept by their jealous lords
at a safe distance from the caravel, figure in the
narrative as the queen and her maids. The In-
dian wardrobe had been taxed to its utmost to do
the strangers honor ; – copper bracelets, lynx-
skins, raccoon-skins, and faces bedaubed with
gaudy colors.
Again they spread their sails, and on the fifth
of May bade farewell to the primitive hospitalities
of Newport, steered along the rugged coasts of
New England, and surveyed, ill pleased, the surf-
beaten rocks, the pine tree and the fir, the shadows
and the gloom of mighty forests. Here man and
nature alike were savage and repellent. Perhaps
some plundering straggler from the fishing-banks,
some man-stealer like the Portuguese Cortereal,
or some kidnapper of children and ravisher of
squaws like themselves, had warned the denizens
of the woods to beware of the worshippers of
Christ. Their only intercourse was in the way of
trade. From the brink of the rocks which over-
hung the sea the Indians would let down a cord to
198 EARLY FRENCH AIDVENTURE. [1524,
the boat below, demand fish-hooks, knives, and
steel, in barter for their furs, and, their bargain
made, Salute the Voyagers with unseemly gestures
of derision and scorn. The French once ventured
ashore; but a war-whoop and a shower of arrows
sent them back to their boats.
Verrazzano Coasted the seaboard of Maine, and
sailed northward as far as Newfoundland, whence,
provisions failing, he steered for France. He had
not found a passage to Cathay, but he had ex-
plored the American coast from the thirty-fourth
degree to the fiftieth, and at various points had
penetrated several leagues into the country. On
the eighth of July, he wrote from Dieppe to the
King the earliest description known to exist of
the shores of the United States.
Great was the joy that hailed his arrival, and
great were the hopes of emolument and wealth
from the new-found shores." The merchants of
Lyons were in a flush of expectation. For himself,
he was earnest to return, plant a colony, and bring
the heathen tribes within the pale of the Church.
But the time was inauspicious. The year of his
voyage was to France a year of disasters, – defeat
in Italy, the loss of Milan, the death of the heroic
Bayard ; and, while Verrazzano was writing his
narrative at Dieppe, the traitor Bourbon was in-
vading Provence. Preparation, too, was soon on
foot for the expedition which, a few months later,
ended in the captivity of Francis on the field of
Pavia. Without a king, without an army, with-
1 Fernando Carli a suo Padre, 4 Aug., 1524.
1527.] CHABOT, 199
out money, convulsed within, and threatened from
without, France after that humiliation was in no
condition to renew her Transatlantic enterprise.
Henceforth few traces remain of the fortunes of
Verrazzano. Ramusio affirms, that, on another
voyage, he was killed and eaten by Savages, in
sight of his followers; ' and a late writer hazards
the conjecture that this voyage, if made at all,
was made in the service of Henry the Eighth of
England.” But a Spanish writer affirms that, in
1527, he was hanged at Puerto del Pico as a
pirate,” and this assertion is fully confirmed by
authentic documents recently brought to light.
The fickle-minded King, always ardent at the
outset of an enterprise and always flagging before
its close, divided, moreover, between the Smiles of
his mistresses and the assaults of his enemies,
might probably have dismissed the New World
from his thoughts. But among the favorites of
his youth was a high-spirited young noble, Phi-
lippe de Brion-Chabot, the partner of his joustings
and tennis-playing, his gaming and gallantries."
He still stood high in the royal favor, and, after
the treacherous escape of Francis from captivity,
held the office of Admiral of France. When the
kingdom had rallied in some measure from its
calamities, he conceived the purpose of following
up the path which Verrazzano had opened.
1 Ramusio, III. 417; Wytſleit, 185. Compare Le Clerc, Établissement
de la Foy, I. 6.
2 Biddle, Memoir of Cabot, 275.
8 Barcia, Ensayo Cronologico, 8.
4 Brantôme, II. 277; Biographie Universelle, Art. Chabot.
200 EARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. | 1534.
The ancient town of St. Malo, thrust out like a
buttress into the sea, strange and grim of aspect,
breathing war from its walls and battlements of
ragged stone, a stronghold of privateers, the home
of a race whose intractable and defiant indepen-
dence neither time nor change has subdued, has
been for centuries a nursery of hardy mariners.
Among the earliest and most eminent on its list
stands the name of Jacques Cartier. His portrait
hangs in the town-hall of St. Malo, - bold, keen
features bespeaking a spirit not apt to quail before
the wrath of man or of the elements. In him
Chabot found a fit agent of his design, if, indeed,
its suggestion is not due to the Breton navigator."
Sailing from St. Malo on the twentieth of April,
1534, Cartier steered for Newfoundland, passed
through the Straits of Belle Isle, entered the
Gulf of Chaleurs, planted a cross at Gaspé, and,
never doubting that he was on the high road
to Cathay, advanced up the St. Lawrence till
he saw the shores of Anticosti. But autumnal
storms were gathering. The voyagers took coun-
sel together, turned their prows eastward, and bore
away for France, carrying thither, as a sample of
the natural products of the New World, two young
Indians, lured into their clutches by an act of vil-
lanous treachery. The voyage was a mere recon-
noissance.” -
1 Cartier was at this time forty years of age, having been born in De-
cember, 1494. I examined the St. Malo portrait in 1881. It is a recent
work (1839), and its likeness is more than doubtful.
* Lescarbot, I. 232 (1612); Relation originale du Voyage de Jacques
Cartier en 1534 (Paris, 1867); Cartier, Discours du Voyage, reprinted by
#535.] JACQUES CARTIER. 20I
The spirit of discovery was awakened. A pas-
sage to India could be found, and a new France
built up beyond the Atlantic. Mingled with such
views of interest and ambition was another motive
scarcely less potent." The heresy of Luther was
convulsing Germany, and the deeper heresy of Cal-
vin infecting France. Devout Catholics, kindling
with redoubled zeal, would fain requite the Church
for her losses in the Old World by winning to her
fold the infidels of the New. But, in pursuing an
end at Once SO pious and so politic, Francis the
First was setting at naught the supreme Pontiff
himself, since, by the preposterous bull of Alexan-
der the Sixth, all America had been given to the
paniards.
In October, 1534, Cartier received from Chabot
another commission, and, in spite of secret but bit-
ter opposition from jealous traders of St. Malo, he
prepared for a second voyage. Three vessels, the
largest not above a hundred and twenty tons, were
placed at his disposal, and Claude de Pontbriand,
Charles de la Pommeraye, and other gentlemen of
birth, enrolled themselves for the adventure. On
the sixteenth of May, 1535, officers and sailors as-
sembled in the cathedral of St. Malo, where, after
confession and mass, they received the parting
blessing of the bishop. Three days later they set
sail. The dingy walls of the rude old seaport, and
the white rocks that line the neighboring shores of
the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. Compare translations in
Hakluyt and Ramusio; MS. Map of Cartier's route in Dépôt des Cartes,
Carton V. •
1 Lettre de Cartier au Roy très Chrétien.
202 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. [1535.
Brittany, faded from their sight, and soon they
were tossing in a furious tempest. The scattered
ships escaped the danger, and, reuniting at the
Straits of Belle Isle, steered westward along the
coast of Labrador, till they reached a small bay
opposite the island of Anticosti. Cartier called it

the Bay of St. Lawrence, a name afterwards ex-
º; and to the great river
above."
To ascend this great river, and tempt the haz-
1 Cartier calls the St. Lawrence the “River of Hochelaga,” or “the
great river of Canada.” He confines the name of Canada to a district ex-
tending from the Isle aux Coudres in the St. Lawrence to a point at some
distance above the site of Quebec. The country below, he adds, was called
by the Indians Saguenay, and that above, Hochelaga. In the map of Gérard
Mercator (1569) the name Canada is given to a town, with an adjacent dis-
trict, on the river Stadin (St. Charles). Lescarbot, a later writer, insists
that the country on both sides of the St. Lawrence, from Hochelaga to its ,
mouth, bore the name of Canada.
In the second map of Ortelius, published about the year 1572, New
France, Nova Francia, is thus divided:— Canada, a district on the St.
Lawrence above the River Saguenay; Chilaga (Hochelaga), the angle be-
tween the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence; Saguenai, a district below the
river of that name; Moscosa, South of the St. Lawrence and east of the
River Richelieu ; Avacal, west and South of Moscosa; Norumbega, Maine
and New Brunswick; Apalachen, Virginia, Pennsylvania, etc.; Terra Cor-
terealis, Labrador; Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida.
Mercator confines the name of New France to districts bordering on
the St. Lawrence. Others give it a much broader application. The use
of this name, or the nearly allied names of Francisca and La Franciscane,
dates back, to say the least, as far as 1525, and the Dutch geographers
are especially free in their use of it, out of spite to the Spaniards.
The derivation of the name of Canada has been a point of discussion.
It is, without doubt, not Spanish, but Indian. In the vocabulary of the
language of Hochelaga, appended to the journal of Cartier's second voyage,
Canada is set down as the word for a town or village. “Ils appellent une
ville, Canada.” It bears the same meaning in the Mohawk tongue. Both
languages are dialects of the Iroquois. Lescarbot affirms that Canada is
simply an Indian proper name, of which it is vain to seek a meaning.
Belleforest also calls it an Indian word, but translates it “Terre,” as does
also Thevet. *
1535.] SECOND VOYAGE OF CARTIER. 203
ards of its intricate navigation with no better
pilots than the two young Indians kidnapped
the year before, was a venture of no light risk.
But skill or fortune prevailed; and, on the first
of September, the voyagers reached in Safety the
gorge of the gloomy Saguenay, with its towering
cliffs and sullen depth of waters. Passing the Isle
aux Coudres, and the lofty promontory of Cape
Tourmente, they came to anchor in a quiet chan-
nel between the northern shore and the margin of
a richly wooded island, where the trees were so
thickly hung with grapes that Cartier named it
the Island of Bacchus."
Indians came swarming from the shores, paddled
their canoes about the ships, and clambered to the
decks to gaze in bewilderment at the novel scene,
and listen to the story of their travelled country-
men, marvellous in their ears as a visit to another
planet.* Cartier received them kindly, listened to
the long harangue of the great chief Donnacona,
1 Now the Island of Orleans.
2 Doubt has been thrown on this part of Cartier's narrative, on the
ground that these two young Indians, who were captured at Gaspé, could
not have been so intimately acquainted as the journal represents with the
savages at the site of Quebec. From a subsequent part of the journal, how-
ever, it appears that they were natives of this place, — “et là est la ville et
demeurance du Seigneur Donnacona, et de nos deux hommes qu’avions
pris le premier voyage.” This is curiously confirmed by Thevet, who per-
sonally knew Cartier, and who, in his Singularités de la France Antarctique,
(p. 147,) says that the party to which the two Indians captured at Gaspé
belonged spoke a language different from that of the other Indians seen
in those parts, and that they had come on a war expedition from the River
Chelogua (Hochelaga). Compare New Found Worlde (London, 1568),
124. This will also account for Lescarbot's remark, that the Indians of
Gaspé had changed their language since Cartier's time. The language of
Stadacone, or Quebec, when Cartier visited it, was apparently a dialect
of the Iroquois.
204 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. {1535,
regaled him with bread and wine; and, when re-
lieved at length of his guests, set forth in a boat
to explore the river above.
As he drew near the opening of the channel,
the Hochelaga again spread before him the broad
expanse of its waters. A mighty promontory,
rugged and bare, thrust its scarped front into the
surging current. Here, clothed in the majesty of
solitude, breathing the stern poetry of the wilder-
ness, rose the cliffs now rich with heroic memo-
ries, where the fiery Count Frontenac cast defiance
at his foes, where Wolfe, Montcalm, and Mont-
gomery fell. As yet, all was a nameless barba-
rism, and a cluster of wigwams held the site of
the rock-built city of Quebec." Its name was
Stadaconé, and it owned the sway of the royal
Donnacona.
Cartier set out to visit this greasy potentate,
ascended the river St. Charles, by him called the
St. Croix,” landed, crossed the meadows, climbed
the rocks, threaded the forest, and emerged upon
a squalid hamlet of bark cabins. When, having
satisfied their curiosity, he and his party were
rowing for the ships, a friendly interruption met
them at the mouth of the St. Charles. An old
1 On ground now covered by the suburbs of St. Roque and St. John.
2 Charlevoix denies that the St. Croix and the St. Charles are the
same ; but he supports his denial by an argument which proves nothing
but his own gross carelessness. Champlain, than whom no one was bet-
ter qualified to form an opinion, distinctly affirms the identity of the two
rivers. See his Map of Quebec, and the accompanying key, in the edi-
tion of 1613. La Potherie is of the same opinion; as also, among mod-
ern writers, Faribault and Fisher. In truth, the description of localities
in Cartier's journal cannot, when closely examined, admit a doubt on the
subject. See also Berthelot, Dissertation sur le Canon de Bronze
1535 | CARTIER AT QUEBEC. 205
chief harangued them from the bank, men, boys,
and children screeched welcome from the meadow,
and a troop of hilarious squaws danced knee-deep
in the water. The gift of a few strings of beads
completed their delight and redoubled their agil-
ity; and, from the distance of a mile, their shrill
songs of jubilation still reached the ears of the
receding Frenchmen.
The hamlet of Stadaconé, with its king, Don-
nacona, and its naked lords and princes, was not
the metropolis of this forest state, since a town far
greater — so the Indians averred — stood by the
brink of the river, many days’ journey above. It
was called Hochelaga, and the great river itself,
with a wide reach of adjacent country, had bor-
rowed its name. Thither, with his two young
Indians as guides, Cartier resolved to go ; but
misgivings seized the guides, as the time drew
near, while Donnacona and his tribesmen, jealous
of the plan, set themselves to thwart it. The
Breton captain turned a deaf ear to their dis-
Suasions; on which, failing to touch his reason,
they appealed to his fears.
One morning, as the ships still lay at anchor,
the French beheld three Indian devils descending
in a canoe towards them, dressed in black and
white dog-skins, with faces black as ink, and horns
long as a man's arm. Thus arrayed, they drifted
by, while the principal fiend, with fixed eyes, as of
One piercing the secrets of futurity, uttered in a
loud voice a long harangue. Then they paddled
for the shore; and no sooner did they reach it
206 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. [1535
than each fell flat like a dead man in the bottom
of the canoe. Aid, however, was at hand; for
Donnacona and his tribesmen, rushing pell-mell
from the adjacent woods, raised the swooning
masqueraders, and, with shrill clamors, bore them
in their arms within the sheltering thickets.
Here, for a full half-hour, the French could hear
them haranguing in solemn conclave. Then the
two young Indians whom Cartier had brought
back from France came out of the bushes, enact-
ing a pantomime of amazement and terror, clasping
their hands, and calling on Christ and the Virgin;
whereupon Cartier, shouting from the vessel, asked
what was the matter. They replied, that the god
Coudouagny had sent to warn the French against
all attempts to ascend the great river, since, should
they persist, Snows, tempests, and drifting ice
would requite their rashness with inevitable ruin.
The French replied that Coudouagny was a fool;
that he could not hurt those who believed in
Christ; and that they might tell this to his three
messengers. The assembled Indians, with little
reverence for their deity, pretended great con-
tentment at this assurance, and danced for joy
along the beach." '
Cartier now made ready to depart. And, first,
he caused the two larger vessels to be towed for
safe harborage within the mouth of the St. Charles.
With the smallest, a galleon of forty tons, and two
1 M. Berthelot, in his Dissertation sur le Canon de Bronze, discovers in
this Indian pantomime a typical representation of the supposed ship-
wreck of Verrazzano in the St. Lawrence. This shipwreck, it is need-
less to say, is a mere imagination of this ingenious writer
1535.] HOCHELAGA. 207
open boats, carrying in all fifty sailors, besides
Pontbriand, La Pommeraye, and other gentlemen,
he set out for Hochelega.
Slowly gliding on their way by walls of ver-
dure brightened in the autumnal sun, they saw
forests festooned with grape-vines, and waters
alive with wild-fowl; they heard the song of the
blackbird, the thrush, and, as they fondly thought,
the nightingale. The galleon grounded; they left
her, and, advancing with the boats alone, on the
second of October neared the goal of their hopes,
the mysterious Hochelaga.
Just below where now are seen the quays
and storehouses of Montreal, a thousand Indians
thronged the shore, wild with delight, dancing,
singing, crowding about the strangers, and show-
ering into the boats their gifts of fish and maize;
and, as it grew dark, fires lighted up the night,
while, far and near, the French could see the ex-
cited Savages leaping and rejoicing by the blaze.
At dawn of day, marshalled and accoutred,
they marched for Hochelaga. An Indian path led
them through the forest which covered the site
of Montreal. The morning air was chill and
sharp, the leaves were changing hue, and beneath
the oaks the ground was thickly strewn with
acorns. They soon met an Indian chief with a
party of tribesmen, or, as the old narrative has
it, “one of the principal lords of the said city,”
attended with a numerous retinue.” Greeting
1 “. . . . l'un des principaulx seigneurs de la dicte ville, accompaigné
de plusieurs personnes.” Cartier (1545), 23.
208 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. (1535.
them after the concise courtesy of the forest, he
led them to a fire kindled by the side of the
path for their comfort and refreshment, seated
them on the ground, and made them a long ha-
rangue, receiving in requital of his eloquence
two hatchets, two knives, and a crucifix, the last
of which he was invited to kiss. This done, they
resumed their march, and presently came upon
open fields, covered far and near with the ripened
maize, its leaves rustling, and its yellow grains
gleaming between the parting husks. Before
them, wrapped in forests painted by the early
frosts, rose the ridgy back of the Mountain of
Montroal, and below, encompassed with its corn-
fields, lay the Indian town. Nothing was visible
but its encircling palisades. They were of trunks
of trees, set in a triple row. The Outer and in-
ner ranges inclined till they met and crossed near
the summit, while the upright row between them,
aided by transverse braces, gave to the whole an
abundant strength. Within were galleries for the
defenders, rude ladders to mount them, and mag-
azines of stones to throw down on the heads of
assailants. It was a mode of fortification prac-
tised by all the tribes speaking dialects of the
Iroquois."
* That the Indians of Hochelaga belonged to the Huron-Iroquois
family of tribes is evident from the affinities of their language, (compare
Gallatin, Synopsis of Indian Tribes,) and from the construction of their
houses and defensive works. This was identical with the construction
universal, or nearly so, among the Huron-Iroquois tribes. In Ramu-
sio, III. 446, there is a plan of Hochelaga and its defences, marked by
errors which seem to show that the maker had not seen the objects repre-
sented. Whence the sketch was derived does not appear, as the original
1535.] HOCHELAGA. 209
The voyagers entered the narrow portal. Within,
they saw some fifty of those large oblong dwell-
ings so familiar in after years to the eyes of the
Jesuit apostles in Iroquois and Huron forests.
They were about fifty yards in length, and twelve
or fifteen wide, framed of sapling poles closely
covered with sheets of bark, and each containing
several fires and several families. In the midst
of the town was an open area, or public square,
a stone's throw in width. Here Cartier and his
followers stopped, while the surrounding houses of
edition of Cartier does not contain it. In 1860, a quantity of Indian
remains were dug up at Montreal, immediately below Sherbrooke Street,
between Mansfield and Metcalfe Streets. (See a paper by Dr. Dawson, in
Canadian Naturalist and Geologist, V. 430.) They may perhaps indicate
the site of Hochelaga. A few, which have a distinctive character, belong
not to the Algonquin, but to the Huron-Iroquois type. The short-stemmed
pipe of terra-cotta is the exact counterpart of those found in the great
Huron deposits of the dead in Canada West, and in Iroquois burial-places
of Western New York. So also of the fragments of pottery and the in-
struments of bone used in Ornamenting it.
The assertion of certain Algonquins, who, in 1642, told the missiona-
ries that their ancestors once lived at Montreal, is far from conclusive
evidence. It may have referred to an occupancy subsequent to Car-
tier's visit, or, which is more probable, the Indians, after their favorite
practice, may have amused themselves with “hoaxing ” their inter-
locutors.
Cartier calls his vocabulary, Le Langage des Pays et Royaulmes de
Hochelaga et Canada, aultrement appellée par nous la Nouvelle France
(ed. 1545). For this and other reasons it is more than probable that the
Indians of Quebec, or Stadaconé, were also of the Huron-Iroquois race,
since by Canada he means the country about Quebec. Seventy years
later, the whole region was occupied by Algonquins, and no trace re-
mained of Hochelaga or Stadacone.
There was a tradition among the Agniés (Mohawks), one of the five
tribes of the Iroquois, that their ancestors were once settled at Quebec.
See Lafitau, I. 101. Canada, as already mentioned, is a Mohawk word.
The tradition recorded by Colden, in his History of the Five Nations (Iro-
quois), that they were formerly settled near Montreal, is of interest here.
The tradition declares that they were driven thence by the Adirondacks
(Algonquins).
14
210 EARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. |1535.
bark disgorged their inmates, – swarms of chil-
dren, and young women and old, their infants in
their arms. They crowded about the visitors, cry-
ing for delight, touching their beards, feeling their
faces, and holding up the screeching infants to be
touched in turn. The marvellous visitors, strange
in hue, strange in attire, with moustached lip and
bearded chin, with arquebuse, halberd, helmet, and
cuirass, seemed rather demigods than men.
Due time having been allowed for this exuber-
ance of feminine rapture, the warriors interposed,
banished the women and children to a distance, and
squatted on the ground around the French, row
within row of Swarthy forms and eager faces, “as
if,” says Cartier, “we were going to act a play.” "
Then appeared a troop of women, each bringing a
mat, with which they carpeted the bare earth for
the behoof of their guests. The latter being seated,
the chief of the nation was borne before them on a
deer-skin by a number of his tribesmen, a bedridden
old savage, paralyzed and helpless, squalid as the
rest in his attire, and distinguished only by a red
fillet, inwrought with the dyed quills of the Canada
porcupine, encircling his lank black hair. They
placed him on the ground at Cartier's feet and
made signs of welcome for him, while he pointed
feebly to his powerless limbs, and implored the
healing touch from the hand of the French chief.
Cartier complied, and received in acknowledgment
the red fillet of his grateful patient. Then from
1 “. . . . comme Sy eussions woulu iouer vng mystere.” Cartier, 25
(1545).
1535.] HOCHELAGA. 211
surrounding dwellings appeared a woful throng,
the sick, the lame, the blind, the maimed, the de-
crepit, brought or led forth and placed on the earth
before the perplexed commander, “as if,” he says,
“a god had come down to cure them.” His skill
in medicine being far behind the emergency, he
pronounced over his petitioners a portion of the
Gospel of St. John, made the sign of the cross, and
uttered a prayer, not for their bodies only, but for
their miserable souls. Next he read the passion of
the Saviour, to which, though comprehending not
a word, his audience listened with grave attention.
Then came a distribution of presents. The squaws
and children were recalled, and, with the warriors,
placed in separate groups. Knives and hatchets
were given to the men, and beads to the women,
while pewter rings and images of the Agnus Dei
were flung among the troopºof children, whence
ensued a vigorous scramble in the square of Hoche-
laga. Now the French trumpeters pressed their
trumpets to their lips, and blew a blast that
filled the air with warlike din and the hearts of
the hearers with amazement and delight. Bid-
ding their hosts farewell, the visitors formed their
ranks and defiled through the gate once more,
despite the efforts of a crowd of women, who, with
clamorous hospitality, beset them with gifts of fish,
beans, corn, and other viands of uninviting aspect,
which the Frenchmen courteously declined.
A troop of Indians followed, and guided them to
the top of the neighboring mountain. Cartier
called it Mont Royal, Montreal; and hence the
212 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. [1535.
name of the busy city which now holds the site of
the vanished Hochelaga. Stadaconé and Hoche-
laga, Quebec and Montreal, in the sixteenth cen-
tury as in the nineteenth, were the centres of
Canadian population. .-
From the summit, that noble prospect met his
eye which at this day is the delight of tourists, but
strangely changed, since, first of white men, the
Breton voyager gazed upon it. Tower and dome
and spire, congregated roofs, white sail and gliding
steamer, animate its vast expanse with varied life.
Cartier saw a different scene. East, west, and
south, the mantling forest was over all, and the
broad blue ribbon of the great river glistened amid
a realm of verdure. Beyond, to the bounds of
Mexico, stretched a leafy desert, and the vast hive
of industry, the mighty battle-ground of later cen-
turies, lay sunk in Savage torpor, wrapped in illim-
itable woods.
The French re-embarked, bade farewell to Hoch-
elaga, retraced their lonely course down the St.
Lawrence, and reached Stadaconé in safety. On
the bank of the St. Charles, their companions had
built in their absence a fort of palisades, and the
ships, hauled up the little stream, lay moored be-
fore it." Here the self-exiled company were soon
besieged by the rigors of the Canadian winter.
The rocks, the shores, the pine trees, the solid floor
1 In 1608, Champlain found the remains of Cartier’s fort. See Cham-
plain (1613), 184–191. Charlevoix is clearly wrong as to the locality.
M. Faribault, who has collected the evidence, (see Voyages de Découverte
au Canada, 109–119,) thinks the fort was near the junction of the little
river Lairet with the St. Charles. -
1535, 1586.] WINTER MISERIES. 213
of the frozen river, all alike were blanketed in
snow, beneath the keen cold rays of the dazzling
sun. The drifts rose above the sides of their ships;
masts, spars, and cordage were thick with glitter-
ing incrustations and sparkling rows of icicles; a
frosty armor, four inches thick, encased the bul-
warks. Yet, in the bitterest weather, the neigh-
boring Indians, “hardy,” says the journal, “as so
many beasts,” came daily to the fort, wading, half
naked, waist-deep through the snow. At length,
their friendship began to abate; their visits grew
less frequent, and during December had wholly
ceased, when a calamity fell upon the French.
A malignant Scurvy broke out among them.
Man after man went down before the hideous dis-
ease, till twenty-five were dead, and only three or
four were left in health. The sound were too few
to attend the sick, and the wretched sufferers lay
in helpless despair, dreaming of the sun and the
vines of France. The ground, hard as flint, defied
their feeble efforts, and, unable to bury their dead,
they hid them in snow-drifts. Cartier appealed to
the saints; but they turned a deaf ear. Then he
nailed against a tree an image of the Virgin, and
on a Sunday summoned forth his woe-begone fol-
lowers, who, haggard, reeling, bloated with their
maladies, moved in procession to the spot, and,
kneeling in the snow, sang litanies and psalms
of David. That day died Philippe Rougemont,
of Amboise, aged twenty-two years. The Holy
Virgin deigned no other response.
There was fear that the Indians, learning their
214 EARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. [1536.
misery, might finish the work that scurvy had
begun. None of them, therefore, were allowed to
approach the fort; and when a party of Savages
lingered within hearing, Cartier forced his invalid
garrison to beat with sticks and stones against the
walls, that their dangerous neighbors, deluded by
the clatter, might think them engaged in hard
labor. These objects of their fear proved, how-
ever, the instruments of their salvation. Cartier,
walking one day near the river, met an Indian,
who not long before had been prostrate, like many
of his fellows, with the scurvy, but who was now,
to all appearance, in high health and spirits.
What agency had wrought this marvellous recov-
ery According to the Indian, it was a certain
evergreen, called by him ameda,' a decoction of the
leaves of which was sovereign against the disease.
The experiment was tried. The sick men drank
copiously of the healing draught, — so copiously
indeed that in six days they drank a tree as large
as a French oak. Thus vigorously assailed, the
distemper relaxed its hold, and health and hope
began to revisit the hapless company.
When this winter of misery had worn away, and
the ships were thawed from their icy fetters, Car-
tier prepared to return. He had made notable dis-
coveries; but these were as nothing to the tales of
wonder that had reached his ear, – of a land of
gold and rubies, of a nation white like the French,
1 Ameda, in the edition of 1545; annedda, in Lescarbot, Ternaux-
Compans, and Faribault. The wonderful tree seems to have been a spruce,
or, more probably, an arbor-vitae.
1536.] IXIDNAPPING. 215
of men who lived without food, and of others to
whom Nature had granted but one leg. Should he
stake his credit on these marvels 2 It were better
that they who had recounted them to him should,
with their own lips, recount them also to the King,
and to this end he resolved that Donnacona and
his chiefs should go with him to court. He lured
them therefore to the fort, and led them into an
ambuscade of sailors, who, seizing the astonished
guests, hurried them on board the ships. Hav-
ing accomplished this treachery, the voyagers pro-
ceeded to plant the emblem of Christianity. The
cross was raised, the fleur-de-lis planted near it,
and, spreading their sails, they steered for home.
It was the sixteenth of July, 1536, when Cartier
again cast anchor under the walls of St. Malo.”
A rigorous climate, a savage people, a fatal dis-
ease, and a soil barren of gold were the allurements
of New France. Nor were the times auspicious for
a renewal of the enterprise. Charles the Fifth,
flushed with his African triumphs, challenged the
Most Christian King to single combat. The war
flamed forth with renewed fury, and ten years
elapsed before a hollow truce varnished the hate of
the royal rivals with a thin pretence of courtesy.
Peace returned ; but Francis the First was sinking
1 Of the original edition (1545) of the narrative of this voyage only
one copy is known, – that in the British Museum. It is styled, Brief
Recit, & succincte narration, de la nauigation faicte es ysles de Canada, Hoche-
lage & Saguenay & autres, awec particulieres meurs, langaige, & ceremonies
des habitans d'icelles; fort delectable a veoir. As may be gathered from
the title, the style and Orthography are those of the days of Rabelais. It
has been reprinted (1863) with valuable notes by M. d’Avezac.
216 EARLY FRIENCH ADVENTURE. [1540.
to his ignominious grave, under the scourge of his
favorite goddess, and Chabot, patron of the former
voyages, was in disgrace."
. Meanwhile the ominous adventure of New
France had found a champion in the person of
Jean François de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, a
nobleman of Picardy. Though a man of high ac-
count in his own province, his past honors paled
before the splendor of the titles said to have
been now conferred on him, - Lord of Norem-
bega, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General in Canada,
Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle,
Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Bacca-
laos.” To this windy gift of ink and parchment was
added a solid grant from the royal treasury, with
which five vessels were procured and equipped,
and to Cartier was given the post of Captain-
1 Brantôme, II, 283; Anquetil, V. 397; Sismondi, XVII. 62.
* Labrador – Laboratoris Terra — is so called from the circumstance
that Cortereal in the year 1500 stole thence a cargo of Indians for slaves.
Belle. Isle and Carpunt, — the strait and islands between Labrador and
Newfoundland. The Great Bay, - the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Norem-
bega, or Norumbega, more properly called Arambec (Hakluyt, III. 167),
was, in Ramusio’s map, the country embraced within Nova Scotia, south-
ern New Brunswick, and a part of Maine. De Laet confines it to a dis-
trict about the mouth of the Penobscot. Wytſleit and other early writers
say that it had a capital city of the same name; and in several old
maps this fabulous metropolis is laid down, with towers and churches,
on the river Penobscot. The word is of Indian origin.
Before me is the commission of Roberval, Lettres Patentes aceordees a
Jehan Françoys de la Roque SF de Roberval, copied from the French ar-
chives. Here he is simply styled “notre Lieutenant-General, Chef Ducteur
et Cappitaine de la d. entreprinse.” The patent is in Lescarbot (1618). In
the Archives de la Bibliothèque Publique de Rouen, an edict is preserved
authorizing Roberval to raise “une armée de volontaires avec victuailles
artillerie, etc. pour aller au pays de Canada.” Harrisse has printed cu.
rious original documents concerning Roberval in his Notes sur la Nouvelle
France.
1540.] ROBERVAL’S COMMISSION. 217
General. “We have resolved,” says Francis, “to
send him again to the lands of Canada and Hoche-
laga, which form the extremity of Asia towards
the west.” His commission declares the ob-
jects of the enterprise to be discovery, settlement,
and the conversion of the Indians, who are de-
scribed as “men without knowledge of God or
use of reason,” “– a pious design, held doubtless
in full sincerity by the royal profligate, now, in
his decline, a fervent champion of the Faith and a
strenuous tormentor of heretics. The machinery
of conversion was of a character somewhat ques-
tionable, since Cartier and Roberval were empow-
ered to ransack the prisons for thieves, robbers,
and other malefactors, to complete their crews
and strengthen the colony. “Whereas,” says the
King, “we have undertaken this voyage for the
honor of God our Creator, desiring with all our
heart to do that which shall be agreeable to Him,
it is our will to perform a compassionate and mer-
itorious work towards criminals and malefactors,
to the end that they may acknowledge the Crea-
tor, return thanks to Him, and mend their lives.
Therefore we have resolved to cause to be delivered
to our aforesaid lieutenant (Roberval), such and
so many of the aforesaid criminals and malefac-
tors detained in our prisons as may seem to him
useful and necessary to be carried to the aforesaid
countries.” Of the expected profits of the voy-
1 De par le Roy, 17 Oct., 1540 (Harrisse).
* See the commission in Lescarbot, I. 411 ; and Hazard, I. 19.
3 Pouvoir donné par le Roy au Seigneur de Roberval, 7 Feb., 1540
(Harrisse).
218 EARLY FRIENCH AIDVENTURE, [1540
age the adventurers were to have one third and
the King another, while the remainder was to
be reserved towards defraying expenses.
With respect to Donnacona and his tribesmen,
basely kidnapped at Stadaconé, their souls had
been better cared for than their bodies; for, hav-
ing been duly baptized, they all died within a
year or two, to the great detriment, as it proved,
of the expedition."
Meanwhile, from beyond the Pyrenees, the Most
Catholic King, with alarmed and jealous eye,
watched the preparations of his Most Christian
enemy. America, in his eyes, was one vast prov-
ince of Spain, to be vigilantly guarded against the
intruding foreigner. To what end were men mus-
tered, and ships fitted out in the Breton seaports 7
Was it for colonization, and if so, where 2 Was
it in Southern Florida, or on the frozen shores of
Baccalaos, of which Breton cod-fishers claimed the
discovery 2 Or would the French build forts on
the Bahamas, whence they could waylay the gold
ships in the Bahama Channel? Or was the expe-
dition destined against the Spanish settlements of
the islands or the Main 2 Reinforcements were
despatched in haste, and a spy was sent to France,
who, passing from port to port, Quimper, St. Malo,
Brest, Morlaix, came back freighted with exagger-
1 M. Charles Cunat à M. L. Hovins, Maire de St. Malo. This is a
report of researches made by M. Cunat in 1844 in the archives of St.
Malo.
Extrait Baptistaire des Sauvages amenes en France par Honneste Homme
Jacques Cartier.
Thevet says that he knew Donnacona in France, and found him “a
good Christian.”
1541.] SPANISH JEALOUSY. 219
ated tales of preparation. The Council of the
Indies was called. “The French are bound for
Baccalaos,” — such was the substance of their re-
port; “your Majesty will do well to send two
Caravels to watch their movements, and a force to
take possession of the said country. And since
there is no other money to pay for it, the gold
from Peru, now at Panama, might be used to that
end.” The Cardinal of Seville thought lightly of
the danger, and prophesied that the French would
reap nothing from their enterprise but disappoint-
ment and loss. The king of Portugal, sole ac-
knowledged partner with Spain in the ownership
of the New World, was invited by the Spanish
ambassador to take part in an expedition against
the encroaching French. “They can do no harm
at Baccalaos,” was the cold reply; “and so,” adds
the indignant ambassador, “this king would say if
they should come and take him here at Lisbon ;
such is the softness they show here on the one
hand, while, on the other, they wish to give law to
the whole world.” "
The five ships, occasions of this turmoil and
alarm, had lain at St. Malo waiting for cannon
and munitions from Normandy and Champagne.
They waited in vain, and as the King's orders were
stringent against delay, it was resolved that Car-
tier should sail at once, leaving Roberval to follow
with additional ships when the expected supplies
arrived.
* See the documents on this subject in the Coleccion de Varios Docu,
mentos of Buckingham Smith, I. 107–112.
220 FARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. ſh 541.
On the twenty-third of May, 1541, the Breton
captain again spread his canvas for New France,
and, passing in safety the tempestuous Atlantic,
the fog-banks of Newfoundland, the island rocks
clouded with screaming sea-fowl, and the forests
breathing piny odors from the shore, cast an-
chor again beneath the cliffs of Quebec. Canoes
came out from shore filled with feathered savages
inquiring for their kidnapped chiefs. “Donna-
cona,” replied Cartier, “is dead”; but he added
the politic falsehood, that the others had married
in France, and lived in state, like great lords. The
Indians pretended to be satisfied; but it was soon
apparent that they looked askance on the perfidi-
ous strangers.
Cartier pursued his course, sailed three leagues
and a half up the St. Lawrence, and anchored
off the mouth of the River of Cap Rouge. It was
late in August, and the leafy landscape sweltered
in the sun. The Frenchmen landed, picked up
quartz crystals on the shore and thought them
diamonds, climbed the steep promontory, drank
at the spring near the top, looked abroad on
the wooded slopes beyond the little river, waded
through the tall grass of the meadow, found a
quarry of slate, and gathered scales of a yellow
mineral which glistened like gold, then returned
to their boats, crossed to the south shore of the
St. Lawrence, and, languid with the heat, rested
in the shade of forests laced with an entanglement
of grape-vines.
1 Hakluyt's date, 1540, is incorrect.
1542.] ROBERVAL AND CARTIER, 221
Now their task began, and while some cleared
off the woods and sowed turnip-seed, others cut a
ZigZag road up the height, and others built two
forts, one at the summit, and one on the shore be-
low. The forts finished, the Vicomte de Beaupré
took command, while Cartier went with two boats
to explore the rapids above Hochelaga. When at
length he returned, the autumn was far advanced ;
and with the gloom of a Canadian November came
distrust, foreboding, and homesickness. Roberval
had not appeared; the Indians kept jealously aloof;
the motley colony was sullen as the dull, raw air
around it. There was disgust and ire at Charles-
bourg-Royal, for so the place was called."
Meanwhile, unexpected delays had detained the
impatient Roberval; nor was it until the six-
teenth of April, 1542, that, with three ships and
two hundred colonists, he set sail from Rochelle.
When, on the eighth of June, he entered the har-
bor of St. John, he found seventeen fishing-vessels
lying there at anchor. Soon after, he descried
three other sail rounding the entrance of the haven,
and, with anger and amazement, recognized the
ships of Jacques Cartier. That voyager had bro-
ken up his colony and abandoned New France.
What motives had prompted a desertion little con-
sonant with the resolute spirit of the man it is
impossible to say, - whether sickness within, or
| The original narrative of this voyage is fragmentary, and exists only
in the translation of Hakluyt. Purchas, Belknap, Forster, Chalmers,
and the other secondary writers, all draw from this source. The narrative
published by the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec is the English
version of Hakluyt retranslated into French.
222 EARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. [1542,
Indian enemies without, disgust with an enterprise
whose unripened fruits had proved so hard and
bitter, or discontent at finding himself reduced to
a post of subordination in a country which he had
discovered and where he had commanded. The
Viceroy ordered him to return; but Cartier escaped
with his vessels under cover of night, and made
sail for France, carrying with him as trophies a
few quartz diamonds from Cap Rouge, and grains
of sham gold from the neighboring slate ledges.
Thus closed the third Canadian voyage of this nota-
ble explorer. His discoveries had gained for him
a patent of nobility, and he owned the seigniorial
mansion of Limoilou," a rude structure of stone
still standing. Here, and in the neighboring town
of St. Malo, where also he had a house, he seems
to have lived for many years.”
Roberval once more set sail, steering northward
to the Straits of Belle Isle and the dreaded Isles of
Demons. And here an incident befell which the
all-believing Thevet records in manifest good faith,
and which, stripped of the adornments of super-
1 This curious relic, which in 1865 was still entire, in the suburbs of
St. Malo, was as rude in construction as an ordinary farmhouse. It had
only a kitchen and a hall below, and two rooms above. At the side was a
small stable, and, opposite, a barn. These buildings, together with two
heavy stone walls, enclosed a square court. Adjacent was a garden and
an orchard. The whole indicates a rough and simple way of life. See
Ramó, Note sur le Manoir de Jacques Cartier.
* The above account of the departure of Cartier from Canada is from
Hakluyt. Since it was written, M. Gosselin, archivist of the Palais de
Justice at Rouen has discovered a paper which shows that Roberval sailed
from France, not on the 16th of April, 1542, but on the 22d of August,
1541, thus confusing the narrative of Hakluyt. What remains certain is
that Cartier left Canada while Roberval stayed there, and that there were
disputes between them. See Ramé, Documents Inédits (1865), 22.
1542.] MARGUERITE. 223
stition and a love of the marvellous, has without
doubt a nucleus of truth. I give the tale as I
find it.
The Viceroy's company was of a mixed com-
plexion. There were nobles, officers, soldiers,
sailors, adventurers, with women too, and chil-
dren. Of the women, some were of birth and
station, and among them a damsel called Mar-
guerite, a niece of Roberval himself. In the ship
was a young gentleman who had embarked for
love of her. His love was too well requited ; and
the stern Viceroy, scandalized and enraged at a
passion which scorned concealment and set shame
at defiance, cast anchor by the haunted island,
landed his indiscreet relative, gave her four arque-
buses for defence, and, with an old Norman nurse
named Bastienne, who had pandered to the lovers,
left her to her fate. Her gallant threw himself
into the surf, and by desperate effort gained the
shore, with two more guns and a supply of am-
munition.
The ship weighed anchor, receded, vanished,
and they were left alone. Yet not so, for the
demon lords of the island beset them day and
night, raging around their hut with a confused
and hungry clamoring, striving to force the frail
barrier. The lovers had repented of their sin,
though not abandoned it, and Heaven was on
their side. The saints vouchsafed their aid, and
the offended Virgin, relenting, held before them
her protecting shield. In the form of beasts or
other shapes abominably and unutterably hideous,
224 EATRLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. [1542.
the brood of hell, howling in baffled fury, tore at
the branches of the sylvan dwelling ; but a celes-
tial hand was ever interposed, and there was a
viewless barrier which they might not pass. Mar-
guerite became pregnant. Here was a double
prize, two souls in one, mother and child. The
fiends grew frantic, but all in vain. She stood
undaunted amid these horrors; but her lover,
dismayed and heart-broken, sickened and died.
Her child soon followed ; then the old Norman
nurse found her unhallowed rest in that accursed
soil, and Marguerite was left alone. Neither her
reason nor her courage failed. When the demons
assailed her, she shot at them with her gun, but
they answered with hellish merriment, and thence-
forth she placed her trust in Heaven alone. There
were foes around her of the upper, no less than of
the nether world. Of these, the bears were the
most redoubtable ; yet, being vulnerable to mortal
weapons, she killed three of them, all, says the
story, “as white as an egg.”
It was two years and five months from her
landing on the island, when, far out at sea, the
crew of a small fishing-craft saw a column of
smoke curling upward from the haunted shore.
Was it a device of the fiends to lure them to their
ruin They thought so, and kept aloof. But
misgiving seized them. They warily drew near,
and descried a female figure in wild attire wav-
ing signals from the strand. Thus at length was
Marguerite rescued and restored to her native
France, where, a few years later, the cosmographer
1542.] ROBERVAL AT CAP ROUGE. 225
Thevet met her at Natron in Perigord, and heard
the tale of wonder from her own lips."
Having left his offending niece to the devils
and bears of the Isles of Demons, Roberval held
his course up the St. Lawrence, and dropped an-
chor before the heights of Cap Rouge. His com-
pany landed; there were bivouacs along the strand,
a hubbub of pick and Spade, axe, saw, and ham-
mer; and soon in the wilderness uprose a goodly
structure, half barrack, half castle, with two tow-
ers, two spacious halls, a kitchen, chambers, store-
rooms, workshops, cellars, garrets, a well, an oven,
and two water-mills. Roberval named it France-
Roy, and it stood on that bold acclivity where
Cartier had before intrenched himself, the St. .
Lawrence in front, and on the right the River
of Cap Rouge. Here all the colony housed under
the same roof, like One of the experimental com-
munities of recent days, – Officers, soldiers, nobles,
artisans, laborers, and convicts, with the women
and children in whom lay the future hope of New
France.
1 The story is taken from the curious manuscript of 1586. Compare
the Cosmographie of Thevet, (1575,) II. c. 6. Thevet was the personal
friend both of Cartier and of Roberval, the latter of whom he calls “mon
familier,” and the former, “mon grand et singulier amy.” He says that
he lived five months with Cartier in his house at St. Malo. He was also
a friend of Rabelais, who once, in Italy, rescued him from a serious em-
barrassment. See the Notice Biographique prefixed to the edition of
Rabelais of Burgaud des Marets and Rathery. The story of Marguerite
is also told in the Heptameron of Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francis
I. (1559).
In the Routier of Jean Alphonse, Roberval's pilot, where the principal
points of the voyage are set down, repeated mention is made of “les
Isles de la Demoiselle,” immediately north of Newfoundland. The in.
ference is obvious that the demoiselle was Marguerite.
15
226 EARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. [1542.
Experience and forecast had both been wanting.
There were storehouses, but no stores; mills, but
no grist ; an ample oven, and a dearth of bread.
It was only when two of the ships had sailed for
France that they took account of their provision
and discovered its lamentable shortcoming. Win-
ter and famine followed. They bought fish from
the Indians, and dug roots and boiled them in
whale-oil. Disease broke out, and, before spring,
killed one third of the colony. The rest would
have quarrelled, mutinied, and otherwise aggra-
vated their inevitable woes, but disorder was
dangerous under the iron rule of the inexorable
Roberval. Michel Gaillon was detected in a petty
theft, and hanged. Jean de Nantes, for a more
venial offence, was kept in irons. The quarrels
of men and the scolding of women were alike re-
quited at the whipping-post, “ by which means,”
quaintly says the narrative, “they lived in peace.”
Thevet, while calling himself the intimate
friend of the Viceroy, gives a darker coloring to
his story. He says that, forced to unceasing
labor, and chafed by arbitrary rules, some of the
soldiers fell under Roberval’s displeasure, and six
of them, formerly his favorites, were hanged in
one day. Others were banished to an island, and
there kept in fetters ; while, for various light
Offences, several, both men and women, were shot.
Even the Indians were moved to pity, and wept
at the sight of their woes."
And here, midway, Our guide deserts us; the
1 Thevet MS. (1586).
IDEATH OF ROBERVAL. 227
ient narrative is broken, and the latter part
ost, leaving us to divine as we may the future
the ill-starred colony. That it did not long
vive is certain. The King, in great need of
berval, sent Cartier to bring him home, and
s voyage seems to have taken place in the
mer of 1543. It is said that, in after years,
Viceroy essayed to repossess himself of his
ansatlantic domain, and lost his life in the at-
pt.” Thevet, on the other hand, with ample
eans of learning the truth, affirms that Roberval
was slain at night, near the Church of the Inno-
cents, in the heart of Paris.
With him closes the prelude of the French-
American drama. Tempestuous years and a reign
blood and fire were in store for France. The
ligious wars begot the hapless colony of Flor-
ida, but for more than half a century they left
New France a desert. Order rose at length out of
he sanguinary chaos; the zeal of discovery and
he spirit of commercial enterprise once more
woke, while, closely following, more potent than
hey, moved the black-robed forces of the Roman
Catholic reaction.
1 Lescarbot (1612), I. 416.
* Le Clerc, Établissement de la Foy, I. 14.
Not E. – The Voyage of Verrazzano. The narrative of the voyage of
Verrazzano is contained in a letter from him, dated at Dieppe, 8 July,
1524. The original letter does not exist. An Italian translation was
printed by Ramusio in 1556, and there is another translation in the Mag-
liabecchian Library at Florence. This last is accompanied by a letter con-
cerning the voyage from one Fernando Carli, dated at Lyons, 4 August,
1524. Hieronimo da Verrazzano, brother of the navigator, made in 1529
a large map of the world, which is preserved in the College of the Propa-














228 EARLY FRENCH ADVENTURE. [1524,
ganda at Rome. The discoveries of Verrazzano are laid down upon it,
and the North American part bears the inscription, “Verazzana sive nova
Gallia quale discopri 5 Anni fa Giovanni da Verazzano fiorentino per ordine
e Comandamento del Cristianissimo Re di Francia.” A copper globe made
by Euphrosynus Ulpius, in 1542, also affirms the discovery of Verrazzano,
and gives his name to a part of the continent, while other contemporary
maps, notably that of Visconte di Maiollo, 1527, also contain traces of
his voyage. Ramusio says that he had conversed with many persons who
knew Verrazzano, and he prints a paper called Discorso d'un gran Capitano
di Mare Francese, in which the voyage of Verrazzano is mentioned by a
contemporary navigator of Dieppe.
Various Spanish and Portuguese documents attest the exploits of Ver-
razzano as a corsair, and a letter of Silveira, Portuguese ambassador to
France, shows that in the spring of 1523 he had announced his purpose of
a voyage to “Cathay.” On the eleventh of May, 1526, he gave a power
of attorney to his brother Hieronimo, the maker of the map, and this
paper still exists, bearing his autograph. Various other original papers
relating to him are extant, one of the most curious being that of the
judge of Cadiz, testifying to his capture and his execution at Puerto del
Pico. None of the early writers question the reality of the voyage.
Among those who affirm it may be mentioned Annibal Caro, 1537; Belle-
forest, 1570; Herrera, 1601 ; Wytſleit, 1603; De Laet, 1603; Lescarbot,
1612.
In 1864, Mr. Buckingham Smith questioned the genuineness of the
Verrazzano letter in a pamphlet called, An Inquiry into the Authenticity of .
Documents concerning a Discovery in North America claimed to have been
made by Verrazzano. Mr. J. Carson Brevoort answered him, in a book
entitled Verrazzano the Navigator. Mr. Henry C. Murphy followed with
another book, The Voyage of Verrazzano, in which he endeavored at great
length to prove that the evidence concerning the voyage was fabricated.
Mr. Henry Harrisse gave a cautious and qualified support to his views in
the Revue Critique. Mr. Major answered them in the London Geographi-
cal Magazine, and Mr. De Costa made an elaborate and effective reply
in his work called Verrazzano the Earplorer. An Italian writer, Signor
Desimoni, has added some cogent facts in support of the authenticity of
the documents. A careful examination of these various writings convinces
me that the evidence in favor of the voyage of Verrazzano is far stronger
than the evidence against it. Abbé Verreau found a contemporary docu-
ment in the Bibliothèque Nationale, in which it is mentioned that the
“memoirs” of Verrazzano were then in possession of Chatillon (Admiral
Coligny). See Report on Canadian Archives, 1874, p. 190.
CHAPTER II.
1542–1604.
LA ROCHE. – CHAMPILAIN. — DE MONTS.
FRENCH FISHERMEN AND FUR-TRADERS. — LA Roche. — THE CONVICTs
of SABLE ISLAND. — TADOUSSAC. — SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN. —
VISITs THE WEST INDIES AND MExICO. — ExPLORES THE ST.
LAwRENCE. — DE MONTS. — HIS ACADIAN SCHEMEs.
YEARS rolled on. France, long tossed among
the surges of civil commotion, plunged at last into
a gulf of fratricidal war. Blazing hamlets, sacked
cities, fields steaming with slaughter, profaned
altars, and ravished maidens, marked the track
of the tornado. There was little room for schemes
of foreign enterprise. Yet, far aloof from siege
and battle, the fishermen of the western ports
still plied their craft on the Banks of Newfound-
land. Humanity, morality, decency, might be
forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the
use of the faithful in Lent and on fast days. Still
the wandering Esquimaux saw the Norman and
Breton sails hovering around some lonely head-
land, or anchored in fleets in the harbor of St.
John ; and still, through salt spray and driv-
ing mist, the fishermen dragged up the riches of
the sea. -
In January and February, 1545, about two ves-
sels a day sailed from French ports for Newfound-
230 LA ROCHE. — CHAMPLAIN. — DE MONTS. [1586.
land." In 1565, Pedro Menendez complains that
the French “rule despotically ” in those parts.
In 1578, there were a hundred and fifty French
fishing-vessels there, besides two hundred of other
nations, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Added
to these were twenty or thirty Biscayan whalers.”
In 1607, there was an old French fisherman at
Canseau who had voyaged to these seas for forty-
two successive years.”
But if the wilderness of ocean had its treasures,
so too had the wilderness of woods. It needed
but a few knives, beads, and trinkets, and the
Indians would throng to the shore burdened with
the spoils of their winter hunting. Fishermen
threw up their old vocation for the more lucrative
trade in bear-skins and beaver-skins. They built
rude huts along the shores of Anticosti, where, at
that day, the bison, it is said, could be seen wal-
lowing in the sands.” They outraged the Indians;
they quarrelled with each other; and this infancy
of the Canadian fur-trade showed rich promise
of the disorders which marked its riper growth.
Others, meanwhile, were ranging the gulf in
search of walrus tusks; and, the year after the
1 Gosselin, Documents Authentiques.
* Hakluyt, III. 132. Comp. Pinkerton, Voyages, XII. 174, and Thevet
MS. (1586).
8 Lescarbot, II. 605. Purchas's date is wrong.
4 Thevet MS. (1586). Thevet says that he had himself seen them.
Perhaps he confounds them with the moose.
In 1565, and for some years previous, bison-skins were brought by the
Indians down the Potomac, and thence carried along-shore in canoes to the
French about the Gulf of St. Lawrence During two years, six thousand
skins were thus obtained. Letters of Pedro Menendez to Philip II., MS.
On the fur-trade, see Hakluyt, III. 187, 193,233,292, etc.
1598.j MARQUIS DE LA ROCHE. 231
battle of Ivry, St. Malo sent out a fleet of small
craft in quest of this new prize. -
In all the western Seaports, merchants and ad-
venturers turned their eyes towards America; not,
like the Spaniards, seeking treasures of silver and
gold, but the more modest gains of codfish and
train-oil, beaver-skins and marine ivory. St.
Malo was conspicuous above them all. The rug-
ged Bretons loved the perils of the sea, and saw
with a jealous eye every attempt to shackle their
activity on this its favorite field. When in 1588
Jacques Noel and Estienne Chaton, the former a
nephew of Cartier and the latter pretending to be
So, gained a monopoly of the American fur-trade
for twelve years, such a clamor arose within the
walls of St. Malo that the obnoxious grant was
promptly revoked."
But soon a power was in the field against which
all St. Malo might clamor in vain. A Catholic
nobleman of Brittany, the Marquis de la Roche,
bargained with the King to colonize New France.
On his part, he was to receive a monopoly of the
trade, and a profusion of worthless titles and
empty privileges. He was declared Lieutenant-
General of Canada, Hochelaga, Newfoundland,
Labrador, and the countries adjacent, with sover-
eign power within his vast and ill-defined domain.
He could levy troops, declare war and peace, make
laws, punish or pardon at will, build cities, forts,
and castles, and grant out lands in fiefs, seignior-
* Lescarbot, I. 418. Compare Ramé, Documents Inédits (1865). In
Hakluyt are two letters of Jacques Noel.
232 LA ROCHE. — CHAMPLAIN — DE MONTS. [1598
ies, counties, viscounties, and baronies." Thus
was effete and cumbrous feudalism to make a
lodgment in the New World. It was a scheme
of high-sounding promise, but in performance less
than contemptible. La Roche ransacked the pris-
ons, and, gathering thence a gang of thieves and
desperadoes, embarked them in a small vessel, and
set sail to plant Christianity and civilization in the
West. Suns rose and set, and the wretched bark,
deep freighted with brutality and vice, held on
her course. She was so small, that the convicts,
leaning over her side, could wash their hands in
the water.” At length, on the gray horizon they
descried a long, gray line of ridgy sand. It was
Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia. A
wreck lay stranded on the beach, and the surf
broke ominously over the long, submerged arms of
sand, stretched far out into the sea on the right
hand and on the left.
Here La Roche landed the convicts, forty in
number, while, with his more trusty followers,
he sailed to explore the neighboring coasts, and
choose a site for the capital of his new dominion,
to which, in due time, he proposed to remove the
prisoners. But suddenly a tempest from the west
assailed him. The frail vessel was forced to run
* Lettres Patentes pour le Sieur de la Roche, 12 Jan., 1598; Lescarbot,
I. 422; Edits et Ordonnances, (Quebec, 1804,) II, 4, La Roche had re-
ceived a similar commission in 1577 and 1578, but seems to have made
no use of it. Ramé, Documents Inédits (1867). There is evidence that,
as early as 1564, the King designed an expedition to colonize Canada.
See Gosselin, Documents Inédits pour servir à l’Histoire de la Marine Nor:
mande.
* Lescarbot, I, 421.
ró03.] THE CONVICTS OF SABLE ISLAND. 233
before the gale, which, howling on her track,
drove her off the coast, and chased her back to-
wards France.
Meanwhile the convicts watched in suspense for
the returning sail. Days passed, weeks passed,
and still they strained their eyes in vain across the
waste of ocean. La Roche had left them to their
fate. Rueful and desperate, they wandered among
the sand-hills, through the stunted whortleberry
bushes, the rank sand-grass, and the tangled cran-
berry vines which filled the hollows. Not a tree
was to be seen ; but they built huts of the frag-
ments of the wreck. For food they caught fish in
the surrounding sea, and hunted the cattle which
ran wild about the island, sprung, perhaps, from
those left here eighty years before by the Baron
de Léry." They killed seals, trapped black foxes,
and clothed themselves in their skins. Their na-
tive instincts clung to them in their exile. As if
not content with inevitable miseries, they quar-
relled and murdered one another. Season after
season dragged on. Five years elapsed, and, of
the forty, only twelve were left alive. Sand, sea,
and sky, - there was little else around them ;
though, to break the dead monotony, the walrus
would sometimes rear his half-human face and
glistening sides on the reefs and sand-bars. At
length, on the far verge of the watery desert,
they descried a sail. She stood on towards the
* Lescarbot, I. 22. Compare De Laet, Lib. II. c. 4. Charlevoix and
Champlain say that they escaped from the wreck of a Spanish vessel;
Purchas, that they were left by the Portuguese.
234 LA ROCHE. —CHAMPLAIN. —DE MONTS. [1603.
island; a boat's crew landed on the beach, and
the exiles were once more among their coun-
trymen.
When La Roche returned to France, the fate
of his followers sat heavy on his mind. But the
day of his prosperity was gone. A host of ene-
mies rose against him and his privileges, and it is
said that the Duc de Mercoeur, seized him and
threw him into prison. In time, however, he
gained a hearing of the King, and the Norman
pilot, Chefdhótel, was despatched to bring the
Outcasts home.
He reached Sable Island in September, 1603,
and brought back to France eleven survivors,
whose names are still preserved." When they
arrived, Henry the Fourth summoned them into
his presence. They stood before him, says an old
writer, like river-gods of yore ; * for from head to
foot they were clothed in shaggy skins, and beards
of prodigious length hung from their swarthy
faces. They had accumulated, on their island, a
quantity of valuable furs. Of these Chefdhótel
had robbed them ; but the pilot was forced to
disgorge his prey, and, with the aid of a bounty
from the King, they were enabled to embark on
their own account in the Canadian trade.” To
1 Gosselin, Documents Authentiques (Rouen, 1876). -
2 Charlevoix, I. 110; Guérin, Navigateurs Français, 210.
8 Purchas, IV. 1807. Before me are several curious papers copied
from the archives of the Palais de Justice of Rouen. One of these is en-
titled Copie d'un Arrét rendu contre Chefdhostel, 27 Nov., 1603. It orders
him to deliver to the eleven men whom he had just brought home two
thirds of their furs. Another, dated 6 March, 1598, relates to the crim-
inals whom La Roche was empowered to take from the prisons. A third,
1603.] FONTGRAVE AND CHAUVIN. 235
their leader, fortune was less kind. Broken by
disaster and imprisonment, La Roche died miser-
ably.
In the mean time, on the ruin of his enterprise,
a new one had been begun. Pontgravé, a mer-
chant of St. Malo, leagued himself with Chauvin,
a captain of the navy, who had influence at court.
A patent was granted to them, with the condition
that they should colonize the country. But their
only thought was to enrich themselves.
At Tadoussac, at the mouth of the Saguenay,
under the shadow of savage and inaccessible
rocks, feathered with pines, firs, and birch trees,
they built a cluster of wooden huts and store-
houses. Here they left sixteen men to gather
the expected harvest of furs. Before the winter
was over, several of them were dead, and the rest
scattered through the woods, living on the charity
of the Indians."
But a new era had dawned on France. Ex-
hausted with thirty years of conflict, she had sunk
at last to a repose, uneasy and disturbed, yet the
harbinger of recovery. The rugged soldier whom,
for the weal of France and of mankind, Providence
had cast to the troubled surface of affairs, was
throned in the Louvre, composing the strife of
factions and the quarrels of his mistresses. The
dated 18 May, 1598, orders that one of these criminals, François de Baul-
dre, convicted of highway robbery, shall not be allowed to go to Canada,
but shall be forthwith beheaded. These papers set at rest the disputed
question of the date of La Roche's voyage. I owe them to the kindness
of M. Gabriel Gravier, of Rouen.
1 Champlain (1632), 34; Estancelin, 96.
236 LA ROCHE. —CHAMPLAIN.--DE MONTS. [1603.
bear-hunting prince of the Pyrenees wore the
crown of France; and to this day, as one gazes
on the time-worn front of the Tuileries, above all
other memories rises the small, strong figure, the
brow wrinkled with cares of love and war, the
bristling moustache, the grizzled beard, the bold,
vigorous, and withal somewhat odd features of the
mountaineer of Béarn. To few has human liberty
owed so deep a gratitude or so deep a grudge.
He cared little for creeds or dogmas. Impressi-
ble, quick in sympathy, his grim lip lighted often
with a smile, and his war-worn cheek was no
stranger to a tear. He forgave his enemies and
forgot his friends. Many loved him ; none but
fools trusted him. Mingled of mortal good and
ill, frailty and force, of all the kings who for two
centuries and more sat on the throne of France
Henry the Fourth alone was a man.
Art, industry, and commerce, so long crushed
and overborne, were stirring into renewed life,
and a crowd of adventurous men, nurtured in
war and incapable of repose, must seek employ-
ment for their restless energies in fields of peace-
ful enterprise. -
Two small, quaint vessels, not larger than the
fishing-craft of Gloucester and Marblehead, - one
was of twelve, the other of fifteen tons, – held
their way across the Atlantic, passed the tem.
pestuous headlands of Newfoundland and the St.
Lawrence, and, with adventurous knight-errantry,
glided deep into the heart of the Canadian wilder-
ness. On board of one of them was the Breton
*598.j SAMUEL IDE CHAMPLAIN. 237
merchant, Pontgravé, and with him a man of
spirit widely different, a Catholic of good family,
Samuel de Champlain, born in 1567 at the small
seaport of Brouage on the Bay of Biscay. His
father was a captain in the royal navy, where he
himself seems also to have served, though during
the war he had fought for the King in Brittany,
under the banners of D'Aumont, St. Luc, and
Brissac. His purse was small, his merit great ;
and Henry the Fourth out of his own slender
revenues had given him a pension to maintain
him near his person. But rest was penance
to him. The war in Brittany was over. The
rebellious Duc de Mercoeur was reduced to obe-
dience, and the royal army disbanded. Cham-
plain, his Occupation gone, conceived a design
consonant with his adventurous nature. He
would visit the West Indies, and bring back to
the King a report of those regions of mystery
whence Spanish jealousy excluded foreigners, and
where every intruding Frenchman was threatened
with death. Here much knowledge was to be
won and much peril to be met. The joint attrac-
tion was resistless.
The Spaniards, allies of the vanquished Leaguers,
were about to evacuate Blavet, their last strong-
hold in Brittany. Thither Champlain repaired :
and here he found an uncle, who had charge of
the French fleet destined to take on board the
Spanish garrison. Champlain embarked with
them, and, reaching Cadiz, succeeded, with the
aid of his relative, who had just accepted the
238 LA ROCHE. —CHAMPLAIN. —DE MONTS. [1598–1600
post of Pilot-General of the Spanish marine, in
gaining command of one of the ships about to
sail for the West Indies under Don Francisco
Colombo. -
At Dieppe there is a curious old manuscript, in
clear, decisive, and somewhat formal handwriting
of the sixteenth century, garnished with sixty-
one colored pictures, in a style of art which a
child of ten might emulate. Here one may see
ports, harbors, islands, and rivers, adorned with
portraitures of birds, beasts, and fishes thereto per-
taining. Here are Indian feasts and dances; In-
dians flogged by priests for not going to mass;
Indians burned alive for heresy, six in One fire.;
Indians working the silver mines. Here, too, are
descriptions of natural objects, each with its illus-
trative sketch, some drawn from life and some
from memory, -as, for example, a chameleon with
two legs; others from hearsay, among which is
the portrait of the griffin said to haunt certain
districts of Mexico, a monster with the wings of
a bat, the head of an eagle, and the tail of an
alligator.
This is Champlain's journal, written and il-
lustrated by his own hand, in that defiance of
perspective and absolute independence of the
canons of art which mark the earliest efforts of
the pencil.
A true hero, after the chivalrous mediaeval
type, his character was dashed largely with the
spirit of romance. Though earnest, sagacious,
and penetrating, he leaned to the marvellous;
1600–1603. CHAMPLAIN IN THE WEST INDIES. 239
and the faith which was the life of his hard career
was somewhat prone to overstep the bounds of
reason and invade the domain of fancy. Hence
the erratic character of some of his exploits, and
hence his simple faith in the Mexican griffin.
His West-Indian adventure occupied him more
than two years. He visited the principal ports
of the islands, made plans and sketches of them
all, after his fashion, and then, landing at Vera
Cru%, journeyed inland to the city of Mexico. On
his return he made his way to Panama. Here,
more than two centuries and a half ago, his bold
and active mind conceived the plan of a ship-canal
agross the isthmus, “by which,” he says, “the
voyage to the South Sea would be shortened by
more than fifteen hundred leagues.” "
On reaching France he repaired to Court, and
it may have been at this time that a royal pat-
ent raised him to the rank of the untitled no-
bility. He soon wearied of the antechambers of
the Louvre. It was here, however, that his des-
1 “. . . . I’on accourciroit par ainsy le chemin de plus de 1500 lieues,
et depuis Panama jusques au destroit de Magellan se seroit une isle, et
de Panama jusques aux Terres Neufves une autre isle,” — etc. Cham-
plain, Bref Discours. A Biscayan pilot had before suggested the plan to
the Spanish government; but Philip the Second, probably in the interest
of certain monopolies, forbade the subject to be again brought forward
on pain of death. -
The journal is entitled, “Bref Discours des Choses plus Remarquables
que Samuel Champlain de Brouage a recognues aux Indes Occidentales.”
The original manuscript, in Champlain's handwriting, is, or was, in the
hands of M. Féret of Dieppe, a collateral descendant of the writer's patron,
the Commander de Chastes. It consists of a hundred and fifteen small
quarto pages, I am indebted to M. Jacques Viger for the use of his copy.
A translation of it was published in 1859 by the Hakluyt Society, with
notes and a biographical notice by no means remarkable for accuracy.
240 LA ROCHE. — CHAMPLAIN. — DEMONTS. [1603
tiny awaited him, and the work of his life was
unfolded. Aymar de Chastes, Commander of the
Order of St. John and Governor of Dieppe, a gray-
haired veteran of the civil wars, wished to mark
his closing days with some notable achievement
for France and the Church. To no man was the
King more deeply indebted. In his darkest hour,
when the hosts of the League were gathering
round him, when friends were falling off, and the
Parisians, exulting in his certain ruin, were hiting
the windows of the Rue St. Antoine to see him
led to the Bastille, De Chastes, without condition
or reserve, gave up to him the town and castle of
Dieppe. Thus he was enabled to fight beneath ifs
walls the battle of Arques, the first in the series
of successes which secured his triumph ; and he
had been heard to say that to this friend in his
adversity he owed his own salvation and that of
France.
De Chastes was one of those men who, amid
the strife of factions and rage of rival fanaticisms,
make reason and patriotism their watchwords, and
stand on the firm ground of a strong and resolute
moderation. He had resisted the madness of
Leaguer and Huguenot alike ; yet, though a foe of
the League, the old soldier was a devout Catholic,
and it seemed in his eyes a noble consummation
of his life to plant the cross and the fleur-de-lis
in the wilderness of New France. Chauvin had
just died, after wasting the lives of a score or more
of men in a second and a third attempt to estab-
lish the fur-trade at Tadoussac. De Chastes came
1603.] DE CHASTES AND CHAMPLAIN. 241
to court to beg a patent of Henry the Fourth ;
“and,” says his friend Champlain, “though his
head was crowned with gray hairs as with years,
he resolved to proceed to New France in person,
and dedicate the rest of his days to the service of
God and his King.”" - -
The patent, costing nothing, was readily granted;
and De Chastes, to meet the expenses of the enter-
prise, and forestall the jealousies which his monop-
oly would awaken among the keen merchants of
the western ports, formed a company with the
more prominent of them. Pontgravé, who had
some knowledge of the country, was chosen to
make a preliminary exploration.
This was the time when Champlain, fresh from
the West Indies, appeared at court. De Chastes
knew him well. Young, ardent, yet ripe in ex-
perience, a skilful seaman and a practised soldier,
he above all others was a man for the enterprise.
He had many conferences with the veteran, under
whom he had served in the royal fleet off the coast
of Brittany. De Chastes urged him to accept a
post in his new company; and Champlain, nothing
loath, consented, provided always that permission
should be had from the King, “to whom,” he says,
“I was bound no less by birth than by the pension
with which his Majesty honored me.” To the
King, therefore, De Chastes repaired. The need-
ful consent was gained, and, armed with a letter to
Pontgravé, Champlain set out for Honfleur. Here
he found his destined companion, and embarking
1 On De Chastes, Vitet, Histoire de Dieppe, c. 19, 20, 21.
16
242 LA ROCHE. – CHAMPLAIN. — DE MONTS. [1603,
with him, as we have seen, they spread their sails
for the west.
Like specks on the broad bosom of the waters,
the two pygmy vessels held their course up the
lonely St. Lawrence. They passed abandoned Taº
doussac, the channel of Orleans, and the gleaming
cataract of Montmorenci; the tenantless rock of
Quebec, the wide Lake of St. Peter and its crowded
archipelago, till now the mountain reared before
them its rounded shoulder above the forest-plain
of Montreal. All was solitude. Hochelaga had
vanished ; and of the Savage population that Car-
tier had found here, sixty-eight years before, no
trace remained. In its place were a few wander-
ing Algonquins, of different tongue and lineage.
In a skiff, with a few Indians, Champlain essayed
to pass the rapids of St. Louis. Oars, paddles,
and poles alike proved vain against the foaming
surges, and he was forced to return. On the deck
of his vessel, the Indians drew rude plans of the
river above, with its chain of rapids, its lakes and
cataracts; and the baffled explorer turned his prow
homeward, the objects of his mission accomplished,
but his own adventurous curiosity unsated. When
the voyagers reached Havre de Grace, a grievous
blow awaited them. The Commander de Chastes
was dead."
1 Champlain, Des Sauvages (1604). Champlain's Indian informants
gave him very confused accounts. They indicated the Falls of Niagara as
a mere “rapid.” They are laid down, however, in Champlain's great map
of 1632 with the following note: “Sault d'eau au bout du Sault
[Lac] Sainct Louis fort hault oil plusieurs sortes de poissons descendans
s’estourdissent.”
1604.] SCHEMES OF DE MONTS. 243
His mantle fell upon Pierre du Guast, Sieur
de Monts, gentleman in ordinary of the King's
chamber, and Governor of Pons. Undaunted by
the fate of La Roche, this nobleman petitioned
the king for leave to colonize La Cadie, or Aca-
die," a region defined as extending from the for-
tieth to the forty-sixth degree of north latitude,
or from Philadelphia to beyond Montreal. The
King's minister, Sully, as he himself tells us,
opposed the plan, on the ground that the coloni-
zation of this northern wilderness would never
repay the Outlay; but De Monts gained his point.
He was made Lieutenant-General in Acadia, with
viceregal powers; and withered Feudalism, with
her antique forms and tinselled follies, was again
to seek a new home among the rocks and pine
trees of Nova Scotia. The foundation of the en-
terprise was a monopoly of the fur-trade, and in
its favor all past grants were unceremoniously
annulled. St. Malo, Rouen, Dieppe, and Rochelle
greeted the announcement with unavailing out-
cries. Patents granted and revoked, monopolies
decreed and extinguished, had involved the un-
1 This name is not found in any earlier public document. It was after-
wards restricted to the peninsula of Nova Scotia, but the dispute concern-
ing the limits of Acadia was a proximate cause of the war of 1755.
The word is said to be derived from the Indian Aquoddiauke, or Aquod-
die, supposed to mean the fish called a pollock. The Bay of Passama-
quoddy, “Great Pollock Water,” if we may accept the same authority,
derives its name from the same origin. Potter in Historical Magazine, I
84. This derivation is doubtful. The Micmac word, Quoddy, Kady, or
Cadie, means simply a place or region, and is properly used in conjunc-
tion with some other noun; as, for example, Katakady, the Place of Eels,
Sunakady (Sumacadie), the Place of Cranberries, Pestumoquoddy (Passama-
quoddy), the Place of Pollocks. Dawson and Rand, in Canadian Antiqua-
rian and Numismatic Journal.
244 LA ROCHE. —CHAMPLAIN.—DE MONTS. [1604.
happy traders in ceaseless embarrassment. De
Monts, however, preserved De Chastes's old com-
pany, and enlarged it, thus making the chief
malcontents sharers in his exclusive rights, and
converting them from enemies into partners.
A clause in his commission empowered him to
impress idlers and vagabonds as material for his
colony, an ominous provision of which he largely
availed himself. His company was strangely in-
congruous. The best and the meanest of France
were crowded together in his two ships. Here
were thieves and ruffians dragged on board by
force, and here were many volunteers of condition
and character, with Baron de Poutrincourt and the
indefatigable Champlain. Here, too, were Catho-
lic priests and Huguenot ministers; for, though
De Monts was a Calvinist, the Church, as usual,
displayed her banner in the van of the enterprise,
and he was forced to promise that he would cause
the Indians to be instructed in the dogmas of
Rome."
* Articles proposez au Roy par le Sieur de Monts; Commissions du Roy et
de Monseigneur l’Admiral au Sieur de Monts; Défenses du Roy Premières
et Secondes, a tous ses subjects, autres que le Sieur de Monts, etc., de traffiquer,
etc.; Déclaration du Roy; Extraict des Registres de Parlement; Remon.
trance faict au Roy par le Sieur de Monts; etc.
CHAPTER III.
1604, 1605.
ACADIA OCCUPIED.
CATHoLIC AND CALVINIST. — THE LOST PRIEST. — ST. CROIx. — WIN.
TER MISERIES. — CHAMPLAIN ON THE COAST OF NEW ENGLAND. –
PORT ROYAL.
DE MONTs, with one of his vessels, sailed from
Havre de Grace on the seventh of April, 1604.
Pontgravé, with stores for the colony, was to
follow in a few days.
Scarcely were they at sea, when ministers and
priests fell first to discussion, then to quarrelling,
then to blows. “I have seen our curé and the
minister,” says Champlain, “fall to with their
fists on questions of faith. I cannot say which
had the more pluck, or which hit the harder; but
I know that the minister sometimes complained
to the Sieur de Monts that he had been beaten.
This was their way of settling points of contro-
versy. I leave you to judge if it was a pleasant
thing to see.”.”
Sagard, the Franciscan friar, relates with horror,
that, after their destination was reached, a priest
and a minister happening to die at the same time.
the crew buried them both in one grave, to see if
they would lie peaceably together.”
1 Champlain, (1632,) 46. 2 Sagard, Histoire du Canada, 9.
246 ACADIA OCCUPIED. [1604,
De Monts, who had been to the St. Lawrence
with Chauvin, and learned to dread its rigorous
winters, steered for a more southern, and, as he
flattered himself, a milder region. The first land
seen was Cap la Héve, on the southern coast of
Nova Scotia. Four days later, they entered a
Small bay, where, to their surprise, they saw a
vessel lying at anchor. Here was a piece of good
luck. The stranger was a fur-trader, pursuing her
traffic in defiance, or more probably in ignorance,
of De Monts's monopoly. The latter, as em-
powered by his patent, made prize of ship and
cargo, consoling the commander, one Rossignol,
by giving his name to the scene of his misfortune.
It is now called Liverpool Harbor.
In an adjacent harbor, called by them Port
Mouton, because a sheep here leaped overboard,
they waited nearly a month for Pontgravé's
store-ship. At length, to their great relief, she
appeared, laden with the spoils of four Basque
fur-traders, captured at Canseau. The supplies
delivered, Pontgravé sailed for Tadoussac to trade
with the Indians, while De Monts, followed by his
prize, proceeded on his voyage.
He doubled Cape Sable, and entered St. Mary's
Bay, where he lay two weeks, sending boats' crews
to explore the adjacent coasts. A party One day
went on shore to stroll through the forest, and
among them was Nicolas Aubry, a priest from
Paris, who, tiring of the scholastic haunts of the
Rue de la Sorbonne and the Rue d'Enfer, had
persisted, despite the remonstrance of his friends,
1604.] THE LOST PRIEST. — ANNAPOLIS, 247
in joining the expedition. Thirsty with a long
walk, under the sun of June, through the tangled
and rock-encumbered woods, he stopped to drink
at a brook, laying his sword beside him on the
grass. On rejoining his companions, he found
that he had forgotten it; and turning back in
search of it, more skilled in the devious windings
of the Quartier Latin than in the intricacies of the
Acadian forest, he soon lost his way. His Com-
rades, alarmed, waited for a time, and them ranged
the woods, shouting his name to the echoing soli-
tudes. Trumpets were sounded, and cannon fired
from the ships, but the priest did not appear. All
now looked askance on a certain Huguenot, with
whom Aubry had often quarrelled on questions of
faith, and who was now accused of having killed
him. In vain he denied the charge. Aubry was
given up for dead, and the ship sailed from St.
Mary's Bay; while the wretched priest roamed to
and fro, famished and despairing, or, couched on
the rocky soil, in the troubled sleep of exhaustion,
dreamed, perhaps, as the wind swept moaning
through the pines, that he heard Once more the
organ roll through the columned arches of Sainte
Geneviève.
The voyagers proceeded to explore the Bay of
Fundy, which De Monts called La Baye Françoise.
Their first notable discovery was that of Annap-
olis Harbor. A small inlet invited them. They
entered, when suddenly the narrow strait dilated
into a broad and tranquil basin, compassed by
sunny hills, wrapped in woodland verdure, and alive
248 ACADIA OCCUPIED. |1604,
with waterfalls. Poutrincourt was delighted with
the scene. The fancy seized him of removing
thither from France with his family; and, to this
end, he asked a grant of the place from De Monts,
who by his patent had nearly half the continent in
his gift. The grant was made, and Poutrincourt
called his new domain Port Royal.
Thence they sailed round the head of the Bay
of Fundy, coasted its northern shore, visited and
named the river St. John, and anchored at last in
Passamaquoddy Bay.
The untiring Champlain, exploring, surveying,
sounding, had made charts of all the principal
roads and harbors; * and now, pursuing his re-
search, he entered a river which he calls La
Rivière des Etechemins, from the name of the
tribe of whom the present Passamaquoddy Indians
are descendants. Near its mouth he found an
islet, fenced round with rocks and shoals, and
called it St. Croix, a name now borne by the river
itself. With singular infelicity this spot was
chosen as the site of the new colony. It com-
manded the river, and was well fitted for defence:
these were its only merits; yet cannon were landed
On it, a battery was planted on a detached rock at
One end, and a fort begun on a rising ground at
the other.”
At St. Mary's Bay the voyagers thought they
had found traces of iron and silver; and Champ-
doré, the pilot, was now sent back to pursue the
* See Champlain, Voyages, (1618,) where the charts are published.
* Lescarbot, Hist. de la Nouvelle France, (1612,) II. 461.
1604.] ST, CROIX. 249
search. As he and his men lay at anchor, fishing,
not far from land, one of them heard a strange
sound, like a weak human voice; and, looking
towards the shore, they saw a small black object
in motion, apparently a hat waved on the end of
a stick. Rowing in haste to the spot, they found
the priest Aubry. For sixteen days he had wan-
dered in the woods, sustaining life on berries and
wild fruits; and when, haggard and emaciated, a
shadow of his former self, Champdoré carried him
back to St. Croix, he was greeted as a man risen
from the grave.
In 1783 the river St. Croix, by treaty, was
made the boundary between Maine and New
Brunswick. But which was the true St. Croix 2
In 1798, the point was settled. De Monts's island
was found; and, painfully searching among the
sand, the sedge, and the matted whortleberry
bushes, the commissioners could trace the founda-
tions of buildings long crumbled into dust;" for
the wilderness had resumed its sway, and silence
and solitude brooded once more over this ancient
resting-place of civilization.
But while the commissioner bends over a moss-
grown stone, it is for us to trace back the dim
vista of the centuries to the life, the zeal, the
energy, of which this stone is the poor memorial.
The rock-fenced islet was covered with cedars,
and when the tide was out the shoals around were
dark with the swash of sea-weed, where, in their
leisure moments, the Frenchmen, we are told,
1 Holmes, Annals, (1829,) I. 122, note I.
250 ACAIDIA OCCUPIED. [1604.
amused themselves with detaching the limpets
from the stones, as a savory addition to their
fare. But there was little leisure at St. Croix.
Soldiers, sailors, and artisans betook themselves
to their task. Before the winter closed in, the
northern end of the island was covered with build-
ings, surrounding a square, where a solitary tree
had been left standing. On the right was a spa-
cious house, well built, and surmounted by one of
those enormous roofs characteristic of the time.
This was the lodging of De Monts. Behind it,
and near the water, was a long, covered gallery,
for labor or amusement in foul weather. Cham-
plain and the Sieur d’Orville, aided by the servants
of the latter, built a house for themselves nearly
opposite that of De Monts; and the remainder of
the square was Occupied by storehouses, a maga-
zine, workshops, lodgings for gentlemen and arti-
sans, and a barrack for the Swiss soldiers, the
whole enclosed with a palisade. Adjacent there
was an attempt at a garden, under the auspices
of Champlain ; but nothing would grow in the
Sandy soil. There was a cemetery, too, and a
small rustic chapel on a projecting point of rock.
Such was the “Habitation de l'Isle Saincte-Croix,”
as set forth by Champlain in quaint plans and
drawings, in that musty little quarto of 1613, sold
by Jean Berjon, at the sign of the Flying Horse,
Rue St. Jean de Beauvais.
Their labors over, Poutrincourt set sail for
France, proposing to return and take possession
of his domain of Port Royal. Seventy-nine men
2000. SEVERITY OF THE WINTER. 251
remained at St. Croix. Here was De Monts, feudal
lord of half a continent in virtue of two potent
syllables, “Henri,” scrawled on parchment by the
rugged hand of the Béarnais. Here were gentle-
men of birth and breeding, Champlain, D’Orville,
Beaumont, Sourin, La Motte, Boulay, and Fouge-
ray; here also were the pugnacious curé and his
fellow priests, with the Huguenot ministers, ob-
jects of their unceasing ire. The rest were labor-
ers, artisans, and soldiers, all in the pay of the
company, and some of them forced into its Ser-
vice.
Poutrincourt's receding sails vanished between
the water and the sky. The exiles were left to
their solitude. From the Spanish settlements
northward to the pole, there was no domestic
hearth, no lodgment of civilized men, save one
weak band of Frenchmen, clinging, as it were
for life, to the fringe of the vast and Savage
continent. The gray and sullen autumn sank
upon the waste, and the bleak wind howled down
the St. Croix, and swept the forest bare. Then
the whirling snow powdered the vast sweep of
desolate woodland, and shrouded in white the
gloomy green of pine-clad mountains. Ice in
sheets, or broken masses, swept by their island
with the ebbing and flowing tide, often debarring
all access to the main, and cutting off their sup-
plies of wood and water. A belt of cedars, in-
deed, hedged the island; but De Monts had
ordered them to be spared, that the north wind
might spend something of its force with whistling
252 ACADTA OCCUPIED. [1605.
through their shaggy boughs. Cider and wine
froze in the casks, and were served out by the
pound. As they crowded round their half-fed
fires, shivering in the icy currents that pierced
their rude tenements, many sank into a desperate
apathy.
Soon the scurvy broke out, and raged with a
fearful malignity. Of the seventy-nine, thirty-
five died before spring, and many more were
brought to the verge of death. In vain they
sought that marvellous tree which had relieved
the followers of Cartier. Their little cemetery
was peopled with nearly half their number, and
the rest, bloated and disfigured with the relentless
malady, thought more of escaping from their woes
than of building up a Transatlantic empire. Yet
among them there was one, at least, who, amid
languor and defection, held to his purpose with
indomitable tenacity; and where Champlain was
present, there was no room for despair.
Spring came at last, and, with the breaking up
of the ice, the melting ºf the snow, and the
clamors of the returning wild-fowl, the spirits
and the health of the woe-begone company be-
gan to revive. But to misery succeeded anxi.
ety and suspense. Where was the succor from
France 2 Were they abandoned to their fate like
the wretched exiles of La Roche : In a happy
hour, they saw an approaching Sail. Pontgravé,
with forty men, cast anchor before their island on
the sixteenth of June ; and they hailed him as the
condemned hails the messenger of his pardon.
1605.] EXPLORATIONS OF CHAMPLAIN. 253
Weary of St. Croix, De Monts resolved to seek
out a more auspicious site, on which to rear the
capital of his wilderness dominion. During the pre-
ceding September, Champlain had ranged the west-
ward coast in a pinnace, visited and named the
island of Mount Desert, and entered the mouth of
the river Penobscot, called by him the Pemetigoet,
or Pentegoet, and previously known to fur-traders
and fishermen as the Norembega, a name which it
shared with all the adjacent region." Now, em-
barking a second time, in a bark of fifteen tons,
with De Monts, several gentlemen, twenty sailors,
and an Indian with his squaw, he set forth on the
eighteenth of June on a second voyage of dis-
covery. They coasted the strangely indented
shores of Maine, with its reefs and surf-washed
islands, rocky headlands, and deep embosomed
bays, passed Mount Desert and the Penobscot,
explored the mouths of the Kennebec, crossed
Casco Bay, and descried the distant peaks of the
White Mountains. The ninth of July brought
them to Saco Bay. They were now within the
limits of a group of tribes who were called by
the French the Armouchiquois, and who included
those whom the English afterwards called the
Massachusetts. They differed in habits as well
as in language from the Etechemins and Micmacs
1 The earliest maps and narratives indicate a city, also called Norem-
bega, on the banks of the Penobscot. The pilot, Jean Alphonse, of Sain-
tonge, says that this fabulous city is fifteen or twenty leagues from the
sea, and that its inhabitants are of small stature and dark complexion.
As late as 1607 the fable was repeated in the Histoire Universelle des Indes
Occidentales.
254 ACADIA OCCUPIED. [1605.
of Acadia, for they were tillers of the soil, and
around their wigwams were fields of maize, beans,
pumpkins, squashes, tobacco, and the so-called Je-
rusalem artichoke. Near Prout's Neck, more than
eighty of them ran down to the shore to meet the
strangers, dancing and yelping to show their joy.
They had a fort of palisades on a rising ground
by the Saco, for they were at deadly war with
their neighbors towards the east. -
On the twelfth, the French resumed their voyage,
and, like some adventurous party of pleasure, held
their course by the beaches of York and Wells,
Portsmouth Harbor, the Isles of Shoals, Rye Beach
and Hampton Beach, till, on the fifteenth, they
descried the dim outline of Cape Ann. Cham-
plain called it Cap aux Isles, from the three adja-
cent islands, and in a subsequent voyage he gave
the name of Beauport to the neighboring harbor
of Gloucester. Thence steering southward and
westward, they entered Massachusetts Bay, gave
the name of Rivière du Guast to a river flowing
into it, probably the Charles ; passed the islands
of Boston Harbor, which Champlain describes as
covered with trees, and were met on the way by
great numbers of canoes filled with astonished
Indians. On Sunday, the seventeenth, they passed
Point Allerton and Nantasket Beach, coasted the
shores of Cohasset, Scituate, and Marshfield, and
anchored for the night near Brant Point. On the
morning of the eighteenth, a head wind forced
them to take shelter in Port St. Louis, for so
they called the harbor of Plymouth, where the
1605.] FLYMOUTH. — CAPE COL). 255
Pilgrims made their memorable landing fifteen
years later. Indian wigwams and garden patches
lined the shore. A troop of the inhabitants came
down to the beach and danced, while others, who
had been fishing, approached in their canoes, came
on board the vessel, and showed Champlain their
fish-hooks, consisting of a barbed bone lashed at
an acute angle to a slip of wood.
From Plymouth the party circled round the
bay, doubled Cape Cod, called by Champlain Cap
Blanc, from its glistening white sands, and steered
southward to Nausett Harbor, which, by reason of
its shoals and sand-bars, they named Port Malle-
barre. Here their prosperity deserted them. A
party of sailors went behind the sand-banks to
find fresh water at a spring, when an Indian
snatched a kettle from one of them, and its owner,
pursuing, fell, pierced with arrows by the robber's
comrades. The French in the vessel opened fire.
Champlain's arquebuse burst, and was near killing
him, while the Indians, swift as deer, quickly
gained the woods. Several of the tribe chanced
to be on board the vessel, but flung themselves
with such alacrity into the water that only one
was caught. They bound him hand and foot, but
soon after humanely set him at liberty.
Champlain, who we are told “delighted marvel-
lously in these enterprises,” had busied himself
throughout the voyage with taking observations,
making charts, and studying the wonders of land
and sea. The “horse-foot crab" seems to have
awakened his special curiosity, and he describes it
256 ACAIDIA OCCUPIED. [1605.
with amusing exactness. Of the human tenants
of the New England coast he has also left the first
precise and trustworthy account. They were clearly
more numerous than when the Puritans landed at
Plymouth, since in the interval a pestilence made
great havoc among them. But Champlain's most
conspicuous merit lies in the light that he threw
into the dark places of American geography, and
the order that he brought out of the chaos of
American cartography, for it was a result of this
and the rest of his voyages that precision and
clearness began at last to supplant the vagueness,
confusion, and contradiction of the earlier map-
makers."
At Nausett Harbor provisions began to fail, and
steering for St. Croix the voyagers reached that
ill-starred island on the third of August. De
Monts had found no spot to his liking. He now
bethought him of that inland harbor of Port Royal
which he had granted to Poutrincourt, and thither
he resolved to remove. Stores, utensils, even por-
tions of the buildings, were placed on board the
vessels, carried across the Bay of Fundy, and
landed at the chosen spot. It was on the north
1 President Eliot of Harvard University, and his son, Mr. Charles Eliot,
during many yacht voyages along the New England coast, made a study
of the points visited by Champlain. I am indebted to them for useful
information, as also to Mr. Henry Mitchell of the Coast Survey, who has
made careful comparisons of the maps of Champlain with the present
features of the places they represent. I am also indebted to the excellent
notes of Rev. Edmund F. Slaſter in Mr. Otis's translation of Champlain,
and to those of Abbé Laverdière in the Quebec edition of the Voyages,
1870. In the new light from these sources, I have revised former con-
clusions touching several localities mentioned in the original narrative.
1605.] PORT ROYAL. 257
side of the basin opposite Goat Island, and a little
below the mouth of the river Annapolis, called by
the French the Equille, and, afterwards, the Dau-
phin. The axemen began their task; the dense
forest was cleared away, and the buildings of the
infant colony soon rose in its place.
But while De Monts and his company were
struggling against despair at St. Croix, the enemies
of his monopoly were busy at Paris; and, by a
ship from France, he was warned that prompt
measures were needed to thwart their machina-
tions. Therefore he set sail, leaving Pontgravé
to command at Port Royal ; while Champlain,
Champdoré, and others, undaunted by the past,
volunteered for a second winter in the wilder-
IlêSS.
CHAPTER IV.
1605–1607.
LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN.
DE MONTS AT PARIS.–MARC LESCARBOT. —DISASTER. – EMBARKA.
TION. — ARRIVAL – DISAPPOINTMENT. — WINTER LIFE AT Port
ROYAL. – L'ORDRE DE BON-TEMPs. – HoPEs BLIGHTED.
EVIL reports of a churlish wilderness, a pitiless
climate, disease, misery, and death, had heralded
the arrival of De Monts. The outlay had been
great, the returns small; and when he reached
Paris, he found his friends cold, his enemies active
and keen. Poutrincourt, however, was still full of
Zeal; and, though his private affairs urgently called
for his presence in France, he resolved, at no small
sacrifice, to go in person to Acadia. He had, more-
over, a friend who proved an invaluable ally.
This was Marc Lescarbot, “avocat en Parlement,”
who had been roughly handled by fortune, and
was in the mood for such a venture, being desirous,
as he tells us, “to fly from a corrupt world,” in
which he had just lost a lawsuit. Unlike De
Monts, Poutrincourt, and others of his associates,
he was not within the pale of the noblesse, belong-
ing to the class of “gens de robe,” which stood
at the head of the bourgeoisie, and which, in its
higher grades, formed within itself a virtual nobil-
1605.] MARC LESCARBOT. 259
ity. Lescarbot was no common man. Not that
his abundant gift of verse-making was likely to
avail much in the woods of New France, nor yet
his classic lore, dashed with a little harmless ped-
antry, born not of the man, but of the times.
But his zeal, his good sense, the vigor of his
understanding, and the breadth of his views, were
as conspicuous as his quick wit and his lively
fancy. One of the best, as well as earliest, records
of the early settlement of North America is due to
his pen; and it has been said, with a certain degree
of truth, that he was no less able to build up a
colony than to write its history. He professed
himself a Catholic, but his Catholicity sat lightly
of him, and he might have passed for one of those
amphibious religionists who in the civil wars were
called “Les Politiques.”
De Monts and Poutrincourt bestirred themselves
to find a priest, since the foes of the enterprise
had been loud in lamentation that the spiritual
welfare of the Indians had been slighted. But it
was Holy Week. All the priests were, or pro-
fessed to be, busy with exercises and confessions,
and not one could be found to undertake the mis-
sion of Acadia. They were more successful in
engaging mechanics and laborers for the voyage.
These were paid a portion of their wages in ad-
vance, and were sent in a body to Rochelle, con-
signed to two merchants of that port, members of
the company. De Monts and Poutrincourt went
thither by post. Lescarbot soon followed, and no
sooner reached Rochelle than he penned and
260 . LESCARBOT AND CHAMPILAIN. (1606.
printed his Adieu & la France, a poem which
gained for him some credit.
More serious matters awaited him, however,
than this dalliance with the Muse. Rochelle was
the centre and citadel of Calvinism, a town of
austere and grim aspect, divided, like Cisatlantic
communities of later growth, betwixt trade and
religion, and, in the interest of both, exacting a
deportment of discreet and well-ordered sobriety.
“One must walk a strait path here,” says Les-
carbot, “unless he would hear from the mayor or
the ministers.” But the mechanics sent from
Paris, flush of money, and lodged together in the
quarter of St. Nicolas, made day and night hide-
ous with riot, and their employers found not a few
of them in the hands of the police. Their ship,
bearing the inauspicious name of the Jonas, lay
anchored in the stream, her cargo on board, when
a sudden gale blew her adrift. She struck on a
pier, then grounded on the flats, bilged, careened,
and settled in the mud. Her captain, who was
ashore, with Poutrincourt, Lescarbot, and others,
hastened aboard, and the pumps were set in
motion ; while all Rochelle, we are told, came to
gaze from the ramparts, with faces of condolence,
but at heart well pleased with the disaster. The
ship and her cargo were saved, but she must be
emptied, repaired, and reladen. Thus a month
was lost; at length, on the thirteenth of May,
1606, the disorderly crew were all brought on
board, and the Jonas put to sea. Poutrincourt
and Lescarbot had charge of the expedition, De
Monts remaining in France.
*\
1606.] ARRIVAL AT PORT ROYAL. 261
Lescarbot describes his emotions at finding him-
self on an element so deficient in solidity, with
only a two-inch plank between him and death.
Off the Azores, they spoke a supposed pirate. For
the rest, they beguiled the voyage by harpooning
porpoises, dancing on deck in calm weather, and
fishing for cod on the Grand Bank. They were
two months on their way, and when, fevered with
eagerness to reach land, they listened hourly for
the welcome cry, they were involved in impene-
trable fogs. Suddenly the mists parted, the sun
shone forth, and streamed fair and bright over the
fresh hills and forests of the New World, in near
view before them. But the black rocks lay be-
tween, lashed by the snow-white breakers. “Thus,”
writes Lescarbot, “doth a man sometimes seek the
land as one doth his beloved, who sometimes re-
pulseth her sweetheart very rudely. Finally, upon
Saturday, the fifteenth of July, about two o'clock
in the afternoon, the sky began to Salute us as it
were with cannon-shots, shedding tears, as being
sorry to have kept us so long in pain; . . . . but,
whilst we followed on our course, there came from
the land odors incomparable for sweetness, brought
with a warm wind so abundantly that all the ori-
ent parts could not produce greater abundance.
We did stretch out our hands as it were to take
them, so palpable were they, which I have admired
a thousand times since.” "
It was noon on the twenty-seventh when the
Jonas passed the rocky gateway of Port Royal
1 The translation is that of Purchas, Nova Francia, c. 12.
262 I.ESCARBOT AND CHAMPILAIN. [1606,
Basin, and Lescarbot gazed with delight and won-
der on the calm expanse of sunny waters, with its
amphitheatre of woody hills, wherein he saw the
future asylum of distressed merit and impoverished
industry. Slowly, before a favoring breeze, they
held their course towards the head of the harbor,
which narrowed as they advanced ; but all was soli-
tude; no moving sail, no sign of human presence.
At length, on their left, nestling in deep forests,
they saw the wooden walls and roofs of the infant
colony. Then appeared a birch canoe, cautiously
coming towards them, guided by an old Indian.
Then a Frenchman, arquebuse in hand, came down
to the shore; and then, from the wooden bastion,
sprang the smoke of a saluting shot. The ship
replied ; the trumpets lent their voices to the
din, and the forests and the hills gave back un-
wonted echoes. The voyagers landed, and found
the colony of Port Royal dwindled to two solitary
Frenchmen.
These soon told their story. The preceding win-
ter had been one of much suffering, though by no
means the counterpart of the woful experience of
St. Croix. But when the spring had passed, the
summer far advanced, and still no tidings of De
Monts had come, Pontgravé grew deeply anxious.
To maintain themselves without supplies and suc-
Cor was impossible. He caused two small vessels
to be built, and set out in search of some of the
French vessels on the fishing-stations. This was
but twelve days before the arrival of the ship
Jonas. Two men had bravely offered themselves
1606.] REUNION. 263
to stay behind and guard the buildings, guns, and
munitions; and an old Indian chief, named Mem-
bertou, a fast friend of the French, and still a
redoubted warrior, we are told, though reputed
to number more than a hundred years, proved a
stanch ally. When the ship approached, the two
guardians were at dinner in their room at the fort.
Membertou, always on the watch, saw the advan-
cing sail, and, shouting from the gate, roused them
from their repast. In doubt who the new-comers
might be, one ran to the shore with his gun, while
the other repaired to the platform where four can-
non were mounted, in the valorous resolve to show
fight should the strangers prove to be enemies.
Happily this redundancy of mettle proved needless.
He saw the white flag fluttering at the masthead,
and joyfully fired his pieces as a salute.
The voyagers landed, and eagerly surveyed their
new home. Some wandered through the build-
ings; some visited the cluster of Indian wigwams
hard by ; some roamed in the forest and over the
meadows that bordered the neighboring river. The
deserted fort now swarmed with life; and, the bet-
ter to celebrate their prosperous arrival, Poutrin-
court placed a hogshead of wine in the courtyard
at the discretion of his followers, whose hilarity, in
consequence, became exuberant. Nor was it dimin-
ished when Pontgravé's vessels were seen entering
the harbor. A boat sent by Poutrincourt, more
than a week before, to explore the coasts, had met
them near Cape Sable, and they joyfully returned
to Port Royal.
264 LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN. [1606
Pontgravé, however, soon sailed for France in
the Jonas, hoping on his way to seize certain con-
traband fur-traders, reported to be at Canseau and
Cape Breton. Poutrincourt and Champlain, bent
on finding a better site for their settlement in a
more southern latitude, set out on a voyage of dis-
covery, in an ill-built vessel of eighteen tons, while
Lescarbot remained in charge of Port Royal. They
had little for their pains but danger, hardship, and
mishap. The autumn gales cut short their explo-
ration; and, after visiting Gloucester Harbor, dou-
bling Monomoy Point, and advancing as far as the
neighborhood of Hyannis, on the southeast coast
of Massachusetts, they turned back, somewhat dis-
gusted with their errand. Along the eastern verge
of Cape Cod they found the shore thickly studded
with the wigwams of a race who were less hunters
than tillers of the soil. At Chatham Harbor —
called by them Port Fortuné — five of the com-
pany, who, contrary to orders, had remained on
shore all night, were assailed, as they slept around
their fire, by a shower of arrows from four hundred
Indians. Two were killed outright, while the sur-
vivors fled for their boat, bristled like porcupines
with the feathered missiles, – a scene Oddly por-
trayed by the untutored pencil of Champlain. He
and Poutrincourt, with eight men, hearing the
war-whoops and the cries for aid, sprang up from
sleep, snatched their weapons, pulled ashore in their
shirts, and charged the yelling multitude, who fled
before their spectral assailants, and vanished in the
woods. “Thus,” observes Lescarbot, “did thirty-
1606. ANOTHER VOYAGE TO NEW ENGLAND. 265
five thousand Midianites fly before Gideon and his
three hundred.” The French buried their dead
comrades; but, as they chanted their funeral
hymn, the Indians, at a safe distance on a neigh-
boring hill, were dancing in glee and triumph, and
mocking them with unseemly gestures; and no
sooner had the party re-embarked, than they dug
up the dead bodies, burnt them, and arrayed them-
selves in their shirts. Tittle pleased with the
country or its inhabitants, the voyagers turned
their prow towards Port Royal, though not until,
by a treacherous device, they had lured some of
their late assailants within their reach, killed them,
and cut off their heads as trophies. Near Mount
Desert, on a stormy night, their rudder broke, and
they had a hair-breadth escape from destruction,
The chief object of their voyage, that of discover-
ing a site for their colony under a more southern
sky, had failed. Pontgravé's son had his hand
blown off by the bursting of his gun; several of
their number had been killed ; others were sick or
wounded ; and thus, on the fourteenth of Novem-
ber, with somewhat downcast visages, they guided
their helpless vessel with a pair of oars to the
landing at Port Royal.
“I will not,” says Lescarbot, “ compare their
perils to those of Ulysses, nor yet of Æneas, lest
thereby I should sully our holy enterprise with
things impure.”
He and his followers had been expecting them
with great anxiety. His alert and buoyant spirit
had conceived a plan for enlivening the courage
266 LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN. [1606.
of the company, a little dashed of late by misgiv-
ings and forebodings. Accordingly, as Poutrin-
court, Champlain, and their weather-beaten crew
approached the wooden gateway of Port Royal,
Neptune issued forth, followed by his tritons, who
greeted the voyagers in good French verse, written
in all haste for the occasion by Lescarbot. And,
as they entered, they beheld, blazoned over the
arch, the arms of France, circled with laurels, and
flanked by the scutcheons of De Monts and Pou-
trincourt."
The ingenious author of these devices had busied
himself, during the absence of his associates, in
more serious labors for the welfare of the colony.
He explored the low borders of the river Équille,
or Annapolis. Here, in the solitude, he saw great
meadows, where the moose, with their young, were
grazing, and where at times the rank grass was
beaten to a pulp by the trampling of their hoofs.
He burned the grass, and sowed crops of wheat,
rye, and barley in its stead. His appearance gave
so little promise of personal vigor, that some of the
party assured him that he would never see France
again, and warned him to husband his strength ;
but he knew himself better, and set at naught these
comforting monitions. He was the most diligent of
workers. He made gardens, near the fort, where,
in his zeal, he plied the hoe with his own hands
late into the moonlight evenings. The priests, of
whom at the outset there had been no lack, had all
1 Lescarbot, Muses de la Nouvelle France, where the programme is
given, and the speeches of Neptune and the tritons in full.
1607.] TORT ROYAL. 267
succumbed to the scurvy at St. Croix; and Lescar-
bot, so far as a layman might, essayed to supply
their place, reading on Sundays from the Scrip-
tures, and adding expositions of his own after a
fashion not remarkable for rigorous Catholicity.
Of an evening, when not engrossed with his gar-
den, he was reading or writing in his room, per-
haps preparing the material of that History of
New France in which, despite the versatility of
his busy brain, his good sense and capacity are
clearly made manifest.
Now, however, when the whole company were
reassembled, Lescarbot found associates more con-
genial than the rude soldiers, mechanics, and labor-
ers who gathered at night around the blazing logs
in their rude hall. Port Royal was a quadrangle
of wooden buildings, enclosing a spacious court.
At the southeast corner was the arched gateway,
whence a path, a few paces in length, led to the
water. It was flanked by a sort of bastion of pal-
isades, while at the southwest corner was another
bastion, on which four cannon were mounted. On
the east side of the quadrangle was a range of
magazines and storehouses; on the west were
quarters for the men; on the north, a dining-hall
and lodgings for the principal persons of the com-
pany; while on the south, or water side, were the
kitchen, the forge, and the oven. Except the gar-
den-patches and the cemetery, the adjacent ground
was thickly studded with the stumps of the newly
felled trees.
Most bountiful provision had been made for the
268 LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN. [1606.
temporal wants of the colonists, and Lescarbot is
profuse in praise of the liberality of De Monts and
two merchants of Rochelle, who had freighted the
ship Jonas. Of wine, in particular, the supply was
so generous, that every man in Port Royal was
served with three pints daily.
The principal persons of the colony sat, fifteen
in number, at Poutrincourt’s table, which, by an
ingenious device of Champlain, was always well
furnished. He formed the fifteen into a new
order, christened “L’Ordre de Bon-Temps.” Each
was Grand Master in turn, holding office for One
day. It was his function to cater for the com-
pany; and, as it became a point of honor to fill
the post with credit, the prospective Grand Master
was usually busy, for several days before coming
to his dignity, in hunting, fishing, or bartering
provisions with the Indians. Thus did Poutrin-
court's table groan beneath all the luxuries of the
winter forest : flesh of moose, Caribou, and deer,
beaver, otter, and hare, bears and wild-cats; with
ducks, geese, grouse, and plover; sturgeon, too,
and trout, and fish innumerable, speared through
the ice of the Equille, or drawn from the depths
of the neighboring bay. “And,” says Lescarbot,
in closing his bill of fare, “whatever our gour-
mands at home may think, we found as good cheer
at Port Royal as they at their Rue aux Ours" in
Paris, and that, too, at a cheaper rate.” For the
preparation of this manifold provision, the Grand
1 A short street between Rue St. Martin and Rue St. Denis, once re.
nowned for its restaurants.
1606.] I’ORDRE DE BON-TEMPS. 269
Master was also answerable; since, during his day
of office, he was autocrat of the kitchen. -
Nor did this bounteous repast lack a solemn
and befitting ceremonial. When the hour had
struck, - after the manner of our fathers they
dined at noon, — the Grand Master entered the
hall, a napkin on his shoulder, his staff of office in
his hand, and the collar of the Order — valued by
Lescarbot at four crowns — about his neck. The
brotherhood followed, each bearing a dish. The
invited guests were Indian chiefs, of whom old
Membertou was daily present, seated at table with
the French, who took pleasure in this red-skin
companionship. Those of humbler degree, war-
riors, squaws, and children, sat on the floor, or
crouched together in the corners of the hall,
eagerly waiting their portion of biscuit or of bread,
a novel and much coveted luxury. Being always
treated with kindness, they became fond of the
French, who often followed them on their moose-
hunts, and shared their winter bivouac.
At the evening meal there was less of form and
circumstance; and when the winter night closed in,
when the flame crackled and the sparks streamed
up the wide-throated chimney, and the founders of
New France with their tawny allies were gathered
around the blaze, then did the Grand Master re-
sign the collar and the staff to the successor of his
honors, and, with jovial courtesy, pledge him in a
cup of wine." Thus these ingenious Frenchmen
beguiled the winter of their exile.
1 Lescarbot, (1612,) II. 581.
270 LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN. 11607.
It was an unusually mild winter. Until Jan-
uary, they wore no warmer garment than their
doublets. They made hunting and fishing parties,
in which the Indians, whose lodges were always to
be seen under the friendly shelter of the buildings,
failed not to bear part. “I remember,” says Les-
carbot, “that on the fourteenth of January, of a
Sunday afternoon, we amused ourselves with sing-
ing and music on the river Equille, and that in
the same month we went to see the wheat-fields
two leagues from the fort, and dined merrily in
the sunshine.”
Good spirits and good cheer saved them in great
measure from the scurvy, and though towards the
end of winter severe cold set in, yet only four men
died. The snow thawed at last, and as patches of
the black and Oozy soil began to appear, they saw
the grain of their last autumn's sowing already
piercing the mould. The forced inaction of the
winter was over. The carpenters built a water-
mill on the stream now called Allen's River;
others enclosed fields and laid out gardens; others,
again, with scoop-nets and baskets, caught the her-
rings and alewives as they ran up the innumerable
rivulets. The leaders of the colony set a con-
tagious example of activity. Poutrincourt forgot
the prejudices of his noble birth, and went himself
into the woods to gather turpentine from the pines,
which he converted into tar by a process of his
own invention; while Lescarbot, eager to test the
qualities of the soil, was again, hoe in hand, at
work all day in his garden. -
1607.] HOPES BLIGHTED. 271
All seemed full of promise; but alas for the
bright hope that kindled the manly heart of Cham-
plain and the earnest spirit of the vivacious advo-
cate | A sudden blight fell on them, and their
rising prosperity withered to the ground. On a
morning, late in spring, as the French were at
breakfast, the ever watchful Membertou came in
with news of an approaching sail. They hastened
to the shore; but the vision of the centenarian
sagamore put them all to shame. They could see
nothing. At length their doubts were resolved.
A small vessel stood on towards them, and an-
chored before the fort. She was commanded by
one Chevalier, a young man from St. Malo, and
was freighted with disastrous tidings. De Monts's
monopoly was rescinded. The life of the enter-
prise was stopped, and the establishment at Port
Royal could no longer be supported; for its ex-
pense was great, the body of the colony being
laborers in the pay of the company. Nor was the
annulling of the patent the full extent of the dis-
aster; for, during the last summer, the Dutch had
found their way to the St. Lawrence, and carried
away a rich harvest of furs, while other inter-
loping traders had plied a busy traffic along the
coasts, and, in the excess of their avidity, dug up
the bodies of buried Indians to rob them of their
funeral robes. -
It was to the merchants and fishermen of the
Norman, Breton, and Biscayan ports, exasperated
at their exclusion from a lucrative trade, and at
the confiscations which had sometimes followed
272 LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN. [1607.
their attempts to engage in it, that this sudden
blow was due. Money had been used freely at
court, and the monopoly, unjustly granted, had
been more unjustly withdrawn. De Monts and
his company, who had spent a hundred thousand
livres, were allowed six thousand in requital, to
be collected, if possible, from the fur-traders in the
form of a tax.
Chevalier, captain of the ill-omened bark, was
entertained with a hospitality little deserved, since,
having been entrusted with sundry hams, fruits,
spices, sweetmeats, jellies, and other dainties, sent
by the generous De Monts to his friends of New
France, he with his crew had devoured them on
the voyage, alleging that, in their belief, the in-
mates of Port Royal would all be dead before their
arrival.
Choice there was none, and Port Royal must be
abandoned. Built on a false basis, sustained only
by the fleeting favor of a government, the gener-
ous enterprise had come to naught. Yet Poutrin-
court, who in virtue of his grant from De Monts
owned the place, bravely resolved that, come what
might, he would see the adventure to an end, even
should it involve emigration with his family to the
wilderness. Meanwhile, he began the dreary task
of abandonment, sending boat-loads of men and
stores to Canseau, where lay the ship Jonas, eking
out her diminished profits by fishing for cod.
Membertou was full of grief at the departure of
his friends. He had built a palisaded village not
far from Port Royal, and here were mustered some
1607.] PORT ROYAL ABANDONED. 273
four hundred of his warriors for a foray into the
country of the Armouchiquois, dwellers along the
coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and West-
ern Maine. One of his tribesmen had been killed
by a chief from the Saco, and he was bent on
revenge. He proved himself a sturdy beggar, pur-
suing Poutrincourt with daily petitions, now for a
bushel of beans, now for a basket of bread, and
now for a barrel of wine to regale his greasy crew.
Membertou's long life had not been one of repose.
In deeds of blood and treachery he had no rival in
the Acadian forest ; and, as his old age was beset
with enemies, his alliance with the French had a
foundation of policy no less than of affection. In
right of his rank of Sagamore, he claimed per-
fect equality both with Poutrincourt and with the
Ring, laying his shrivelled forefingers together in
token of friendship between peers. Calumny did
not spare him; and a rival chief intimated to the
French, that, under cover of a war with the Ar-
mouchiquois, the crafty veteran meant to seize and
plunder Port Royal. Precautions, therefore, were
taken ; but they were seemingly needless ; for,
their feasts and dances over, the warriors launched
their birchen flotilla and set out. After an absence
of six weeks they reappeared with howls of victory,
and their exploits were commemorated in French
verse by the muse of the indefatigable Lescarbot."
With a heavy heart the advocate bade farewell
to the dwellings, the cornfields, the gardens, and all
the dawning prosperity of Port Royal, and sailed
1 See Muses de la Nouvelle France.
18
274 LESCARBOT AND CHAMPLAIN. [1607.
for Canseau in a small vessel on the thirtieth of
July. Poutrincourt and Champlain remained be-
hind, for the former was resolved to learn before
his departure the results of his agricultural labors.
Reaching a harbor on the southern coast of Nova
Scotia, six leagues west of Canseau, Lescarbot found
a fishing-vessel commanded and owned by an old
Basque, named Savalet, who for forty-two succes-
sive years had carried to France his annual cargo
of codfish. He was in great glee at the success of
his present venture, reckoning his profits at ten
thousand francs. The Indians, however, annoyed
him beyond measure, boarding him from their
canoes as his fishing-boats came alongside, and
helping themselves at will to his halibut and cod.
At Canseau — a harbor near the strait now bearing
the name — the ship Jonas still lay, her hold well
stored with fish ; and here, on the twenty-seventh
of August, Lescarbot was rejoined by Poutrincourt
and Champlain, who had come from Port Royal in
an open boat. For a few days, they amused them-
selves with gathering raspberries on the islands;
then they spread their sails for France, and early
in October, 1607, anchored in the harbor of St.
Malo.
First of Europeans, they had essayed to found an
agricultural colony in the New World. The lead-
ers of the enterprise had acted less as merchants
than as citizens; and the fur-trading monopoly,
odious in itself, had been used as the instrument of
a large and generous design. There was a radical
defect, however, in their scheme of settlement.
1607.] CHARACTER OF THE ENTERPRISE. 275
Excepting a few of the leaders, those engaged in
it had not chosen a home in the wilderness of New
France, but were mere hirelings, without wives or
families, and careless of the welfare of the colony.
The life which should have pervaded all the mem-
bers was confined to the heads alone. In one re-
spect, however, the enterprise of De Monts was
truer in principle than the Roman Catholic coloni-
Zation of Canada, on the one hand, or the Puritan
colonization of Massachusetts, on the other, for it
did not attempt to enforce religious exclusion.
Towards the fickle and bloodthirsty race who
claimed the lordship of the forests, these colonists,
excepting only in the treacherous slaughter at Port
Fortuné, bore themselves in a spirit of kindness
contrasting brightly with the rapacious cruelty of
the Spaniards and the harshness of the English
settlers. When the last boat-load left Port Royal,
the shore resounded with lamentation; and noth-
ing could console the afflicted savages but reiterated
promises of a speedy return.
CHAPTER W.
1610, 1611.
THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS.
POUTRINCOURT AND THE JESUITS. – HE SAILS FOR ACADIA. — SUDDEN
CONVERSIONS. —BIENCOURT. — DEATH OF THE KING. — MADAME DE
GUERCHEVILLE. — BIARD AND MASSE.— THE JESUITs TRIUMPHANT.
BouTRINCOURT, we have seen, owned Port Royal
in virtue of a grant from De Monts. The ardent
and adventurous baron was in evil case, involved
in litigation and low in purse; but nothing could
damp his zeal. Acadia must become a new France,
and he, Poutrincourt, must be its father. He
gained from the King a confirmation of his grant,
and, to supply the lack of his own weakened re-
sources, associated with himself one Robin, a man
of family and wealth. This did not save him
from a host of delays and vexations; and it was
not until the spring of 1610 that he found himself
in a condition to embark on his new and doubtful
venture. * *
Meanwhile an influence, of sinister omen as he
thought, had begun to act upon his schemes. The
Jesuits were strong at court. One of their num-
ber, the famous Father Coton, was confessor to
Henry the Fourth, and, on matters of this world
as of the next, was ever whispering at the facile
ear of the renegade King. New France offered a
#610.] UNWELCOME ALLIES. 277
fresh field of action to the indefatigable Society
of Jesus, and Coton urged upon the royal Convert,
that, for the saving of souls, some of its members
should be attached to the proposed enterprise.
The King, profoundly indifferent in matters of re-
ligion, saw no evil in a proposal which at least
promised to place the Atlantic betwixt him and
some of those busy friends whom at heart he
deeply mistrusted." Other influences, too, seconded
the confessor. Devout ladies of the court, and the
Queen herself, supplying the lack of virtue with
an overflowing piety, burned, we are assured, with
a holy zeal for snatching the tribes of the West
from the bondage of Satan. Therefore it was in-
sisted that the projected colony should combine
the spiritual with the temporal character, or, in
other words, that Poutrincourt should take Jesuits
with him. Pierre Biard, Professor of Theology at
Lyons, was named for the mission, and repaired in
haste to Bordeaux, the port of embarkation, where
he found no vessel, and no sign of preparation;
and here, in wrath and discomfiture, he remained
for a whole year.
That Poutrincourt was a good Catholic appears
from a letter to the Pope, written for him in Latin
by Lescarbot, asking a blessing on his enterprise,
and assuring his Holiness that one of his grand
objects was the saving of souls.” But, like other
good citizens, he belonged to the national party in
1 The missionary Biard makes the characteristic assertion, that the
King initiated the Jesuit project, and that Father Coton merely obeyed
his orders. Biard, Relation, c. 11.
2 See Lescarbot, (1618,) 605.
278 THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS. (1610
the Church, those liberal Catholics, who, side by
side with the Huguenots, had made head against
the League, with its Spanish allies, and placed
Henry the Fourth upon the throne. The Jesuits,
an order Spanish in origin and policy, determined
champions of ultramontane principles, the sword
and shield of the Papacy in its broadest preten-
sions to spiritual and temporal sway, were to him,
as to others of his party, objects of deep dislike
and distrust. He feared them in his colony, evaded
what he dared not refuse, left Biard waiting in
solitude at Bordeaux, and sought to postpone the
evil day by assuring Father Coton that, though
Port Royal was at present in no state to receive
the missionaries, preparation should be made to
entertain them the next year after a befitting
fashion.
Poutrincourt owned the barony of St. Just in
Champagne, inherited a few years before from his
mother. Hence, early in February, 1610, he set
out in a boat loaded to the gunwales with pro-
visions, furniture, goods, and munitions for Port
Royal, descended the rivers Aube and Seine, and
reached Dieppe safely with his charge." Here his
ship was awaiting him ; and on the twenty-sixth
of February he set sail, giving the slip to the
indignant Jesuit at Bordeaux.
The tedium of a long passage was unpleasantly
broken by a mutiny among the crew. It was
suppressed, however, and Poutrincourt entered at
* Lescarbot, Relation Dernière, 6. This is a pamphlet of thirty-nine
pages, containing matters not included in the larger work.
1610.] INDLAN PROSELYTES. 279
length the familiar basin of Port Royal. The
buildings were still standing, whole and sound save
a partial falling in of the roofs. Even furniture
was found untouched in the deserted chambers.
The centenarian Membertou was still alive, his
leathern, wrinkled visage beaming with welcome.
Poutrincourt set himself without delay to the
task of Christianizing New France, in an access of
zeal which his desire of proving that Jesuit aid
was superfluous may be supposed largely to have
reinforced. He had a priest with him, one La
Flèche, whom he urged to the pious work. No
time was lost. Membertou first was catechised,
confessed his sins, and renounced the Devil, whom
we are told he had faithfully served during a
hundred and ten years. His squaws, his children,
his grandchildren, and his entire clan, were next
won over. It was in June, the day of St. John
the Baptist, when the naked proselytes, twenty-
One in number, were gathered on the shore at
Port Royal. Here was the priest in the vestments
of his office; here were gentlemen in gay attire,
soldiers, laborers, lackeys, all the infant colony.
The converts kneeled; the sacred rite was finished,
Te Deum was sung, and the roar of cannon pro-
claimed this triumph over the powers of darkness."
Membertou was named Henri, after the King;
his principal squaw, Marie, after the Queen. One
of his sons received the name of the Pope, an-
other that of the Dauphin ; his daughter was
called Marguerite, after the divorced Marguerite de
1 Lescarbot, Relation Dernière, 11.
280 THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS. [1610.
Valois, and, in like manner, the rest of the squalid
company exchanged their barbaric appellatives for
the names of princes, nobles, and ladies of rank."
The fame of this chef-d'oeuvre of Christian piety,
as Lescarbot gravely calls it, spread far and wide
through the forest, whose denizens, partly out of a
notion that the rite would bring good luck, partly
to please the French, and partly to share in the
good cheer with which the apostolic efforts of
Father La Flèche had been sagaciously seconded,
came flocking to enroll themselves under the ban-
ners of the Faith. Their zeal ran high. They
would take no refusal. Membertou was for war
on all who would not turn Christian. A living
skeleton was seen crawling from hut to hut in
search of the priest and his saving waters; while
another neophyte, at the point of death, asked
anxiously whether, in the realms of bliss to which
he was bound, pies were to be had comparable to
those with which the French regaled him.
A formal register of baptisms was drawn up to
be carried to France in the returning ship, of
which Poutrincourt’s son, Biencourt, a spirited
youth of eighteen, was to take charge. He sailed
in July, his father keeping him company as far
as Port la Hève, whence, bidding the young man
farewell, he attempted to return in an open boat
to Port Royal. A north wind blew him out to
sea; and for six days he was out of sight of
land, subsisting on rain-water wrung from the
boat's sail, and on a few wild-fowl which he had
1 Regitre de Baptème de l'Église du Port Royal en la Nouvelle France.
Iö10.] ASSASSINATION OF HENRY IV. 281
shot on an island. Five weeks passed before he
could rejoin his colonists, who, despairing of his
safety, were about to choose a new chief.
Meanwhile young Biencourt, speeding on his
way, heard dire news from a fisherman on the
Grand Bank. The knife of Ravaillac had done
its work. Henry the Fourth was dead.
There is an ancient street in Paris, where a
great thoroughfare contracts to a narrow pass,
the Rue de la Ferronnerie. Tall buildings over-
shadow it, packed from pavement to tiles with
human life, and from the dingy front of one of
them the sculptured head of a man looks down on
the throng that ceaselessly defiles beneath. On
the fourteenth of May, 1610, a ponderous coach,
studded with fleurs-de-lis and rich with gilding,
rolled along this street. In it was a small man,
well advanced in life, whose profile once seen
could not be forgotten: a hooked nose, a protrud-
ing chin, a brow full of wrinkles, grizzled hair, a
short, grizzled beard, and stiff, gray moustaches,
bristling like a cat's. One would have thought
him some whiskered satyr, grim from the rack of
tumultuous years; but his alert, upright port be-
spoke unshaken vigor, and his clear eye was full
of buoyant life. Following on the footway strode
a tall, strong, and somewhat corpulent man, with
sinister, deep-set eyes and a red beard, his arm
and shoulder covered with his cloak. In the
throat of the thoroughfare, where the sculptured
image of Henry the Fourth still guards the spot, a
collision of two carts stopped the coach. Ravaillac
282 THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS. 11610.
quickened his pace. In an instant he was at the
door. With his cloak dropped from his shoulders,
and a long knife in his hand, he set his foot upon
a guardstone, thrust his head and shoulders into
the coach, and with frantic force stabbed thrice
at the King's heart. A broken exclamation, a
gasping convulsion ; and then the grim visage
drooped on the bleeding breast. Henry breathed
his last, and the hope of Europe died with him.
The omens were sinister for Old France and for
New. Marie de Medicis, “ cette grosse banquière,”
coarse Scion of a bad stock, false wife and faithless
queen, paramour of an intriguing foreigner, tool
of the Jesuits and of Spain, was Regent in the
minority of her imbecile son. The Huguenots
drooped, the national party collapsed, the vigor
ous hand of Sully was felt no more, and the
treasure gathered for a vast and beneficent enter-
prise became the instrument of despotism and the
prey of corruption. Under such dark auspices,
young Biencourt entered the thronged chambers
of the Louvre.
He gained audience of the Queen, and displayed
his list of baptisms; while the ever present Jes-
uits failed not to seize him by the button,' assur-
ing him, not only that the late King had deeply
at heart the establishment of their Society in Aca-
dia, but that to this end he had made them a
grant of two thousand livres a year. The Jesuits
had found an ally and the intended mission a
1 Lescarbot, (1618,) 662 : “. . . . ne manquerent de l'empoigner par
les cheveux.”
1610.] MADAME DE GUERCHEVILLE. 283
friend at court, whose story and whose character
are too striking to pass unnoticed.
This was a lady of honor to the Queen, An-
toinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville, once
renowned for grace and beauty, and not less con-
spicuous for qualities rare in the unbridled court
of Henry's predecessor, where her youth had been
passed. When the civil war was at its height, the
royal heart, leaping, with insatiable restlessness
from battle to battle, from mistress to mistress,
had found a brief repose in the affections of his
Corisande, famed in tradition and romance; but
Corisande was suddenly abandoned, and the young
widow, Madame de Guercheville, became the load-
star of his erratic fancy. It was an evil hour for
the Béarnais. Henry sheathed in rusty steel, bat-
tling for his crown and his life, and Henry robed
in royalty and throned triumphant in the Louvre,
alike urged their suit in vain. Unused to defeat,
the King's passion rose higher for the obstacle that
barred it. On one occasion he was met with an
answer not unworthy of record : —
“Sire, my rank, perhaps, is not high enough to
permit me to be your wife, but my heart is too
high to permit me to be your mistress.” "
She left the court and retired to her chateau of
La Roche-Guyon, on the Seine, ten leagues below
Paris, where, fond of magnificence, she is said to
have lived in much expense and splendor. The
* A similar reply is attributed to Catherine de Rohan, Duchesse de
Deux-Ponts: “Jesuis trop pauvre pour étre votre femme, et de trop bonne
maison pour étre votre maitresse.” Her suitor also was Henry the Fourth,
Ductionnaire de Bayle, III. 2182.
284 THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS. [1610.
indefatigable King, haunted by her memory, made
a hunting-party in the neighboring forests; and,
as evening drew near, separating himself from his
courtiers, he sent a gentleman of his train to ask
of Madame de Guercheville the shelter of her roof.
The reply conveyed a dutiful acknowledgment of
the honor, and an offer of the best entertainment
within her power. It was night when Henry, with
his little band of horsemen, approached the chateau,
where lights were burning in every window, after
a fashion of the day on occasions of welcome to an
honored guest. Pages stood in the gateway, each
with a blazing torch ; and here, too, were gentle-
men of the neighborhood, gathered to greet their
sovereign. Madame de Guercheville came forth,
followed by the women of her household; and
when the King, unprepared for so benign a wel-
come, giddy with love and hope, saw her radiant in
pearls and more radiant yet in a beauty enhanced
by the wavy torchlight and the surrounding shad-
ows, he scarcely dared trust his senses : —
“Que vois-je, madame; est-ce bien vous, et suis-
je ce roi méprisé 2"
He gave her his hand, and she led him within
the chateau, where, at the door of the apartment
destined for him, she left him, with a graceful
reverence. The King, nowise disconcerted, did not
doubt that she had gone to give orders for his en-
tertainment, when an attendant came to tell him
that she had descended to the courtyard and called
for her coach. Thither he hastened in alarm : —
“What I am I driving you from your house 7”
* 610.] MADAME DE GUERCHEVILLE. 285
* Sire,'' replied Madame de Guercheville, * where
a king is, he should be the sole master ; but, for
my part, I like to preserve some little authority
wherever I may be.''
With another deep reverence, she entered her
coach and disappeared, seeking shelter under the
roof of a friend, some two leagues off, and leaving
the baffled King to such consolation as he might
find in a magnificent repast, bereft of the presence
of the hostess.*
l Mémoires de l'Abbé de Choisy, Liv. XII. The elaborate notices of Ma-
dame de Guercheville in the Biographie Générale and the Biographie Uni-
verselle are from this source. She figures under the name of Scilinde in
Les Amours du Grand Alcandre (Henry IV.). See Collection Petitot, LXIII.
515, note, where the passage is extracted. -
The Abbé de Choisy says that when the King was enamored of her she
was married to M. de Liancourt. This, it seems, is a mistake, this second
marriage not taking place till 1594. Madame de Guercheville refused
to take the name of Liancourt, because it had once been borne by the
Duchesse de Beaufort, who had done it no honor, —a scruple very reason-
ably characterized by her biographer as * trop affecté.''
The following is De Choisy's account :—
* Enfin ce prince s'avisa un jour, pour dernière ressource, de faire une
partie de chasse du côté de La Roche-Guyon ; et, sur la fin de la journée,
s'étant séparé de la plupart de ses courtisans, il envoya un gentilhomme à
La Roche-Guyon demander le couvert pour une nuit. Madame de Guerche-
ville, sans s'embarrasser, répondit au gentilhomme, que le Roi lui feroit
beaucoup d'honneur, et qu'elle le recevroit de son mieux. En effet, elle
donna ordre à un magnifique souper ; on éclaira toutes les fenêtres du
château avec des torches (c'étoit la mode en ce temps-là) ; elle se para de
ses plus beaux habits, se couvrit de perles (c'étoit aussi la mode); et lorsque
le Roi arriva à l'entrée de la nuit, elle alla le recevoir à la porte de sa
maison, accompagnée de toutes ses femmes, et de quelques gentilshommes
du voisinage. Des pages portoient les torches devant elle. Le Roi, trans-
porté de joie, la trouva plus belle que jamais : les ombres de la nuit, la
lumière des flambeaux, les diamans, la surprise d'un accueil si favorable et
si peu accoutumé, tout contribuait à renouveler ses anciennes blessures.
* Que vois-je, madame ? ' lui dit ce monarque tremblant ; "est-ce bien vous,
et suis-je ce roi méprisé ? ' Madame de Guercheville l'interrompit, en le
priant de monter dans son appartement pour se reposer. Il lui donna la
main. Elle le conduisit jusqu'à la porte de sa chambre, lui fit une grande
révérence, et se retira. Le Roi ne s'en étonna pas; il crut qu'elle vouloit
286 THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS, [1610
Henry could admire the virtue which he could
not vanquish ; and, long after, on his marriage, he
acknowledged his sense of her worth by begging
her to accept an honorable post near the person of
the Queen.
“Madame,” he said, presenting her to Marie
de Medicis, “I give you a lady of honor who is a
lady of honor indeed.”
Some twenty years had passed since the adven-
ture of La Roche-Guyon. Madame de Guercheville
had outlived the charms which had attracted her
royal suitor, but the virtue which repelled him
was reinforced by a devotion no less uncompromis-
ing. A rosary in her hand and a Jesuit at her
side, she realized the utmost wishes of the subtle
fathers who had moulded and who guided her.
She readily took fire when they told her of the
benighted souls of New France, and the wrongs
of Father Biard kindled her utmost indigmation.
She declared herself the protectress of the Ameri-
can missions; and the only difficulty, as a Jesuit
writer tells us, was to restrain her zeal within
reasonable bounds."
She had two illustrious coadjutors. The first
was the jealous Queen, whose unbridled rage and
aller donner ordre à la fête qu’elle lui préparoit. Mais il fut bien surpris
quand on lui vint dire qu’elle étoit déscendue dans sa cour, et qu’elle avoit
crié tout haut; Qu'on attelle mon cochel comme pour aller coucher hors de
chez elle. Il descendit aussitót, et tout €perdu lui dit: ‘Quoi! madame,
je vous chasserai de votre maison 3 ° “Sire,” lui répondit-elle d’un ton
ferme, “un roi doit étre le maitre partout oil il est; et pour moi, je suis
bien aise d’avoir quelque pouvoir dans les lieux oil je me trouve.’ Et,
sans vouloir l'écouter davantage, elle monta dans son coche, et alla coucher
a deux lieues de la chez une de ses amies.”
1 Charlevoix, I. 122.
1610.] 1BIARD AND MASSE. 287
vulgar clamor had made the Louvre a hell. The
second was Henriette d’Entragues, Marquise de
Werneuil, the crafty and capricious siren who had
awakened these conjugal tempests. To this singu-
lar coalition were joined many other ladies of the
court; for the pious flame, fanned by the Jesuits,
spread through hall and boudoir, and fair votaries
of the Loves and Graces found it a more grateful
task to win heaven for the heathen than to merit
it for themselves.
Young Biencourt saw it vain to resist. Biard
must go with him in the returning ship, and also
another Jesuit, Enemond Masse. The two fathers
repaired to Dieppe, wafted on the wind of court
favor, which they never doubted would bear them
to their journey's end. Not so, however. Poutrin-
court and his associates, in the dearth of their
own resources, had bargained with two Huguenot
merchants of Dieppe, Du Jardin and Du Quesne,
to equip and load the vessel, in consideration of
their becoming partners in the expected profits.
Their indignation was extreme when they saw the
intended passengers. They declared, that they
would not aid in building up a colony for the
profit of the king of Spain, nor risk their money
in a venture where Jesuits were allowed to inter-
meddle; and they closed with a flat refusal to
receive them on board, unless, they added with
patriotic sarcasm, the Queen would direct them to
transport the whole order beyond sea." Biard and
Masse insisted, on which the merchants demanded
1 Lescarbot, (1618,) 664.
288 THE JESUITS AND THEIR PATRONESS. (1611.
reimbursement for their outlay, as they would
have no further concern in the business.
Biard communicated with Father Coton, Father
Coton with Madame de Guercheville. No more
was needed. The zealous lady of honor, “indig-
nant,” says Biard, “to see the efforts of hell pre-
Vail,” and resolved “that Satan should not remain
master of the field,” set on foot a subscription,
and raised an ample fund within the precincts of
the court. Biard, in the name of the “Province
of France of the Order of Jesus,” bought out the
interest of the two merchants for thirty-eight hun-
dred livres, thus constituting the Jesuits equal
partners in business with their enemies. Nor was
this all; for, out of the ample proceeds of the sub-
Scription, he lent to the needy associates a further
sum of seven hundred and thirty-seven livres, and
advanced twelve hundred and twenty-five more to
complete the outfit of the ship. Well pleased, the
triumphant priests now embarked, and friend and
foe set sail together on the twenty-sixth of Jan-
uary, 1611."
1 Contract d’Association des Jesuites au Trafique du Canada, 20 Jan.,
1611; a certified copy of the original parchment. It is noteworthy that
the first contract of the French Jesuits in America relates to a partnership
to carry on the fur-trade. Compare Lescarbot, (1618,) 665; Biard, Rela-
tion, c. 12; Champlain, (1632,) 100; Charlevoix, I. 123; De Laet, Lib. II.
c. 21; Lettre du P. Pierre Biard au T. R. P. Claude Aquaviva, Général
de la Compagnie de Jésus à Rome, Dieppe, 21 Jan., 1611; Lettre du P.
Biard au R. P. Christophe Balthazar, Provincial de France à Paris, Port
Royal, 10 Juin, 1611; Lettre du P. Biard au T. R. P. Claude Aquaviva,
Port Royal, 31 Jan., 1612. These letters form part of an interesting col-
lection recently published by R. P. Auguste Carayon, S. J., under the
title, Première Mission des Jesuites au Canada (Paris, 1864). They are
taken from the Jesuit archives at Rome.
CHAPTER WI.
1611, 1612.
JESUITS IN ACADIA.
THE JESUITS ARRIVE. – Collision OF POWERS TEMPORAL AND SPIRIT-
UAL. — Excursion of BIENCOURT. — BIARD'S INDIAN STUDIES. —
MISERY AT PORT Roy AL. — GRANT TO MADAME DE GUERCHEVILLE.
— GILBERT DU THET. — QUARRELS. — ANATHEMAS. – TRUCE.
THE voyage was one of inordinate length, –
beset, too, with icebergs, larger and taller, accord-
ing to the Jesuit voyagers, than the Church of
Notre Dame; but on the day of Pentecost their
ship, “The Grace of God,” anchored before Port
Royal. Then first were seen in the wilderness of
New France the close black cap, the close black
robe, of the Jesuit father, and the features seamed
with study and thought and discipline. Then
first did this mighty. Proteus, this many-colored
Society of Jesus, enter upon that rude field of toil
and woe, where, in after years, the devoted zeal of
its apostles was to lend dignity to their order and
do honor to humanity.
Few were the regions of the known world to
which the potent brotherhood had not stretched
the vast network of its influence. Jesuits had
disputed in theology with the bonzes of Japan,
and taught astronomy to the mandarins of China ;
had wrought prodigies of sudden conversion among
- 19
290 JESUITS IN ACADIA, [1611.
the followers of Brahma, preached the papal su-
premacy to Abyssinian schismatics, carried the
cross among the savages of Caffraria, wrought
reputed miracles in Brazil, and gathered the tribes
of Paraguay beneath their paternal sway. And
now, with the aid of the Virgin and her votary at
court, they would build another empire among the
tribes of New France. The omens were sinister
and the outset was unpropitious. The Society was
destined to reap few laurels from the brief apostle-
ship of Biard and Masse.
When the voyagers landed, they found at Port
Royal a band of half-famished men, eagerly ex-
pecting their succor. The voyage of four months
had, however, nearly exhausted their own very
moderate stock of provisions, and the mutual con-
gratulations of the old colonists and the new were
damped by a vision of starvation. A friction,
too, sspeedily declared itself between the spiritual
and the temporal powers. Pontgravé's son, then
trading on the coast, had exasperated the Indians
by an outrage on One of their women, and, dread-
ing the wrath of Poutrincourt, had fled to the
woods. Biard saw fit to take his part, remon-
strated for him with vehemence, gained his par-
don, received his confession, and absolved him.
The Jesuit says, that he was treated with great
consideration by Poutrincourt, and that he should
be forever beholden to him. The latter, however,
chafed at Biard's interference.
“Father,” he said, “I know my duty, and I beg
you will leave me to do it. I, with my sword,
1611.] IEXCURSION OF BIENCOURT. 291
have hopes of paradise, as well as you with your
breviary. Show me my path to heaven. I will
show you yours on earth.” "
He soon set sail for France, leaving his son Bien-
court in charge. This hardy young sailor, of
ability and character beyond his years, had, on his
visit to court, received the post of Vice-Admiral in
the seas of New France, and in this capacity had
a certain authority over the trading-vessels of St.
Malo and Rochelle, several of which were upon
the coast. To compel the recognition of this au-
thority, and also to purchase provisions, he set out
along with Biard in a boat filled with armed fol-
lowers. His first collision was with young Pont-
gravé, who with a few men had built a trading-hut
on the St. John, where he proposed to winter.
Meeting with resistance, Biencourt took the whole
party prisoners, in spite of the remonstrances of
Biard. Next, proceeding along the coast, he
levied tribute on four or five traders wintering at
St. Croix, and, continuing his course to the Kenne-
bec, found the Indians of that region greatly en-
raged at the conduct of certain English adventurers,
who, three or four years before, had, as they said,
set dogs upon them and otherwise maltreated
them. These were the colonists under Popham
and Gilbert, who in 1607 and 1608 made an abor-
tive attempt to settle near the mouth of the river.
Nothing now was left of them but their deserted
fort. The neighboring Indians were Abenakis,
1 Lescarbot, (1618,) 669. Compare Biard, Relation, c. 14; and Biard,
Lettre au R. P. Christophe Balthazar, in Carayon, 9.
292 JESUITS IN ACAIDIA. [1611.
one of the tribes included by the French under the
general name of Armouchiquois. Their disposi-
tion was doubtful, and it needed all the coolness
of young Biencourt to avoid a fatal collision. On
one occasion a curious incident took place. The
French met six canoes full of warriors descending
the Kennebec, and, as neither party trusted the
other, the two encamped on Opposite banks of the
river. In the evening the Indians began to sing
and dance. Biard suspected these proceedings to
be an invocation of the Devil, and “in order,” he
says, “to thwart this accursed tyrant, I made our
people sing a few church hymns, such as the Salve,
the Ave Maris Stella, and others. But being once
in train, and getting to the end of their spiritual
songs, they fell to singing such others as they
knew, and when these gave out they took to mim-
icking the dancing and singing of the Armouchi-
quois on the other side of the water; and as
Frenchmen are naturally good mimics, they did it
so well that the Armouchiquois stopped to listen ;
at which our people stopped too; and then the
Indians began again. You would have laughed to
hear them, for they were like two choirs answering
each other in concert, and you would hardly have
known the real Armouchiquois from the sham
ones.”
Before the capture of young Pontgravé, Biard
made him a visit at his camp, six leagues up the
St. John. Pontgravé's men were sailors from St.
Malo, between whom and the other Frenchmen
there was much ill blood. Biard had hardly en-
1611.] MEMBERTOU. 293
tered the river when he saw the evening sky
crimsoned with the dancing fires of a superb
aurora borealis, and he and his attendants mar-
velled what evil thing the prodigy might portend.
Their Indian companions said that it was a sign
of war. In fact, the night after they had joined
Pontgravé a furious quarrel broke out in the camp,
with abundant shouting, gesticulating, and swear-
ing; and, says the father, “I do not doubt that
an accursed band of furious and sanguinary spirits
were hovering about us all night, expecting every
moment to see a horrible massacre of the few
Christians in those parts; but the goodness of God
bridled their malice. No blood was shed, and on
the next day the squall ended in a fine calm.”
He did not like the Indians, whom he describes
as “lazy, gluttonous, irreligious, treacherous, cruel,
and licentious.” He makes an exception in favor
of Membertou, whom he calls “the greatest, most
renowned, and most redoubted Savage that ever
lived in the memory of man,” and especially com-
mends him for contenting himself with but one wife,
hardly a superlative merit in a centenarian. Biard
taught him to say the Lord's Prayer, though at
the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread,”
the chief remonstrated, saying, “If I ask for moth-
ing but bread, I shall get no fish or moose-meat.”
His protracted career was now drawing to a close,
and, being brought to the settlement in a dying
state, he was placed in Biard's bed and attended by
the two Jesuits. He was as remarkable in person
as in character, for he was bearded like a French-
294 JESUITS IN ACADIA. [1611.
man. Though, alone among La Flèche's converts,
the Faith seemed to have left some impression
upon him, he insisted on being buried with his
heathen forefathers, but was persuaded to forego
a wish fatal to his salvation, and slept at last in
consecrated ground.
Another of the scanty fruits of the mission was
a little girl on the point of death, whom Biard had
asked her parents to give him for baptism. “Take
her and keep her, if you like,” was the reply, “for
she is no better than a dead dog.” “We accepted
the offer,” says Biard, “in order to show them the
difference between Christianity and their impi-
ety; and after giving her what care we could, to-
gether with some instruction, we baptized her.
We named her after Madame the Marquise de
Guercheville, in gratitude for the benefits we
have received from that lady, who can now re-
joice that her name is already in heaven; for, a
few days after baptism, the chosen soul flew to
that place of glory.”
Biard’s greatest difficulty was with the Micmac
language. Young Biencourt was his best inter-
preter, and on common occasions served him well;
but the moment that religion was in question he
was, as it were, stricken dumb, the reason being
that the language was totally without abstract
terms. Biard resolutely set himself to the study of
it, a hard and thorny path, On which he made small
progress, and often went astray. Seated, pencil
in hand, before some Indian squatting on the floor,
whom with the bribe of a mouldy biscuit he had
1611.] 1DISCORD. — DESPONDENCY. 295
lured into the hut, he plied him with questions
which he often neither would nor could answer.
What was the Indian word for Faith, Hope,
Charity, Sacrament, Baptism, Eucharist, Trinity,
Incarnation & The perplexed Savage, willing to
amuse himself, and impelled, as Biard thinks, by
the Devil, gave him scurrilous and unseemly
phrases as the equivalent of things holy, which,
studiously incorporated into the father's Indian
catechism, produced on his pupils an effect the re-
verse of that intended. Biard's colleague, Masse,
was equally zealous, and still less fortunate. He
tried a forest life among the Indians with signal
ill success. Hard fare, smoke, filth, the scolding
of squaws, and the cries of children, reduced him
to a forlorn condition of body and mind, wore him
to a skeleton, and sent him back to Port Royal
without a single convert.
The dark months wore slowly on. A band of
half-famished men gathered about the huge fires
of their barn-like hall, moody, sullen, and quarrel-
some. Discord was here in the black robe of the
Jesuit and the brown capote of the rival trader.
The position of the wretched little colony may well
provoke reflection. Here lay the shaggy continent,
from Florida to the Pole, outstretched in savage
slumber along the sea, the stern domain of Nature,
or, to adopt the ready solution of the Jesuits, a
realm of the powers of night, blasted beneath the
sceptre of hell. On the banks of James River
was a nest of woe-begone Englishmen, a handful
of Dutch fur-traders at the mouth of the Hud-
296 JESUITS IN ACAIDIA. [1612.
son," and a few shivering Frenchmen among the
snow-drifts of Acadia; while deep within the wild
monotony of desolation, on the icy verge of the great
northern river, the hand of Champlain upheld the
fleur-de-lis on the rock of Quebec. These were the
advance guard, the forlorn hope of civilization,
messengers of promise to a desert continent. Yet,
unconscious of their high function, not content
with inevitable woes, they were rent by petty
jealousies and miserable feuds, while each of these
detached fragments of rival nationalities, scarcely
able to maintain its own wretched existence on a
few square miles, begrudged to the others the
Smallest share in a domain which all the nations
of Europe could hardly have sufficed to fill.
One evening, as the forlorn tenants of Port Royal
sat together disconsolate, Biard was seized with a
spirit of prophecy. He called upon Biencourt to
serve out the little of wine that remained, - a pro-
posal which met with high favor from the com-
pany present, though apparently with none from
the youthful Vice-Admiral. The wine was ordered,
however, and, as an unwonted cheer ran around the
circle, the Jesuit announced that an inward voice
told him how, within a month, they should see a
ship from France. In truth, they saw one within
- a week. On the twenty-third of January, 1612,
arrived a small vessel laden with a moderate store
of provisions and abundant seeds of future strife.
1 It is not certain that the Dutch had any permanent trading-post here
before 1613, when they had four houses at Manhattan. O’Callaghan, Hist
New Netherland, I. 69.
26.12.) GRANT TO MADAME DE GUERCHEVILLE. 297
This was the expected succor sent by Poutrin-
court. A series of ruinous voyages had exhausted
his resources; but he had staked all on the success
of the colony, had even brought his family to Aca-
dia, and he would not leave them and his com-
panions to perish." His credit was gone; his hopes
were dashed ; yet assistance was proffered, and, in
his extremity, he was forced to accept it. It came
from Madame de Guercheville and her Jesuit ad-
visers. She offered to buy the interest of a thou-
sand crowns in the enterprise. The ill-omened
succor could not be refused; but this was not all.
The zealous protectress of the missions obtained
from De Monts, whose fortunes, like those of Pou-
trincourt, had ebbed low, a transfer of all his
claims to the lands of Acadia; while the young
King, Louis the Thirteenth, was persuaded to give
her, in addition, a new grant of all the territory of
North America, from the St. Lawrence to Florida.
Thus did Madame de Guercheville, or in other
words, the Jesuits who used her name as a cover,
become proprietors of the greater part of the future
United States and British Provinces. The English
colony of Virginia and the Dutch trading-houses of
New York were included within the limits of this
destined Northern Paraguay, while Port Royal, the
seigniory of the unfortunate Poutrincourt, was en-
compassed, like a petty island, by the vast domain
of the Society of Jesus. They could not deprive
him of it, since his title had been confirmed by the
1 Biard, Epistola ex Portu-regali in Acadia, 1612. Biard says that there
was no other family in the colony.
298 JESUITS IN ACAIDIA. [1612.
late King, but they flattered themselves, to borrow
their own language, that he would be “confined
as in a prison.”’ His grant, however, had been
vaguely worded, and, while they held him re-
stricted to an insignificant patch of ground, he
claimed lordship over a wide and indefinite terri-
tory. Here was argument for endless strife. Other
interests, too, were adverse. Poutrincourt, in his
discouragement, had abandoned his plan of lib-
eral colonization, and now thought of nothing but
beaver-skins. He wished to make a trading-post ;
the Jesuits wished to make a mission.
When the vessel anchored before Port Royal,
Biemcourt, with disgust and anger, saw another
Jesuit landed at the pier. This was Gilbert du
Thet, a lay brother, versed in affairs of this world,
who had come out as representative and adminis-
trator of Madame de Guercheville. Poutrincourt,
also, had his agent on board ; and, without the
loss of a day, the two began to quarrel. A
truce ensued; then a smothered feud, pervading
the whole colony, and ending in a notable explo-
sion. The Jesuits, chafing under the sway of
Biencourt, had withdrawn without ceremony, and
betaken themselves to the vessel, intending to
sail for France. Biencourt, exasperated at such a
breach of discipline, and fearing their representa-
tions at court, Ordered them to return, adding
that, since the Queen had commended them to his
especial care, he could not, in conscience, lose sight
of them. The indignant fathers excommunicated
1 Biard, Relation, c. 19.
1612.] BIENCOURT AND THE PRIESTS. 299
him. On this, the sagamore Louis, son of the
grisly convert Membertou, begged leave to kill
them ; but Biencourt would not countenance this
summary mode of relieving his embarrassment.
He again, in the King's name, ordered the clerical
mutineers to return to the fort. Biard declared
that he would not, threatened to excommunicate
any who should lay hand on him, and called the
Vice-Admiral a robber. His wrath, however, soon
cooled ; he yielded to necessity, and came quietly
ashore, where, for the next three months, neither
he nor his colleagues would say mass, or perform
any office of religion." At length a change came
Over him ; he made advances of peace, prayed that
the past might be forgotten, said mass again, and
closed with a petition that Brother du Thet might
be allowed to go to France in a trading vessel then
On the coast. His petition being granted, he wrote
to Poutrincourt a letter overflowing with praises of
his son ; and, charged with this missive, Du Thet
set sail. &
1 Lescarbot, (1618,) 676. Biard passes over the affair in silence. In
his letters (see Carayon) prior to this time, he speaks favorably both of
Biencourt and Poutrincourt.
CHAPTER VII.
1613.
LA SAUSSAYE. — ARGALL,
Voyag|E OF LA SAUSSAYE. — MoUNT DESERT. — ARGALL ATTACKs THE
ERENCH. — DEATH OF DU THET. — ST. SAUVEUR DESTROYED.
PENDING these squabbles, the Jesuits at home
were far from idle. Bent on ridding themselves of
Poutrincourt, they seized, in satisfaction of debts
due them, all the cargo of his returning vessel, and
involved him in a network of litigation. If we ac-
cept his own statements in a letter to his friend
Lescarbot, he was outrageously misused, and in-
deed defrauded, by his clerical copartners, who at
length had him thrown into prison." Here, exas-
perated, weary, sick of Acadia, and anxious for the
wretched exiles who looked to him for succor, the
unfortunate man fell ill. Regaining his liberty, he
again addressed himself with what strength re-
mained to the forlorn task of sending relief to his
son and his comrades.
Scarcely had Brother Gilbert du Thet arrived in
France, when Madame de Guercheville and her
Jesuits, strong in court favor and in the charity
of wealthy penitents, prepared to take possession
of their empire beyond sea. Contributions were
1 See the letter, in Lescarbot, (1618,) 678.
1613.) VOYAGE OF LA SAUSSAYE. 30I
asked, and not in vain; for the Sagacious fathers,
mindful of every spring of influence, had deeply
studied the mazes of feminine psychology, and
then, as now, were favorite confessors of the fair.
It was on the twelfth of March, 1613, that the
“Mayflower” of the Jesuits sailed from Honfleur
for the shores of New England. She was the
“Jonas,” formerly in the service of De Monts, a
small craft bearing forty-eight sailors and colonists,
including two Jesuits, Father Quentin and Brother
Du Thet. She carried horses, too, and goats, and
was abundantly stored with all things needful by
the pious munificence of her patrons. A courtier
named La Saussaye was chief of the colony, Cap-
tain Charles Fleury commanded the ship," and, as
she winged her way across the Atlantic, benedic-
tions hovered over her from lordly halls and per-
fumed chambers.
On the sixteenth of May, La Saussaye touched
at La Hève, where he heard mass, planted a
cross, and displayed the scutcheon of Madame de
Guercheville. Thence, passing on to Port Royal,
he found Biard, Masse, their servant-boy, an
apothecary, and one man beside. Biencourt and
his followers were scattered about the woods and
shores, digging the tuberous roots called ground-
nuts, catching alewives in the brooks, and by
similar expedients sustaining their miserable exist-
ence. Taking the two Jesuits on board, the voy-
1 Rapport fait & l’Amirauté de Rouen par Charles Fleury, Capitaine du
Jonas, le 27 Aoust, 1614. I am indebted to M. Gabriel Gravier of Rouen
for a copy of this document.
302 LA SAUSSAYE. — ARGALL. {1613.
agers steered for the Penobscot. A fog rose upon
the sea. They sailed to and fro, groping their
way in blindness, straining their eyes through the
mist, and trembling each instant lest they should
descry the black outline of some deadly reef and
the ghostly death-dance of the breakers. But
Heaven heard their prayers. At night they could
see the stars." The sun rose resplendent on a
laughing sea, and his morning beams streamed
fair and full on the wild heights of the island of
Mount Desert. They entered a bay that stretched
inland between iron-bound shores, and gave it the
name of St. Sauveur. It is now called French-
man's Bay. They saw a coast-line of weather-
beaten crags set thick with spruce and fir, the
surf-washed cliffs of Great Head and Schooner
Head, the rocky front of Newport Mountain,
patched with ragged woods, the arid domes of
Dry Mountain and Green Mountain, the round
bristly backs of the Porcupine Islands, and the
waving outline of the Gouldsborough Hills.
La Saussaye cast anchor not far from Schooner
Head, and here he lay till evening. The jet-black
shade betwixt crags and sea, the pines along the
cliff, pencilled against the fiery sunset, the dreamy
slumber of distant mountains bathed in shadowy
purple, – such is the scene that in this Our day
1 “Suruint en mer vne si espaisse brume, que nous n'y voyons pas plus
de iour que de nuict. Nous apprehendions grandement ce danger, parce
qu’en cét endroict, il y a beaucoup de brisans et rochers. . . . . De Sa
bonté, Dieu nous exauça, car le soir mesme nous commençasmes a voir les
estoiles, et le matin les brouées se dissiperent; nous nous reconnusmes
estre au deuant des Monts deserts.” Biard, Relation, c. 23.
té13.] MOUNT DESERT. 303
greets the wandering artist, the roving collegian
bivouacked on the shore, or the pilgrim from stifled
cities renewing his jaded strength in the mighty
life of Nature. Perhaps they then greeted the ad-
venturous Frenchmen. There was peace on the
wilderness and peace on the sea; but none in this
missionary bark, pioneer of Christianity and civili-
zation. A rabble of angry sailors clamored on her
deck, ready to mutiny over the terms of their en-
gagement. Should the time of their stay be reck-
oned from their landing at La Hève, or from their
anchoring at Mount Desert 2 Fleury, the naval
commander, took their part. Sailor, courtier, and
priest gave tongue together in vociferous debate.
Poutrincourt was far away, a ruined man; and the
intractable Vice-Admiral had ceased from troub-
ling; yet not the less were the Omens of the pious
enterprise sinister and dark. The company, how-
ever, went ashore, raised a cross, and heard mass.
At a distance in the woods they saw the signal
smoke of Indians, whom Biard lost no time in vis-
iting. Some of them were from a village on the
shore, three leagues westward. They urged the
French to go with them to their wigwams. The
astute savages had learned already how to deal
with a Jesuit.
“Our great chief, Asticou, is there. He wishes
for baptism. He is very sick. He will die unbap-
tized. He will burn in hell, and it will be all your
fault.”
This was enough. Biard embarked in a canoe,
and they paddled him to the spot, where he found
304 LA SAUSSAYE. – ARGALL. [1613.
the great chief, Asticou, in his wigwam, with a
heavy cold in the head. Disappointed of his char-
itable purpose, the priest consoled himself with
observing the beauties of the neighboring shore,
which seemed to him better fitted than St. Sau-
veur for the intended settlement. It was a gen-
tle slope, descending to the water, covered with
tall grass, and backed by rocky hills. It looked
southeast upon a harbor where a fleet might ride
at anchor, sheltered from the gales by a cluster of
islands."
The ship was brought to the spot, and the colo-
nists disembarked. First they planted a cross;
then they began their labors, and, with their la-
bors, their quarrels. La Saussaye, Zealous for ag-
riculture, wished to break ground and raise crops
immediately; the rest opposed him, wishing first
to be housed and fortified. Fleury demanded that
the ship should be unladen, and La Saussaye would
not consent.” Debate ran high, when suddenly all
1 Biard says that the place was only three leagues from St. Sauveur,
and that he could go and return in an afternoon. He adds that it was
“séparé de la grande Isle des Monts Déserts.” He was evidently mistaken
in this. St. Sauveur being on the east side of Mount Desert, there is no
place separated from it, and answering to his description, which he could
have reached within the time mentioned. He no doubt crossed Mount
Desert Sound, which, with Soames's Sound, nearly severs the island. The
settlement must have been on the western side of Soames's Sound. Here,
about a mile from the open sea, on the farm of Mr. Fernald, is a spot per-
fectly answering to the minute description of Biard: “Le terroir noir, gras,
et fertile, . . . . la jolie colline esleuée doucement sur la mer, et baignée à
ses costez de deux fontaines; . . . . les petites islettes qui rompent les flots et
les vents.” The situation is highly picturesque. On the opposite or east-
ern shore of the sound are found heaps of clam-shells and other indica.
tions of an Indian village, probably that of Asticou. ..I am indebted to
E. L. Hamlin, Esq., of Bangor, for pointing out this locality.
* Rapport de Fleury a l'Amrauté de Rouen.
.613.) THE ENEMY IN SIGHT. 305
was harmony, and the disputants were friends once
more in the pacification of a common danger.
Far out at sea, beyond the islands that sheltered
their harbor, they saw an approaching sail; and,
as she drew near, straining their anxious eyes, they
could descry the red flags that streamed from her
masthead and her stern ; then the black muzzles of
her cannon, — they counted seven on a side; then
the throng of men upon her decks. The wind was
brisk and fair; all her sails were set ; she came on,
writes a spectator, more swiftly than an arrow."
Six years before, in 1607, the ships of Captain
Newport had conveyed to the banks of James River
the first vital germ of English colonization on the
continent. Noble and wealthy speculators, with
Hispaniola, Mexico, and Peru for their inspiration,
had combined to gather the fancied golden harvest
of Virginia, received a charter from the Crown, and
taken possession of their El Dorado. From tavern,
gaming-house, and brothel was drawn the staple
of the colony, - ruined gentlemen, prodigal Sons,
disreputable retainers, debauched tradesmen. Yet
it would be foul slander to affirm that the founders
of Virginia were all of this stamp; for among the
riotous crew were men of worth, and, above them
all, a hero disguised by the homeliest of names.
Again and again, in direst woe and jeopardy, the
infant settlement owed its life to the heart and
hand of John Smith.
1 “Ta nauire Anglois venoit plus viste qu'un dard, ayant le vent a sou-
hait, tout pauis de rouge, les pauillons d’Angleterre flottans, et trois
trompettes et deux tambours faisans rage de, sonner.” Biard, Relation,
C. 25.
20
306 LA SAUSSAYE. — ARGALL. [1618.
Several years had elapsed since Newport's voy.
age; and the colony, depleted by famine, disease,
and an Indian war, had been recruited by fresh
emigration, when one Samuel Argall arrived at
Jamestown, captain of an illicit trading-vessel.
He was a man of ability and force, — one of those
compounds of craft and daring in which the age
was fruitful; for the rest, unscrupulous and grasp.
ing. In the spring of 1613 he achieved a charac-
teristic exploit, the abduction of Pocahontas, that
most interesting of young Squaws, or, to borrow
the style of the day, of Indian princesses. Sailing
up the Potomac, he lured her on board his ship,
and then carried off the benefactress of the colony
a prisoner to Jamestown. Here a young man of
family, Rolfe, became enamored of her, married
her with more than ordinary ceremony, and thus
secured a firm alliance between her tribesmen and
the English.
Meanwhile Argall had set forth on another en-
terprise. With a ship of one hundred and thirty
tons, carrying fourteen guns and sixty men, he
sailed in May for islands off the coast of Maine to
fish, as he says, for cod." He had a more impor-
tant errand, for Sir Thomas Dale, Governor of Vir-
ginia, had commissioned him to expel the French
from any settlement they might have made within
the limits of King James's patents.” Thick fogs
involved him ; and, when the weather cleared, he
found himself not far from the Bay of Penobscot.
1 Letter of Argall to Nicholas Hawes, June, 1613, in Purchas, IV. 1764,
2 Collections Mass. Hist, Soc., Fourth Series, IX. 41, 489.
1613.) ARGALL AND HIS PRIZE. 307
Canoes came out from shore; the Indians climbed
the ship's side, and, as they gained the deck,
greeted the astonished English with an odd panto-
mime of bows and flourishes, which, in the belief
of the latter, could have been learned from none
but Frenchmen." By signs, too, and by often
repeating the word Norman, – by which they
always designated the French, – they betrayed
the presence of the latter. Argall questioned them
as well as his total ignorance of their language
would permit, and learned, by signs, the position
and numbers of the colonists. Clearly they were
no match for him. Assuring the Indians that the
Normans were his friends, and that he longed to
see them, he retained one of the visitors as a
guide, dismissed the rest with presents, and shaped
his course for Mount Desert.”
Now the wild heights rose in view; now the
English could see the masts of a small ship an-
chored in the sound; and now, as they rounded
the islands, four white tents were visible on the
grassy slope between the water and the woods.
They were a gift from the Queen to Madame
de Guercheville and her missionaries. Argall's
men prepared for fight, while their Indian guide,
amazed, broke into a howl of lamentation.
On shore all was confusion. Bailleul, the pilot,
* “. . . . et aux cérémonies que les sauvages faisoient pour leur com-
plaire, ils recognoissoient que c'étoient cerémonies de courtoisie et ciuilitez
françoises.” Biard, Relation, c. 25.
* Holmes, American Annals, by a misapprehension of Champlain's
narrative, represents Argall as having a squadron of eleven ships. He
certainly had but one.
308 IA SAUSSAYE. — ARGALL. {1612.
went to reconnoitre, and ended by hiding among
the islands. La Saussaye lost presence of mind,
and did nothing for defence. La Motte, his lieu-
tenant, with Captain Fleury, an ensign, a sergeant,
the Jesuit Du Thet, and a few of the bravest men,
hastened on board the vessel, but had no time to
cast loose her cables. Argall bore down on them,
with a furious din of drums and trumpets, showed
his broadside, and replied to their hail with a
volley of cannon and musket shot. “Fire! Fire!”
screamed Fleury. But there was no gunner to
obey, till Du Thet seized and applied the match.
“The cannon made as much noise as the enemy’s,”
writes Biard; but, as the inexperienced artillerist
forgot to aim the piece, no other result ensued.
Another storm of musketry, and Brother Gilbert
du Thet rolled helpless on the deck. The French
ship was mute. The English plied her for a time
with shot, then lowered a boat and boarded.
Under the awnings which covered her, dead and
wounded men lay strewn about her deck, and
among them the brave lay brother, smothering in
his blood. He had his wish ; for, on leaving
France, he had prayed with uplifted hands that
he might not return, but perish in that holy enter-
prise. Like the Order of which he was a humble
member, he was a compound of qualities in ap-
pearance contradictory. La Motte, sword in hand,
showed fight to the last, and won the esteem of
his captors."
1 Fleury, who was wounded, greatly blames the flight of La Saussaye:
“Siluyet ses dicts compagnons eussent donné combat et se fussent de-
#613.] CONDUCT OF ARGALL. 309
The English landed without meeting any show
of resistance, and ranged at will among the tents,
the piles of baggage and stores, and the buildings
and defences newly begun. Argall asked for the
commander, but La Saussaye had fled to the woods.
The crafty Englishman seized his chests, caused
the locks to be picked, searched till he found the
royal letters and commissions, withdrew them,
replaced everything else as he had found it, and
again closed the lids. In the morning, La Saus-
saye, between the English and starvation, pre-
ferred the former, and issued from his hiding-place.
Argall received him with studious courtesy. That
country, he said, belonged to his master, King
James. Doubtless they had authority from their
own sovereign for thus encroaching upon it; and,
for his part, he was prepared to yield all respect
to the commissions of the king of France, that
the peace between the two nations might not be
disturbed. Therefore he prayed that the commis-
sions might be shown to him. La Saussaye opened
his chests. The royal signature was nowhere to
be found. At this, Argall's courtesy was changed
to wrath. He denounced the Frenchmen as rob-
bers and pirates who deserved the gallows, re-
moved their property on board his ship, and spent
the afternoon in dividing it among his followers.
The disconsolate French remained on the scene of
their woes, where the greedy sailors as they came
fendus, le dict navire n'eust esté prins.” In a reply to complaints of the
French ambassador, it was said that the French fired the first shot. See
Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., Fourth Series, IX. 489.
310 LA SAUSSAYE.-ARGALL. [1613,
ashore would snatch from them, now a cloak, now
a hat, and now a doublet, till the unfortunate
colonists were left half naked. In other respects
the English treated their captives well, - except
two of them, whom they flogged; and Argall,
whom Biard, after recounting his knavery, calls
“a gentleman of noble courage,” having gained
his point, returned to his former courtesy.
But how to dispose of the prisoners ? Fifteen
of them, including La Saussaye and the Jesuit
Masse, were turned adrift in an open boat, at the
mercy of the wilderness and the sea. Nearly all
were landsmen; but while their umpractised hands
were struggling with the oars, they were joined
among the islands by the fugitive pilot and his
boat's crew. Worn and half starved, the united
bands made their perilous way eastward, stop-
ping from time to time to hear mass, make a
procession, or catch codfish. Thus sustained in
the spirit and in the flesh, cheered too by the
Indians, who proved fast friends in need, they
crossed the Bay of Fundy, doubled Cape Sable,
and followed the southern coast of Nova Scotia,
till they happily fell in with two French trading:
vessels, which bore them in safety to St. Malo.
CHAPTER VIII.
1613–1615.
RUIN OF FIRENCH ACADIA.
THE JESUITs AT JAMESTown. — WRATH OF SIR THOMAs DALE. — A
NEW ExPEDITION. — PORT ROYAL DEMOLISHED. — EQUIvoCAL Pos-
TURE OF THE JESUITs. – THEIR ADVENTURES. — THE FRENCH
will NOT ABANDON ACADIA.
“PRAISED be God, behold two thirds of our com-
pany safe in France, telling their strange adven-
tures to their relatives and friends. And now you
will wish to know what befell the rest of us.” "
Thus writes Father Biard, who, with his compan-
ions in misfortune, fourteen in all, prisoners on
board Argall's ship and the prize, were borne cap-
tive to Virginia. Old Point Comfort was reached
at length, the site of Fortress Monroe; Hampton
Roads, renowned in our day for the sea-fight of the
Titans; Sewell’s Point; the Rip Raps; Newport
News; — all household words in the ears of this
generation. Now, far on their right, buried in the
damp shade of immemorial verdure, lay, untrodden
and voiceless, the fields where stretched the leaguer-
ing lines of Washington, where the lilies of France
floated beside the banners of the new-born repub-
1 “Dieu soit beny. Voyla ja les deux tiers de nostre troupe reconduicts
en France sains et sauues parmy leurs parents et amis, quiles Oyent conter
leurs grandes aventures. Ores consequenment vous desirez scaudir ce qui
deuiendra l'autre tiers.” Diard, Relation, c. 28.
312 RUIN OF FIRENCH ACADIA. [1613.
lic, and where, in later years, embattled treason
confronted the manhood of an outraged nation."
And now before them they could descry the masts
of small craft at anchor, a cluster of rude dwellings
fresh from the axe, scattered tenements, and fields
green with tobacco.
Throughout the voyage the prisoners had been
soothed with flattering tales of the benignity of
the Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale, his
love of the French, and his respect for the memory
of Henry the Fourth, to whom, they were told, he
was much beholden for countenance and favor. On
their landing at Jamestown, this consoling picture
was reversed. The Governor fumed and blustered,
talked of halter and gallows, and declared that he
would hang them all. In vain Argall remonstrated,
urging that he had pledged his word for their lives.
Dale, outraged by their invasion of British terri-
tory, was deaf to all appeals; till Argall, driven to
extremity, displayed the stolen commissions, and
proclaimed his stratagem, of which the French
themselves had to that moment been ignorant. As
they were accredited by their government, their
lives at least were safe. Yet the wrath of Sir
Thomas Dale still burned high. He summoned his
council, and they resolved promptly to wipe off all
stain of French intrusion from shores which King
James claimed as his own.
Their action was utterly unauthorized. The two
kingdoms were at peace. James the First, by the
patents of 1606, had granted all North America,
1 Written immediately after the War of Secession
#613.) SECOND EXPEDITION OF ARGALL. 313
from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degree of
latitude, to the two companies of London and Ply-
mouth, Virginia being assigned to the former, while
to the latter were given Maine and Acadia, with
adjacent regions. Over these, though as yet the
claimants had not taken possession of them, the
authorities of Virginia had no color of jurisdiction.
England claimed all North America, in virtue of
the discovery of Cabot; and Sir Thomas Dale be-
came the self-constituted champion of British rights,
not the less zealous that his championship promised
a harvest of booty.
Argall's ship, the captured ship of La Saussaye,
and another smaller vessel, were at Once equipped
and despatched on their errand of havoc. Argall
commanded; and Biard, with Quentin and several
others of the prisoners, were embarked with him."
They shaped their course first for Mount Desert.
Here they landed, levelled La Saussaye's unfinished
defences, cut down the French cross, and planted
one of their own in its place. Next they sought
out the island of St. Croix, seized a quantity of
Salt, and razed to the ground all that remained
of the dilapidated buildings of De Monts. They
crossed the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal, guided,
says Biard, by an Indian chief, -an improbable
assertion, since the natives of these coasts hated
the English as much as they loved the French, and
* In his Relation, Biard does not explain the reason of his accompany-
ing the expedition. In his letter to the General of the Jesuits, dated
Amiens, 26 May, 1614, (Carayon,) he says that it was “dans le dessein de
profiter de la première occasion qui se rencontrerait, pour nous renvoyer
dans notre patrie.”
314. RUIN OF FRENCH ACADIA. [1613.
now well knew the designs of the former. The
unfortunate settlement was tenantless. Biencourt,
with some of his men, was on a visit to neighboring
bands of Indians, while the rest were reaping in
the fields on the river, two leagues above the fort.
Succor from Poutrincourt had arrived during the
summer. The magazines were by no means empty,
and there were cattle, horses, and hogs in adjacent
fields and enclosures. Exulting at their good for-
tune, Argall's men butchered or carried off the ani-
mals, ransacked the buildings, plundered them even
to the locks and bolts of the doors, and then laid
the whole in ashes; “and may it please the Lord,”
adds the pious Biard, “that the sins therein com-
mitted may likewise have been consumed in that
burning.”
Having demolished Port Royal, the marauders
went in boats up the river to the fields where the
reapers were at work. These fled, and took refuge
behind the ridge of a hill, whence they gazed help-
lessly on the destruction of their harvest. Biard
approached them, and, according to the declara-
tion of Poutrincourt made and attested before the
Admiralty of Guienne, tried to persuade them to
desert his son, Biencourt, and take service with
Argall. The reply of one of the men gave little
encouragement for further parley : —
“Begone, or I will split your head with this
hatchet.”
There is flat contradiction here between the nar-
rative of the Jesuit and the accounts of Poutrin-
sourt and contemporary English writers, who agree
1613.] CONDUCT OF BIARD. 315
in affirming that Biard, “Out of indigestible malice
that he had conceived against Biencourt,’’’ encour-
aged the attack on the settlements of St. Croix and
Port Royal, and guided the English thither. The
priest himself admits that both French and English
regarded him as a traitor, and that his life was in
danger. While Argall's ship was at anchor, a
Frenchman shouted to the English from a distance
that they would do well to kill him. The master
of the ship, a Puritan, in his abomination of priests,
and above all of Jesuits, was at the same time
urging his commander to set Biard ashore and
leave him to the mercy of his countrymen. In this
pass, he was saved, to adopt his own account, by
what he calls his simplicity; for he tells us, that,
while — instigated, like the rest of his enemies, by
the Devil—the robber and the robbed were joining
hands to ruin him, he was on his knees before Ar-
gall, begging him to take pity on the French, and
leave them a boat, together with provisions to sus-
tain their miserable lives through the winter. This
spectacle of charity, he further says, so moved the
noble heart of the commander, that he closed his
ears to all the promptings of foreign and domestic
malice.”
1 Briefe Intelligence from Virginia by Letters. See Purchas, IV. 1808.
Compare Poutrincourt's letter to Lescarbot, in Lescarbot, (1618,) 684.
Also, Plainte du Sieur de Poutrincourt devant le Juge de l’Admirauté de
Guyenne, Lescarbot, 687.
* “Ie ne scay qui secourut tant a propos le Iesuite en ce danger quesa
simplicité. Car tout de mesme que s'il eust esté bien fauorisé et qu'il eust
peu beaucoup enuers ledit Anglois, il se mit a genoux deuant le Capitaine
par deux diuerses fois et a deux diuerses occasions, a celle fin de le flechir
a misericorde enuers les François du dit Port Royal esgarés parles bois, et
316 RUIN OF FRENCH ACAIDIA. [1613.
The English had scarcely re-embarked, when
Biencourt arrived with his followers, and beheld
the scene of destruction. Hopelessly outnumbered,
he tried to lure Argall and some of his officers into
an ambuscade, but they would not be entrapped.
Biencourt now asked for an interview. The word
of honor was mutually given, and the two chiefs
met in a meadow not far from the demolished
dwellings. An anonymous English writer says
that Biencourt offered to transfer his allegiance to
King James, on condition of being permitted to
remain at Port Royal and carry on the fur-trade
under a guaranty of English protection ; but that
Argall would not listen to his overtures." The in-
terview proved a stormy one. Biard says that the
Frenchman vomited against him every species of
malignant abuse. “In the mean time,” he adds,
“you will considerately observe to what madness
the evil spirit exciteth those who sell themselves to
him.” ”
According to Poutrincourt.” Argall admitted
that the priest had urged him to attack Port
pour luy persuader de leur laisser quelques viures, leur chaloupe et quelqu'.
autre moyen de passer l’hyuer. Et voyez combien differentes petitions
on faisoit audit Capitaine: car au mesme temps que le P. Biard le Sup-
pſioit ainsi pour les François, vn François crioit de loin, avec outrages et
iniures, qu’il le falloit massacrer.
“Or Argal, qui est d’vn coeur noble, voyant ceste tant sincere affection
du Iesuite, et de l'autre costé tant bestiale et enragée inhumanité de ce
François, laquelle ne recognoissoit my sa propre nation, my bien-faicts, ny
religion, my estoit dompté par l'affliction et verges de Dieu, estima,” etc.
Biard, Relation, c. 29. He writes throughout in the third person.
1 Briefe Intelligence, Purchas, IV. 1808. -
2 Biard, c. 29 : “Cependant vous remarquerez Sagement insques a
quelle rage le malin esprit agite ceux qui se vendent a luy.”
3 Plainte du Sieur de Poutrincourt, Lescarbot, (1618,) 689.
1613.] ADVENTURES OF BIARD. 317
Royal. Certain it is, that Biencourt demanded
his surrender, frankly declaring that he meant to
hang him. “Whilest they were discoursing to-
gether,” says the old English writer above men-
tioned, “one of the savages, rushing suddenly forth
from the Woods, and licentiated to come neere,
did after his manner, with such broken French as
he had, earnestly mediate a peace, wondring why
they that seemed to be of one Country should vse
others with such hostilitie, and that with such a
forme of habit and gesture as made them both to
laugh.” "
His work done, and, as he thought, the French
settlements of Acadia effectually blotted out, Ar-
gall set sail for Virginia on the thirteenth of No-
vember. Scarcely was he at sea when a storm
Scattered the vessels. Of the smallest of the three
nothing was ever heard. Argall, severely buffeted,
reached his port in safety, having first, it is said,
compelled the Dutch at Manhattan to acknowledge
for a time the sovereignty of King James.” The
captured ship of La Saussaye, with Biard and his
colleague Quentin on board, was forced to yield
to the fury of the western gales, and bear away
for the Azores. To Biard the change of destina-
tion was not unwelcome. He stood in fear of the
truculent Governor of Virginia, and his tempest-
rocked slumbers were haunted with unpleasant
| Purchas, IV. 1808.
” Description of the Province of New Albion, in New York Historical
Collections, Second Series, I. 335. The statement is doubtful. It is sup
ported, however, by the excellent authority of Dr. O’Callaghan, History
of New Netherland, I. 69.
3.18 RUIN OF FIRENCH ACADIA. [1613.
visions of a rope's end." It seems that some of
the French at Port Royal, disappointed in their
hope of hanging him, had commended him to Sir
Thomas Dale as a proper subject for the gallows,
drawing up a paper, signed by six of them, and
containing allegations of a nature well fitted to
kindle the Wrath of that vehement official. The
vessel was commanded by Turnel, Argall's lieuten-
ant, apparently an officer of merit, a scholar and
linguist. He had treated his prisoner with great
kindness, because, says the latter, “he esteemed
and loved him for his naïve simplicity and ingenu-
ous candor.”” But of late, thinking his kindness
misplaced, he had changed it for an extreme cold-
ness, preferring, in the words of Biard himself, “to
think that the Jesuit had lied, rather than so
many who accused him.””
Water ran low, provisions began to fail, and
they eked out their meagre supply by butchering
the horses taken at Port Royal. At length they
came within sight of Fayal, when a new terror
seized the minds of the two Jesuits. Might not
the Englishmen fear that their prisoners would
denounce them to the fervent Catholics of that
island as pirates and sacrilegious kidnappers of
priests 2 From such hazard the escape was obvi-
1 “Le Mareschal Thomas Deel (que vous avez ouy estre fort aspre en
ses humeurs) . . . . attendoit en bon deuotion le Pere Biard pour luytost
accourcir les voyages, luy faisant troutler au milieu d'une eschelle le bout
du monde.” Biard, Relation, c. 30, 33.
* “. . . . il avoit faict estat de le priser et l'aymer pour sa naïfue sim-
plicité et outlerte candeur.” Ibid., c. 30.
* “. . . . il aimoit mieux croire que le Iesuite fust menteur que non
pas tant d'autres qui l’accusoyent.” Ibid.
1613.) ADVENTURES OF BIARD. 319
ous. What more simple than to drop the priests
into the sea 7" In truth, the English had no little
dread of the results of conference between the Jes-
uits and the Portuguese authorities of Fayal; but
the conscience or humanity of Turnel revolted at
the expedient which awakened such apprehension
in the troubled mind of Biard. He contented him-
self with requiring that the two priests should
remain hidden while the ship lay off the port.
Biard does not say that he enforced the demand
either by threats or by the imposition of oaths.
He and his companion, however, rigidly complied
with it, lying close in the hold or under the
boats, while suspicious officials searched the ship,
— a proof, he triumphantly declares, of the auda-
cious malice which has asserted it as a tenet of
Rome that no faith need be kept with heretics.
Once more at sea, Turnel shaped his course for
home, having, with some difficulty, gained a supply
of water and provisions at Fayal. All was now
harmony between him and his prisoners. When
he reached Pembroke, in Wales, the appearance of
the vessel — a French craft in English hands —
again drew upon him the suspicion of piracy. The
Jesuits, dangerous witnesses among the Catholics
of Fayal, could at the worst do little harm with
the Vice-Admiral at Pembroke. To him, there-
fore, he led the prisoners, in the sable garb of their
Order, now much the worse for wear, and com-
* “Ce Souci nous inquiétait fort. Qu'allaient-ils faire? Nous jette-
raient-ils à l’eau ?” Lettre du P. Biard au T. R. P. Claude Aquaviva,
Amiens, 26 Mai, 1614, in Carayon, 106. Like all Biard’s letters to Aqua
viva, this is translated from the original Latin.
320 RUIN OF FRENCH ACADLA. [1614,
mended them as persons without reproach, “where-
in,” adds the modest father, “he spoke the truth.” "
The result of their evidence was, we are told, that
Turnel was henceforth treated, not as a pirate, but,
according to his deserts, as an honorable gentleman.
This interview led to a meeting with certain dig-
nitaries of the Anglican Church, who, much inter-
ested in an encounter with Jesuits in their robes,
were filled, says Biard, with wonder and admira-
tion at what they were told of their conduct.” He
explains that these churchmen differ widely in form
and doctrine from the English Calvinists, who, he
says, are called Puritans; and he adds, that they
are superior in every respect to these, whom they
detest as an execrable pest.”
Biard was sent to Dover and thence to Calais,
returning, perhaps, to the tranquil honors of his
chair of theology at Lyons. La Saussaye, La
Motte, Fleury, and other prisoners, were, at vari-
ous times, sent from Virginia to England, and ulti-
mately to France. Madame de Guercheville, her
pious designs crushed in the bud, seems to have
gained no further satisfaction than the restoration
of the vessel. The French ambassador complained
of the outrage, but answer was postponed; and, in
the troubled state of France, the matter appears
to have been dropped.*
1 “. . . . gens irreprochables, ce disoit-il, et disoit vray.” Biard,
Relation, c. 32.
* “. . . . et les ministres en demonstroyent grands signes estonne-
ment et d'admiration.” Ibid., c. 31. .
3 “. . . . et les detestent comme peste execrable.” Ibid., c. 32.
4 Order of Council respecting certain claims against Capt. Argall, etc. An-
swer to the preceding Order. See Colonial Documents of New York, III. 1, 2.
1615.] FORTUNES OF POUTRINCOURT. 321
Argall, whose violent and crafty character was
Offset by a gallant bearing and various traits of
martial virtue, became Deputy-Governor of Vir-
ginia, and, under a military code, ruled the colony
with a rod of iron. He enforced the observance
of Sunday with an edifying rigor. Those who ab-
sented themselves from church were, for the first
offence, imprisoned for the night, and reduced to
slavery for a week; for the second offence, en-
slaved a month; and for the third, a year. Nor
was he less strenuous in his devotion to mammon.
He enriched himself by extortion and wholesale
peculation, and his audacious dexterity, aided by
the countenance of the Earl of Warwick, who is
said to have had a trading connection with him,
thwarted all the efforts of the company to bring
him to account. In 1623, he was knighted by the
hand of King James."
Early in the spring following the English at-
tack, Poutrincourt came to Port Royal. He found
the place in ashes, and his unfortunate son, with
the men under his command, wandering houseless
in the forests. They had passed a winter of ex-
treme misery, sustaining their wretched existence
with roots, the buds of trees, and lichens peeled
from the rocks. -
Despairing of his enterprise, Poutrincourt re-
turned to France. In the next year, 1615, during
the civil disturbances which followed the marriage
1 Argall's history may be gleaned from Purchas, Smith, Stith, Gorges,
Beverly, etc. An excellent summary will be found in Belknap's American
Biography, and a briefer one in Allen's.
- 21
322 RUIN OF FIRENCH ACAIDIA. [1615.
of the King, command was given him of the royal
forces destined for the attack on Méry; and here,
happier in his death than in his life, he fell, sword
in hand."
In spite of their reverses, the French kept hold
on Acadia.” Biencourt, partially at least, rebuilt
Port Royal ; while winter after winter the smoke
of fur-traders' huts curled into the still, sharp air
of these frosty wilds, till at length, with happier
auspices, plans of settlement were resumed.”
Rude hands strangled the “Northern Paraguay’’
in its birth. Its beginnings had been feeble, but
behind were the forces of a mighty Organization,
at once devoted and ambitious, enthusiastic and
calculating. Seven years later the Mayflower
landed her emigrants at Plymouth. What would
have been the issues had the zeal of the pious
lady of honor preoccupied New England with a
Jesuit colony 7 -
1 Nobilissimi Herois Potrincurti; Epitaphium, Lescarbot, (1618,) 694.
BHe took the town, but was killed immediately after by a treacherous shot,
in the fifty-eighth year of his age. He was buried on his barony of St.
Just.
* According to Biard, more than five hundred French vessels sailed
annually, at this time, to America, for the whale and cod fishery and the
fur-trade. -
* There is an autograph letter in the Archives de la Marine from Bien
court, — who had succeeded to his father's designation, — written at Port
Royal in September, 1618, and addressed “aux Autorités de la Ville de
Paris,” in which he urges upon them the advantages of establishing for-
tified posts in Acadia, thus defending it against incursions of the English,
who had lately seized a French trader from Dieppe, and insuring the con-
tinuance and increase of the traffic in furs, from which the city of Paris
derived such advantages. Moreover, he adds, it will serve as an asylum
for the indigent and suffering of the city, to their own great benefit and the
advantage of the municipality, who will be relieved of the burden of their
maintenance. It does not appear that the city responded to his appeal.
1615.] FRANCE AND ENGLAND. 323
In an obscure stroke of lawless violence began
the strife of France and England, Protestantism
and Rome, which for a century and a half shook
the struggling communities of North America, and
closed at last in the memorable triumph on the
Plains of Abraham. -
CHAPTER IX.
1608, 1609.
CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC.
A NEW ENTERPRISE. – THE ST. LAwrBNCE. – CONFLICT witH
BASQUES. – TADOUSSAC. - QUEBEC FOUNDED. — ConsPIRACY. —
WINTER.—THE MONTAGNAIs. – SPRING. — PROJECTs of Explo-.
RATION,
A LONELY ship sailed up the St. Lawrence.
The white whales floundering in the Bay of Ta-
doussac, and the wild duck diving as the foaming
prow drew near, – there was no life but these in
all that watery solitude, twenty miles from shore
to shore. The ship was from Honfleur, and was
commanded by Samuel de Champlaim. He was
the AEneas of a destined people, and in her womb
lay the embryo life of Canada.
De Monts, after his exclusive privilege of trade
was revoked, and his Acadian enterprise ruined,
had, as we have seen, abandoned it to Poutrin-
court. Perhaps would it have been well for him
had he abandoned with it all Transatlantic en-
terprises; but the passion for discovery and the
noble ambition of founding colonies had taken
possession of his mind. These, rather than a mere
hope of gain, seem to have been his controlling
motives; yet the profits of the fur-trade were
1608.] VIEWS OF CHAMPLAIN. 325
vital to the new designs he was meditating, to
meet the heavy outlay they demanded; and he
solicited and obtained a fresh monopoly of the
traffic for one year."
Champlain was, at the time, in Paris; but his
unquiet thoughts turned westward. He was en-
amored of the New World, whose rugged charms
had seized his fancy and his heart ; and as ex-
plorers of Arctic seas have pined in their repose
for polar ice and snow, so did his restless thoughts
revert to the fog-wrapped coasts, the piny Odors of
forests, the noise of waters, the sharp and piercing
sunlight, so dear to his remembrance. He longed
to unveil the mystery of that boundless wilderness,
and plant the Catholic faith and the power of
France amid its ancient barbarism. --
Five years before, he had explored the St. Law-
rence as far as the rapids above Montreal. On its
banks, as he thought, was the true site for a settle-
ment, — a fortified post, whence, as from a secure
basis, the waters of the vast interior might be
traced back towards their sources, and a western
route discovered to China and Japan. For the
fur-trade, too, the innumerable streams that de-
scended to the great river might all be closed
against foreign intrusion by a single fort at some
commanding point, and made tributary to a rich
and permanent commerce; while — and this was
nearer to his heart, for he had often been heard to
say that the saving of a soul was worth more
than the conquest of an empire — countless savage
1 See the patent in Champlain, (1618,) 163.
326 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. [1608.
tribes, in the bondage of Satan, might by the same
avenues be reached and redeemed.
De Monts embraced his views; and, fitting out
two ships, gave command of one to the elder
Pontgravé, of the other to Champlain. The for-
mer was to trade with the Indians and bring back
the cargo of furs which, it was hoped, would meet
the expense of the voyage. To Champlain fell the
harder task of settlement and exploration.
Pontgravé, laden with goods for the Indian
trade of Tadoussac, sailed from Honfleur on the
fifth of April, 1608. Champlain, with men, arms,
and stores for the colony, followed, eight days
later. On the fifteenth of May he was on the
Grand Bank; on the thirtieth he passed Gaspé,
and on the third of June neared Tadoussac. No
living thing was to be seen. He anchored, lowered
a boat, and rowed into the port, round the rocky
point at the southeast, then, from the fury of its
winds and currents, called La Pointe de Tous les
Diables." There was life enough within, and more
than he cared to find. In the still anchorage
under the cliffs lay Pontgravé's vessel, and at her
side another ship, which proved to be a Basque
fur-trader.
Pontgravé, arriving a few days before, had found
himself anticipated by the Basques, who were
busied in a brisk trade with bands of Indians
cabined along the borders of the cove. He dis-
played the royal letters, and commanded a cessa-
1 Champlain, (1618,) 166. Also called La Pointe aux Rochers. Ibid.,
(1632,) 119.
1608.) TADOUSSAC. 327
tion of the prohibited traffic; but the Basques
proved refractory, declared that they would trade
in spite of the King, fired on Pontgravé with
cannon and musketry, wounded him and two of
his men, and killed a third. They then boarded
his vessel, and carried away all his cannon, small
arms, and ammunition, saying that they would
restore them when they had finished their trade
and were ready to return home.
Champlain found his comrade on shore, in a dis-
abled condition. The Basques, though still strong
enough to make fight, were alarmed for the con-
sequences of their conduct, and anxious to come to
terms. A peace, therefore, was signed on board
their vessel; all differences were referred to the
judgment of the French courts, harmony was re-
stored, and the choleric strangers betook them-
selves to catching whales.
This port of Tadoussac was long the centre of
the Canadian fur-trade. A desolation of barren
mountains closes round it, betwixt whose ribs of
rugged granite, bristing with savins, birches, and
firs, the Saguenay rolls its gloomy waters from the
northern wilderness. Centuries of civilization have
not tamed the wildness of the place; and still,
in grim repose, the mountains hold their guard
around the waveless lake that glistens in their
shadow, and doubles, in its sullen mirror, crag,
precipice, and forest.
Near the brink of the cove or harbor where the
vessels lay, and a little below the mouth of a brook
which formed one of the outlets of this small lake,
328 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. [1608.
stood the remains of the wooden barrack built by
Chauvin eight years before. Above the brook
were the lodges of an Indian camp,' — stacks of
poles covered with birch-bark. They belonged to
an Algonquin horde, called Montagnais, denizens
of surrounding wilds, and gatherers of their only
harvest, — skins of the moose, Caribou, and bear;
fur of the beaver, marten, otter, fox, wild-cat, and
lynx, Nor was this all, for they were inter-
mediate traders betwixt the French and the shiver-
ing bands who roamed the weary stretch of stunted
forest between the head-waters of the Saguenay
and Hudson's Bay. Indefatigable canoe-men, in
their birchen vessels, light as egg-shells, they
threaded the devious tracks of countless rippling
streams, shady by-ways of the forest, where the
wild duck scarcely finds depth to swim ; then
descended to their mart along those scenes of
picturesque yet dreary grandeur which steam has
made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly
moving paddles, they glided beneath the cliff whose
shaggy brows frown across the Zenith, and whose
base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hol-
low cadence; and they passed the sepulchral Bay
of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron, — a
sanctuary of solitude and silence : depths which,
as the fable runs, no sounding line can fathom,
and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling
eagle seems a speck.”
1 Plan du Port de Tadoussac, Champlain, (1618,) 172.
* Bouchette estimates the height of these cliffs at eighteen hundred
feet. They overhang the river and bay. The scene is one of the most
remarkable on the continent.
$608.] QUEBEC. 329
Peace being established with the Basques, and
the wounded Pontgravé busied, as far as might be,
in transferring to the hold of his ship the rich
lading of the Indian canoes, Champlain spread his
Sails, and again held his course up the St. Law-
rence. Far to the south, in sun and shadow,
slumbered the woody mountains whence fell the
countless springs of the St. John, behind tenantless
shores, now white with glimmering villages, – La
Chenaie, Granville, Kamouraska, St. Roche, St.
Jean, Vincelot, Berthier. But on the north the
jealous wilderness still asserts its sway, crowding
to the river's verge its walls, domes, and towers of
granite; and to this hour, its solitude is scarcely
broken.
Above the point of the Island of Orleans, a con.
striction of the vast channel narrows it to less than
a mile, with the green heights of Point Levi on
One side, and on the other the cliffs of Quebec."
Here, a small stream, the St. Charles, enters the
1 The origin of this name has been disputed, but there is no good
ground to doubt its Indian origin, which is distinctly affirmed by Cham-
plain and Lescarbot. Charlevoix, Fastes Chronologiques (1608), derives it
from the Algonquin word Quebeio, or Quelibec, signifying a narrowing or
contracting (rétrécissement). A half-breed Algonquin told Garneau that the
word Quebec, or Ouabec, means a strait. The same writer was told by
M. Malo, a missionary among the Micmacs, a branch of the Algonquins,
that in their dialect the word Kibec had the same meaning, Martin says,
“Les Algonquins l’appellent Ouabec, et les Micmacs Kebèque, c'est a dire,
‘lā oil la rivière est fermée.’” Martin's Bressani, App., 326. The deriva-
tions given by La Potherie, Le Beau, and others, are purely fanciful. The
circumstance of the word Quebec being found engraved on the ancient seal
of Lord Suffolk (see Hawkins, Picture of Quebec) can only be regarded as
a curious coincidence. In Cartier's times the site of Quebec was occupied
by a tribe of the Iroquois race, who called their village Stadacone. The
Hurons called it, says Sagard, Atow-ta-requee. In the modern Huron
dialect, Tiatou-ta-riti means the narrows.
330 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. [1608,
St. Lawrence, and in the angle betwixt them rises
the promontory, on two sides a natural fortress.
Between the cliffs and the river lay a strand cov-
ered with walnuts and other trees. From this
strand, by a rough passage gullied downward from
the place where Prescott Gate now guards the way,
one might climb the heights to the broken plateau
above, now burdened with its ponderous load of
churches, convents, dwellings, ramparts, and bat-
teries. Thence, by a gradual ascent, the rock
sloped upward to its highest summit, Cape Dia-
mond," looking down on the St. Lawrence from
a height of three hundred and fifty feet. Here
the citadel now stands; then the fierce sun
fell on the bald, baking rock, with its crisped
mosses and parched lichens. Two centuries and
a half have quickened the solitude with swarm-
ing life, covered the deep bosom of the river with
barge and steamer and gliding sail, and reared
cities and villages on the site of forests; but
nothing can destroy the surpassing grandeur of
the scene.
On the strand between the water and the cliffs
Champlain's axemen fell to their work. They
were pioneers of an advancing host, — advancing,
it is true, with feeble and uncertain progress:
priests, soldiers, peasants, feudal scutcheons, royal
insignia. Not the Middle Age, but engendered of
it by the stronger life of modern centralization;
1 Champlain calls Cape Diamond Mont du Gas (Guast), from the
family name of De Monts. He gives the name of Cape Diamond to
Pointe a Puiseaux. See Map of Quebec (1613)
1608.] CONSBIRACY. 331
sharply stamped with a parental likeness; heir to
parental weakness and parental force.
In a few weeks a pile of wooden buildings rose
On the brink of the St. Lawrence, on or near the
site of the market-place of the Lower Town of
Quebec." The pencil of Champlain, always regard-
less of proportion and perspective, has preserved
its likeness. A strong wooden wall, surmounted
by a gallery loopholed for musketry, enclosed three
buildings, containing quarters for himself and his
men, together with a courtyard, from one side of
which rose a tall dove-cot, like a belfry. A moat
surrounded the whole, and two or three small can-
non were planted on salient platforms towards the
river. There was a large storehouse near at hand,
and a part of the adjacent ground was laid out as
a garden.
In this garden Champlain was one morning
directing his laborers, when Tétu, his pilot, ap-
proached him with an anxious countenance, and
muttered a request to speak with him in private.
Champlain assenting, they withdrew to the neigh-
boring woods, when the pilot disburdened himself
of his secret. One Antoine Natel, a locksmith,
smitten by conscience or fear, had revealed to him
a conspiracy to murder his commander and de-
liver Quebec into the hands of the Basques and
Spaniards then at Tadoussac. Another locksmith,
named Duval, was author of the plot, and, with
the aid of three accomplices, had befooled or fright-
ened nearly all the company into taking part in it,
1 Compare Faribault, Voyages de Decouverte au Canada, 105.
332 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. [1608,
Each was assured that he should make his fortune,
and all were mutually pledged to poniard the first
betrayer of the secret. The critical point of their
enterprise was the killing of Champlain. Some
were for strangling him, some for raising a false
alarm in the night and shooting him as he came
out from his quarters.
Having heard the pilot's story, Champlain, re-
maining in the woods, desired his informant to
find Antoine Natel, and bring him to the spot.
Natel soon appeared, trembling with excitement
and fear, and a close examination left no doubt of
the truth of his statement. A small vessel, built
by Pontgravé at Tadoussac, had lately arrived, and
orders were now given that it should anchor close
at hand. On board was a young man in whom
confidence could be placed. Champlain sent him
two bottles of wine, with a direction to tell the four
ringleaders that they had been given him by his
Basque friends at Tadoussac, and to invite them to
share the good cheer. They came aboard in the
evening, and were seized and secured. “Voyla done
mes galants bien estonnez,” writes Champlain.
It was ten o’clock, and most of the men on shore
were asleep. They were wakened suddenly, and
told of the discovery of the plot and the arrest of
the ringleaders. Pardon was then promised them,
and they were dismissed again to their beds, greatly
relieved, for they had lived in trepidation, each
fearing the other. Duval's body, swinging from a
gibbet, gave wholesome warning to those he had
seduced; and his head was displayed on a pike,
2008.j THE MONTAGNAIS. 333
from the highest roof of the buildings, food for
birds, and a lesson to sedition. His three accom-
plices were carried by Pontgravé to France, where
they made their atonement in the galleys." t
It was on the eighteenth of September that Pont-
gravé set sail, leaving Champlain with twenty-eight
men to hold Quebec through the winter. Three
weeks later, and shores and hills glowed with gay
prognostics of approaching desolation, — the yellow
and scarlet of the maples, the deep purple of the
ash, the garnet hue of young Oaks, the crimson of
the tupelo at the water's edge, and the golden
plumage of birch saplings in the fissures of the
cliff. It was a short-lived beauty. The forest
dropped its festal robes. Shrivelled and faded,
they rustled to the earth. The crystal air and
laughing sum of October passed away, and No.
vember sank upon the shivering waste, chill and
sombre as the tomb.
A roving band of Montagnais had built their
huts near the buildings, and were busying them-
selves with their autumn eel-fishery, on which
they greatly relied to sustain their miserable lives
through the winter. Their slimy harvest being
gathered, and duly smoked and dried, they gave it
for safe-keeping to Champlain, and set out to hunt
beavers. It was deep in the winter before they
came back, reclaimed their eels, built their birch
cabins again, and disposed themselves for a life of
ease, until famine or their enemies should put an
end to their enjoyments. These were by no means
| Lescarbot, (1612), 623; Purchas, IV. 1642.
334 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. 11608.
without alloy. While, gorged with food, they lay
dozing on piles of branches in their smoky huts,
where, through the crevices of the thin birch-bark,
streamed in a cold capable at times of congealing
mercury, their slumbers were beset with nightmare
visions of Iroquois forays, Scalpings, butcherings,
and burnings. As dreams were their Oracles, the
camp was wild with fright. They sent out no
scouts and placed no guard; but, with each repe-
tition of these nocturnal terrors, they came flock-
ing in a body to beg admission within the fort.
The women and children were allowed to enter
the yard and remain during the might, while anx-
ious fathers and jealous husbands shivered in the
darkness without.
On one occasion, a group of wretched beings was
seen on the farther bank of the St. Lawrence, like
wild animals driven by famine to the borders of
the settler's clearing. The river was full of drift.
ing ice, and there was no crossing without risk of
life. The Indians, in their desperation, made the
attempt; and midway their canoes were ground to
atoms among the tossing masses. Agile as wild-
cats, they all leaped upon a huge raft of ice, the
squaws carrying their children on their shouldérs,
a feat at which Champlain marvelled when he saw
their starved and emaciated condition. Here they
began a wail of despair; when happily the pressure
of other masses thrust the sheet of ice against the
northern shore. They landed and soon made their
appearance at the fort, worn to skeletons and hor-
rible to look upon. The French gave them food,
A-
1609 | WINTER AT QUEBEC. 335
which they devoured with a frenzied avidity, and,
unappeased, fell upon a dead dog left on the Snow
by Champlain for two months past as a bait for
foxes. They broke this carrion into fragments,
and thawed and devoured it, to the disgust of the
spectators, who tried vainly to prevent them.
This was but a severe access of the periodical
famine which, during winter, was a normal condi-
tion of the Algonquin tribes of Acadia and the
Lower St. Lawrence, who, unlike the cognate tribes
of New England, never tilled the soil, or made any
reasonable provision against the time of need.
One would gladly know how the founders of
Quebec spent the long hours of their first winter;
but on this point the only man among them, per-Jº
haps, who could write, has not thought it neces-
sary to enlarge. He himself beguiled his leisure
with trapping foxes, or hanging a dead dog from
a tree and watching the hungry martens in their
efforts to reach it. Towards the close of winter,
all found abundant employment in nursing them-
selves or their neighbors, for the inevitable scurvy
broke out with virulence. At the middle of May,
only eight men of the twenty-eight were alive
and of these half were suffering from disease."
This wintry purgatory wore away; the icy sta-
lactites that hung from the cliffs fell crashing to
the earth; the clamor of the wild geese was heard;
the bluebirds appeared in the naked woods; the
water-willows were covered with their soft cat-
erpillar-like blossoms; the twigs of the swamp-
1 Champlain, (1613,) 205.
336 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. [1609.
maple were flushed with ruddy bloom ; the ash
hung out its black tufts; the shad-bush seemed a
wreath of snow; the white stars of the bloodroot
gleamed among dank, fallen leaves; and in the
young grass of the wet meadows, the marsh-mari-
golds shone like spots of gold.
Great was the joy of Champlain when, on the
fifth of June, he saw a sailboat rounding the Point
of Orleans, betokening that the spring had brought
with it the longed for succors. A son-in-law of
Pontgravé, named Marais, was on board, and he
reported that Pontgravé was then at Tadoussac,
where he had lately arrived. Thither Champlain
hastened, to take counsel with his comrade. His
constitution or his courage had defied the scurvy.
They met, and it was determined betwixt them,
that, while Pontgravé remained in charge of Que-
bec, Champlain should enter at Once on his long-
meditated explorations, by which, like La Salle
seventy years later, he had good hope of finding a
way to China.
But there was a lion in the path. The Indian
tribes, to whom peace was unknown, infested with
their scalping parties the streams and pathways
of the forest, and increased tenfold its inseparable
risks. The after career of Champlain gives abun-
dant proof that he was more than indifferent to all
such chances; yet now an expedient for evading
them offered itself, so consonant with his instincts
that he was glad to accept it.
During the last autumn, a young chief from the
banks of the then unknown Ottawa had been at
1609.] THE IROQUOIS. 337
Quebec; and, amazed at what he saw, he had
begged Champlain to join him in the spring
against his enemies. These enemies were a for-
midable race of savages, the Iroquois, or Five Con-
federate Nations, who dwelt in fortified villages
within limits now embraced by the State of New
York, and who were a terror to all the surround-
ing forests. They were deadly foes of their kin-
dred, the Hurons, who dwelt on the lake which
bears their name, and were allies of Algonquin
bands on the Ottawa. All alike were tillers of
the soil, living at ease when compared with the
famished Algonquins of the Lower St. Lawrence.
By joining these Hurons and Algonquins against
their Iroquois enemies, Champlain might make
himself the indispensable ally and leader of the
tribes of Canada, and at the same time fight his
way to discovery in regions which otherwise were
barred against him. From first to last, it was the
policy of France in America to mingle in Indian
politics, hold the balance of power between adverse
tribes, and envelop in the network of her power
and diplomacy the remotest hordes of the wilder-
ness. Of this policy the Father of New France
may perhaps be held to have set a rash and pre-
mature example. Yet, while he was apparently
following the dictates of his own adventurous
1 The tribes east of the Mississippi, between the latitudes of Lake Su-
perior and of the Ohio, were divided, with slight exceptions, into two groups
or families, distinguished by a radical difference of language. One of
these families of tribes is called Algonquin, from the name of a small In-
dian community on the Ottawa. The other is called the Huron-Iroquois,
from the names of its two principal members.
22
338 CHAMPLAIN AT QUEBEC. [1609.
spirit, it became evident, a few years later, that
under his thirst for discovery and spirit of knight-
errantry lay a consistent and deliberate purpose.
That it had already assumed a definite shape is
not likely; but his after course makes it plain
that, in embroiling himself and his colony with
the most formidable Savages on the continent, he
was by no means acting SO recklessly as at first
sight would appear.
CHAPTER X.
1609.
LAKE CHAMPLAIN.
CHAMPLAIN JOINS A WAR PARTY. — PREPARATION. — DEPARTURE. –
THE RIVER RICHELIEU. — THE SPIRITS CONSULTED. — Discovery
OF LAKE CHAMPLAIN. – BATTLE witH THE IRoquois. – FATE OF
PRISONERS. — PANIC OF THE VICTORs.
IT was past the middle of June, and the ex-
pected warriors from the upper country had not
come : a delay which seems to have given Cham-
plain little concern, for, without waiting longer,
he set out with no better allies than a band of
Montagnais. But, as he moved up the St. Law-
rence, he saw, thickly clustered in the bordering
forest, the lodges of an Indian camp, and, landing,
found his Huron and Algonquin allies. Few of
them had ever seen a white man, and they sur-
rounded the steel-clad strangers in speechless won-
der. Champlain asked for their chief, and the
staring throng moved with him towards a lodge
where sat, not one chief, but two, for each band
had its own. There were feasting, smoking, and
speeches; and, the needful ceremony over, all de-
scended together to Quebec; for the strangers
were bent on seeing those wonders of architec-
ture, the fame of which had pierced the recesses
of their forests.
340 IAKE CHAMPLAIN. [1609.
On their arrival, they feasted their eyes and
glutted their appetites; yelped consternation at
the sharp explosions of the arquebuse and the roar
of the cannon; pitched their camps, and bedecked
themselves for their war-dance. In the still night,
their fire glared against the black and jagged cliff,
and the fierce red light fell on tawny limbs con-
vulsed with frenzied gestures and ferocious stamp-
ings; on contorted visages, hideous with paint;
on brandished weapons, stone war-clubs, stone
hatchets, and stone-pointed lances; while the
drum kept up its hollow boom, and the air was
split with mingled yells.
The war-feast followed, and then all embarked
together. Champlain was in a small shallop,
carrying besides himself, eleven men of Pont-
gravé's party, including his son-in-law, Marais,
and the pilot La Routte. They were armed with
the arquebuse, a matchlock or firelock somewhat
like the modern carbine, and from its short-
ness not ill suited for use in the forest. On
the twenty-eighth of June they spread their
sails and held their course against the current,
while around them the river was alive with ca-
noes, and hundreds of naked arms plied the
paddle with a steady, measured sweep. They
crossed the Lake of St. Peter, threaded the
devious channels among its many islands, and
reached at last the mouth of the Rivière des
Iroquois, since called the Richelieu, or the St.
1 Champlain's dates, in this part of his narrative, are exceedingly care.
less and confused, May and June being mixed indiscriminately.
1609.] THE RIVER RICHELIEU. 341
John." Here, probably on the site of the town
of Sorel, the leisurely warriors encamped for two
days, hunted, fished, and took their ease, regaling
their allies with venison and wild-fowl. They
quarrelled, too ; three fourths of their number
Seceded, took to their canoes in dudgeon, and pad-
dled towards their homes, while the rest pursued
their course up the broad and placid stream.
Walls of verdure stretched on left and right.
Now, aloft in the lonely air rose the cliffs of
Beloeil, and now, before them, framed in circling
forests, the Basin of Chambly spread its tranquil
mirror, glittering in the sun. The shallop out-
sailed the canoes. Champlain, leaving his allies
behind, crossed the basin and tried to pursue his
course; but, as he listened in the stillness, the
unwelcome noise of rapids reached his ear, and,
by glimpses through the dark foliage of the Islets
of St. John, he could see the gleam of snowy foam
and the flash of hurrying waters. Leaving the
boat by the shore in charge of four men, he went
with Marais, La Routte, and five others, to explore
the wild before him. They pushed their way
through the damps and shadows of the wood,
through thickets and tangled vines, over mossy
rocks and mouldering logs. Still the hoarse sur-
ging of the rapids followed them ; and when, part-
ing the screen of foliage, they looked out upon the
river, they saw it thick set with rocks, where,
plunging Over ledges, gurgling under drift-logs,
darting along clefts, and boiling in chasms, the
1. Also called the Chambly, the St. Louis, and the Sorel,
342 LAKE CHAMPLAIN. [1609
angry waters filled the solitude with monotonous
ravings." -
Champlain retraced his steps. He had learned
the value of an Indian's word. His allies had
promised him that his boat could pass unob-
structed throughout the whole journey. “It
afflicted me,” he says, “ and troubled me exceed-
ingly to be obliged to return without having seen
so great a lake, full of fair islands and bordered
with the fine countries which they had described
to me.”
When he reached the boat, he found the whole
savage crew gathered at the spot. He mildly
rebuked their bad faith, but added, that, though
they had deceived him, he, as far as might be,
would fulfil his pledge. To this end, he directed
Marais, with the boat and the greater part of the
men, to return to Quebec, while he, with two who
offered to follow him, should proceed in the Indian
Cà,Il OéS.
The warriors lifted their canoes from the water,
and bore them on their shoulders half a league
through the forest to the smoother stream above.
Here the chiefs made a muster of their forces,
counting twenty-four canoes and sixty warriors.
All embarked again, and advanced Once more, by
marsh, meadow, forest, and scattered islands, then
full of game, for it was an uninhabited land, the
war-path and battle-ground of hostile tribes. The
warriors observed a certain system in their ad-
1 In spite of the changes of civilization, the tourist, with Champlain's
journal in his hand, can easily trace each stage of his progress.
i609.] THE WAR PARTY. 343
vance. Some were in front as a vanguard; others
formed the main body; while an equal number
were in the forests on the flanks and rear, hunting
for the subsistence of the whole; for, though they
had a provision of parched maize pounded into
meal, they kept it for use when, from the vicinity
of the enemy, hunting should become impossible.
Late in the day they landed and drew up their
canoes, ranging them closely, side by side. Some
stripped sheets of bark, to cover their camp sheds;
others gathered wood, the forest being full of dead,
dry trees; others felled the living trees, for a
barricade. They seem to have had steel axes,
obtained by barter from the French ; for in less
than two hours they had made a strong defensive
work, in the form of a half-circle, open on the
river side, where their canoes lay on the strand,
and large enough to enclose all their huts and
sheds." Some of their number had gone forward
as scouts, and, returning, reported no signs of an
enemy. This was the extent of their precaution,
for they placed no guard, but all, in full security,
stretched themselves to sleep, — a vicious custom
from which the lazy warrior of the forest rarely
departs.
They had not forgotten, however, to consult
their oracle. The medicine-man pitched his magic
* Such extempore works of defence are still used among some tribes
of the remote West. The author has twice seen them, made of trees
piled together as described by Champlain, probably by war parties of the
Crow or Snake Indians.
Champlain, usually too concise, is very minute in his descriptiou of the
march and encampment,
344 LAKE CHAMPLAIN. [1609
lodge in the woods, formed of a small stack of poles,
planted in a circle and brought together at the
tops like stacked muskets. Over these he placed
the filthy deer-skins which served him for a robe,
and, creeping in at a narrow opening, hid himself
from view. Crouched in a ball upon the earth,
he invoked the spirits in mumbling inarticulate
tones; while his naked auditory, squatted on the
ground like apes, listened in wonder and awe.
Suddenly, the lodge moved, rocking with violence
to and fro, by the power of the spirits, as the
Indians thought, while Champlain could plainly
see the tawny fist of the medicine-man shaking
the poles. They begged him to keep a watchful
eye on the peak of the lodge, whence fire and
smoke would presently issue; but with the best
efforts of his vision, he discovered none. Mean-
while the medicine-man was seized with such con-
vulsions, that, when his divination was over, his
naked body streamed with perspiration. In loud,
clear tones, and in an unknown tongue, he invoked
the spirit, who was understood to be present in
the form of a stone, and whose feeble and Squeak-
ing accents were heard at intervals, like the wail
of a young puppy."
In this manner they consulted the spirit — as
1 This mode of divination was universal among the Algonquin tribes,
and is not extinct to this day among their roving Northern bands. Le
Jeune, Lafitau, and other early Jesuit writers, describe it with great mi-
nuteness. The former (Relation, 1634) speaks of an audacious conjurer,
who, having invoked the Manitou, or spirit, killed him with a hatchet.
To all appearance he was a stone, which, however, when struck with the
hatchet, proved to be full of flesh and blood. A kindred superstition pre:
wails among the Crow Indians.
1609.] FIRST SIGHT OF THE LAKE. 345
Champlain thinks, the Devil — at all their camps.
His replies, for the most part, seem to have given
them great content; yet they took other measures,
of which the military advantages were less ques-
tionable. The principal chief gathered bundles of
sticks, and, without wasting his breath, stuck
them in the earth in a certain order, calling each
by the name of some warrior, a few taller than
the rest representing the subordinate chiefs. Thus
was indicated the position which each was to hold
in the expected battle. All gathered round and
attentively studied the sticks, ranged like a child’s
wooden soldiers, or the pieces on a chessboard ;
then, with no further instruction, they formed
their ranks, broke them, and reformed them again
and again with excellent alacrity and skill.
Again the canoes advanced, the river widening
as they went. Great islands appeared, leagues in
extent, — Isle à la Motte, Long Island, Grande Isle.
Channels where ships might float and broad reaches
of water stretched between them, and Champlain
entered the lake which preserves his name to pos-
terity. Cumberland Head was passed, and from
the opening of the great channel between Grande
Isle and the main he could look forth on the wil-
derness sea. Edged with woods, the tranquil flood
spread southward beyond the sight. Far on the
left rose the forest ridges of the Green Moun-
tains, and on the right the Adirondacks, haunts
in these later years of amateur sportsmen from
counting-rooms or college halls. Then the Iro-
Quois made them their hunting-ground ; and be:
346 LAKE CHAMPLAIN, [1609.
yond, in the valleys of the Mohawk, the Onondaga,
and the Genesee, stretched the long line of their
five cantons and palisaded towns.
At night they encamped again. The scene is
a familiar one to many a tourist ; and perhaps,
standing at sunset on the peaceful strand, Cham-
plain saw what a roving student of this generation
has seen on those same shores, at that same hour:
the glow of the vanished sun behind the western
mountains, darkly piled in mist and shadow along
the sky; near at hand, the dead pine, mighty in
decay, stretching its ragged arms athwart the burn-
ing heaven, the crow perched on its top like an
image carved in jet ; and aloft, the nighthawk,
circling in his flight, and, with a strange whirring
sound, diving through the air each moment for the
insects he makes his prey.
The progress of the party was becoming danger-
ous. They changed their mode of advance, and
moved only in the night. All day, they lay close
in the depth of the forest, sleeping, lounging, smok-
ing tobacco of their own raising, and beguiling the
hours, no doubt, with the shallow banter and ob-
scene jesting with which knots of Indians are wont
to amuse their leisure. At twilight they embarked
again, paddling their cautious way till the eastern
sky began to redden. Their goal was the rocky
promontory where Fort Ticonderoga was long af-
terward built. Thence, they would pass the outlet
of Lake George, and launch their canoes again on
that Como of the wilderness, whose waters, limpid
as a fountain-head, stretched far southward be-
^,
1609.1 PROGNOSTICS. 347
tween their flanking mountains. Landing at the
future site of Fort William Henry, they would
carry their canoes through the forest to the river
Hudson, and, descending it, attack perhaps some
Outlying town of the Mohawks. In the next cen-
tury this chain of lakes and rivers became the
grand highway of Savage and civilized war, linked
to memories of momentous conflicts.
The allies were spared so long a progress. On
the morning of the twenty-ninth of July, after
paddling all night, they hid as usual in the forest
on the western shore, apparently between Crown
Point and Ticonderoga. The warriors stretched
themselves to their slumbers, and Champlain, after
walking till nine or ten o'clock through the sur-
rounding woods, returned to take his repose on a
pile of spruce-boughs. Sleeping, he dreamed a
dream, wherein he beheld the Iroquois drowning
in the lake; and, trying to rescue them, he was
told by his Algonquin friends that they were good
for nothing, and had better be left to their fate.
For some time past he had been beset every morn-
ing by his superstitious allies, eager to learn about
his dreams; and, to this moment, his unbroken
slumbers had failed to furnish the desired prognos-
tics. The announcement of this auspicious vision
filled the crowd with joy, and at nightfall they
embarked, flushed with anticipated victories."
1 The power of dreams among Indians in their primitive condition can
scarcely be over-estimated. Among the ancient Hurons and cognate tribes,
they were the universal authority and oracle; but while a dreamer of repu-
tation had unlimited power, the dream of a vaurien was held in no account
There were professed interpreters of dreams. Brébeuf, Rel, des Hurons
348 LAKE CHAMPILAIN. [1609.
It was ten o’clock in the evening, when, near
a projecting point of land, which was probably
Ticonderoga, they descried dark objects in motion
on the lake before them. These were a flotilla of
Iroquois canoes, heavier and slower than theirs, for
they were made of oak bark." Each party saw the
other, and the mingled war-cries pealed over the
darkened water. The Iroquois, who were near
the shore, having no stomach for an aquatic bat-
tle, landed, and, making night hideous with their
clamors, began to barricade themselves. Cham-
plain could see them in the woods, laboring like
beavers, hacking down trees with iron axes taken
from the Canadian tribes in war, and with stone
hatchets of their own making. The allies re-
mained on the lake, a bowshot from the hostile
barricade, their canoes made fast together by poles
lashed across. All night they danced with as much
vigor as the frailty of their vessels would permit,
their throats making amends for the enforced re-
straint of their limbs. It was agreed on both sides
that the fight should be deferred till daybreak;
117. A man, dreaming that he had killed his wife, made it an excuse for
killing her in fact. All these tribes, including the Iroquois, had a stated
game called Ononhara, or the dreaming game, in which dreams were made
the pretext for the wildest extravagances. See Lafitau, Charlevoix, Sagard,
Brébeuf, etc.
1 Champlain, (1618,) 232. Probably a mistake; the Iroquois canoes
were usually of elm bark. The paper-birch was used wherever it could be
had, being incomparably the best-material. All the tribes, from the mouth
of the Saco northward and eastward, and along the entire northern portion
of the valley of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, used the birch.
The best substitutes were elm and spruce. The birch bark, from its lami-
nated texture, could be peeled at any time; the others only when the sap
was in motion.
1609.] ENCOUNTER WITH THE IROQUOIS. 349
but meanwhile a commerce of abuse, sarcasm, men-
ace, and boasting gave unceasing exercise to the
lungs and fancy of the combatants, – “much,”
says Champlain, “like the besiegers and besieged
in a beleaguered town.”
As day approached, he and his two followers put
On the light armor of the time. Champlain wore
the doublet and long hose then in vogue. Over
the doublet he buckled on a breastplate, and prob-
ably a back-piece, while his thighs were protected
by cuisses of steel, and his head by a plumed
casque. Across his shoulder hung the strap of
his bandoleer, or ammunition-box; at his side was
his sword, and in his hand his arquebuse." Such
was the equipment of this ancient Indian-fighter,
whose exploits date eleven years before the land-
ing of the Puritans at Plymouth, and sixty-six
years before King Philip's War.
Each of the three Frenchmen was in a separate
canoe, and, as it grew light, they kept themselves
hidden, either by lying at the bottom, or covering
themselves with an Indian robe. The canoes ap-
proached the shore, and all landed without opposi-
tion at some distance from the Iroquois, whom
they presently could see filing out of their barri-
cade, tall, strong men, some two hundred in num-
ber, the boldest and fiercest warriors of North
America. They advanced through the forest with
a steadiness which excited the admiration of Cham-
1 Champlain, in his rude drawing of the battle, (ed. 1613,) portrays
himself and his equipment with sufficient distinctness. Compare plates
of the weapons and armor of the period in Meyrick, Ancient Armor, and
Susane, Histoire de l'Ancienne Infanterie Française.
350 - TAKE CHAMPLAIN. * [1609,
plain. Among them could be seen three chiefs,
made conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some bore
shields of wood and hide, and some were covered
with a kind of armor made of tough twigs inter-
laced with a vegetable fibre supposed by Champlain
to be cotton."
The allies, growing anxious, called with loud
cries for their champion, and opened their ranks
that he might pass to the front. He did so, and,
advancing before his red companions in arms, stood
revealed to the gaze of the Iroquois, who, behold-
ing the warlike apparition in their path, stared in
mute amazement. “I looked at them,” says Cham-
plain, “and they looked at me. When I saw them
getting ready to shoot their arrows at us, I levelled
my arquebuse, which I had loaded with four balls,
and aimed straight at one of the three chiefs. The
shot brought down two, and wounded another. On
this, our Indians set up such a yelling that one could
not have heard a thunder-clap, and all the while
the arrows flew thick on both sides. The Iroquois
were greatly astonished and frightened to see two
of their men killed so quickly, in spite of their
arrow-proof armor. As I was reloading, one of
my companions fired a shot from the woods, which
so increased their astonishment that, seeing their
chiefs dead, they abandoned the field and fled into
1. According to Lafitau, both bucklers and breastplates were in frequent
use among the Iroquois. The former were very large and made of cedar
wood covered with interwoven thongs of hide. The kindred nation of the
Hurons, says Sagard (Voyage des Hurons, 126–206), carried large shields,
and wore greaves for the legs and cuirasses made of twigs interwoven
with 'cords. His account corresponds with that of Champlain, who gives
a wood-cut of a warrior thus armed.
1609.] TORTURE. ' 351
the depth of the forest.” The allies dashed after
them. Some of the Iroquois were killed, and more
were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were
abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the
panic flight. The victory was complete.
At night, the victors led out one of the prisoners,
told him that he was to die by fire, and ordered
him to sing his death-song, if he dared. Then they
began the torture, and presently scalped their vic-
tim alive," when Champlain, sickening at the sight,
begged leave to shoot him. They refused, and he
turned away in anger and disgust ; on which they
called him back and told him to do as he pleased.
He turned again and a shot from his arquebuse put
the wretch out of misery.
The scene filled him with horror; but, a few
months later, on the Place de la Grève at Paris,
he might have witnessed tortures equally revolt-
ing and equally vindictive, inflicted on the regicide
Ravaillac by the sentence of grave and learned
judges.
The allies made a prompt retreat from the scene
of their triumph. Three or four days brought
them to the mouth of the Richelieu. Here they
separated; the Hurons and Algonquins made for
1 It has been erroneously asserted that the practice of Scalping did not
prevail among the Indians before the advent of Europeans. In 1535,
Cartier saw five scalps at Quebec, dried and stretched on hoops. In
1564, Laudonnière saw them among the Indians of Florida. The Algon-
quins of New England and Nova Scotia were accustomed to cut off and
carry away the head, which they afterwards scalped. Those of Canada, it
seems, sometimes scalped dead bodies on the field. The Algonquin
practice of carrying off heads as trophies is mentioned by Lalemant,
Roger Williams, Jescarbot, and Champlain. Compare Historical Maga.
zine, First Series, V. 253.
352 LAKE CHAMPLAIN. [1609.
the Ottawa, their homeward route, each with a
share of prisoners for future torments. At parting
they invited Champlain to visit their towns, and
aid them again in their wars, an invitation which
this paladin of the woods failed not to accept.
The companions now remaining to him were the
Montagnais. In their camp on the Richelieu, one
of them dreamed that a war party of Iroquois was
close upon them ; on which, in a torrent of rain,
they left their huts, paddled in dismay to the
islands above the Lake of St. Peter, and hid them-
selves all night in the rushes. In the morning,
they took heart, emerged from their hiding-places,
descended to Quebec, and went thence to Tadous-
sac, whither Champlain accompanied them. Here
the squaws, stark naked, swam out to the canoes
to receive the heads of the dead Iroquois, and,
hanging them from their necks, danced in tri-
umph along the shore. One of the heads and a
pair of arms were then bestowed on Champlain, –
touching memorials of gratitude, which, however,
he was by no means to keep for himself, but to
present to the King.
Thus did New France rush into collision with the
redoubted warriors of the Five Nations. Here was
the beginning, and in some measure doubtless the
cause, of a long suite of murderous conflicts, bear-
ing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn.
Champlain had invaded the tiger's den; and now,
in Smothered fury, the patient Savage would lie
biding his day of blood.
CHAPTER XI.
1610–1612.
WAR. — TRADE. – DISCOVERY.
CHAMPLAIN AT FONTAINEBLEAU. — CHAMPLAIN ON THE ST. LAWRENCE,
— ALARM. — BATTLE. — WAR PARTIES. — ICEBERGs. – ADVENTUR-
ERs. – CHAMPLAIN AT MONTREAL. — RETURN TO FRANCE. — THE
COMTE DE SOIssONS. — THE PRINCE DE COND#.
CHAMPLAIN and Pontgravé returned to France,
while Pierre Chauvin of Dieppe held Quebec in
their absence. The King was at Fontainebleau,
—it was a few months before his assassination, —
and here Champlain recounted his adventures, to
the great satisfaction of the lively monarch. He
gave him also, not the head of the dead Iroquois,
but a belt wrought in embroidery of dyed quills of
the Canada porcupine, together with two small
birds of scarlet plumage, and the skull of a gar-
fish.
De Monts was at court, striving for a renewal
of his monopoly. His efforts failed; on which,
with great spirit but little discretion, he resolved
to push his enterprise without it. Early in the
spring of 1610, the ship was ready, and Champlain
and Pontgravé were on board, when a violent ill-
ness seized the former, reducing him to the most
miserable of all conflicts, the battle of the eager
spirit against the treacherous and failing flesh.
23
354 WAR. — TRADE. – DISCOVERY. [1610.
Having partially recovered, he put to sea, giddy
and weak, in wretched plight for the hard career
of toil and battle which the New World offered
him. The voyage was prosperous, no other mis-
hap occurring than that of an ardent youth of
St. Malo, who drank the health of Pontgravé with
such persistent enthusiasm that he fell overboard
and was drowned.
There were ships at Tadoussac, fast loading with
furs; and boats, too, higher up the river, antici-
pating the trade, and draining De Monts's re-
sources in advance. Champlain, who was left free
to fight and explore wherever he should see fit,
had provided, to use his own phrase, “two strings
to his bow.” On the one hand, the Montagnais
had promised to guide him northward to Hudson's
Bay; on the other, the Hurons were to show him
the Great Lakes, with the mines of copper on their
shores; and to each the same reward was prom-
ised, - to join them against the common foe, the
Iroquois. The rendezvous was at the mouth of
the River Richelieu. Thither the Hurons were to
descend in force, together with Algonquins of the
Ottawa; and thither Champlain now repaired,
while around his boat swarmed a multitude of
Montagnais canoes, filled with warriors whose lank
hair streamed loose in the wind.
There is an island in the St. Lawrence near the
mouth of the Richelieu. On the nineteenth of
June, it was swarming with busy and clamorous
savages, Champlain's Montagnais allies, cutting
down the trees and clearing the ground for a
610.] ALARM. 355
dance and a feast; for they were hourly expect-
ing the Algonquin warriors, and were eager to
welcome them with befitting honors. But Sud-
denly, far out on the river, they saw an advancing
canoe. Now on this side, now on that, the flash-
ing paddles urged it forward as if death were on
its track; and as it drew near, the Indians on
board cried out that the Algonquins were in the
forest, a league distant, engaged with a hundred
warriors of the Iroquois, who, outnumbered, were
fighting savagely within a barricade of trees.
The air was split with shrill outcries. The
Montagnais snatched their weapons, – shields,
bows, arrows, war-clubs, sword-blades made fast
to poles, – and ran headlong to their canoes, im-
peding each other in their haste, screeching to
Champlain to follow, and invoking with no less
vehemence the aid of certain fur-traders, just ar-
rived in four boats from below. These, as it was
not their cue to fight, lent them a deaf ear; on
which, in disgust and scorn, they paddled off, call-
ing to the recusants that they were women, fit for
nothing but to make war on beaver-skins.
Champlain and four of his men were in the
canoes. They shot across the intervening water,
and, as their prows grated on the pebbles, each
warrior flung down his paddle, snatched his weap-
ons, and ran into the woods. The five Frenchmen
followed, striving vainly to keep pace with the
naked, light-limbed rabble, bounding like shadows
through the forest. They quickly disappeared.
Even their shrill cries grew faint, till Champlain
356 WAR. — TRADE. – DISCOVERY. {1610.
and his men, discomforted and vexed, found them-
selves deserted in the midst of a swamp. The day
was sultry, the forest air heavy, close, and filled
with hosts of mosquitoes, “so thick,” says the
chief sufferer, “that we could scarcely draw
breath, and it was wonderful how cruelly they
persecuted us.”" Through black mud, spongy
moss, water knee-deep, over fallen trees, among
slimy logs and entangling roots, tripped by vines,
lashed by recoiling boughs, panting under their
steel head-pieces and heavy corselets, the French-
men struggled on, bewildered and indignant. At
length they descried two Indians running in the
distance, and shouted to them in desperation, that,
if they wanted their aid, they must guide them to
the enemy.
At length they could hear the yells of the com-
batants; there was light in the forest before them,
and they issued into a partial clearing made by
the Iroquois axemen near the river. Champlain
saw their barricade. Trees were piled into a cir-
cular breastwork, trunks, boughs, and matted foli-
age forming a strong defence, within which the
Iroquois stood savagely at bay. Around them
flocked the allies, half hidden in the edges of the
forest, like hounds around a wild boar, eager,
clamorous, yet afraid to rush in. They had at-
tacked, and had met a bloody rebuff. All their
hope was now in the French ; and when they saw
* “. . . . quantité de mousquites, qui estoient si espoisses qu’elles ne
nous permettoient point presque de reprendre nostre halaine, tant elles
nous pers&cutoient, et si cruellement que c'estoit chose estrange.” Cham:
plain, (1618,) 250.
1610.] BATTLE. — VICTORY. 357
them, a yell arose from hundreds of throats that
outdid the wilderness voices whence its tones were
borrowed, - the whoop of the horned owl, the
scream of the cougar, the howl of starved wolves
On a winter night. A fierce response pealed from
the desperate band within ; and amid a storm of
arrows from both sides, the Frenchmen threw
themselves into the fray, firing at random through
the fence of trunks, boughs, and drooping leaves,
with which the Iroquois had encircled themselves.
Champlain felt a stone-headed arrow splitting his
ear and tearing through the muscles of his neck.
He drew it Out, and, the moment after, did a simi-
lar office for one of his men. But the Iroquois
had not recovered from their first terror at the
arquebuse; and when the mysterious and terrible
assailants, clad in steel and armed with thunder-
bolts, ran up to the barricade, thrust their pieces
through the openings, and shot death among the
crowd within, they could not control their fright,
but with every report threw themselves flat on the
ground. Animated with unwonted valor, the allies,
covered by their large shields, began to drag out
the felled trees of the barricade, while others, un-
der Champlain's direction, gathered at the edge of
the forest, preparing to close the affair with a final
rush. New actors soon appeared on the scene.
These were a boat's crew of the fur-traders under
a young man of St. Malo, One Des Prairies, who,
when he heard the firing, could not resist the im-
pulse to join the fight. On seeing them, Cham-
plain checked the assault, in order, as he says, that
358 WAR. — TRADE. – DISCOVERY. [1610.
the new-comers might have their share in the
sport. The traders opened fire, with great zest
and no less execution; while the Iroquois, now
wild with terror, leaped and writhed to dodge the
shot which tore through their frail armor of twigs.
Champlain gave the signal; the crowd ran to the
barricade, dragged down the boughs or clambered
over them, and bore themselves, in his own words,
“so well and manfully,” that, though scratched
and torn by the sharp points, they quickly forced
an entrance. The French ceased their fire, and,
followed by a smaller body of Indians, scaled the
barricade on the farther side. Now, amid howl-
ings, shouts, and screeches, the work was finished.
Some of the Iroquois were cut down as they stood,
hewing with their war-clubs, and foaming like
slaughtered tigers; some climbed the barrier and
were killed by the furious crowd without ; some
were drowned in the river; while fifteen, the only
survivors, were made prisoners. “By the grace
of God,” writes Champlain, “behold the battle
won ’’ Drunk with ferocious ecstasy, the con-
querors scalped the dead and gathered fagots for
the living, while some of the fur-traders, too late
to bear part in the fight, robbed the carcasses of
their blood-bedrenched robes of beaver-skin, amid
the derision of the surrounding Indians."
That might, the torture fires blazed along the
shore. Champlain saved one prisoner from their
clutches, but nothing could save the rest. One
1 Champlain. (1618,) 254. This narrative, like most others, is much
abridged in the edition of 1632.
1610.] A SAVAGE CONCOURSE. 359
body was quartered and eaten.” “As for the rest
of the prisoners,” says Champlain, “they were kept
to be put to death by the women and girls, who in
this respect are no less inhuman than the men, and,
indeed, much more so; for by their subtlety they
invent more cruel tortures, and take pleasure in it.”
On the next day, a large band of Hurons ap-
peared at the rendezvous, greatly vexed that they
had come too late. The shores were thickly
studded with Indian huts, and the woods were
full of them. Here were warriors of three des-
ignations, including many subordinate tribes, and
representing three grades of Savage Society: the
Hurons, the Algonquins of the Ottawa, and the
Montagnais; afterwards styled by a Franciscan
friar, than whom few men better knew them, the
nobles, the burghers, and the peasantry and pau-
pers of the forest.” Many of them, from the re-
mote interior, had never before seen a white man;
and, wrapped like statues in their robes, they stood
gazing on the French with a fixed stare of wild
and wondering eyes.
Judged by the standard of Indian war, a heavy
blow had been struck on the common enemy.
1 Traces of cannibalism may be found among most of the North Amer-
ican tribes, though they are rarely very conspicuous. Sometimes the prac-
tice arose, as in the present instance, from revenge or ferocity; sometimes
it bore a religious character, as with the Miamis, among whom there ex-
isted a secret religious fraternity of man-eaters; sometimes the heart of a
brave enemy was devoured in the idea that it made the eater brave. This
last practice was common. The ferocious threat, used in speaking of an
enemy, “I will eat his heart,” is by no means a mere figure of speech,
The roving hunter-tribes, in their winter wanderings, were not infre
quently impelled to canibalism by famine.
2 Sagard, Voyage des Hurons, 184
360 WAR. — TRADE. – DISCOVERY. [1610.
Here were hundreds of assembled warriors; yet
none thought of following up their success. Elated
with unexpected fortune, they danced and sang;
then loaded their canoes, hung their scalps on
poles, broke up their camps, and set out trium-
phant for their homes. Champlain had fought
their battles, and now might claim, on their part,
guidance and escort to the distant interior. Why
he did not do so is scarcely apparent. There were
cares, it seems, connected with the very life of his
puny colony, which demanded his return to France.
Nor were his anxieties lessened by the arrival of a
ship from his native town of Brouage, with tidings
of the King's assassination. Here was a death-
blow to all that had remained of De Monts's credit
at Court ; while that unfortunate nobleman, like
his old associate, Poutrincourt, was moving with
swift strides toward financial ruin. With the rev-
Ocation of his monopoly, fur-traders had swarmed
to the St. Lawrence. Tadoussac was full of them,
and for that year the trade was spoiled. Far from
aiding to support a burdensome enterprise of colo-
nization, it was in itself an Occasion of heavy loss.
Champlain bade farewell to his garden at Que-
bec, where maize, wheat, rye, and barley, with
vegetables of all kinds, and a small vineyard of
native grapes, – for he was a zealous horticultu-
rist," — held forth a promise which he was not to
see fulfilled. He left one Du Parc in command,
with sixteen men, and, sailing on the eighth of
1. During the next year, he planted roses around Quebec. Champlain,
(1618,) 313.
1611.1 RIVAL TRADERS. 361
August, arrived at Honfleur with no worse acci-
dent than that of running over a sleeping whale
near the Grand Bank.
With the opening spring he was afloat again.
Perils awaited him worse than those of Iroquois
tomahawks; for, approaching Newfoundland, the
ship was entangled for days among drifting fields
and bergs of ice. Escaping at length, she arrived
at Tadoussac on the thirteenth of May, 1611. She
had anticipated the spring. Forests and moun-
tains, far and near, all were white with Snow. A
principal object with Champlain was to establish
such relations with the great Indian communities
of the interior as to secure to De Monts and his
associates the advantage of trade with them ; and
to this end he now repaired to Montreal, a position
in the gateway, as it were, of their yearly descents
of trade or war. On arriving, he began to survey
the ground for the site of a permanent post.
A few days convinced him, that, under the pres-
ent system, all his efforts would be vain. Wild
reports of the wonders of New France had gone
abroad, and a crowd of hungry adventurers had
hastened to the land of promise, eager to grow
rich, they scarcely knew how, and soon to return
disgusted. A fleet of boats and small vessels fol-
lowed in Champlain's wake. Within a few days,
thirteen of them arrived at Montreal, and more
soon appeared. He was to break the ground;
others would reap the harvest. Travel, discovery,
and battle, all must inure to the profit, not of the
colony, but of a crew of greedy traders.
362 WAR.—TRADE. – DISCOVERY. [1611.
Champlain, however, chose the site and cleared
the ground for his intended post. It was immedi-
ately above a small stream, now running under
arches of masonry, and entering the St. Lawrence
at Point Callières, within the modern city. He
called it Place Royale;" and here, on the margin
of the river, he built a wall of bricks made on the
spot, in order to measure the destructive effects of
the “ice-shove” in the spring.
Now, down the surges of St. Louis, where the
mighty floods of the St. Lawrence, contracted to a
marrow throat, roll in fury among their sunken
rocks, – here, through foam and spray and the
roar of the angry torrent, a fleet of birch canoes
came dancing like dry leaves on the froth of some
riotous brook. They bore a band of Hurons, first
at the rendezvous. As they drew near the land-
ing, all the fur-traders' boats blazed out a clat-
tering fusillade, which was designed to bid them
welcome, but in fact terrified many of them to
such a degree that they scarcely dared to come
ashore. Nor were they reassured by the bearing
of the disorderly crowd, who, in jealous competi-
tion for their beaver-skins, left them not a mo-
ment's peace, and outraged all their notions of
decorum. More soon appeared, till hundreds of
warriors were encamped along the shore, all rest-
less, suspicious, and alarmed. Late One night, they
awakened Champlain. On going with them to
their camp, he found chiefs and warriors in sol-
1 The mountain being Mont Royal (Montreal). The Hospital of the
Gray Nuns was built on a portion of Champlain's Place Royale.
1611.] INTERVIEW WITH IDE MONTS. 363
emn conclave around the glimmering firelight.
Though they were fearful of the rest, their trust
in him was boundless. “Come to our country,
buy our beaver, build a fort, teach us the true
faith, do what you will, but do not bring this
crowd with you.” The idea had seized them that
these lawless bands of rival traders, all well armed,
meant to plunder, and kill them. Champlain as-
sured them of safety, and the whole night was
Consumed in friendly colloquy. Soon afterward,
however, the camp broke up, and the uneasy war-
riors removed to the borders of the Lake of St.
Louis, placing the rapids betwixt themselves and
the objects of their alarm. Here Champlain vis-
ited them, and hence these intrepid canoe-men,
kneeling in their birchen egg-shells, carried him
homeward down the rapids, somewhat, as he ad-
mits, to the discomposure of his nerves."
The great gathering dispersed : the traders de-
scended to Tadoussac, and Champlain to Quebec;
while the Indians went, some to their homes,
some to fight the Iroquois. A few months later,
Champlain was in close conference with De Monts,
at Pons, a place near Rochelle, of which the latter
was governor. The last two years had made it
apparent that, to keep the colony alive and main-
tain a basis for those discoveries on which his
1 The first white man to descend the rapids of St. Louis was a youth
named Louis, who, on the 10th of June, 1611, went with two Indians to
shoot herons on an island, and was drowned on the way down; the
second was a young man who in the summer before had gone with the
Hurons to their country, and who returned with them on the 13th of June;
the third was Champlain himself.
364 WAR. - TRADE. – DISCOVERY. [1612.
heart was bent, was impossible without a change
of system. De Monts, engrossed with the cares
of his government, placed all in the hands of his
associate, and Champlain, fully empowered to act
as he should judge expedient, set out for Paris.
On the way, Fortune, at One stroke, wellnigh
crushed him and New France together; for his
horse fell on him, and he narrowly escaped with
life. When he was partially recovered, he re-
sumed his journey, pondering on means of rescue
for the fading colony. A powerful protector must
be had, – a great name to shield the enterprise
from assaults and intrigues of jealous rival in-
terests. On reaching Paris he addressed himself
to a prince of the blood, Charles de Bourbon,
Comte de Soissons; described New France, its re-
sources, and its boundless extent, urged the need
of unfolding a mystery pregnant perhaps with re-
sults of the deepest moment, laid before him maps
and memoirs, and begged him to become the guar-
dian of this new world. The royal consent being
obtained, the Comte de Soissons became Lieutenant-
General for the King in New France, with vice-
regal powers. These, in turn, he conferred upon
Champlain, making him his lieutenant, with full
control over the trade in furs at and above Quebec,
and with power to associate with himself such
persons as he saw fit, to aid in the exploration
and settlement of the country."
1 Commission de Monseigneur le Comte de Soissons donnée au Sieur de
Champlein, 15 Oct., 1612. See Champlain, (1632,) 231, and Mémoires des
Commissaires, II. 451.
1612.] CONDE. 365
Scarcely was the commission drawn when the
Comte de Soissons, attacked with fever, died, to
the joy of the Breton and Norman traders, whose
jubilation, however, found a speedy end. Henri
de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, first prince of the
blood, assumed the vacant protectorship. He was
grandson of the gay and gallant Condé of the
civil wars, was father of the great Condé, the
youthful victor of Rocroy, and was husband of
Charlotte de Montmorenci, whose blonde beauties
had fired the inflammable heart of Henry the
Fourth. To the unspeakable wrath of that keen
lover, the prudent Condé fled with his bride, first
to Brussels, and then to Italy; nor did he return
to France till the regicide's knife had put his
jealous fears to rest." After his return, he began
to intrigue against the court. He was a man of
common abilities, greedy of money and power,
and scarcely seeking even the decency of a pretext
to cover his mean ambition.” His chief honor—
an honor somewhat equivocal — is, as Voltaire
observes, to have been father of the great Condé.
Busy with his intrigues, he cared little for colonies
and discoveries; and his rank and power were his
sole qualifications for his new post.
In Champlain alone was the life of New France.
By instinct and temperament he was more im-
pelled to the adventurous toils of exploration than
1 The anecdote, as told by the Princess herself to her wandering court
during the romantic campaigning of the Fronde, will be found in the
curious Mémoires de Lemet.
2 Mémoires de Madame de Motteville, passim ; Sismondi, Histoire des
Français, XXIV., XXV., passim.
366 WAR. — TRADE. – DISCOVERY. [1612.
to the duller task of building colonies. The profits
of trade had value in his eyes Only as means to
these ends, and settlements were important chiefly
as a base of discovery. Two great objects eclipsed
all others, – to find a route to the Indies, and to
bring the heathen tribes into the embraces of the
Church, since, while he cared little for their bodies,
his solicitude for their souls knew no bounds.
It was no part of his plan to establish an odious
monopoly. He sought rather to enlist the rival
traders in his cause ; and he now, in concurrence
with De Monts, invited them to become sharers in
the traffic, under certain regulations, and on con-
dition of aiding in the establishment and support
of the colony. The merchants of St. Malo and
Rouen accepted the terms, and became members
of the new company; but the intractable heretics
of Rochelle, refractory in commerce as in religion,
kept aloof, and preferred the chances of an illicit
trade. The prospects of New France were far
from flattering; for little could be hoped from
this unwilling league of selfish traders, each jeal-
ous of the rest. They gave the Prince of Condé
large gratuities to secure his countenance and
support. The hungry viceroy took them, and
with these emoluments his interest in the colony
ended.
CHAPTER XII.
1612, 1613.
THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU.
ILLUSIONs. – A PATH TO THE NORTH SEA. — THE OTTAw A. — For Est
TRAVELLERs. – INDIAN FEAST. - THE IMPOSTOR ExPOSED. — RE-
TURN TO MONTREAL.
THE arrangements just indicated were a work
of time. In the summer of 1612, Champlain was
forced to forego his yearly voyage to New France;
nor, even in the following spring, were his labors
finished and the rival interests brought to har-
mony. Meanwhile, incidents occurred destined
to have no small influence on his movements.
Three years before, after his second fight with
the Iroquois, a young man of his company had
boldly volunteered to join the Indians on their
homeward journey, and winter among them.
Champlain gladly assented, and in the following
summer the adventurer returned. Another young
man, one Nicolas de Vignau, next offered himself;
and he also, embarking in the Algonquin canoes,
passed up the Ottawa, and was seen no more for a
twelvemonth. In 1612 he reappeared in Paris,
bringing a tale of wonders; for, says Champlain,
“he was the most impudent liar that has been
seen for many a day.” He averred that at the
368 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. [1613.
sources of the Ottawa, he had found a great lake;
that he had crossed it, and discovered a river flow-
ing northward; that he had descended this river,
and reached the shores of the sea; that here he
had seen the wreck of an English ship, whose
crew, escaping to land, had been killed by the
Indians; and that this sea was distant from Mon-
treal only seventeen days by canoe. The clear-
ness, consistency, and apparent simplicity of his
story deceived Champlain, who had heard of a
voyage of the English to the northern seas, coupled
with rumors of wreck and disaster," and was thus
confirmed in his belief of Vignau's honesty. The
Maréchal de Brissac, the President Jeannin, and
other persons of eminence about the court, greatly
interested by these dexterous fabrications, urged
Champlain to follow up without delay a discovery
which promised results so important; while he,
with the Pacific, Japan, China, the Spice Islands,
and India stretching in flattering vista before his
fancy, entered with eagerness on the chase of this
illusion. Early in the spring of 1613 the un-
wearied voyager crossed the Atlantic, and sailed
up the St. Lawrence. On Monday, the twenty-
seventh of May, he left the island of St. Helen,
opposite Montreal, with four Frenchmen, one of
whom was Nicolas de Vignau, and one Indian, in
two small canoes. They passed the swift current
at St. Ann’s, crossed the Lake of Two Mountains,
1 Evidently the voyage of Henry Hudson in 1610–12, when that navi-
gator, after discovering Hudson's Strait, lost his life through a mutiny.
Compare Jérémie, Relation, in Recueil de Voyages au Nord, VI.
1613.] CHAMPLAIN ON THE OTTAWA. 369
and advanced up the Ottawa till the rapids of
Carillon and the Long Saut checked their course.
So dense and tangled was the forest, that they
were forced to remain in the bed of the river,
trailing their canoes along the bank with cords,
or pushing them by main force up the current.
Champlain's foot slipped; he fell in the rapids,
two boulders, against which he braced himself,
saving him from being swept down, while the
cord of the canoe, twisted round his hand, nearly
severed it. At length they reached smoother
water, and presently met fifteen canoes of friendly
Indians. Champlain gave them the most awk-
ward of his Frenchmen, and took one of their
number in return, – an exchange greatly to his
profit.
All day they plied their paddles, and when
night came they made their camp-fire in the forest.
He who now, when two centuries and a half are
passed, would see the evening bivouac of Cham-
plain, has but to encamp, with Indian guides, on
the upper waters of this same Ottawa, or on the
borders of some lonely river of New Brunswick or
of Maine.
Day dawned. The east glowed with tranquil
fire, that pierced, with eyes of flame, the fir trees
whose jagged tops stood drawn in black against
the burning heaven. Beneath, the glossy river
slept in shadow, or spread far and wide in sheets
of burnished bronze ; and the white moon, paling
in the face of day, hung like a disk of silver in
the western sky. Now, a fervid light touched the
24
370 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. [1613.
dead top of the hemlock, and, creeping downward,
bathed the mossy beard of the patriarchal cedar, un-
stirred in the breathless air. Now, a fiercer spark
beamed from the east ; and now, half risen on the
sight, a dome of crimson fire, the sun blazed with
floods of radiance across the awakened wilderness.
The canoes were launched again, and the voy-
agers held their course. Soon the still surface was
flecked with spots of foam ; islets of froth floated
by, tokens of some great convulsion. Then, on
their left, the falling curtain of the Rideau shone
like silver betwixt its bordering woods, and in
front, white as a snow-drift, the cataracts of the
Chaudière barred their way. They saw the un-
bridled river careering down its sheeted rocks,
foaming in unfathomed chasms, wearying the Soli-
tude with the hoarse outcry of its agony and
rage.
On the brink of the rocky basin where the
plunging torrent boiled like a caldron, and puffs
of spray sprang out from its concussion like Smoke
from the throat of a cannon, Champlain's two In-
dians took their stand, and, with a loud invocation,
threw tobacco into the foam, an offering to the
local spirit, the Manitou of the cataract."
They shouldered their canoes over the rocks, and
through the woods; then launched them again,
* An invariable custom with the upper Indians on passing this place.
When many were present, it was attended with solemn dances and
speeches, a contribution of tobacco being first taken on a dish. It was
thought to insure a safe voyage; but was often an occasion of disaster,
since hostile war parties, lying in ambush at the spot, would surprise and
kill the votaries of the Manitou in the very presence of their guardian. It
is on the return voyage that Champlain particularly describes the sacrifice.
1613.] THE OTTAWA, 3.71
and, with toil and struggle, made their amphibious
way, pushing, dragging, lifting, paddling, shoving
with poles; till, when the evening Sun poured its
level rays across the quiet Lake of the Chaudière,
they landed, and made their camp on the verge of
a woody island.
Day by day brought a renewal of their toils.
Hour by hour, they moved prosperously up the
long windings of the solitary stream ; then, in
quick succession, rapid followed rapid, till the bed
of the Ottawa seemed a slope of foam. Now, like
a wall bristling at the top with woody islets, the
Falls of the Chats faced them with the sheer plunge
of their sixteen cataracts. Now they glided be
neath overhanging cliffs, where, seeing but unseen,
the crouched wild-cat eyed them from the thicket;
now through the maze of water-girded rocks, which
the white cedar and the spruce clasped with ser-
pent-like roots, or among islands where old hem-
locks darkened the water with deep green shadow.
Here, too, the rock-maple reared its verdant masses,
the beech its glistening leaves and clean, smooth
stem, and behind, stiff and sombre, rose the balsam-
fir. Here, in the tortuous channels, the muskrat
swam and plunged, and the splashing wild duck
dived beneath the alders or among the red and
matted roots of thirsty water-willows. Aloft, the
white pine towered above a sea of verdure; old
fir trees, hoary and grim, shaggy with pendent
mosses, leaned above the stream, and beneath,
dead and submerged, some fallen Oak thrust from
the current its bare, bleached limbs, like the skele-
372 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. [1613.
ton of a drowned giant. In the weedy cove stood
the moose, neck-deep in water to escape the flies,
wading shoreward, with glistening sides, as the
canoes drew near, shaking his broad antlers and
writhing his hideous nostril, as with clumsy trot
he vanished in the woods.
In these ancient wilds, to whose ever verdant
antiquity the pyramids are young and Nineveh a
mushroom of yesterday; where the sage wanderer
of the Odyssey, could he have urged his pilgrimage
so far, would have surveyed the same grand and
stern monotony, the same dark sweep of melan-
choly woods; — here, while New England was a
solitude, and the settlers of Virginia scarcely dared
venture inland beyond the sound of a cannon-shot,
Champlain was planting on shores and islands
the emblems of his faith. Of the pioneers of the
North American forests, his name stands foremost
on the list. It was he who struck the deepest and
boldest strokes into the heart of their pristine bar-
barism. At Chantilly, at Fontainebleau, at Paris,
in the cabinets of princes and of royalty itself,
mingling with the proud vanities of the court;
then lost from sight in the depths of Canada, the
companion of savages, sharer of their toils, priva-
tions, and battles, more hardy, patient, and bold
than they ; — such, for successive years, were the
alternations of this man's life.
To follow on his trail once more. His Indians
said that the rapids of the river above were im-
passable. Nicolas de Vignau affirmed the con-
trary; but, from the first, Vignau had been found
1613.) FOREST TRAVELLERS. 373
always in the wrong. His aim seems to have
been to involve his leader in difficulties, and dis-
gust him with a journey which must soon result
in exposing the imposture which had occasioned
it. Champlain took counsel of the Indians. The
party left the river, and entered the forest.
“We had a hard march,” says Champlain. “I
carried for my share of the luggage three arque-
buses, three paddles, my overcoat, and a few baga-
telles. My men carried a little more than I did,
and suffered more from the mosquitoes than from
their loads. After we had passed four small
ponds and advanced two leagues and a half, we
were so tired that we could go no farther, having
eaten nothing but a little roasted fish for nearly
twenty-four hours. So we stopped in a pleasant
place enough by the edge of a pond, and lighted
a fire to drive off the mosquitoes, which plagued
us beyond all description; and at the same time
we set our nets to catch a few fish.”
On the next day they fared still worse, for their
way was through a pine forest where a tornado
had passed, tearing up the trees and piling them
one upon another in a vast “windfall,” where
boughs, roots, and trunks were mixed in confu-
sion. Sometimes they climbed over and some-
times crawled through these formidable barricades,
till, after an exhausting march, they reached the
banks of Muskrat Lake, by the edge of which was
an Indian settlement."
1 In 1867 a man in the employ of Captain Overman found, on the line
of march followed by Champlain from the pond where he passed the night
374 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU [1613.
This neighborhood was the seat of the principal
Indian population of the river," and, as the canoes
advanced, unwonted signs of human life could be
seen on the borders of the lake. Here was a
rough clearing. The trees had been burned; there
was a rude and desolate gap in the Sombre green
of the pine forest. Dead trunks, blasted and
black with fire, stood grimly upright amid the
charred stumps and prostrate bodies of comrades
half consumed. In the intervening spaces, the
soil had been feebly scratched with hoes of wood
or bone, and a crop of maize was growing, now
some four inches high.” The dwellings of these
slovenly farmers, framed of poles covered with
to Muskrat Lake, a brass astrolabe bearing the date 1603. As the astro-
labe, an antiquated instrument for taking latitudes, was not many years
after Champlain's day superseded by the quadrant, at least so far as
French usage was concerned, the conjecture is admissible that this one
was dropped by him. See a pamphlet by A. J. Russell, Champlain's Astro-
labe (Montreal, 1879), and another by O. H. Marshall, Discovery of an
Astrolabe supposed to have been lost by Champlain (New York, 1879).
* Usually called Algoumequins, or Algonquins, by Champlain and
other early writers, – a name now always used in a generic sense to
designate a large family of cognate tribes, speaking languages radically
similar, and covering a vast extent of country.
The Algonquins of the Isle des Allumettes and its neighborhood are
most frequently mentioned by the early writers as la Nation de l'Isle.
Lalemant (Relation des Hurons, 1639) calls them. Ehonkeronons. Vimont
(Relation, 1640) calls them Kichesipirini. The name Algonquin was used
generically as early as the time of Sagard, whose Histoire du Canada
appeared in 1636. Champlain always limits it to the tribes of the
Ottawa.
Isle des Allumettes was called also Isle du Borgne, from a renowned
one-eyed chief who made his abode here, and who, after greatly exasper-
ating the Jesuits by his evil courses, at last became a convert and died in
the faith. They regarded the people of this island as the haughtiest of
all the tribes Le Jeune, Relation (1636), 230.
* Champlain, Quatriesme Voyage, 29. This is a pamphlet of fifty-two
pages, containing the journal of his voyage of 1613, and apparently pub-
lished at the close of that year.
1513.] OTTAWA CEMETERY. 375
sheets of bark, were scattered here and there,
singly or in groups, while their tenants were run-
ning to the shore in amazement. The chief, Ni-
bachis, offered the calumet, then harangued the
crowd : “These white men must have fallen from
the clouds. How else could they have reached us
through the woods and rapids which even we find
it hard to pass : The French chief can do any-
thing. All that we have heard of him must be
true.” And they hastened to regale the hungry
visitors with a repast of fish.
Champlain asked for guidance to the settlements
above. It was readily granted. Escorted by his
friendly hosts, he advanced beyond the foot of
Muskrat Lake, and, landing, saw the unaccus-
tomed sight of pathways through the forest. They
led to the clearings and cabins of a chief named
TessOuat, who, amazed at the apparition of the
white strangers, exclaimed that he must be in a
dream." Next, the voyagers crossed to the neigh-
boring island, then deeply wooded with pine, elm,
and oak. Here were more desolate clearings,
more rude cornfields and bark-built cabins. Here,
too, was a cemetery, which excited the wonder of
Champlain, for the dead were better cared for than
the living. Each grave was covered with a double
row of pieces of wood, inclined like a roof till they
1 Tessouat's village seems to have been on the lower Lac des Allu-
mettes, a wide expansion of that arm of the Ottawa which flows along the
southern side of Isle des Allumettes. Champlain, perhaps from the loss
of his astrolabe, is wrong, by one degree, in his reckoning of the latitude,
470 for 460. Tessouat was father, or predecessor, of the chief Le Borgne,
whose Indian name was the same. See note, ante, p. 374.
376 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. [1613,
crossed at the ridge, along which was laid a thick
tablet of wood, meant apparently either to bind
the whole together or protect it from rain. At
one end stood an upright tablet, or flattened post,
rudely carved with an intended representation of
the features of the deceased. If a chief, the head
was adorned with a plume. If a warrior, there
were figures near it of a shield, a lance, a war-club,
and a bow and arrows; if a boy, of a small bow
and one arrow ; and if a woman or a girl, of a
kettle, an earthen pot, a wooden spoon, and a
paddle. The whole was decorated with red and
yellow paint; and beneath slept the departed,
wrapped in a robe of skins, his earthly treasures
about him, ready for use in the land of souls.
Tessouat was to give a tabagie, or Solemn feast,
in honor of Champlain, and the chiefs and elders
of the island were invited. Runners were sent
to summon the guests from neighboring hamlets;
and, on the morrow, TessOuat's squaws swept his
cabin for the festivity. Then Champlain and his
Frenchmen were seated on skins in the place of
honor, and the naked guests appeared in quick
succession, each with his wooden dish and spoon,
and each ejaculating his guttural salute as he
stooped at the low door. The spacious cabin was
full. The congregated wisdom and prowess of the
nation sat expectant on the bare earth. Each
long, bare arm thrust forth its dish in turn as the
host served out the banquet, in which, as courtesy -
enjoined, he himself was to have no share. First,
a mess of pounded maize, in which were boiled,
1613.] INDIAN FEAST. 377
without salt, morsels of fish and dark Scraps of
meat; then, fish and flesh broiled on the embers,
with a kettle of cold water from the river. Cham-
plain, in wise distrust of Ottawa cookery, confined
himself to the simpler and less doubtful viands.
A few minutes, and all alike had vanished. The
kettles were empty. Then pipes were filled and
touched with fire brought in by the squaws, while
the young men who had stood thronged about the
entrance now modestly withdrew, and the door
was closed for counsel.”
First, the pipes were passed to Champlain.
Then, for full half an hour, the assembly smoked
in silence. At length, when the fitting time was
come, he addressed them in a speech in which he
declared, that, moved by affection for them, he
visited their country to see its richness and its
beauty, and to aid them in their wars; and he
now begged them to furnish him with four canoes
and eight men, to convey him to the country of
the Nipissings, a tribe dwelling northward on the
lake which bears their name.”
1 Champlain's account of this feast (Quatriesme Voyage, 32) is unusually
minute and graphic. In every particular — excepting the pounded maize
—it might, as the writer can attest from personal experience, be taken as
the description of a similar feast among some of the tribes of the Far
West at the present day, as, for example, one of the remoter bands of the
Dacotah, a race radically distinct from the Algonquin.
* The Nebecerini of Champlain, called also Nipissingues, Nipissiriniens,
Nibissuriniens, Bissiriniens, Epiciriniens, by various early French writers.
They are the Askikouanheronons of Lalemant, who borrowed the name
- from the Huron tongue, and were also called Sorciers from their ill repute
as magicians. They belonged, like the Ottawas, to the great Algonquin
family, and are considered by Charlevoix (Journal Historique, 186) as alone
preserving the original type of that race and language. They had, how
ever, borrowed certain usages from their Huron neighbors.
378 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. [1613.
His audience looked grave, for they were but
cold and jealous friends of the Nipissings. For
a time they discoursed in murmuring tones among
themselves, all smoking meanwhile with redoubled
vigor. Then Tessouat, chief of these forest repub-
licans, rose and spoke in behalf of all.
“We always knew you for our best friend
among the Frenchmen. We love you like our
own children. But why did you break your word
with us last year when we all went down to meet
you at Montreal, to give you presents and go
with you to war 7 You were not there, but other
Frenchmen were there who abused us. We will
never go again. As for the four canoes, you shall
have them if you insist upon it; but it grieves us
to think of the hardships you must endure. The
Nipissings have weak hearts. They are good for
nothing in war, but they kill us with charms, and
they poison us. Therefore we are on bad terms
with them. They will kill you, too.”
Such was the pith of TessOuat's discourse, and
at each clause the conclave responded in unison
with an approving grunt.
Champlain urged his petition; sought to relieve
their tender scruples in his behalf; assured them
that he was charm-proof, and that he feared no
hardships. At length he gained his point. The
canoes and the men were promised, and, seeing
himself as he thought on the highway to his phan-
tom Northern Sea, he left his entertainers to their
pipes, and with a light heart issued from the close
and smoky den to breathe the fresh air of the
1613.] INDIAN COUNCIL, 379
afternoon. He visited the Indian fields, with
their young crops of pumpkins, beans, and French
peas, – the last a novelty obtained from the trad-
ers." Here, Thomas, the interpreter, soon joined
him with a countenance of ill news. In the ab-
sence of Champlain, the assembly had reconsidered
their assent. The canoes were denied.
With a troubled mind he hastened again to the
hall of council, and addressed the naked senate in
terms better suited to his exigencies than to their
dignity.
“I thought you were men; I thought you would
hold fast to your word: but I find you children,
without truth. You call yourselves my friends,
yet you break faith with me. Still I would not
incommode you; and if you cannot give me four
canoes, two will serve.’”
The burden of the reply was, rapids, rocks,
cataracts, and the wickedness of the Nipissings.
“We will not give you the canoes, because we
are afraid of losing you,” they said.
“This young man,” rejoined Champlain, point-
ing to Vignau, who sat by his side, “ has been to
their country, and did not find the road or the
people so bad as you have said.”
“Nicolas,” demanded Tessouat, “ did you say
that you had been to the Nipissings ’’’
1 “Pour passer le reste du jour, je fus me pourmener par les jardins,
qui n'estoient remplis que de quelques citrouilles, phasioles, et de nos pois,
qu'ils commencent a cultiver, oil Thomas, mon truchement, qui entendoit
fort bien la langue, me vint trouver,” etc. Champlain, (1632,) Lib. IV. c. 2
* “. . . . et leur dis, que je les avois jusques à ce jour estimez hommes,
et veritables, et que maintenant ils se monstroient enfants et mensongers.”
etc. Ibid.
380 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. (1613.
The impostor sat mute for a time, and then re-
plied, “Yes, I have been there.”
Hereupon an outcry broke from the assembly,
and they turned their eyes on him askance, “as
if,” says Champlain, “they would have torn and
eaten him.”
“You are a liar,” returned the unceremonious
host ; “you know very well that you slept here
among my children every night, and got up again
every morning; and if you ever went to the Ni-
pissings, it must have been when you were asleep.
How can you be so impudent as to lie to your chief,
and so wicked as to risk his life among so many
dangers? He ought to kill you with tortures worse
than those with which we kill our enemies.” "
Champlain urged him to reply, but he sat
motionless and dumb. Then he led him from
the cabin, and conjured him to declare if in truth
he had seen this sea of the north. Vignau, with
oaths, affirmed that all he had said was true. Re-
turning to the council, Champlain repeated the
impostor's story: how he had seen the sea, the
wreck of an English ship, the heads of eighty
Englishmen, and an English boy, prisoner among
the Indians.
1 “Alors Tessouat . . . . luy dit en son langage: Nicolas, est-il vray
que tu as dit avoir esté aux Nebecerini ? Il fut longtemps sans parler,
puis illeur dit en leur langue, qu'il parloit aucunement: Ouy jºy ay esté.
Aussitost ils le regardèrent de travers, et se jettant sur luy, comme s'ils
l’eussent woulu manger ou deschirer, firent de grands cris, et Tessouat luy
dit: Tu es un asseuré menteur: tu SQais bien que tous les soirs tu cou
chois a mes costez avec mes enfants, et tous les matins tu t”y levois: si
tu as esté vers ces peuples, Ç'a esté en dormant,” etc. Champlain, (1632,)
Lib IV. c. 2.
1613.] THE IMPOSTOR. UNMASKED. 381
At this, an outcry rose louder than before, and
the Indians turned in ire upon Vignau.
“You are a liar.” “Which way did you go?”
“By what rivers?” “By what lakes 2° “Who
went with you?”
Vignau had made a map of his travels, which
Champlain now produced, desiring him to explain
it to his questioners; but his assurance failed him,
and he could not utter a word.
Champlain was greatly agitated. His heart
was in the enterprise; his reputation was in a
measure at stake ; and now, when he thought his
triumph so near, he shrank from believing himself
the sport of an impudent impostor. The council
broke up ; the Indians displeased and moody, and
he, on his part, full of anxieties and doubts. g
“I called Vignau to me in presence of his com-
panions,” he says. “I told him that the time for
deceiving me was ended; that he must tell me
whether or not he had really seen the things he
had told of ; that I had forgotten the past, but
that, if he continued to mislead me, I would have
him hanged without mercy.” *
Vignau pondered for a moment; then fell on
his knees, owned his treachery, and begged for-
giveness. Champlain broke into a rage, and, un-
able, as he says, to endure the sight of him,
ordered him from his presence, and sent the in-
terpreter after him to make further examination.
Vanity, the love of notoriety, and the hope of
reward, seem to have been his inducements; for
he had in fact spent a quiet winter in Tessouat's
382 THE IMPOSTOR VIGNAU. [1613.
cabin, his nearest approach to the northern sea;
and he had flattered himself that he might escape
the necessity of guiding his commander to this
pretended discovery. The Indians were somewhat
exultant. “Why did you not listen to chiefs and
warriors, instead of believing the lies of this fel-
low 2° And they counselled Champlain to have
him killed at once, adding, “Give him to us, and
we promise you that he shall never lie again.”
No motive remaining for farther advance, the
party set out on their return, attended by a fleet
of forty canoes bound to Montreal" for trade.
They passed the perilous rapids of the Calumet,
and were one night encamped on an island, when
an Indian, slumbering in an uneasy posture, was
visited with a nightmare. He leaped up with a
yell, screamed that somebody was killing him, and
ran for refuge into the river. Instantly all his
companions sprang to their feet, and, hearing in
fancy the Iroquois war-whoop, took to the water,
splashing, diving, and wading up to their necks,
in the blindness of their fright. Champlain and
his Frenchmen, roused at the noise, snatched
their weapons and looked in vain for an enemy.
The panic-stricken warriors, reassured at length,
waded crestfallen ashore, and the whole ended in
a laugh.
At the Chaudière, a contribution of tobacco was
collected on a wooden platter, and, after a solemn
harangue, was thrown to the guardian Manitou.
1 The name is used here for distinctness. The locality is indicated by
Champlain as Le Saut, from the Saut St. Louis, immediately above.
1613.] ARRIVAL AT MONTREAL. 383
On the seventeenth of June they approached Mon-
treal, where the assembled traders greeted them
with discharges of small arms and cannon. Here,
among the rest, was Champlain's lieutenant, Du
Parc, with his men, who had amused their leisure
with hunting, and were revelling in a sylvan abun-
dance, while their baffled chief, with worry of
mind, fatigue of body, and a Lenten diet of half-
cooked fish, was grievously fallen away in flesh
and strength. He kept his word with De Vignau,
left the scoundrel unpunished, bade farewell to the
Indians, and, promising to rejoin them the next
year, embarked in one of the trading-ships for
France.
CHAPTER XIII.
1615.
DISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON.
RELIGIOUS ZEAL OF CHAMPLAIN. — RícollBT FRIARs. – ST. FRANCIS.
– EXPLORATION AND WAR. — LE CARON ON THE OTTAw A. – CHAM-
PLAIN REACHES LAKE HURON.— THE HURON Towns. – MAss IN
THE WILDERNESs.
IN New France, spiritual and temporal inter-
ests were inseparably blended, and, as will here-
after appear, the conversion of the Indians was
used as a means of commercial and political
growth. But, with the single-hearted founder of
the colony, considerations of material advantage,
though clearly recognized, were no less clearly
subordinate. He would fain rescue from perdi-
tion a people living, as he says, “like brute beasts,
without faith, without law, without religion, with-
out God.” While the want of funds and the
indifference of his merchant associates, who as
yet did not fully see that their trade would find
in the missions its surest ally, were threatening
to wreck his benevolent schemes, he found a kin-
dred spirit in his friend Houël, secretary to the
King, and comptroller-general of the salt-works
of Brouage. Near this town was a convent of
Récollet friars, some of whom were well known
to Houël. To them he addressed himself; and
#615.] RÉCOLLET FRIARS. 385
several of the brotherhood, “inflamed,” we are told,
“with charity,” were eager to undertake the mis-
sion. But the Récollets, mendicants by profession,
were as weak in resources as Champlain himself.
He repaired to Paris, then filled with bishops, car-
dinals, and nobles, assembled for the States-Gen-
eral. Responding to his appeal, they subscribed
fifteen hundred livres for the purchase of vest-
ments, candles, and Ornaments for altars. The
King gave letters patent in favor of the mission,
and the Pope gave it his formal authorization.
By this instrument the papacy in the person of
Paul the Fifth virtually repudiated the action of
the papacy in the person of Alexander the Sixth,
who had proclaimed all America the exclusive
property of Spain."
The Récollets form a branch of the great Fran-
ciscan order, founded early in the thirteenth cen-
tury by St. Francis of Assisi. Saint, hero, or
madman, according to the point of view from
which he is regarded, he belonged to an era of
the Church when the tumult of invading heresies
awakened in her defence a band of impassioned
champions, widely different from the placid saints
of an earlier age. He was very young when
dreams and voices began to reveal to him his vo-
cation, and kindle his high-wrought nature to
sevenfold heat. Self-respect, natural affection,
decency, became in his eyes but stumbling-blocks
and snares. He robbed his father to build a
1 The papal brief and the royal letter are in Sagard, Histoire de la
Nouvelle France, and Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy.
25
386 DISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON. [1615.
church ; and, like so many of the Roman Catholic
saints, confounded filth with humility, exchanged
clothes with beggars, and walked the streets of
Assisi in rags amid the hootings of his townsmen.
He vowed perpetual poverty and perpetual beg-
gary, and, in token of his renunciation of the
world, stripped himself naked before the Bishop
of Assisi, and then begged of him in charity a
peasant's mantle. Crowds gathered to his fervid
and dramatic eloquence. His handful of disciples
multiplied, till Europe became thickly dotted with
their convents. At the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury, the three Orders of St. Francis numbered a
hundred and fifteen thousand friars and twenty-
eight thousand nuns. Four popes, forty-five cardi-
mals, and forty-six canonized martyrs were enrolled
on their record, besides about two thousand more
who had shed their blood for the faith." Their
missions embraced nearly all the known world;
and, in 1621, there were in Spanish America
alone five hundred Franciscan convents.”
In process of time the Franciscans had relaxed
their ancient rigor; but much of their pristine
spirit still subsisted in the Récollets, a reformed
branch of the Order, sometimes known as Fran-
ciscans of the Strict Observance.
Four of their number were named for the mission
of New France, — Denis Jamay, Jean Dolbeau,
Joseph le Caron, and the lay brother Pacifique du
1 Helyot, Histoire des Ordres Religieux et Militaires, devotes his seventh
volume (ed. 1792) to the Franciscans and Jesuits. He draws largely from
the great work of Wadding on the Franciscans.
* Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, I. 33–52.
1615.] RECOLLET FRIARS. 387
Plessis. “They packed their church ornaments,”
says Champlain, “and we, Our luggage.” All alike
confessed their sins, and, embarking at Honfleur,
reached Quebec at the end of May, 1615. Great
was the perplexity of the Indians as the apostolic
mendicants landed beneath the rock. Their garb
was a form of that common to the brotherhood of
St. Francis, consisting of a rude garment of coarse
gray cloth, girt at the waist with the knotted cord
of the Order, and furnished with a peaked hood,
to be drawn over the head. Their naked feet
were shod with wooden Sandals, more than an inch
thick."
Their first care was to choose a site for their
convent, near the fortified dwellings and store-
houses built by Champlain. This done, they made
an altar, and celebrated the first mass ever said in
Canada. Dolbeau was the officiating priest; all
New France kneeled on the bare earth around him,
and cannon from the ship and the ramparts hailed
the mystic rite.” Then, in imitation of the Apos-
tles, they took counsel together, and assigned to
each his province in the vast field of their mis-
sion : to Le Caron, the Hurons, and to Dolbeau, the
Montagnais; while Jamay and Du Plessis were to
remain for the present near Quebec.
Dolbeau, full of zeal, set out for his post, and, in
the next winter, tried to follow the roving hordes
of Tadoussac to their frozen hunting-grounds. He
1 An engraving of their habit will be found in Helyot (1792).
* Lettre du P. Jean Dolbeau au P. Didace David, son ami; de Quebec le
20 Juillet, 1615. See Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, I. 62.
388 DISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON_ [1615.
was not robust, and his eyes were weak. Lodged
in a hut of birch bark, full of abominations, dogs,
fleas, stench, and all uncleanness, he succumbed at
length to the smoke, which had wellnigh blinded
him, forcing him to remain for several days with
his eyes closed.' After debating within himself
whether God required of him the sacrifice of his
sight, he solved his doubts with a negative, and
returned to Quebec, only to depart again with
opening spring on a tour so extensive, that it
brought him in contact with outlying bands of the
Esquimaux.” Meanwhile Le Caron had long been
absent on a more noteworthy mission.
While his brethren were building their convent
and garnishing their altar at Quebec, the ar-
dent friar had hastened to the site of Montreal,
then thronged with a savage concourse, come down
for the yearly trade. He mingled with them,
studied their manners, tried to learn their lan-
guages, and, when Champlain and Pontgravé ar-
rived, declared his purpose of wintering in their
villages. Dissuasion availed nothing. “What,”
he demanded, “are privations to him whose life
is devoted to perpetual poverty, and who has no
ambition but to serve God 2’’
The assembled Indians were more eager for tem-
poral than for spiritual succor, and beset Cham-
plain with clamors for aid against the Iroquois.
He and Pontgravé were of one mind. The aid
demanded must be given, and that from no motive
1 Sagard, Hist. de la Nouvelle France, 26.
* Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, I. 71.
1615.] POLICY OF CHAMPILAIN. 389
of the hour, but in pursuance of a deliberate pol-
icy. It was evident that the innumerable tribes
of New France, otherwise divided, were united in
a common fear and hate of these formidable
bands, who, in the strength of their fivefold
league, spread havoc and desolation through all
the surrounding wilds. It was the aim of Cham-
plain, as of his successors, to persuade the threat-
ened and endangered hordes to live at peace with
each other, and to form against the common foe
a virtual league, of which the French colony would
be the heart and the head, and which would con-
tinually widen with the widening area of discovery.
With French soldiers to fight their battles, French
priests to baptize them, and French traders to sup-
ply their increasing wants, their dependence would
be complete. They would become assured tributa-
ries to the growth of New France. It was a triple
alliance of soldier, priest, and trader. The soldier
might be a roving knight, and the priest a martyr
and a saint ; but both alike were subserving the
interests of that commerce which formed the only
solid basis of the colony. The scheme of English
colonization made no account of the Indian tribes.
In the scheme of French colonization they were all
in all.
In one point the plan was fatally defective, since
it involved the deadly enmity of a race whose
character and whose power were as yet but ill un-
derstood, - the fiercest, boldest, most politic, and
most ambitious savages to whom the American
forest has ever given birth.
390 DISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON. 11615,
The chiefs and warriors met in council, - Algon-
quins of the Ottawa, and Hurons from the borders
of the great Fresh-Water Sea. Champlain prom-
ised to join them with all the men at his command,
while they, on their part, were to muster without
delay twenty-five hundred Warriors for an inroad
into the country of the Iroquois. He descended at
Once to Quebec for needful preparation; but when,
after a short delay, he returned to Montreal, he
found, to his chagrin, a solitude. The wild con-
course had vanished; nothing remained but the
skeleton poles of their huts, the smoke of their
fires, and the refuse of their encampments. Im-
patient at his delay, they had set out for their
villages, and with them had gone Father Joseph
le Caron.
Twelve Frenchmen, well armed, had attended
him. Summer was at its height, and as his canoe
stole along the bosom of the glassy river, and he
gazed about him on the tawny multitude whose
fragile craft covered the water like swarms of
gliding insects, he thought, perhaps, of his white-
washed cell in the convent of Brouage, of his book,
his table, his rosary, and all the narrow routine
of that familiar life from which he had awakened
to contrasts so startling. That his progress up
the Ottawa was far from being an excursion of
pleasure is attested by his letters, fragments of
which have come down to us.
“It would be hard to tell you,” he writes to a
friend, “how tired I was with paddling all day,
with all my strength, among the Indians; wading
1615.] LE CARON'S JOURNEY. 391
the rivers a hundred times and more, through the
mud and over the sharp rocks that cut my feet;
carrying the canoe and luggage through the woods
to avoid the rapids and frightful cataracts; and
half starved all the while, for we had nothing to
eat but a little Sagamite, a sort of porridge of
water and pounded maize, of which they gave us
a very small allowance every morning and night.
But I must needs tell you what abundant conso-
lation I found under all my troubles; for when
One sees so many infidels needing nothing but a
drop of water to make them children of God,
one feels an inexpressible ardor to labor for their
conversion, and sacrifice to it one's repose and
life.” I
Another Récollet, Gabriel Sagard, followed the
same route in similar company a few years later,
and has left an account of his experience, of which
Le Caron's was the counterpart. Sagard reckons
from eighty to a hundred waterfalls and rapids in
the course of the journey, and the task of avoiding
them by pushing through the woods was the harder
for him because he saw fit to go barefoot, “in
imitation of our seraphic father, Saint Francis.”
“We often came upon rocks, mudholes, and fallen
* “. . . . Car helas quand on voit un si grand nombre d’Infidels, et
qu'il ne tient qu'à une goutte d'eau pour les rendre enfans de Dieu, on res-
sent je ne sgay quelle ardeur de travailler a leur conversion et d'y sacrifier
son repos et sa vie.” Le Caron, in Le Clerc, I. 74. Le Clerc, usually exact,
affixes a wrong date to Le Caron's departure, which took place, not in the
autumn, but about the first of July, Champlain following on the ninth.
Of Champlain the editions consulted have been those of 1620 and 1627,
the narrative being abridged in the edition of 1632. Compare Sagard,
Histoire de la Nouvelle France.
392 IDISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON. {l 615.
trees, which we had to scramble over, and some-
times we must force our way with head and hands
through dense woods and thickets, without road or
path. When the time came, my Indians looked
for a good place to pass the night. Some went
for dry wood ; others for poles to make a shed ;
others kindled a fire, and hung the kettle to a
stick stuck aslant in the ground ; and others
looked for two flat stones to bruise the Indian
corn, of which they make Sagamite.”
This sagamite was an extremely thin porridge;
and, though scraps of fish were now and then
boiled in it, the friar pined away daily on this
weak and scanty fare, which was, moreover, made
repulsive to him by the exceeding filthiness of the
cookery. Nevertheless, he was forced to disguise
his feelings. “One must always keep a smiling,
modest, contented face, and now and then sing a
hymn, both for his own consolation and to please
and edify the savages, who take a singular pleas-
ure in hearing us sing the praises of Our God.”
Among all his trials, none afflicted him so much
as the flies and mosquitoes. “If I had not kept
my face wrapped in a cloth, I am almost sure they
would have blinded me, so pestiferous and poison-
ous are the bites of these little demons. They
make One look like a leper, hideous to the sight.
I confess that this is the worst martyrdom I suf-
fered in this country; hunger, thirst, weariness,
and fever are nothing to it. These little beasts
not only persecute you all day, but at night they
get into your eyes and mouth, crawl under your
: 615.] CHAMPLAIN AT LAKE NIPISSING. 393
clothes, or stick their long stings through them,
and make such a noise that it distracts your atten-
tion, and prevents you from saying your prayers.”
He reckons three or four kinds of them, and adds,
that in the Montagnais country there is still an-
other kind, so small that they can hardly be seen,
but which “bite like devils’ imps.” The sports-
man who has bivouacked in the woods of Maine
will at Once recognize the minute tormentors there
known as “no-see-'ems.”
While through tribulations like these Le Caron
made his way towards the scene of his apostleship,
Champlain was following on his track. With two
canoes, ten Indians, Etienne Brulé his interpreter,
and another Frenchman, he pushed up the Ottawa
till he reached the Algonquin villages which had
formed the term of his former journeying. He
passed the two lakes of the Allumettes; and now,
for twenty miles, the river stretched before him,
straight as the bee can fly, deep, narrow, and black,
between its mountain shores. He passed the rap-
ids of the Joachims and the Caribou, the Rocher
Capitaine, and the Deux Rivières, and reached at
length the tributary waters of the Mattawan. He
turned to the left, ascended this little stream forty
miles or more, and, crossing a portage track, well
trodden, reached the margin of Lake Nipissing.
The canoes were launched again, and glided by
leafy shores and verdant islands till at length
appeared signs of human life and clusters of bark
lodges, half hidden in the vastness of the woods.
It was the village of an Algonquin band, called
394 IDISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON. | 1615.
the Nipissings, – a race so beset with spirits, in-
fested by demons, and abounding in magicians,
that the Jesuits afterwards stigmatized them as
“the Sorcerers.” In this questionable company
Champlain spent two days, feasted on fish, deer,
and bears. Then, descending to the outlet of the
lake, he steered his canoes westward down the
current of French River.
Days passed, and no sign of man enlivened the
rocky desolation. Hunger was pressing them hard,
for the ten gluttonous Indians had devoured al-
ready nearly all their provision for the voyage,
and they were forced to subsist on the blueberries
and wild raspberries that grew abundantly in the
meagre soil, when suddenly they encountered a
troop of three hundred savages, whom, from their
strange and startling mode of wearing their hair,
Champlain named the Cheveua Relevés. “Not
one of our courtiers,” he says, “takes so much
pains in dressing his locks.” Here, however, their
care of the toilet ended; for, thºugh tattooed on
various parts of the body, painted, and armed with
bows, arrows, and shields of bison-hide, they wore
no clothing whatever. Savage as was their aspect,
they were busied in the pacific task of gathering
blueberries for their winter store. Their demeanor
was friendly ; and from them the voyager learned
that the great lake of the Hurons was close at
hand."
1 These savages belonged to a numerous Algonquin tribe who occupied
a district west and southwest of the Nottawassaga Bay of Lake Huron,
within the modern counties of Bruce and Grey, Canada West. Sagard
speaks of meeting a party of them near the place where they were met by
1615.] FIRST SIGHT OF THE LAKE. 395
Now, far along the western sky was traced the
watery line of that inland ocean, and, first of white
men except the Friar Le Caron, Champlain beheld
the “Mer Douce,” the Fresh-Water Sea of the
Hurons. Before him, too far for sight, lay the
spirit-haunted Manitoualins, and, Southward, spread
the vast bosom of the Georgian Bay. For more
than a hundred miles, his course was along its
eastern shores, among islets countless as the sea-
sands, – an archipelago of rocks worn for ages
by the wash of waves. He crossed Byng Inlet,
Franklin Inlet, Parry Sound, and the wider bay of
Matchedash, and seems to have landed at the inlet
now called Thunder Bay, at the entrance of the
Bay of Matchedash, and a little west of the Harbor
of Penetanguishine. asº
An Indian trail led inland, through woods and
thickets, across broad meadows, over brooks, and
along the skirts of green acclivities. To the eye
of Champlain, accustomed to the desolation he had
left behind, it seemed a land of beauty and abun-
dance. He reached at last a broad opening in the
forest, with fields of maize, pumpkins ripening in
the sun, patches of sunflowers, from the seeds of
which the Indians made hair-oil, and, in the midst,
the Huron town of Otouacha. In all essential
Champlain. Sagard, Grand Voyage dº Pays des Hurons, 77. The Hurons
called them Ondataouaouat, or Ondatahouat, whence the name Outaouat
(Ottawa), which is now commonly used to designate a particular tribe, or
group of tribes, but which the French often employed as a generic term
for all the Algonquin tribes of the Upper Lakes. It is written in various
forms by French and English writers, as Outouais, Outaouaks, Tawaas,
Oadauwaus, Outautes, Outaouacs, Utawas, Ottawwawwug, Outtoaets, Outta
waats, Attawawas.
396 IDISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON. [1615,
points, it resembled that which Cartier, eighty years
before, had seen at Montreal : the same triple pali-
sade of crossed and intersecting trunks, and the
same long lodges of bark, each containing several
families. Here, within an area of thirty or forty
miles, was the seat of one of the most remarkable
savage communities on the continent. By the In-
dian standard, it was a mighty nation ; yet the
entire Huron population did not exceed that of a
third or fourth class American city."
To the south and southeast lay other tribes of
kindred race and tongue, all stationary, all tillers
of the soil, and all in a state of social advance-
ment when compared with the roving bands of
Eastern Canada: the Neutral Nation * west of the
Niagara, and the Eries and Andastes in Western
New York and Pennsylvania ; while from the
Genesee eastward to the Hudson lay the banded
tribes of the Iroquois, leading members of this
potent family, deadly foes of their kindred, and
at last their destroyers.
In Champlain the Hurons saw the champion who
was to lead them to victory. There was bounti-
ful feasting in his honor in the great lodge at
Otouacha ; and other welcome, too, was tendered,
of which the Hurons were ever liberal, but which,
1 Champlain estimates the number of Huron villages at seventeen or
eighteen. Le Jeune, Sagard, and Lalemant afterwards reckoned them at
from twenty to thirty-two. Le Clerc, following Le Caron, makes the popu-
lation about ten thousand Souls; but several later observers, as well as
Champlain himself, set it at above thirty thousand.
2 A warlike people, called Neutral from their neutrality between the
Hurons and the Iroquois, which did not save them from sharing the
destruction which overwhelmed the former.
1615.] THE FIRST MASS. 397
with all courtesy, was declined by the virtuous
Champlain. Next, he went to Carmaron, a league
distant, and then to Touaguainchain and Teque-
nonquihaye ; till at length he reached Carhagouha,
with its triple palisade thirty-five feet high. Here
he found Le Caron. The Indians, eager to do him
honor, were building for him a bark lodge in the
neighboring forest, fashioned like their own, but
much smaller. In it the friar made an altar,
garnished with those indispensable decorations
which he had brought with him through all the
vicissitudes of his painful journeying; and hither,
night and day, came a curious multitude to listen
to his annunciation of the new doctrine. It was
a joyful hour when he saw Champlain approach
his hermitage; and the two men embraced like
brothers long sundered.
The twelfth of August was a day evermore
marked with white in the friar's calendar. Ar-
rayed in priestly vestments, he stood before his
simple altar; behind him his little band of Chris-
tians, – the twelve Frenchmen who had attended
him, and the two who had followed Champlain.
Here stood their devout and valiant chief, and, at
his side, that pioneer of pioneers, Etienne Brulé,
the interpreter. The Host was raised aloft; the
worshippers kneeled. Then their rough voices
joined in the hymn of praise, Te Deum laudamus ;
and then a volley of their guns proclaimed the tri-
umph of the faith to the okies, the manitous, and
all the brood of anomalous devils who had reigned
with undisputed sway in these wild realms of
398 DISCOVERY OF LAKE HURON. [1615.
darkness. The brave friar, a true soldier of the
Church, had led her forlorn hope into the fast-
nesses of hell; and now, with contented heart, he
might depart in peace, for he had said the first
mass in the country of the Hurons.
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CHAPTER XIV.
1615, 1616.
THE GREAT WAR PARTY.
MUSTER OF WARRIORs. – DEPARTURE. — THE RIVER TRENT. — LARE
ONTARIO. — THE IROQUOIs Town. — ATTACK. – REPULSE. — CHAM-
PLAIN woundED.—RETREAT. - Adventures of ÉTIENNE BRULÉ.
—WINTER HUNT. — CHAMPLAIN LOST IN THE FOREST. — MADE UM-
PIRE OF INDIAN QUARRELS.
THE lot of the favored guest of an Indian camp
or village is idleness without repose, for he is
never left alone, and the repletion of incessant
and inevitable feasts. Tired of this inane routine,
Champlain, with some of his Frenchmen, set forth
on a tour of observation. Journeying at their
ease by the Indian trails, they visited, in three
days, five palisaded villages. The country de-
lighted them, with its meadows, its deep woods,
its pine and cedar thickets, full of hares and
partridges, its wild grapes and plums, cherries,
crab-apples, nuts, and raspberries. It was the
seventeenth of August when they reached the
Huron metropolis, Cahiagué, in the modern town-
ship of Orillia, three leagues west of the river
Severn, by which Lake Simcoe pours its waters
into the bay of Matchedash. A shrill clamor of
rejoicing, the fixed stare of wondering squaws,
and the screaming flight of terrified children,
400 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1615.
hailed the arrival of Champlain. By his esti-
mate, the place contained two hundred lodges;
but they must have been relatively small, since,
had they been of the enormous capacity some-
times found in these structures, Cahiagué alone
would have held the whole Huron population.
Here was the chief rendezvous, and the town
swarmed with gathering warriors. There was
cheering news; for an allied nation, called Ca-
rantouans, probably identical with the Andastes,
had promised to join the Hurons in the enemy's
country, with five hundred men." Feasts and the
war-dance consumed the days, till at length the
tardy bands had all arrived; and, shouldering
their canoes and Scanty baggage, the naked host
set forth.
At the outlet of Lake Simcoe they all stopped
to fish, – their simple substitute for a commissa-
riat. Hence, too, the intrepid Étienne Brulé, at
his own request, was sent with twelve Indians to
hasten forward the five hundred allied warriors,
a dangerous venture, since his course must lie
through the borders of the Iroquois.
He set out on the eighth of September, and on
the morning of the tenth, Champlain, shivering in
his blanket, awoke to see the meadows sparkling
with an early frost, soon to vanish under the
bright autumnal sun. The Huron fleet pursued its
course along Lake Simcoe, across the portage to
1 Champlain, (1627,) 31. While the French were aiding the Hurons
against the Iroquois, the Dutch on the Hudson aided the Iroquois against
this nation of allies, who captured three Dutchmen, but are said to have
set them free in the belief that they were French. Ibid.
1615.] A DEER HUNT. 401
Balsam or Sturgeon Lake, and down the chain of
lakes which form the sources of the river Trent.
As the long line of canoes moved on its way, no
human life was seen, no sign of friend or foe; yet,
at times, to the fancy of Champlain, the borders
f the stream seemed decked with groves and
shrubbery by the hands of man, and the walnut
trees, laced with grape-vines, seemed decorations
of a pleasure-ground.
They stopped and encamped for a deer hunt.
Five hundred Indians, in line, like the skirmishers
of an army advancing to battle, drove the game to
the end of a woody point ; and the canoe-men
killed them with spears and arrows as they took
to the river. Champlain and his men keenly rel-
ished the sport, but paid a heavy price for their
pleasure. A Frenchman, firing at a buck, brought
down an Indian, and there was need of liberal
gifts to console the sufferer and his friends.
The canoes now issued from the mouth of the
Trent. Like a flock of venturous wild-fowl, they
put boldly out upon Lake Ontario, crossed it in
safety, and landed within the borders of New
York, on or near the point of land west of Hun-
gry Bay. After hiding their light craft in the
woods, the warriors took up their swift and wary
march, filing in silence between the woods and the
lake, for four leagues along the strand. Then
they struck inland, threaded the forest, crossed the
outlet of Lake Oneida, and after a march of four
days, were deep within the limits of the Iroquois.
On the ninth of October some of their scouts met
26
402 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1615
a fishing-party of this people, and captured them,
eleven in number, men, women, and children. They
were brought to the camp of the exultant Hurons.
As a beginning of the jubilation, a chief cut off a
finger of one of the women; but desisted from
further torturing on the angry protest of Cham-
plain, reserving that pleasure for a more conve-
nient season.
On the next day they reached an open space in
the forest. The hostile town was close at hand,
surrounded by rugged fields with a slovenly and
savage cultivation. The young Hurons in advance
saw the Iroquois at work among the pumpkins and
maize, gathering their rustling harvest. Nothing
could restrain the hare-brained and ungoverned
crew. They screamed their war-cry and rushed
in ; but the Iroquois Snatched their weapons, killed
and wounded five or six of the assailants, and
drove back the rest discomfited. Champlain and
his Frenchmen were forced to interpose; and the
report of their pieces from the border of the woods
stopped the pursuing enemy, who withdrew to
their defences, bearing with them their dead and
wounded."
It appears to have been a fortified town of the
Onondagas, the central tribe of the Iroquois con-
federacy, standing, there is some reason to believe,
within the limits of Madison County, a few miles
south of Take Oneida.” Champlain describes its
1 Le Clerc (I. 79–87) gives a few particulars not mentioned by Cham-
plain, whose account will be found in the editions of 1620, 1627, and 1632.
* Champlain calls the tribe Antoudronons, Antouhonorons, or Entou.
honorons. I at first supposed them to be the Senecas, but further inquiry
1915. IROQUOIS FORTIFICATION. 403
defensive works as much stronger than those of
the Huron villages. They consisted of four con-
centric rows of palisades, formed of trunks of
trees, thirty feet high, set aslant in the earth, and
intersecting each other near the top, where they
supported a kind of gallery, well defended by shot-
proof timber, and furnished with wooden gutters
for quenching fire. A pond or lake, which washed
one side of the palisade, and was led by sluices
within the town, gave an ample supply of water,
while the galleries were well provided with maga-
zines of stones.
Champlain was greatly exasperated at the des-
ultory and futile procedure of his Huron allies.
Against his advice, they now withdrew to the dis-
tance of a cannon-shot from the fort, and en-
camped in the forest, out of sight of the enemy.
“I was moved,” he says, “to speak to them
roughly and harshly enough, in order to incite
them to do their duty, for I foresaw that, if things
went according to their fancy, nothing but harm
could come of it, to their loss and ruin.” He
proceeded, therefore, to instruct them in the art
of war.
leads me to believe that they were the Onondagas. Mr. O. H. Marshall
thinks that the town was on Lake Onondaga, and supports his opinion in
an excellent article in the Magazine of American History. General John
S. Clark has, however, shown that the site of an ancient Indian fort On
Nichols Pond, in the town of Fenner, Madison County, fulfils the conditions
sufficiently to give some countenance to the supposition of its identity with
that described by Champlain. A plan of the locality was kindly sent me
by Mr. L. W. Ledyard, and another by Rev. W. M. Beauchamp, whose
careful examination of the spot confirms but partially the conclusions of
General Clark. Champlain's drawing of the fort was clearly made from
memory, and contains obvious inaccuracies.
404 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1615.
In the morning, aided doubtless by his ten or
twelve Frenchmen, they set themselves with alac-
rity to their prescribed task. A wooden tower
was made, high enough to overlook the palisade,
and large enough to shelter four or five marksmen.
Huge wooden shields, or movable parapets, like
the mantelets of the Middle Ages, were also con-
structed. Four hours sufficed to finish the work,
and then the assault began. Two hundred of the
strongest warriors dragged the tower forward, and
planted it within a pike's length of the palisade.
Three arquebusiers mounted to the top, where,
themselves well sheltered, they opened a raking
fire along the galleries, now thronged with wild
and naked defenders. But nothing could restrain
the ungovernable Hurons. They abandoned their
mantelets, and, deaf to every command, swarmed
out like bees upon the open field, leaped, shouted,
shrieked their war-cries, and shot off their arrows;
while the Iroquois, yelling defiance from their
ramparts, sent back a shower of stones and arrows
in reply. A Huron, bolder than the rest, ran for-
ward with firebrands to burn the palisade, and
others followed with wood to feed the flame. But
it was stupidly kindled on the leeward side, with-
out the protecting shields designed to cover it ;
and torrents of water, poured down from the gut-
ters above, quickly extinguished it. The confusion
was redoubled. Champlain strove in vain to re-
store order. Each warrior was yelling at the top
of his throat, and his voice was drowned in the
Outrageous din. Thinking, as he says, that his
1615.j CHAMPLAIN WOUNDED. - 405
head would split with shouting, he gave over the
attempt, and busied himself and his men with
picking off the Iroquois along their ramparts.
The attack lasted three hours, when the assail-
ants fell back to their fortified camp, with seven-
teen warriors wounded. Champlain, too, had
received an arrow in the knee, and another in
the leg, which, for the time, disabled him. He
was urgent, however, to renew the attack; while
the Hurons, crestfallen and disheartened, refused
to move from their camp unless the five hundred
allies, for some time expected, should appear.
They waited five days in vain, beguiling the in-
terval with frequent skirmishes, in which they
were always worsted ; then began hastily to re-
treat, carrying their wounded in the centre, while
the Iroquois, Sallying from their stronghold,
showered arrows on their flanks and rear. The
wounded, Champlain among the rest, after being
packed in baskets made on the spot, were carried
each on the back of a strong warrior, “bundled
in a heap,” says Champlain, “doubled and strapped
together after such a fashion that one could move
no more than an infant in swaddling-clothes. The
pain is extreme, as I can truly say from experi-
ence, having been carried several days in this way,
since I could not stand, chiefly on account of the
arrow-wound I had got in the knee. I never was
in such torment in my life, for the pain of the
wound was nothing to that of being bound and
pinioned on the back of one of our savages. I
lost patience, and as soon as I could bear my
406 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1615.
weight I got out of this prison, or rather out of
hel].” " -
At length the dismal march was ended. They
reached the spot where their canoes were hidden,
found them untouched, embarked, and recrossed
to the northern shore of Lake Ontario. The Hu-
rons had promised Champlain an escort to Quebec;
but as the chiefs had little power, in peace or war,
beyond that of persuasion, each warrior found good
reasons for refusing to lend his canoe. Champlain,
too, had lost prestige. The “man with the iron
breast" had proved not inseparably wedded to
victory; and though the fault was their own, yet
not the less was the lustre of their hero tarnished.
There was no alternative. . He must winter with
the Hurons. The great war party broke into frag-
ments, each band betaking itself to its hunting-
ground. A chief named Durantal, or Darontal,”
offered Champlain the shelter of his lodge, and he
was glad to accept it.
Meanwhile, Étienne Brulé had found cause to
rue the hour when he undertook his hazardous
mission to the Carantouan allies. Three years
passed before Champlain saw him. It was in the
summer of 1618, that, reaching the Saut St. Louis,
he there found the interpreter, his hands and his
swarthy face marked with traces of the ordeal he
had passed. Brulé then told him his story.
He had gone, as already mentioned, with twelve
1 Champlain, (1627,) 46. In the edition of 1632 there are some omis,
sions and verbal changes in this part of the narrative.
* Champlain, with his usual carelessness, calls him by either name in
differently.
1616.] ETIENNE BRULE. 407
Indians, to hasten the march of the allies, who
were to join the Hurons before the hostile town.
Crossing Lake Ontario, the party pushed onward
with all speed, avoiding trails, threading the thick-
est forests and darkest swamps, for it was the
land of the fierce and watchful Iroquois. They
were well advanced on their way when they saw
a small party of them crossing a meadow, set upon
them, surprised them, killed four, and took two
prisoners, whom they led to Carantouan, a pali-
Saded town with a population of eight hundred
warriors, or about four thousand souls. The
dwellings and defences were like those of the
Hurons, and the town seems to have stood on or
near the upper waters of the Susquehanna. They
were welcomed with feasts, dances, and an uproar
of rejoicing. The five hundred warriors prepared
to depart, but, engrossed by the general festivity,
they prepared so slowly, that, though the hostile
town was but three days distant, they found on
reaching it that the besiegers were gone. Brulé
now returned with them to Carantouan, and, with
enterprise worthy of his commander, spent the
winter in a tour of exploration. Descending a
river, evidently the Susquehanna, he followed it
to its junction with the sea, through territories of
populous tribes, at war the one with the other.
When, in the spring, he returned to Carantouan,
five or six of the Indians offered to guide him
towards his countrymen. Less fortunate than be-
fore, he encountered on the way a band of Iro-
quois, who, rushing upon the party, scattered them
408 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1616.
through the woods. Brulé ran like the rest. The
cries of pursuers and pursued died away in the
distance. The forest was silent around him. He
was lost in the shady labyrinth. For three or four
days he wandered, helpless and famished, till at
length he found an Indian foot-path, and, choosing
between starvation and the Iroquois, desperately
followed it to throw himself on their mercy. He
Soon saw three Indians in the distance, laden with
fish newly caught, and called to them in the Hu-
ron tongue, which was radically similar to that of
the Iroquois. They stood amazed, then turned to
fly; but Brulé, gaunt with famine, flung down his
weapons in token of friendship. They now drew
near, listened to the story of his distress, lighted
their pipes, and smoked with him; then guided
him to their village, and gave him food.
A crowd gathered about him. “Whence do you
come 2 Are you not one of the Frenchmen, the
men of iron, who make war on us?”
Brulé answered that he was of a nation better
than the French, and fast friends of the Iroquois.
His incredulous captors tied him to a tree, tore
out his beard by handfuls, and burned him with
firebrands, while their chief vainly interposed in
his behalf. He was a good Catholic, and wore
an Agnus Dei at his breast. One of his torturers
asked what it was, and thrust out his hand to
take it.
“If you touch it,” exclaimed Brulé, “you and
all your race will die.”
The Indian persisted. The day was hot, and
1616.] £TIENNE BRULE. 4.09
one of those thunder-gusts which often succeed
the fierce heats of an American midsummer was
rising against the sky. Brulé pointed to the inky
clouds as tokens of the anger of his God. The
storm broke, and, as the celestial artillery boomed
over their darkening forests, the Iroquois were
stricken with a superstitious terror. They all fled
from the spot, leaving their victim still bound fast,
until the chief who had endeavored to protect him
returned, cut the cords, led him to his lodge, and
dressed his wounds. Thenceforth there was neither
dance nor feast to which Brulé was not invited ;
and when he wished to return to his countrymen,
a party of Iroquois guided him four days on his
way. He reached the friendly Hurons in safety,
and joined them on their yearly descent to meet
the French traders at Montreal."
Brulé's adventures find in some points their
counterpart in those of his commander on the
winter hunting-grounds of his Huron allies. As
we turn the ancient, worm-eaten page which pre-
serves the simple record of his fortunes, a wild
and dreary scene rises before the mind, - a chill
* The story of Étienne Brulé, whose name may possibly allude to the
fiery ordeal through which he had passed, is in Champlain's narrative of
his voyage of 1618. It will be found in the edition of 1627, but is omitted
in the condensed edition of 1632. It is also told by Sagard.
Brulé met a lamentable fate. In 1632 he was treacherously murdered
by Hurons at one of their villages near Penetanguishine. Several years
after, when the Huron country was ravaged and half depopulated by an
epidemic, the Indians believed that it was caused by the French in re-
venge for his death, and a renowned sorcerer averred that he had seen
a sister of the murdered man flying over their country, breathing forth
pestilence and death. Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 34; Brébeuf, Relation des
Hurons, 1635, 28; 1637, 160, 167 (Quebec, 1858).
410 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1615.
November air, a murky sky, a cold lake, bare
and shivering forests, the earth strewn with crisp
brown leaves, and, by the water-side, the bark
sheds and smoking camp-fires of a band of Indian
hunters. Champlain was of the party. There
was ample occupation for his gun, for the morn-
ing was vocal with the clamor of wild-fowl, and
his evening meal was enlivened by the rueful
music of the wolves. It was a lake north or
northwest of the site of Kingston. On the bor-
ders of a neighboring river, twenty-five of the
Indians had been busied ten days in preparing for
their annual deer-hunt. They planted posts inter-
laced with boughs in two straight converging lines,
each extending more than half a mile through
forests and swamps. At the angle where they
met was made a strong enclosure like a pound.
At dawn of day the hunters spread themselves
through the woods, and advanced with shouts,
clattering of sticks, and howlings like those of
wolves, driving the deer before them into the en-
closure, where others lay in wait to despatch them
with arrows and spears.
Champlain was in the woods with the rest, when
he saw a bird whose novel appearance excited his
attention; and, gun in hand, he went in pursuit.
The bird, flitting from tree to tree, lured him deeper
and deeper into the forest; then took wing and
vanished. The disappointed sportsman tried to
retrace his steps. But the day was clouded, and
he had left his pocket-compass at the camp. The
forest closed around him, trees mingled with trees
i615.] CHAMPLAIN LOST IN THE WOODS. 411
in endless confusion. Bewildered and lost, he
wandered all day, and at night slept fasting at the
foot of a tree. Awaking, he wandered on till
afternoon, when he reached a pond slumbering in
the shadow of the woods. There were water-fowl
along its brink, some of which he shot, and for
the first time found food to allay his hunger. He
kindled a fire, cooked his game, and, exhausted,
blanketless, drenched by a cold rain, made his
prayer to Heaven, and again lay down to sleep.
Another day of blind and weary wandering suc-
ceeded, and another night of exhaustion. He had
found paths in the wilderness, but they were not
made by human feet. Once more roused from his
shivering repose, he journeyed on till he heard the
tinkling of a little brook, and bethought him of
following its guidance, in the hope that it might
lead him to the river where the hunters were
now encamped. With toilsome steps he followed
the infant stream, now lost beneath the decaying
masses of fallen trunks or the impervious intri-
cacies of matted “windfalls,” now stealing through
swampy thickets or gurgling in the shade of rocks,
till it entered at length, not into the river, but into
a small lake. Circling around the brink, he found
the point where the brook ran out and resumed
its course. Listening in the dead stillness of the
woods, a dull, hoarse sound rose upon his ear. He
went forward, listened again, and could plainly
hear the plunge of waters. There was light in
the forest before him, and, thrusting himself
through the entanglement of bushes he stood On
412 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1615.
the edge of a meadow. Wild animals were here
of various kinds; some skulking in the bordering
thickets, some browsing on the dry and matted
grass. On his right rolled the river, wide and
turbulent, and along its bank he saw the portage
path by which the Indians passed the neighboring
rapids. He gazed about him. The rocky hills
seemed familiar to his eye. A clue was found at
last ; and, kindling his evening fire, with grateful
heart he broke a long fast on the game he had
killed. With the break of day he descended at
his ease along the bank, and soon descried the
smoke of the Indian fires curling in the heavy
morning air against the gray borders of the forest.
The joy was great on both sides. The Indians
had searched for him without ceasing; and from
that day forth his host, Durantal, would never
let him go into the forest alone.
They were thirty-eight days encamped on this
nameless river, and killed in that time a hundred
and twenty deer. Hard frosts were needful to give
them passage over the land of lakes and marshes
that lay between them and the Huron towns.
Therefore they lay waiting till the fourth of
December; when the frost came, bridged the lakes
and streams, and made the OOZy marsh as firm as
granite. Snow followed, powdering the broad
wastes with dreary white. Then they broke up
their camp, packed their game on sledges or
on their shoulders, tied on their snow-shoes, and
began their march. Champlain could scarcely en-
dure his load, though some of the Indians carried
1616.] WINTER JOURNEYING. 413
a weight fivefold greater. At night, they heard
the cleaving ice uttering its strange groans of tor-
ment, and on the morrow there came a thaw.
For four days they waded through slush and water
up to their knees; then came the shivering north-
west wind, and all was hard again. In nineteen
days they reached the town of Cahiagué, and,
lounging around their smoky lodge-fires, the hun-
ters forgot the hardships of the past.
For Champlain there was "ho rest. A double
motive urged him, - discovery, and the strength-
ening of his colony by widening its circle of trade.
First, he repaired to Carhagouha ; and here he
found the friar, in his hermitage, still praying,
preaching, making catechisms, and struggling with
the manifold difficulties of the Huron tongue. Af-
ter spending several weeks together, they began
their journeyings, and in three days reached the
chief village of the Nation of Tobacco, a powerful
tribe akin to the Hurons, and soon to be incorpo-
rated with them." The travellers visited seven of
their towns, and then passed westward to those of
the people whom Champlain calls the Cheveua Rele-
vés, and whom he commends for neatnéss and inge-
nuity no less than he condemns them for the nullity
of their summer attire.” As the strangers passed
from town to town, their arrival was everywhere
the signal of festivity. Champlain exchanged
pledges of amity with his hosts, and urged them to
1 The Dionondadies, Petuneux, or Nation of Tobacco, had till re-
cently, according to Lalemant, been at war with the Hurons.
* See ante, p. 394.
414 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. ſ1616,
come down with the Hurons to the yearly trade at
Montreal.
Spring was now advancing, and, anxious for his
colony, he turned homeward, following that long
circuit of Lake Huron and the Ottawa which Iro-
quois hostility made the only practicable route.
Scarcely had he reached the Nipissings, and gained
from them a pledge to guide him to that delusive
northern sea which never ceased to possess his
thoughts, when evikenews called him back in haste
to the Huron towns. A band of those Algonquins
who dwelt on the great island in the Ottawa had
spent the winter encamped near Cahiagué, whose
inhabitants made them a present of an Iroquois
prisoner, with the friendly intention that they
should enjoy the pleasure of torturing him. The
Algonquins, on the contrary, fed, clothed, and
adopted him. On this, the donors, in a rage, sent
a warrior to kill the Iroquois. He stabbed him,
accordingly, in the midst of the Algonquin chiefs,
who in requital killed the murderer. Here was a
casus belli involving most serious issues for the
French, since the Algonquins, by their position on
the Ottawa, could cut off the Hurons and all their
allies from coming down to trade. Already a fight
had taken place at Cahiagué; the principal Algon-
quin chief had been wounded, and his band forced
to purchase safety by a heavy tribute of wampum"
and a gift of two female prisoners.
1 Wampum was a sort of beads, of several colors, made originally by
the Indians from the inner portion of certain shells, and afterwards by
the French of porcelain and glass. It served a treble purpose, – that of
1616.] RETURN TO QUEBEC. 415
All eyes turned to Champlain as umpire of the
quarrel. The great council-house was filled with
Huron and Algonquin chiefs, smoking with that
immobility of feature beneath which their race often
hide a more than tiger-like ferocity. The umpire
addressed the assembly, enlarged on the folly of
falling to blows between themselves when the
common enemy stood ready to devour them both,
extolled the advantages of the French trade and
alliance, and, with zeal not Wholly disinterested,
urged them to shake hands like brothers. The
friendly counsel was accepted, the pipe of peace was
smoked, the storm dispelled, and the commerce of
New France rescued from a serious peril.'
Once more Champlain turned homeward, and
with him went his Huron host, Durantal. Le
Caron had preceded him ; and, on the eleventh of
July, the fellow travellers met again in the in-
fant capital of Canada. The Indians had reported
that Champlain was dead, and he was welcomed as
One risen from the grave. The friars, who were all
here, chanted lauds in their chapel, with a solemn
mass and thanksgiving. To the two travellers,
fresh from the hardships of the wilderness, the
hospitable board of Quebec, the kindly society of
countrymen and friends, the adjacent gardens, –
always to Champlain an object of especial inter-
est, — seemed like the comforts and repose of
home.
currency, decoration, and record. Wrought into belts of various devices,
each having its significance, it preserved the substance of treaties and com-
pacts from generation to generation.
1 Champlain, (1627,) 63—72.
416 THE GREAT WAR PARTY. [1616.
The chief Durantal found entertainment worthy
of his high estate. The fort, the ship, the armor,
the plumes, the cannon, the marvellous architecture
of the houses and barracks, the splendors of the
chapel, and above all the good cheer, outran the
boldest excursion of his fancy; and he paddled
back at last to his lodge in the woods, bewildered
with astonishment and admiration.
CHAPTER XV.
1616 – 1627.
HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTEREST.S.
QUEBEC. — TADOUSSAC. — EMBARRASSMENTS OF CHAMPLAIN. — MoxT-
MORENCY. — MADAME DE CHAMPLAIN. — DISORDER AND DANGER. —
THE DUC DE VENTADOUR. —THE JESUITs. – CATHolics AND HERE-
TICS. — RICHELIEU. — THE HUNDRED Associates.
AT Quebec the signs of growth were faint and
few. By the water-side, under the cliff, the so-
called “ habitation,” built in haste eight years be-
fore, was already tottering, and Champlain was
forced to rebuild it. On the verge of the rock
above, where now are seen the buttresses of the
demolished castle of St. Louis, he began, in 1620,
a fort, behind which were fields and a few build-
ings. A mile or more distant, by the bank of the
St. Charles, where the General Hospital now stands,
the Récollets, in the same year, built for them-
selves a small stone house, with ditches and Out-
works for defence; and here they began a farm,
the stock consisting of several hogs, a pair of asses,
a pair of geese, seven pairs of fowls, and four pairs
of ducks." The only other agriculturist in the col-
ony was Louis Hébert, who had come to Canada in
1 Lettre du P. Denis Jamet, 15 Aout, 1620, in Sagard, Histoire du
Canada, 58.
27
4.18 HOSTILE SECTS.— RIVAL INTERESTS. [1616–20
1617 with a wife and three children, and who made
a house for himself on the rock, at a little distance
from Champlain's fort.
Besides Quebec, there were the three trading
stations of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Tadoussac,
occupied during a part of the year. Of these,
Tadoussac was still the most important. Landing
here from France in 1617, the Récollet Paul Huet
said mass for the first time in a chapel built of
branches, while two sailors standing beside him
waved green boughs to drive off the mosquitoes.
Thither afterward came Brother Gervais Mohier,
newly arrived in Canada; and meeting a crowd of
Indians in festal attire, he was frightened at first,
suspecting that they might be demons. Being in-
vited by them to a feast, and told that he must not
decline, he took his place among a party of two
hundred, squatted about four large kettles full of
fish, bear's meat, pease, and plums, mixed with figs,
raisins, and biscuit procured at great cost from the
traders, the whole boiled together and well stirred
with a canoe-paddle. As the guest did no honor
to the portion set before him, his entertainers tried
to tempt his appetite with a large lump of bear's
fat, a supreme luxury in their eyes. This only
increased his embarrassment, and he took a hasty
leave, uttering the ejaculation, “Ho, ho, ho!”
which, as he had been correctly informed, was the
proper mode of acknowledgment to the master
of the feast.
A change had now begun in the life of Cham-
plain. His forest rovings were over. To battle
1616–24.] EMBARRASSMENTS OF CHAMPLAIN. 419
with savages and the elements was more congenial
with his nature than to nurse a puny colony into
growth and strength; yet to each task he gave
himself with the same strong devotion.
His difficulties were great. Quebec was half trad-
ing-factory, half mission. Its permanent inmates
did not exceed fifty or sixty persons, – fur-traders,
friars, and two or three wretched families, who had
no inducement, and little wish, to labor. The fort
is facetiously represented as having two old women
for garrison, and a brace of hens for sentinels."
All was discord and disorder. Champlain was the
nominal commander; but the actual authority was
with the merchants, who held, excepting the friars,
nearly everybody in their pay. Each was jealous
of the other, but all were united in a common
jealousy of Champlain. The few families whom
they brought over were forbidden to trade with the
Indians, and compelled to sell the fruits of their
labor to the agents of the company at a low, fixed
price, receiving goods in return at an inordinate
valuation. Some of the merchants were of Rouen,
some of St. Malo ; some were Catholics, some were
Huguenots. Hence unceasing bickerings. All exer-
cise of the Reformed religion, on land or water, was
prohibited within the limits of New France; but the
Huguenots set the prohibition at naught, roaring
their heretical psalmody with such vigor from their
ships in the river, that the unhallowed strains pol-
luted the ears of the Indians on shore. The mer-
chants of Rochelle, who had refused to join the
| Advis au Roy sur les Affaires de la Nouvelle France, 7.
420 HOSTILE SECTS.–RIVAL INTERESTS. [1616–24.
company, carried on a bold illicit traffic along the
borders of the St. Lawrence, endangering the col-
ony by selling fire-arms to the Indians, eluding
pursuit, or, if hard pressed, showing fight; and
this was a source of perpetual irritation to the
incensed monopolists."
The colony could not increase. The company
of merchants, though pledged to promote its
growth, did what they could to prevent it. They
were fur-traders, and the interests of the fur-trade
are always opposed to those of settlement and
population. They feared, too, and with reason,
that their monopoly might be suddenly revoked,
like that of De Monts, and they thought only of
making profit from it while it lasted. They had no
permanent stake in the country; nor had the men
in their employ, who formed nearly all the scanty
population of Canada. Few, if any, of these had
brought wives to the colony, and none of them
thought of cultivating the soil. They formed a
floating population, kept from starving by yearly
supplies from France.
Champlain, in his singularly trying position,
displayed a mingled zeal and fortitude. He went
every year to France, laboring for the interests of
the colony. To throw open the trade to all com-
petitors was a measure beyond the wisdom of the
times; and he hoped only to bind and regulate the
monopoly so as to make it subserve the generous
1 Champlain, 1627 and 1632, passim ; Sagard, Hist, du Canada, passim ;
Le Clerc, Établissement de la Foy, cc. 4–7; Advis au Roy sur les Affaires
de la Nouvelle France; Décret de Prise de Corps d'Hébert ; Plainte de la
Nouvelle France à la France sa Germaine, passim.
R820.] MADAME DE CHAMPLAIN. 421
purpose to which he had given himself. The im-
prisonment of Condé was a source of fresh embar-
rassment ; but the young Duc de Montmorenci
assumed his place, purchasing from him the profit-
able lieutenancy of New France for eleven thousand
crowns, and continuing Champlain in command.
Champlain had succeeded in binding the company
of merchants with new and more stringent en-
gagements; and, in the vain belief that these
might not be wholly broken, he began to conceive
fresh hopes for the colony. In this faith he em-
barked with his wife for Quebec in the spring of
1620; and, as the boat drew near the landing, the
cannon welcomed her to the rock of her banish-
ment. The buildings were falling to ruin; rain
entered on all sides; the courtyard, says Cham-
plain, was as squalid and dilapidated as a grange
pillaged by soldiers. Madame de Champlain was
still very young. If the Ursuline tradition is to
be trusted, the Indians, amazed at her beauty and
touched by her gentleness, would have worshipped
her as a divinity. Her husband had married her
at the age of twelve; ' when, to his horror, he
presently discovered that she was infected with
the heresies of her father, a disguised Huguenot.
He addressed himself at Once to her conversion,
and his pious efforts were something more than
successful. During the four years which she
passed in Canada, her zeal, it is true, was chiefly
exercised in admonishing Indian squaws and cate-
1 Contrat de Mariage de Samuel de Champlain, 27 Dec., 1610. Charavay
Documents Inédits sur Samuel de Champlain.
422 HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTERESTS [1622,
chising their children; but, on her return to
France, nothing would content her but to become
a nun. Champlain refused ; but, as she was child-
less, he at length consented to a virtual, though
not formal separation. After his death she gained
her wish, became an Ursuline nun, founded a con-
vent of that order at Meaux, and died with a
reputation almost saintly."
At Quebec, matters grew from bad to worse.
The few emigrants, with no inducement to labor,
fell into a lazy apathy, lounging about the trading-
houses, gaming, drinking when drink could be had,
Or roving into the woods on vagabond hunting ex-
cursions. The Indians could not be trusted. In
the year 1617 they had murdered two men near
the end of the Island of Orleans. Frightened
at what they had done, and incited perhaps by
other causes, the Montagnais and their kindred
bands mustered at Three Rivers to the number
of eight hundred, resolved to destroy the French.
The secret was betrayed; and the childish multi-
tude, naked and famishing, became suppliants to
their intended victims for the means of life. The
French, themselves at the point of starvation,
could give little or nothing. An enemy far more
formidable awaited them ; and now were seen the
fruits of Champlain's intermeddling in Indian
wars. In the summer of 1622, the Iroquois de-
scended upon the settlement. A strong party of
their warriors hovered about Quebec, but, still
1 Eartraits des Chroniques de l’Ordre des Ursulines, Journal de Quebec, 10
Mars, 1855.
1620–21.] A NEW MONOPOLY. 423
fearful of the arquebuse, forbore to attack it, and
assailed the Récollet convent on the St. Charles.
The prudent friars had fortified themselves. While
Some prayed in the chapel, the rest, with their
Indian converts, manned the walls. • The Iroquois
respected their palisades and demi-lunes, and with-
drew, after burning two Huron prisoners.
Yielding at length to reiterated complaints, the
Viceroy Montmorency suppressed the company of
St. Malo and Rouen, and conferred the trade of
New France, burdened with similar conditions,
destined to be similarly broken, on two Hugue-
nots, William and Émery de Caen. The change
was a signal for fresh disorders. The enraged
monopolists refused to yield. The rival traders
filled Quebec with their quarrels; and Champlain,
seeing his authority set at naught, was forced to
occupy his newly built fort with a band of armed
followers. The evil rose to such a pitch, that he
joined with the Récollets and the better-disposed
among the colonists in sending one of the friars to
lay their grievances before the King. The dis-
pute was compromised by a temporary union of
the two companies, together with a variety of
arréts and regulations, suited, it was thought, to
restore tranquillity.”
A new change was at hand. Montmorency,
tired of his viceroyalty, which gave him ceaseless
1 Lettre de Montmorency & Champlain, 2 Fevrier, 1621; Paris Docu-
ments in archives of Massachusetts, I. 493.
2 Le Roy & Champlain, 20 Mars, 1622; Champlain, (1632, Seconde Par.
tie,) Livre I.; Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, c. 6; Sagard, Histowe du
Canada, Livre I. c. 7
424 HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTEREST.S. [1625.
annoyance, sold it to his nephew, Henri de Lévis,
Duc de Ventadour. It was no worldly motive
which prompted this young nobleman to assume
the burden of fostering the infancy of New France.
He had retired from the court, and entered into
holy orders. For trade and colonization he cared
nothing. The conversion of infidels was his sole
care. The Jesuits had the keeping of his con-
science, and in his eyes they were the most fitting
instruments for his purpose. The Récollets, it is
true, had labored with an unflagging devotion.
The six friars of their Order — for this was the
number which the Calvinist Caen had bound him-
self to support — had established five distinct mis-
sions, extending from Acadia to the borders of
Lake Huron; but the field was too vast for their
powers. Ostensibly by a spontaneous movement
of their own, but in reality, it is probable, under
influences brought to bear on them from without,
the Récollets applied for the assistancé of the
Jesuits, who, strong in resources as in energy,
would not be compelled to rest on the reluctant
support of Huguenots. Three of their brother-
hood, Charles Lalemant, Enemond Masse, and
Jean de Brébeuf, accordingly embarked; and, four-
teen years after Biard and Masse had landed in
Acadia, Canada beheld for the first time those
whose names stand so prominent in her annals, —
the mysterious followers of Loyola. Their re-
ception was most inauspicious. Champlain was
absent. Caen would not lodge them in the fort;
the traders would not admit them to their houses,
1626.] ARRIVAL OF JESUITS. 425
Nothing seemed left for them but to return as
they came ; when a boat, bearing several Récol-
lets, approached the ship to proffer them the
hospitalities of the convent on the St. Charles."
They accepted the proffer, and became guests of
the charitable friars, who nevertheless entertained
a lurking jealousy of these formidable co-workers.
The Jesuits soon unearthed and publicly burnt
a libel against their Order belonging to some of
the traders. Their strength was soon increased.
The Fathers Noirot and De la Nouè landed, with
twenty laborers, and the Jesuits were no longer
houseless.” Brébeuf set forth for the arduous
mission of the Hurons; but, on arriving at Trois
Rivières, he learned that one of his Francis-
can predecessors, Nicolas Wiel, had recently been
drowned by Indians of that tribe, in the rapid
behind Montreal, known to this day as the Saut
au Récollet. Less ambitious for martyrdom than
he afterwards approved himself, he postponed his
voyage to a more auspicious season. In the fol-
lowing spring he renewed the attempt, in company
with De la Nouè and one of the friars. The In-
dians, however, refused to receive him into their
canoes, alleging that his tall and portly frame
would overset them; and it was only by dint of
1 Le Clerc, Etablissement de la Foy, I. 310; Lalemant à Champlain, 28
Juillet, 1625, in Le Clerc, I. 313; Lalemant, Relation, 1625, in Mercure
Français, XIII.
* Lalemant, in a letter dated 1 August, 1626, says that at that time
there were only forty-three Frenchmen at Quebec. The Jesuits employed
themselves in confessing them, preaching two sermons a month, studying
the Indian languages, and cultivating the ground, as a preparation for
more arduous work. See Carayon, Première Mission, 117.
426 HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTEREST.S. [1626.
many presents that their pretended scruples could
be conquered. Brébeuf embarked with his com-
panions, and, after months of toil, reached the
barbarous scene of his labors, his sufferings, and
his death.
Meanwhile the Viceroy had been deeply scan-
dalized by the contumacious heresy of Emery de
Caen, who not only assembled his Huguenot sai-
lors at prayers, but forced Catholics to join them.
He was ordered thenceforth to prohibit his crews
from all praying and psalm-singing on the river St.
Lawrence. The crews revolted, and a compromise
was made. It was agreed, that, for the present,
they might pray, but not sing.” “A bad bargain,”
says the pious Champlain, “but we made the best
of it we could.” Caen, enraged at the Viceroy's
reproofs, lost no opportunity to vent his spleen
against the Jesuits, whom he cordially hated.
Eighteen years had passed since the founding of
Quebec, and still the colony could scarcely be said
to exist but in the founder's brain. Those who
should have been its support were engrossed by
trade or propagandism. Champlain might look
back on fruitless toils, hopes deferred, a life spent
seemingly in vain. The population of Quebec
had risen to a hundred and five persons, men,
women, and children. Of these, one or two fami-
lies only had learned to support themselves from
the products of the soil. All withered under the
1 “. . . . en fin, fut accordé qu'ils ne chanteroient point les Pseaumes,
mais qu'ils s'assembleroient pour faire leur prières.” Champlain, (1632,
Seconde Partie,) 108.
1620.] A RIVAL COLONY. 427
monopoly of the Caens." Champlain had long
desired to rebuild the fort, which was weak and
ruinous; but the merchants would not grant the
men and means which, by their charter, they were
bound to furnish. At length, however, his urgency
in part prevailed, and the work began to advance.
Meanwhile the Caens and their associates had
greatly prospered, paying, it is said, an annual
dividend of forty per cent. In a single year they
brought from Canada twenty-two thousand beaver-
skins, though the usual number did not exceed
twelve or fifteen thousand.”
While infant Canada was thus struggling into
a half-stifled being, the foundation of a common-
wealth destined to a marvellous vigor of develop-
ment had been laid on the Rock of Plymouth. In
their character, as in their destiny, the rivals were
widely different ; yet, at the outset, New Eng-
land was unfaithful to the principle of freedom.
New England Protestantism appealed to Liberty,
then closed the door against her; for all Protes-
tantism is an appeal from priestly authority to the
right of private judgment, and the New England
Puritan, after claiming this right for himself, de-
nied it to all who differed with him. On a stock
of freedom he grafted a scion of despotism; * yet
* Advis au Roy, passim ; Plainte de la Nouvelle France.
* Lalemant, Relation, 1625, in Mercure Français, XIII. The skins sold
at a pistole each. The Caens employed forty men and upwards in Canada,
besides a hundred and fifty in their ships.
* In Massachusetts, none but church-members could vote or hold office.
In other words, the deputies to the General Court were deputies of churches,
and the Governor and magistrates were church-members, elected by church-
members. Church and State were not united : they were identified. A
428 HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTERESTS. [1627.
the vital juices of the root penetrated at last to
the uttermost branches, and nourished them to an
irrepressible strength and expansion. With New
France it was otherwise. She was consistent to
the last. Root, stem, and branch, she was the
nursling of authority. Deadly absolutism blighted
her early and her later growth. Friars and Jes-
uits, a Ventadour and a Richelieu, shaped her
destinies. All that conflicted against advancing
liberty — the centralized power of the crown and
the tiara, the ultramontane in religion, the des-
potic in policy — found their fullest expression
and most fatal exercise. Her records shine with
glorious deeds, the self-devotion of heroes and of
martyrs; and the result of all is disorder, imbe-
cility, ruin.
The great champion of absolutism, Richelieu,
majority of the people, including men of wealth, ability, and character, were
deprived of the rights of freemen because they were not church-mem-
bers. When some of them petitioned the General Court for redress, they
were imprisoned and heavily fined as guilty of sedition. Their sedition
consisted in their proposing to appeal to Parliament, though it was
then composed of Puritans. See Palfrey, History of New England, Vol.
II. Ch. IV.
The New England Puritans were foes, not only of episcopacy, but of
presbytery. But under their system of separate and independent churches,
it was impossible to enforce the desired uniformity of doctrine. Therefore,
while inveighing against English and Scottish presbytery, they established
a virtual presbytery of their own. A distinction was made. The New
England Synod could not coerce an erring church; it could only advise and
eachort. This was clearly insufficient, and, accordingly, in cases of heresy
and schism, the ciril power was invoked. That is to say, the churches in
their ecclesiastical capacity consigned doctrinal offenders for punishment
to the same churches acting in a civil capacity, while they professed an
abomination of presbytery because it endangered liberty of conscience.
See A Platform of Church Discipline, gather'd out of the Word of God and
agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the
Synod at Cambridge, in New England, Ch. XVII. §§ 8, 9
1627.] RICHELIEU. 429
was now supreme in France. His thin frame, pale
cheek, and cold, calm eye, concealed an inexorable
will, and a mind of vast capacity, armed with all
the resources of boldness and of craft. Under his
potent agency, the royal power, in the weak hands
of Louis the Thirteenth, waxed and strengthened
daily, triumphing over the factions of the court,
the turbulence of the Huguenots, the ambitious
independence of the nobles, and all the elements
of anarchy which, since the death of Henry the
Fourth, had risen into fresh life. With no friends
and a thousand enemies, disliked and feared by
the pitiful King whom he served, making his tool
by turns of every party and of every principle, he
advanced by countless crooked paths towards his
object, — the greatness of France under a concen-
tred and undivided authority.
In the midst of more urgent cares, he addressed
himself to fostering the commercial and naval
power. Montmorency then held the ancient
charge of Admiral of France. Richelieu bought
it, suppressed it, and, in its stead, constituted him-
self Grand Master and Superintendent of Naviga-
tion and Commerce. In this new capacity, the
mismanaged affairs of New France were not long
concealed from him ; and he applied a prompt and
powerful remedy. The privileges of the Caens
were annulled. A company was formed, to con-
sist of a hundred associates, and to be called the
Company of New France. Richelieu himself was
the head, and the Maréchal Deffiat and other men
of rank, besides many merchants and burghers
430 HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTEREST.S. [1627.
of condition, were members." The whole of New
France, from Florida to the Arctic Circle, and
from Newfoundland to the sources of the St. Law-
rence and its tributary waters, was conferred on
them forever, with the attributes of sovereign
power. A perpetual monopoly of the fur-trade
was granted them, with a monopoly of all other
commerce within the limits of their government
for fifteen years.” The trade of the colony was
declared free, for the same period, from all duties
and imposts. Nobles, officers, and ecclesiastics,
members of the Company, might engage in com-
mercial pursuits without derogating from the privi-
leges of their order. And, in evidence of his
good will, the King gave them two ships of war,
armed and equipped.
On their part, the Company were bound to con-
vey to New France during the next year, 1628,
two or three hundred men of all trades, and be-
fore the year 1643 to increase the number to four
thousand persons,” of both sexes; to lodge and
support them for three years; and, this time ex-
pired, to give them cleared lands for their main-
tenance. Every settler must be a Frenchman and
a Catholic ; and for every new settlement at least
three ecclesiastics must be provided. Thus was
1 Noms, Surnoms, et Qualitez des Associez de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle
France. *
* The whale and the cod fishery were, however, to remain open to all.
* Charlevoix erroneously says sixteen thousand. Compare Acte pour
l’Etablissement de la Compagnie des Cent Associes, in Mercure Français, XIV.
Partie II. 232; Edits et Ordonnances, I. 5. The act of establishment was
originally published in a small duodecimo volume, which differs, though
not very essentially, from the copy in the Mercure.
1627.] EXCLUSION OF HUGUENOTS. 431
New France to be forever free from the taint of
heresy. The stain of her infancy was to be wiped
away. Against the foreigner and the Huguenot
the door was closed and barred. England threw
Open her colonies to all who wished to enter, — to
the suffering and oppressed, the bold, active, and
enterprising. France shut out those who wished
to come, and admitted only those who did not, —
the favored class who clung to the old faith and
had no motive or disposition to leave their homes.
English colonization obeyed a natural law, and
sailed with wind and tide ; French colonization
spent its whole struggling existence in futile efforts
to make head against them. The English colonist
developed inherited freedom on a virgin soil; the
'French colonist was pursued across the Atlantic by
a paternal despotism better in intention and more
withering in effect than that which he left behind.
If, instead of excluding Huguenots, France had
given them an asylum in the west, and left them
there to work out their own destinies, Canada
would never have been a British province, and the
United States would have shared their vast do-
main with a vigorous population of self-governing
Frenchmen.
A trading company was now feudal proprietor
of all domains in North America within the claim
of France. Fealty and homage on its part, and
on the part of the Crown the appointment of su-
preme judicial officers, and the confirmation of the
titles of dukes, marquises, counts, and barons, were
the only reservations. The King heaped favors
432 * HOSTILE SECTS. – RIVAL INTERESTs. [1627.
on the new corporation. Twelve of the bourgeois
members were ennobled ; while artisans and even
manufacturers were tempted, by extraordinary
privileges, to emigrate to the New World. The
associates, of whom Champlain was one, entered
upon their functions with a capital of three hun-
dred thousand livres."
1 Articles et Conventions de Société et Compagnie, in Mercure Français,
YIV. Partie II. 250.
CHAPTER XVI.
1628, 1629.
THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC.
REvolT OF ROCHELLE. — WAR WITH ENGLAND. — THE ENGLISH ON
THE ST. LAWRENCE. — Bold ATTITUDE OF CHAMPLAIN. — THE
FRENCH SQUADRON DESTROYED. — FAMINE. — RETURN OF THE
ENGLISH. — QUEBEC SURRENDERED. — ANOTHER NAVAL BATTLE. —
MICIIEL. — CHAMPLAIN AT LONDON.
THE first care of the new Company was to suc-
cor Quebec, whose inmates were on the verge of
starvation. Four armed vessels, with a fleet of
transports commanded by Roquemont, one of the
associates, sailed from Dieppe with colonists and
supplies in April, 1628; but nearly at the same
time another squadron, destined also for Quebec,
was sailing from an English port. War had at
length broken out in France. The Huguenot re-
volt had come to a head. Rochelle was in arms
against the King; and Richelieu, with his royal
ward, was beleaguering it with the whole strength
of the kingdom. Charles the First of England,
urged by the heated passions of Buckingham, had
declared himself for the rebels, and sent a fleet to
their aid. At home, Charles detested the follow-
ers of Calvin as dangerous to his own authority;
abroad, he befriended them as dangerous to the
authority of a rival. In France, Richelieu crushed
28
434 THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC. [1628.
protestantism as a curb to the house of Bourbon ;
in Germany, he nursed and strengthened it as a
curb to the house of Austria.
The attempts of Sir William Alexander to
colonize Acadia had of late turned attention in
England towards the New World ; and, on the
breaking Out of the war, an expedition was set on
foot, under the auspices of that singular person-
age, to seize on the French possessions in North
America. It was a private enterprise, undertaken
by London merchants, prominent among whom
was Gervase Kirke, an Englishman of Derbyshire,
who had long lived at Dieppe, and had there mar-
ried a Frenchwoman." Gervase Kirke and his
associates fitted out three small armed ships, com-
manded respectively by his sons David, Lewis, and
Thomas. Letters of marque were obtained from
the King, and the adventurers were authorized to
drive out the French from Acadia and Canada.
Many Huguenot refugees were among the crews.
Having been expelled from New France as settlers,
the persecuted sect were returning as enemies.
One Captain Michel, who had been in the ser-
vice of the Caens, “a furious Calvinist,” “ is said
to have instigated the attempt, acting, it is af-
firmed, under the influence of one of his former
employers.
Meanwhile the famished tenants of Quebec were
eagerly waiting the expected succor. Daily they
1 Henry Kirke, First English Conquest of Canada, (1871,) 27, 28, 206–
208. David Kirke was knighted in Scotland. Hence he is said to have
been Scotch by descent.
* Charlevoix, I. 171.
1628.] ATTACK AT CAPE TOURMENTE. 435
gazed beyond Point Levi and along the channels
of Orleans, in the vain hope of seeing the approach-
ing sails. At length, on the ninth of July, two
men, worn with struggling through forests and
Over torrents, crossed the St. Charles and mounted
the rock. They were from Cape Tourmente, where
Champlain had some time before established an
outpost, and they brought news that, according to
the report of Indians, six large vessels lay in the
harbor of Tadoussac." The friar Le Caron was
at Quebec, and, with a brother Récollet, he went
in a canoe to gain further intelligence. As the
missionary scouts were paddling along the borders
of the Island of Orleans, they met two canoes
advancing in hot haste, manned by Indians, who
with shouts and gestures warned them to turn
back.
The friars, however, waited till the canoes came
up, when they saw a man lying disabled at the
bottom of one of them, his moustaches burned
by the flash of the musket which had wounded
him. He proved to be Foucher, who commanded
at Cape Tourmente. On that morning, — such
was the story of the fugitives, – twenty men had
landed at that post from a small fishing-vessel.
Being to all appearance French, they were hos-
pitably received; but no sooner had they entered
the houses than they began to pillage and burn all
before them, killing the cattle, wounding the com:
mandant, and making several prisoners.”
1 Champlain, (1632, Seconde Partie,) 152.
2 Sagard, 919.
436 THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC. [1628.
The character of the fleet at Tadoussac was now
sufficiently clear. Quebec was incapable of de-
fence. Only fifty pounds of gunpowder were left
in the magazine; and the fort, owing to the neglect
and ill-will of the Caens, was so wretchedly con-
structed, that, a few days before, two towers of
the main building had fallen. Champlain, how-
ever, assigned to each man his post, and waited
the result." On the next afternoon, a boat was
seen issuing from behind the Point of Orleans and
hovering hesitatingly about the mouth of the St.
Charles. On being challenged, the men on board
proved to be Basque fishermen, lately captured by
the English, and now sent by Kirke unwilling
messengers to Champlain. Climbing the steep
pathway to the fort, they delivered their letter, —
a summons, couched in terms of great courtesy, to
surrender Quebec. There was no hope but in
courage. A bold front must supply the lack of
batteries and ramparts; and Champlain dismissed
the Basques with a reply, in which, with equal
courtesy, he expressed his determination to hold
his position to the last.”
All now stood on the watch, hourly expecting
the enemy; when, instead of the hostile squadron,
a small boat crept into sight, and One Desdames,
with ten Frenchmen, landed at the storehouses.
He brought stirring news. The French com-
mander, Roquemont, had despatched him to tell
Champlain that the ships of the Hundred Asso-
1 10 July, 1628.
* Sagard, 922; Champlain, (1632, Seconde Partie,) 157.
1629.) FAMINE. 437
ciates were ascending the St. Lawrence, with rein-
forcements and supplies of all kinds. But on his
way Desdamès had seen an Ominous sight, — the
English squadron standing under full sail out of
Tadoussac, and steering downwards as if to inter-
cept the advancing succor. He had only escaped
them by dragging his boat up the beach and hiding
it ; and scarcely were they out of sight when the
booming of cannon told him that the fight was
begun.
Racked with suspense, the starving tenants of
Quebec waited the result ; but they waited in vain.
No white sail moved athwart the green solitudes
of Orleans. Neither friend nor foe appeared ; and
it was not till long afterward that Indians brought
them the tidings that Roquemont's crowded trans-
ports had been overpowered, and all the supplies
destined to relieve their miseries sunk in the St.
Lawrence or seized by the victorious English.
Kirke, however, deceived by the bold attitude of
Champlain, had been too discreet to attack Quebec,
and after his victory employed himself in cruising
for French fishing-vessels along the borders of the
Gulf.
Meanwhile, the suffering at Quebec increased
daily. Somewhat less than a hundred men, women.
and children were cooped up in the fort, subsisting
on a meagre pittance of pease and Indian corn.
The garden of the Héberts, the only thrifty set-
tlers, was ransacked for every root or seed that
could afford nutriment. Months wore on, and, in
the spring, the distress had risen to such a pitch
4.38 THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC. [1629.
that Champlain had wellnigh resolved to leave to
the women, children, and sick the little food that
remained, and with the able-bodied men invade the
Iroquois, seize one of their villages, fortify himself
in it, and sustain his followers on the buried stores
of maize with which the strongholds of these provi-
dent savages were always furnished.
Seven ounces of pounded pease were now the
daily food of each ; and, at the end of May, even
this failed. Men, women, and children betook
themselves to the woods, gathering acorns and
grubbing up roots. Those of the plant called
Solomon's seal were most in request." Some
joined the Hurons or the Algonquins; some wan-
dered towards the Abenakis of Maine; some de-
scended in a boat to Gaspé, trusting to meet a
French fishing-vessel. There was scarcely one
who would not have hailed the English as de-
liverers. But the English had sailed home with
their booty, and the season was so late that there
was little prospect of their return. Forgotten
alike by friends and foes, Quebec was on the
verge of extinction.
On the morning of the nineteenth of July, an
Indian, renowned as a fisher of eels, who had built
his hut on the St. Charles, hard by the new dwell-
ing of the Jesuits, came, with his usual imper-
turbability of visage, to Champlain. He had just
discovered three ships sailing up the south channel
of Orleans. Champlain was alone. All his fol-
lowers were absent, fishing or searching for roots.
1 Sagard, 977.
1629.ſ QUEBEC SURRENDERED. 439
At about ten o’clock his servant appeared with
four small bags of roots, and the tidings that he
had seen the three ships a league off, behind Point
Levi. As man after man hastened in, Champlain
ordered the starved and ragged band, sixteen in
all," to their posts, whence, with hungry eyes,
they watched the English vessels anchoring in the
basin below, and a boat with a white flag moving
towards the shore. A young officer landed with
a summons to surrender. The terms of capitula-
tion were at length settled. The French were to
be conveyed to their own country, and each sol-
dier was allowed to take with him his clothes,
and, in addition, a coat of beaver-skin.” On this
some murmuring rose, several of those who had
gone to the Hurons having lately returned with
peltry of no small value. Their complaints were
vain; and on the twentieth of July, amid the
roar of cannon from the ships, Lewis Kirke,
the Admiral's brother, landed at the head of his
soldiers, and planted the cross of St. George
where the followers of Wolfe again planted it
a hundred and thirty years later. After inspect-
ing the worthless fort, he repaired to the houses
of the Récollets and Jesuits on the St. Charles.
He treated the former with great courtesy, but
displayed against the latter a violent aversion,
expressing his regret that he could not have
begun his operations by battering their house
1 Champlain, (1632, Seconde Partie,) 267.
* Articles granted to the Sieurs Champlain and Le Pont by Thomas
Kearke, 19 July, 1629.
440 THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC. [1629.
about their ears. The inhabitants had no cause
to complain of him. He urged the widow and
family of the settler Hébert, the patriarch, as he
has been styled, of New France, to remain and
enjoy the fruits of their industry under English
allegiance; and, as beggary in France was the
alternative, his offer was accepted.
Champlain, bereft of his command, grew rest-
less, and begged to be sent to Tadoussac, where
the Admiral, David Kirke, lay with his main
squadron, having sent his brothers Lewis and
Thomas to seize Quebec. Accordingly, Champlain,
with the Jesuits, embarking with Thomas Kirke,
descended the river. Off Mal Bay a strange sail
was seen. As she approached, she proved to be a
French ship. In fact, she was on her way to Que-
bec with supplies, which, if earlier sent, would
have saved the place. She had passed the Ad-
miral's squadron in a fog; but here her good
fortune ceased. Thomas Kirke bore down on her,
and the cannonade began. The fight was hot and
doubtful; but at length the French struck, and
Kirke sailed into Tadoussac with his prize. Here
lay his brother, the Admiral, with five armed
ships.
The Admiral's two voyages to Canada were pri-
vate ventures; and, though he had captured nine-
teen fishing-vessels, besides Roquemont's eighteen
transports and other prizes, the result had not
answered his hopes. His mood, therefore, was far
from benign, especially as he feared, that, Owing
to the declaration of peace, he would be forced to
1629.] MICHEL AND THE JESUITS. 441
disgorge a part of his booty; yet, excepting the
Jesuits, he treated his captives with courtesy, and
often amused himself with shooting larks on shore
in company with Champlain. The Huguenots,
however, of whom there were many in his ships,
showed an exceeding bitterness against the Cath-
olics. Chief among them was Michel, who had
instigated and conducted the enterprise, the mer-
chant admiral being but an indifferent seaman.
Michel, whose skill was great, held a high com-
mand and the title of Rear-Admiral. He was a
man of a sensitive temperament, easily piqued on
the point of honor. His morbid and irritable
nerves were wrought to the pitch of frenzy by the
reproaches of treachery and perfidy with which
the French prisoners assailed him, while, on the
other hand, he was in a state of continual rage at
the fancied neglect and contumely of his English
associates. He raved against Kirke, who, as he
declared, treated him with an insupportable arro-
gance. “I have left my country,” he exclaimed,
“for the service of foreigners; and they give me
nothing but ingratitude and scorn.” His fevered
mind, acting on his diseased body, often excited
him to transports of fury, in which he cursed
indiscriminately the people of St. Malo, against
whom he had a grudge, and the Jesuits, whom he
detested. On one occasion, Kirke was conversing
with some of the latter.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “your business in Can-
ada was to enjoy what belonged to M. de Caen,
whom you dispossessed.”
442 THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC. |1629.
“Pardon me, sir,” answered Brébeuf, “we came
purely for the glory of God, and exposed our-
Selves to every kind of danger to convert the
Indians.” .
Here Michel broke in : “Ay, ay, convert the In-
dians ! You mean, convert the beaver !”
“That is false !” retorted Brébeuf.
Michel raised his fist, exclaiming, “But for the
respect I owe the General, I would strike you for
giving me the lie.”
Brébeuf, a man of powerful frame and vehement
passions, nevertheless regained his practised self-
command, and replied: “You must excuse me. I
did not mean to give you the lie. I should be
very sorry to do so. The words I used are those
we use in the schools when a doubtful question is
advanced, and they mean no offence. Therefore
I ask you to pardon me.”
Despite the apology, Michel’s frenzied brain
harped on the presumed insult, and he raved
about it without ceasing.
“Bon Dieu !” said Champlain, “you swear well
for a Reformer l’’
“I know it,” returned Michel; “I should be
content if I had but struck that Jesuit who gave
me the lie before my general.” -
At length, one of his transports of rage ended in
a lethargy from which he never awoke. His fu-
neral was conducted with a pomp suited to his rank;
and, amid discharges of cannon whose dreary roar
was echoed from the yawning gulf of the Saguenay,
his body was borne to its rest under the rocks of
1629.] EXPLOIT OF DANIEL. 443
Tadoussac. Good Catholics and good Frenchmen
saw in his fate the immediate finger of Providence.
“I do not doubt that his soul is in perdition,” re-
marks Champlain, who, however, had endeavored
to befriend the unfortunate man during the access
of his frenzy."
Having finished their carousings, which were
profuse, and their trade with the Indians, which
was not lucrative, the English steered down the St.
Lawrence. Kirke feared greatly a meeting with
Razilly, a naval officer of distinction,” who was to
have sailed from France with a strong force to suc-
Cor Quebec; but, peace having been proclaimed, the
expedition had been limited to two ships under
Captain Daniel. Thus Kirke, wilfully ignoring
the treaty of peace, was left to pursue his depre-
dations unmolested. Daniel, however, though too
weak to cope with him, achieved a signal exploit.
On the island of Cape Breton, near the site of
Louisburg, he found an English fort, built two
months before, under the auspices, doubtless, of Sir
William Alexander. Daniel, regarding it as a bold
encroachment on French territory, stormed it at
, the head of his pikemen, entered sword in hand,
and took it with all its defenders.”
1 Champlain, (1632, Seconde Partie,) 256: “Je ne doute point qu’elle
ne soit aux enfers.” The dialogue above is literally translated. The
Jesuits Le Jeune and Charlevoix tell the story with evident satisfaction.
* Claude de Razilly was one of three brothers, all distinguished in the
marine service.
8 Relation du Voyage fait par le Capitaine Daniel ; Champlain, (1632,
Seconde Partie,) 271. Captain Farrar, who commanded the fort, declares,
however, that they were “treacherously surprised.” Petition of Captain
Constance Farrar, Dec., 1629
444 THE ENGLISH AT QUEBEC. [1629.
Meanwhile, Kirke with his prisoners was cross-
ing the Atlantic. His squadron at length reached
Plymouth, whence Champlain set out for London.
Here he had an interview with the French am-
bassador, who, at his instance, gained from the
King a promise, that, in pursuance of the terms
of the treaty concluded in the previous April,
New France should be restored to the French
Crown.
It long remained a mystery why Charles con-
sented to a stipulation which pledged him to
resign so important a conquest. The mystery is
explained by the recent discovery of a letter from
the King to Sir Isaac Wake, his ambassador at
Paris. The promised dowry of Queen Henrietta
Maria, amounting to eight hundred thousand
crowns, had been but half paid by the French
government, and Charles, then at issue with his
Parliament and in desperate need of money, in-
structs his ambassador, that, when he receives the
balance due, and not before, he is to give up to
the French both Quebec and Port Royal, which
had also been captured by Kirke. The letter was
accompanied by “solemn instruments under our
hand and seal” to make good the transfer on
fulfilment of the condition. It was for a sum
equal to about two hundred and forty thousand
dollars that Charles entailed on Great Britain and
her colonies a century of bloody wars. The Kirkes
and their associates, who had made the conquest
at their own cost, under the royal authority, were
never reimbursed, though David Kirke received
1629.] MOTIVES OF CHARLES I. 445
the honor of knighthood, which cost the King
nothing."
1 Charles I. to Sir Isaac Wake, 12 June, 1631, printed in Brymner,
Report on Canadian Archives, 1884, p. lx.
Before me is a copy of the original agreement for the restitution of
Quebec and, Port Royal, together with ships and goods taken after the
peace. It is indorsed, Articles arrestes entre les Deputés des Deua Couronnes
pour la Restitution des Choses qui ont été prinses depuis le Traicte de Paia fait
entre elles; 24 Avril, 1629. It was not till two years later that King
Charles carried it into effect, on receiving the portion of the Queen. See
also Lettres de Chateauneuf, Ambassadeur de France, au Cardinal de Riche-
lieu, Nov., Dec , 1629, and Memorial of the French Ambassador to King
Charles, Feb., 1630; Lord Dorchester to Sir Isaac Wake, 15 April, 1630;
Examination of Capt. David Kirke before Sir Henry Marten, 27 May (?),
1631; The King to Sir William Alexander, 12 June, 1632; Extrait con-
cernant ce qui s'est passé dans l'Acadie et le Canada en 1627 et 1628 tiré d'un
Requête du Chevalier Louis Kirk, in Mémoires des Commissaires, II. 275;
Literae continentes Promissionem Regis ad tradendum, etc., in Hazard, I. 314;
Traité de Pair fait & Suze, Ibid. 319; Réglemens entre les Roys de France et
d’Angleterre, in Mercure Français, XVIII. 39; Rushworth, II. 24; Traité
entre le Roi Louis XIII. et Charles I., Roi d'Angleterre, pour la Restitution de
la Nouvelle France, l’Acadie, et Canada, 29 Mars, 1632.
In the Archives des Affaires Étrangères is a letter, not signed, but
evidently written by Champlain, apparently on the 16th of October, the day
of his arrival in England. It gives a few details not in his printed narra-
tive. It states that Lewis Kirke took two silver chalices from a chest of
the Jesuits, on which the Jesuit Masse said, “Do not profane them, for
they are sacred.” “Profane them l’’ returned Kirke; “since you tell me
that, I will keep them, which I would not have done otherwise. I take
them because you believe in them, for I will have no idolatry.”
CHAPTER XVII.
1632–1635.
DEATH OF CHAMPLAIN.
NEw FRANCE RESTORED TO THE FRENCH CROWN. — ZEAL OF CHAM.
PLAIN. — THE ENGLISH LEAVE QUEBEC. — RETURN OF JESUITs. –
ARRIVAL OF CHAMPLAIN. — DAILY LIFE AT QUEBEC. — PROPA-
GANDISM. — POLICY AND RELIGION. — DEATH OF CHAMPLAIN.
ON Monday, the fifth of July, 1632, Emery de
Caen anchored before Quebec. He was commis-
sioned by the French Crown to reclaim the place
from the English ; to hold, for one year, a mo-
mopoly of the fur-trade, as an indemnity for his
losses in the war; and, when this time had ex-
pired, to give place to the Hundred Associates of
New France."
By the convention of Suza, New France was to
be restored to the French Crown ; yet it had been
matter of debate whether a fulfilment of this
engagement was worth the demanding. That
wilderness of woods and savages had been ruin-
ous to nearly all connected with it. The Caens,
successful at first, had suffered heavily in the end.
The Associates were on the verge of bankruptcy.
These deserts were useless unless peopled; and
to people them would depopulate France. Thus
argued the inexperienced reasoners of the time,
1 Articles accorde's au Sr. de Caen ; Acte de Protestation du Sr. de Caen.
1632.] OLD AND NEW FRANCE. 447
judging from the wretched precedents of Spanish
and Portuguese colonization. The world had not
as yet the example of an island kingdom, which,
vitalized by a stable and regulated liberty, has
peopled a continent and spread colonies over all
the earth, gaining constantly new vigor with the
matchless growth of its offspring.
On the other hand, honor, it was urged, de-
manded that France should be reinstated in the
land which she had discovered and explored.
Should she, the centre of civilization, remain
cooped up within her own narrow limits, while
rivals and enemies were sharing the vast regions
of the West ? The commerce and fisheries of New
France would in time become a school for French
sailors. Mines even now might be discovered ;
and the fur-trade, well conducted, could not but be
a source of wealth. Disbanded soldiers and women
from the streets might be shipped to Canada.
Thus New France would be peopled and old
France purified. A power more potent than rea-
son reinforced such arguments. Richelieu seems
to have regarded it as an act of personal encroach-
ment that the subjects of a foreign crown should
seize on the domain of a company of which he
was the head; and it could not be supposed, that,
with power to eject them, the arrogant minister
would suffer them to remain in undisturbed pos-
Session.
A spirit far purer and more generous was active
in the same behalf. The character of Champlain
belonged rather to the Middle Age than to the
448 T} EATH OF CHAMPILAIN. [1632
Seventeenth century. Long toil and endurance
had calmed the adventurous enthusiasm of his
youth into a steadfast earnestness of purpose; and
he gave himself with a loyal Zeal and devotedness
to the profoundly mistaken principles which he
had espoused. In his mind, patriotism and re-
ligion were inseparably linked. France was the
champion of Christianity, and her honor, her
greatness, were involved in her fidelity to this
high function. Should she abandon to perdition
the darkened nations among whom she had cast
the first faint rays of hope 2 Among the members
of the Company were those who shared his zeal;
and though its capital was exhausted, and many
of the merchants were withdrawing in despair,
these enthusiasts formed a subordinate association,
raised a new fund, and embarked on the venture
afresh."
England, then, resigned her prize, and Caen was
despatched to reclaim Quebec from the reluctant
hands of Thomas Kirke. The latter, obedient to
an order from the King of England, struck his
flag, embarked his followers, and abandoned the
scene of his conquest. Caen landed with the Jes-
uits, Paul le Jeune and Anne de la Noué. They
climbed the steep stairway which led up the rock,
and, as they reached the top, the dilapidated fort
lay on their left, while farther on was the stone
cottage of the Héberts, surrounded with its vege-
table gardens, – the only thrifty spot amid a
scene of neglect. But few Indians could be seen.
1 Etat de la depense de la Compagnie de la Nouvelle France.
633.] CHAMPLAIN RESUMES COMMAND. 449
True to their native instincts, they had, at first,
left the defeated French and welcomed the con-
querors. Their English partialities were, however,
but short-lived. Their intrusion into houses and
storerooms, the stench of their tobacco, and their
importunate begging, though before borne pa-
tiently, were rewarded by the new-comers with
Oaths, and sometimes with blows. The Indians
soon shunned Quebec, seldom approaching it ex-
cept when drawn by necessity or a craving for
brandy. This was now the case; and several Al-
gonquin families, maddened with drink, were
howling, screeching, and fighting within their
bark lodges. The women were frenzied like the
men. It was dangerous to approach the place
unarmed."
In the following spring, 1633, on the twenty-
third of May, Champlain, commissioned anew by
Richelieu, resumed command at Quebec in behalf
of the Company.” Father le Jeune, Superior of
the mission, was wakened from his morning sleep
by the boom of the saluting cannon. Before he
could sally forth, the convent door was darkened
by the stately form of his brother Jesuit, Brébeuf,
newly arrived ; and the Indians who stood by
uttered ejaculations of astonishment at the rap-
tures of their greeting. The father hastened to
the fort, and arrived in time to see a file of mus-
keteers and pikemen mounting the pathway of
1 Relation du Voyage fait & Canada pour la Prise de Possession du Fort
de Quebec par les François, in Mercure Français, XVIII.
2 Voyage de Champlain, in Mercure Francais, XIX, ; Lettre de Caen
29
450 DEATH OF CHAMPLAIN. [1633.
the cliff below, and the heretic Caen resigning the
keys of the citadel into the Catholic hands of
Champlain. Le Jeune's delight exudes in praises
of one not always a theme of Jesuit eulogy, but
on whom, in the hope of a continuance of his fa-
vors, no praise could now be ill bestowed. “I
sometimes think that this great man [Richelieu],
who by his admirable wisdom and matchless con-
duct of affairs is so renowned on earth, is preparing
for himself a dazzling crown of glory in heaven
by the care he evinces for the conversion of so
many lost infidel souls in this savage land. I pray
affectionately for him every day,” etc."
For Champlain, too, he has praises which, if
more measured, are at least as sincere. Indeed,
the Father Superior had the best reason to be
pleased with the temporal head of the colony. In
his youth, Champlain had fought on the side of
that more liberal and national form of Romanism
of which the Jesuits were the most emphatic an-
tagonists. Now, as Le Jeune tells us, with evident
contentment, he chose him, the Jesuit, as director
of his conscience. In truth, there were none but
Jesuits to confess and absolve him ; for the Récol-
lets, prevented, to their deep chagrin, from return-
ing to the missions they had founded, were seen
no more in Canada, and the followers of Loyola
were sole masters of the field.” The manly heart
1 Le Jeune, Relation, 1633, 26 (Quebec, 1858).
2 Mémoire faict en 1637 pour l'Affaire des Pères Récollect2 . . . . tou-
chant le Droit qu'ils ont depuis l’An 1615 d’aller en Quanada. Mémoire in-
structif contenant la Conduite des Pères Récollects de Paris en leur Mission de
Canada.
1633.] QUEBEC A MISSION. 451
of the commandant, earnest, Zealous, and direct,
was seldom chary of its confidence, or apt to stand
too warily on its guard in presence of a profound
art mingled with a no less profound sincerity.
A stranger visiting the fort of Quebec would
have been astonished at its air of conventual deco-
rum. Black Jesuits and scarfed officers mingled
at Champlain's table. There was little conversa-
tion, but, in its place, histories and the lives of
saints were read aloud, as in a monastic refectory."
Prayers, masses, and confessions followed one an-
other with an edifying regularity, and the bell
of the adjacent chapel, built by Champlain, rang
morning, noon, and night. Godless soldiers caught
the infection, and whipped themselves in penance
for their sins. Debauched artisans outdid each
other in the fury of their contrition. Quebec was
become a mission. Indians gathered thither as of
old, not from the baneful lure of brandy, for the
traffic in it was no longer tolerated, but from the
less pernicious attractions of gifts, kind words, and
politic blandishments. To the vital principle of
propagandism both the commercial and the military
character were subordinated ; or, to speak more
justly, trade, policy, and military power leaned
on the missions as their main support, the grand
instrument of their extension. The missions were
to explore the interior; the missions were to win
over the savage hordes at once to Heaven and to
France. Peaceful, benign, beneficent, were the
1 Le Jeune, Relation, 1634, 2 (Quebec, 1858). Compare Du Creux,
Historia Canadensis, 156.
452 IDEATH OF CHAMPLAIN. [1635.
weapons of this conquest. France aimed to sub-
due, not by the sword, but by the cross; not to
overwhelm and crush the nations she invaded, but
to convert, civilize, and embrace them among her
children.
And who were the instruments and the pro-
moters of this proselytism, at Once so devout and
so politic 2 Who can answer % who can trace out
the crossing and mingling currents of wisdom and
folly, ignorance and knowledge, truth and false-
hood, weakness and force, the noble and the base,
— can analyze a systematized contradiction, and
follow through its secret wheels, springs, and levers
a phenomenon of moral mechanism 2 Who can
define the Jesuits? The story of their missions is
marvellous as a tale of chivalry, or legends of the
lives of Saints. For many years, it was the history
of New France and of the wild communities of her
desert empire.
Two years passed. The mission of the Hurons
was established, and here the indomitable Brébeuf,
with a band worthy of him, toiled amid miseries
and perils as fearful as ever shook the constancy
of man; while Champlain at Quebec, in a life un-
eventful, yet harassing and laborious, was busied
in the round of cares which his post involved.
Christmas day, 1635, was a dark day in the
annals of New France. In a chamber of the fort,
breathless and cold, lay the hardy frame which
war, the wilderness, and the sea had buffeted so
long in vain. After two months and a half of ill-
ness, Champlain, stricken with paralysis, at the
1635.] HIS CHARACTER. 453
age of sixty-eight, was dead. His last cares were
for his colony and the succor of its suffering fami-
lies. Jesuits, officers, soldiers, traders, and the
few settlers of Quebec, followed his remains to
the church; Le Jeune pronounced his eulogy," and
the feeble community built a tomb to his honor.”
The colony could ill spare him. For twenty-
seven years he had labored hard and ceaselessly
for its welfare, Sacrificing fortune, repose, and
domestic peace to a cause embraced with enthu-
siasm and pursued with intrepid persistency. His
character belonged partly to the past, partly to
the present. The preua, chevalier, the crusader,
the romance-loving explorer, the curious, knowl-
edge-seeking traveller, the practical navigator, all
claimed their share in him. His views, though
far beyond those of the mean spirits around him,
belonged to his age and his creed. He was less
statesman than soldier. He leaned to the most
direct and boldest policy, and One of his last acts
was to petition Richelieu for men and munitions
for repressing that standing menace to the colony,
the Iroquois.” His dauntless courage was matched
by an unwearied patience, proved by life-long vex-
ations, and not wholly subdued even by the saintly
follies of his wife. He is charged with credulity,
1 Le Jeune, Relation, 1636, 56 (Quebec, 1858).
* Vimont, Relation, 1643, 3 (Quebec, 1858). A supposed discovery,
in 1865, of the burial-place of Champlain, produced a sharp controversy at
Quebec. Champlain made a will, leaving 4,000 livres, with other property,
to the Jesuits. The will was successfully contested before the Parliament
of Paris, and was annulled on the ground of informality.
3 Lettre de Champlain aw Ministre, 15 Aout, 1635.
454 DEATH OF CHAMPILAIN. [1635.
from which few of his age were free, and which in
all ages has been the foible of earnest and generous
natures, too ardent to criticise, and too honorable
to doubt the honor of others. Perhaps the heretic
might have liked him more if the Jesuit had liked
him less. The adventurous explorer of Lake Hu-
ron, the bold invader of the Iroquois, befits but
indifferently the monastic sobrieties of the fort of
Quebec, and his sombre environment of priests.
Yet Champlaim was no formalist, nor was his an
empty Zeal. A soldier from his youth, in an age
of unbridled license, his life had answered to his
maxims; and when a generation had passed after
his visit to the Hurons, their elders remembered
with astonishment the continence of the great
French war-chief. -
His books mark the man, - all for his theme
and his purpose, nothing for himself. Crude in
style, full of the superficial errors of carelessness
and haste, rarely diffuse, often brief to a fault,
they bear on every page the palpable impress of
truth. -
With the life of the faithful soldier closes the
opening period of New France. Heroes of another
stamp succeed; and it remains to tell the story
of their devoted lives, their faults, follies, and
virtues.
IND EX.
IND EX.
A.
Abenakis Indians, the adventure of
Biencourt with the, 291, 292.
Acadia, De Monts’s scheme to colonize,
243; derivation of the name, 243
note; granted Madame de Guerche-
ville, 297 ; the ruin of, 314.
Adieu & la France, 260.
Adirondack Mountains, 345.
Alabama, State of, 15.
Alexander, Sir William, his attempts
to colonize Acadia, 434; mentioned,
Alexander the Sixth, Pope, 201, 385.
Algonquin Indians, the, 242, 337
note; at Tadoussac, 328 ; a war
feast at Quebec, 340; led by Cham-
plain against the Iroquois, 340;
their bad faith to him, 342; their
emcampment, 343, 346; their oracle,
344; their route towards the enemy,
346; meet the Iroquois, 348 ; the
fight with the Iroquois, 350; their
victory, 351; their retreat, 351;
their settlement on the Ottawa, 374
note ; on Lake Huron, 394 note;
involved in a fight concerning an
Iroquois prisoner, 414.
Allen's River, 270.
Allumettes Lakes, 393.
Alphonse, Jean, a pilot, 253.
Alva, Duke of, his influence over
Catharine de Medicis, 101; men-
tioned, 154.
Amboise, the Peace of, 49.
Ameda, an evergreen with healing
properties, 214, 214 note.
America, discovery of, by Spain, 9;
Spanish adventurers in, 9, 14–18.
Anastasia Island, 132, 133.
Andastes, an Indian tribe, 400.
Annapolis Harbor, discovered by De
Monts, 247. -
Annapolis River, called Équille and
Dauphin, 257, 266.
Antarctic France, 32.
Anticosti, Island of, 200, 202.
Appalache, village in Florida, 12.
Archer's Creek, 41.
Arciniega, Sancho de, joins Menendez,
105.
Argall, Samuel, Captain, arrives at
Jamestown, 306; abduction of Po-
cahontas by, 306 ; sails for the
coast of Maine, 306; interviews the
Indians, 307; attacks the French at
Mount Desert, 308 ; seizes their
commissions and property, 309; his
treatment of his prisoners, 310; de-
stroys the French settlements at
Mount Desert and St. Croix, 313;
second expedition to Mount Desert,
313; demolishes Port Royal, 314;
interview with Biencourt, 316; re.
turns to Virginia, 317; concerning
the Dutch at Manhattan, 317; be-
comes Deputy-Governor of Virginia,
321; his arbitrary government there,
321; knighted by King James, 321.
Arkansas River, 12 note, 15.
Arlac, ensign to Laudonnière, 65; car-
ries prisoners home to Outina, 65;
joins the Thimagoas in an attack
against Potanou, 66; releases Lau-
donnière, 74 ; mentioned, 80: goes
to Outina for provisions, 85 ; in
battle with the Indians, 87; joins
Ribault in attack on Menendez, 116.
Armouchiquois Indians, 253, 273.
Arques, the battle of, 240.
Asticou, an Indian chief at Mount De-
sert, 303.
Astina, an Indian chief, 83.
Athore, son of Satourioma, 64.
Aubert, of Dieppe, explores Gulf of
St. Lawrence, 192.
Aubry, Nicolas, lost in the Acadian
forest, 246; found, 249.
Audubon, J. J., 59.
Audusta, Indian chief, 42.
Avacal, 202 note.
458
INDEX.
Ayllon, Vasquez de, discoveries of, in
Florida, 11; named the river Jor-
dan, 11 note.
B.
Baccalaos, a name of Newfoundland,
189 vote.
Bahama Channel, 108, 161.
Bahama Islands, 10.
Bailleul, a pilot, 307.
Barcia, account of Menendez’s attack
on French at Florida, 112 note.
Darré, Nicolas, commanded the Co-
ligny colonists, 44.
Bartrams, the, 59.
Basin of Chambly, 341.
Basques, the, in America, 152, 188;
engaged in fur-trade, 326 ; peace
established with, 328.
Bauldre, François de, 235 note.
Bay of Espiritu Santo, landing of De
Soto at, 14 note.
Bay of Fundy, De Monts explores, 247;
mentioned. 248, 310.
Bay of Penobscot, 306.
Bay of St. Lawrence, 202.
Bay of the Trinity, 328.
Bayard, death of, 198.
Bazares, Guido de las, expedition to
Florida, 17.
Beauchamp, Rev. W. M., 403 note.
Beaufort, S. 41.
Beaumont, at St. Croix, 251.
Beauport, former name of Gloucester,
Mass., 254.
Beaupré, Vicomte de, has charge of
forts at Charlesbourg-Royal, 221.
Belle Isle, Straits of, 200, 202.
Beloeil, the cliffs of, 341.
Berjon, Jean, 250.
Berthier, 329.
Biard, Pierre, 286; sails for Port Royal,
288; confesses Pontgravč’s son, 290;
makes an excursion with Biencourt,
291; account of his adventure with
the Abenakis Indians, 292; accounts
of the Indian Membertou, &c., 293,
294; learning the Indian language,
294; his prophecy, 296; the mission-
ary, 277, 277 note; carried by La
Saussaye to Mount Desert, 302; visit
to Asticou, 303; quoted, 310,311,322,
322 note; taken captive to Virginia,
311; accompanies Argall on his ex-
pedition, 313; conduct of, at the
attack on Port Royal, 315; driven by
a storm to the Azores, 317; recom-
mended as a subject for the gallows,
318; Turnel’s confidence in him,
318; kept a prisoner while at Fayal.
319; before the Vice-Admiral at
Pembroke, 320; sent to Calais, 320.
Biencourt, a son of Poutrincourt, 280;
his audience with the Queen, 282;
Sails for Port Royal, 288 ; left in
charge at Port, Royal, 291; makes
an excursion along the coast, 291;
takes Some prisoners, and levies
tribute on traders. 291; his ad-
Venture with the Abenakis Indians,
292; quarrels with the Jesuits, 298:
interview with Argall, 316; his
anger against Biard, 317; partially
rebuilds Port Royal, 322, 322 note.
Bimini, Island of, explored by Ponce
de Leon, 10.
Bison, the vast herds of, 15, 15 note.
Black drink, the, in use among the
Indians, 166, 166 note.
Blavet, the Spaniards evacuate, 237.
Bois-Lecomte, commands expedition
to Florida, 27.
Bon Temps, Order of, at Port Royal,
268, 269.
Borgia, General of the Jesuits, 177.
Boston Harbor, Champlain at, 254.
Boulay, at St. Croix, 251.
Bºlet, Captain, arrival in Florida,
Bourdelais, François, an officer with
Gourgues, 167.
Brant Point, 254.
Brazil, curious animals of, 28 rºote.
Brébeuf, Jean de, Jesuit, arrival of, in
Canada, 424; concerning his mis-
Sion to the Hurons, 425; Michel
uarrels with him, 442; returns to
Quebec, 449; his mission work in
New France, 452.
Breton, Christophe le, escapes Me-
mendez's butchery, 145, 147 note.
Bretons, the, in America, 152, 188;
fishermen, at Newfoundland, 229.
Brion-Chabot, Philippe de, Admiral of
France, 199.
Brissac, Maréchal de, 368.
Broad River, 39 note.
Brouage, town of, 360, 384.
Brulé, Etienne, an interpreter, 393,
397; his mission to the Carantouans,
400; meets Champlain after three
years, 406; his adventures with the
Indians, 406-409; reaches the Sus-
quehanna, 407; taken prisoner by
the Iroquois, 408; his tortures, 408;
predicts vengeance against the Iro-
quois, 409; arrives at Montreal, 409;
his death, 409 note.
Buccaneers, leave Fort Caroline, 73;
return. and sentenced to death, 76.
Buckingham, Duke of, 433.
Byng Inlet, 395.
INDEX.
C.
Cabeça de Vaca, Alvar Nuñez, in ex-
pedition with Narvaez, 12 note, 13.
Cabot, Sebastian, 189 note, 313.
Cadiz, 237.
Caen, Émery de, his religious exer-
cises prohibited, 426; arrives at
Quebec, his commission, 446; takes
possession of Quebec, 448.
Caen, William and Émery, traders
with Quebec, 423. 424; their mo-
nopoly of the trade, 427, 427 note;
their privileges annulled, 449; men-
tioned, 436.
Cahiagué, arrival of Champlain at,
399; beauty of the country about,
399; gathering of Indian warriors
at, 400; Champlain and the Indians
return to, 413.
Caille, François de la, sergeant to Lau-
donnière, 63; proposal to turn bucca-
neer, 7.1, 71 mote ; breaks with the
buccaneers, 72; captures the muti-
neers, 74, 75.
Calibogue Sound, 43.
Caloosa River, 79.
Calos, King of, an Indian chief and
magician, 79.
Calumet, the rapids of, 382. -
Calvin, John, 21, 179, 201, 433; his
controversy with Villegagnon, 31.
Calvinists, arrival of, at Ganabara, 28;
tyranny of Villegagnon to, 30; re-
turn to France, 31.
Canada, derivation of the word, 202
note; extent of, 202 note.
Canaries, 105.
Cancello, a Dominican monk in Flor-
ida, 7.
Cannibalism among the Indians, 359
77.0te.
Canseau, a fur-trading post, 246, 264.
Cap aux Isles, former name of Cape
Ann, 254.
Cap Blanc, 255.
Cº. ia Hève, on coast of Nova Scotia,
246
Cap Rouge, Cartier's party at, 221;
Roberval’s landing at, 225; Rober-
val builds at, 225.
Cape Ann, 254.
Cape Blanco, 159.
Cape Breton, 190 note; a fur-trading
post, 264; seizure of a fort at, 443.
Cape Canaveral, 79, 133.
Cape Cod, called by Champlain Cap
Blanc, 255; the Indians at, attack
Champlain's party, 264.
Cape Diamond, 330 note.
Cape Finisterre, 159.
Cape Sable, 246, 310.
459
Cape St. Helena, formerly Chicora,
39 mote. -
Cape San Antonio, Gourgues lands at,
160
Cape Tourmente, 203; attacked by
the English fleet, 435; Champlain
establishes an outpost at, 435.
Cape Verd, 160.
Carantouan, a palisaded town, 407.
Carantouan Indians, 400.
Carhagouha, a Huron town, 397.
Caribou, rapids of, 393.
Carillon, rapids of, 369.
Carmaron, Champlaim at, 397.
Cartier, Jacques, sails for Newfound-
land, 200; return to France, 200; his
portrait, 200 mote ; makes a second
voyage, 201; explores the St. Law-
rence River, 203; ascends the St.
Charles River, 204; gifts to the In-
dians, 205; marches for Hochelaga,
207; received by the Indians at
Hochelaga, 260; heals the sick In-
dians, 210, 211; winters on the St.
Charles, 212; breaking out of the
scurvy among his men, 213; kid-
maps Donnacona, and returns to
France, 215; plants the cross on the
banks of the St. Charles, 215; made
Captain-General, 216; makes a sec-
ond voyage to Canada, 216; the ob-
ject of his enterprise, 217 : his party
consists of thieves, robbers, &c.,
217 : sails for Canada, and arrives at
Quebec, 220; builds forts and win-
ters at Charlesbourg-Royal, 221;
explores the St. Lawrence, 221;
abandons Canada and arrives in
France, 221, 222, 222 note ; sent to
bring Roberval,227; mentioned, 396.
Casco Bay, 253.
Cathay, the kingdom of, 194, 198.
Catholic and Calvinist, disputes be-
tween, 245.
Cazemove, an officer with Gourgues,
170, 172.
Chabot, commissions Cartier, 201.
Challeux, escapes from the Spaniards
at Fort Caroline, 124, 129; men-
tioned, 146 note.
Champdoré, a pilot with Champlain,
248; at Port Royal, 257.
Champlain, Madame, at Quebec, 421;
founds a convent, death of, 422.
Champlain, Samuel de, early life, 237;
spirit of adventure, 237; his ex-
perience in the army, 237; receives
a pension, 237; his illustrated jour-
mal, 238, 239 mote; his plan for
a ship-canal, 239; his favor from
the King, 239; his West-Indian ad-
venture, 239; joins De Chastes in
460
INDEX.
expedition to Canada, 241; explores
the St. Lawrence, 242; passes the
rapids of St. Louis, 242; quoted,
245; explores the Bay of l'undy,
247; builds his house at St. Croix,
250; explores the coast of Maine,
253; of New Hampshire and Massa-
chusetts, 254; adventure with the
Indians at Cape Cod, 255, 264; his
trustworthy account of New Eng-
land coast, 256; makes a second
trip along Massachusetts coast, 264;
arrives at Port Royal, 265; at
Mount Desert in a storm, 265;
abandons Port Royal and sails for
France, 274; at Paris, 325; his de-
sire for exploration, 325; makes
second expedition to Canada, 326;
encounters the Basque fur-traders,
326; arrives at Tadoussac, 326; sails
up the St. Lawrence, 328; com-
mences building at Quebec, 331; the
plot to kill him, 331; he disposes of
the mutineers, 332; spends the win-
ter at Quebec, 333, 335; his kind
treatment of the Montagnais, 334;
sickness and death of his company,
335; the policy of his allying him-
self with the Indians, 337; joins a
war party, 339; visits the Algon-
quin camp, 339; sails up the Riche-
lieu, 340; advances toward the
enemy, 342–347; explores the St.
John, 341; the Indians' bad faith to-
ward him, 342; his encampment, 343
note ; discovers Lake Champlain,
345; encamps there, 346; his dream,
347; meets the Iroquois, 348; his
armor, 349, 349 note; the fight, 350;
the Indians’ gift to him, 352; re-
turns to Quebec and Tadoussac,
352; returns to France, 353: his in-
terview with the King, 353; his ill-
ness, 353; sails again for Canada,
353; arrives at Tadoussac, 354;
secures the Indians as guides, 354;
a second fight with the Iroquois,
355–358; wounded by an arrow, 357;
his garden at Quebec, 360, 360 note,
at Honfleur, 361; in the ice at New-
foundland, 361; makes a clearing
at Montreal, 362; descends the
rapids of St. Louis, 363; visits the
Indians at Lake St. Louis, 363; in-
terview with the Huron Indians,
363; returns to Quebec, 363; in
conference with De Monts at Pons,
363; returns to Paris, 364; injured
by fall of his horse, 364; power
given him over trade, exploration,
etc., 364; interests Comte de Sois-
sons in New France, 364; the two
objects of his ambition, 366; his be.
lief in the discoveries of Wignau,
368; returns to Canada to follow
them up, 369; with exploring party
sails up the Ottawa, 369–371; meets
with an accident, 369; plants the
emblems of his faith in the wilds of
Canada, 372; his account of his
march, 373; discovery of an astro-
labe lost by, 373 note; at the vil-
lage of the Algonquins, 374; crosses
Muskrat Lake, 375; interview with
the chief Nibachis, 375; at Tes-
Souat's feast, 376, 377 note; asks
assistance of Tessouat, 377; which
he refuses, 379; concerning the im-
posture of Vignau, 379–381; returns
to Montreal, 382; departs for France,
383; his religious zeal, 384; interests
the Récollet Friars in his mission,
384; returns to Quebec with them,
387; at Montreal, 388; his policy
concerning the Indians, 389; disap-
pointed in an attack on the Iroquois,
390; discovers Lake Nipissing, 393;
sails down the French river, 394;
encounters an Algonquin tribe, 394;
arrives at the village of the Nipis-
sings, 394; discovers Lake Huron,
395; at Otouacha, a Huron town,
396; received by the Hurons, 396;
his estimate of the Huron villages,
396 mote ; meets Le Caron at a
Huron village, 397; attends the cele-
bration of mass, 397; greeted by the
Indians, 399; starts on a tour of ob-
servation, 399; arrives at Cahiagué,
399; joins the Hurons in another
attack on the Iroquois, 400; takes
part in a deer hunt, 401, 410; dis-
covers Lake Ontario, 401; describes
the defences of the Onondagas, 402;
interferes in an Indian skirmish,
402 ; instructs the Indians in the art
of war, 404; attacks the Iroquois,
404; wounded, 405; meets with
Etienne Brulé, 406; loses prestige
with the Hurons, 406; winters with
them, 406; lost in the woods, 411;
arrives at the Indian settlement,
412; travels with the Indians to
Cahiagué, 413; starts homeward,
414; recalled to the Huron town,
414; acts as umpire in an Indian
quarrel, 415; arrives at Quebec,
415; makes some improvements at
Quebec, 417; the difficulties of his
position, 417 ; his endeavors to open
trade, 420, 421: returns from France
with his wife, 421; lays his griev-
ances before the King, 423; begins
to rebuild the fort, 427; a member ºf
INDEX.
the Company of New France, 432;
established an outpost at Cape Tour-
mente, 435; expecting an attack
from the English, 436; refuses to
surrender, 436; his desperate re-
solve, 438; the terms of capitulation,
438; surrenders Quebec to the Eng-
lish, 439; descends the St. Law–
rence to Tadoussac, 440; meets a
French ship with supplies, 440;
quoted concerning Michel, 443; ar-
rives in London, 443; forms a new
association, 448; his zeal and loy–
alty to France, 448; assumes com-
mand at Quebec, 449; chooses Le
Jeune his confessor, 450; builds a
chapel at Quebec, 451; death of,
452; his burial place, 453 note ; his
character, 453; his books, 454.
Chantilly, 372.
Charles the First, aids the Hugue-
nots, 433; restores New France to
the French crown, 444.
Charles the Fifth, 23, 194, 215; jeal-
ousy of Erench expeditions, 218.
Charles the Eighth, the condition of
France under his reign, 192.
Charles the Ninth, the French peti-
tion for redress to, 145; mentioned,
41, 56, 151; asserts the French
right to Florida, 152, 153; demands
redress for the massacre in Florida,
154; submits to the decision of
Spain, 155; his leaning toward the
Catholics, 156.
Charles River, 254.
Charlesbourg-Royal, Cartier's party
winter at, 221.
Charlesfort, built by Coligny’s colo-
mists, 41; burned, 43.
Charlevoix, quoted, 101 note ; a Jes-
uit, 157.
Chatham Harbor, called Port For.
tune, 264.
Chaton, Estienne, engaged in Ameri-
can fur-trade, 231.
Chauvin, joins Pontgravé in coloni-
zation scheme, 235; death of, 240;
mentioned, 328,
Chauvin, Pierre, of Dieppe, left in
charge at Quebec, 353.
Chefdhótel, sent for the convicts at
Sable Island, 234; a Norman pilot,
234; his robbery of the convicts,
234, 234 mote.
Chenonceau, the, probably Archer’s
Creek, 41.
Chesapeake Bay, called by Menendez
St. Mary’s, 103; supposed com-
munication with the St. Lawrence,
148, 149 note.
Chevalier, arrival of, at Port Royal,
461
271; entertained at Port Royal,
72.
Cheveua Relevés, Indians so named
by Champlain, 394, 413.
Chihuahua, town of 12 note.
Chilaga (Hochelaga), 202 note.
China, 368.
Christmas Day in New France, 452.
Cinaloa, 12 note.
Clark, Gen. John S., 402 note.
Cohasset, 254.
Cointac, a student, 29.
Coligny, Gaspar de, Admiral of France,
22; character of, 23; his scheme for
a colony in America, 34; renews
his colonization enterprise, 49; re-
quests Laudonnière's resignation,
94; concerning his French colony,
153; his power waning, 156.
C. ligny Colonists, landing at Florida,
36; received by the Indians, 36;
their explorations, 37–40; their im-
pressions of Florida, 37; landing at
Fernandina, 38; naming the rivers,
39; settle at Port Royal, 39; build.
a fort, 41; attend an Indian festi-
val, 42; become discontented, 44;
appoint new commander, 44; build
a vessel, 45; abandon Port Royal,
45, 46; taken prisoners by an Eng-
lish bark, 46; who composed the
second party, 49, 49 note. See
Fort Caroline.
Colombo, Don Francisco, 238.
Colonization, French and English,
compared, 431.
Columbus, Christopher, 18, 152, 187,
188.
Company of New France, the, formed
by Richelieu, 429; rights and duties
of, 430.
Condé, Prince de, 22, 49; becomes
Lieutenant-General of New France,
365; his character, 365; his interest
in New France, 366; his jealousy
of Henry the Fourth, 365.
Convicts at Sable Island, 232, 233;
taken back to France, 234, 234 mote ;
allowed to engage in the fur-trade,
234, 234 note.
Corisande, mistress
Fourth, 283.
Corruption at the French court, 22.
Cortés, Hernando, conquest of Mex-
ico by, 11.
Cosette, French captain at Florida,
114.
of Henry the
Coton, Father, confessor to Henry the
Fourth, 276, 288.
Couexis, Indian chief, 43.
Cºil of the Indies, their report,
9.
462
INDEX.
Cousin, a navigator, discoveries of,
187. •
Crown Point, 347.
Cuba, 10, 11, 100.
Cumberland Head, 345.
D.
D'Alava, ambassador at Paris, 152.
Dale, Sir Thomas, commission to Ar-
gall, 306; his wrath toward , the
Jesuits, 312; champion of British
rights, 313.
Daniel, Captain, arrives in the St.
Lawrence, 443; seizes an English
fort, 443.
Dauphine, the, one of Verrazzano’s
vessels, 194.
Debré, Pierre, 164
De Chastes, Aymar, l is character, 240;
his loyalty to the King, 240; de-
termination to colonize New France,
240; forms a company, 241; a pa-
tent granted to him, 241; death of,
42.
Deer hunt, the Indians’ preparation
for, 401, 410.
De la Noué, Father, arrival at Quebec,
425; his mission to the Hurons,
425.
De Léry, a Calvinist minister, 28 note,
31.
Denis. of Honfleur, explores Gulf of
St. Lawrence, 192.
D'Entragues, Henriette, an ally of the
Jesuits, 287.
Desdames, 436, 437.
Des Prairies, in the fight with the
Iroquois, 357.
Deux Rivières, 393.
Dieppe, town of, 240, 243.
Dolbeau, Jean, a Franciscan, 386;
endeavors to convert the Indians
at Tadoussac, 387; nearly loses his
sight and returns to Quebec, 388.
Don Antonio, Portuguese prince, 177.
Dominica, Menendez lands at, 106.
Donnacona, Indian chief at Quebec,
203 note; his strategy with Cartier,
205, 206 note : death of, 218.
D’Orville, Sieur, at St. Croix, 250.
Drake, 90, 193.
Dreams, the power of, among Indians,
347 note. -
Dry Mountain, 302.
Du Jardin, concerning sending of
Jesuits to Port Royal, 287.
Du Parc, left in command at Quebec,
360; at Montreal, 383.
Du Plessis, Friar, at Quebec, 387.
Dupont, 39.
Du Quesne, refuses to send Jesuits to
Port Royal, 287.
Durantel, Indian chief, 406, 412; ac-
companies Champlain home, 415;
his entertainment, 416.
Dutch, the, their fur traffic along the
St. Lawrence, 271; on the Hudson,
aid the Iroquois, 400 note.
Du Thet, Gilbert, sails for Acadia, 301;
death of, 308. -
Duval, in plot against Champlain,
331; hanged by Champlain, 332.
E.
Eliot, Charles W., 256 note.
Elizabeth, Queen of England, 177.
England, aids the Huguenots in
France, 433.
England and France, peace restored
between, 443.
English, the, pillage Cape Tour-
mente, 435; at Quebec, 436; seize
Roquemont with supplies for Que-
bec, 437; return home from Quebec,
438; Quebec surrenders to the, 439;
leave Quebec, 448.
English Churchmen versus the Puri-
tans, 320.
English claim to America, 313.
English colonization compared with
French, 431.
English fishing-vessels at Newfound-
land, 230.
quille River, called Annapolis. 266.
Etechemin Indians of Acadia, 253.
F.
Falls of Niagara, 242 note.
Falls of the Chats, 371.
Farrar, Captain, 443 note.
Fayal, 318.
Fernald, Mr., 304 vote.
Fernandina, landing of colonists at,
38
Fisheries, at Newfoundland, 103, 189,
229.
Fleury, Captain Charles, commander
of the “Jonas,” 301; mentioned,
303, 320; conduct during the attack
on his vessel by the English, 308.
Florida, discoveries of De Ayllon in,
11; explorations of De Narvaez in,
12; discovery of, by Ponce de Leon,
11; a rich harvest to the explorer,
13; indefinite boundary of 18; Eng-
lish, Spanish, and French claims
to, 18, 19; its fruitfulness and re-
Sources, 37, 38 ; Ribaut’s account
INDEX.
of, 38; arrival of the Coligny col-
onists at, 35; abandoned by them,
46; the boundaries of, according to
Spanish geographers, 103; its boun-
daries according to the Spanish, 152;
how divided, 202 note.
Fontainebleau, 372.
Forquevaulx, French ambassador, con-
cerning the massacre in Florida, 153,
154, 155.
Fort Caroline, built by Laudonnière,
56; discontent at, 68; mutiny and
conspiracy at, 72; departure of mu-
timeers from, 73 ; arrival of two
Spaniards at, their strange stories,
79; famine at, 81; the colonists ap-
ply to Outina for provisions, 83;
the colonists deceived by Outina,
attack and take him prisoner, 84;
the French prepare to leave, 92;
arrival of Jean Ribaut with reim-
forcements, 93; arrival of a Spanish
war ship at, 95; anxiety at the ap-
pearance of the Spanish, and coun-
cil of war held, 114 ; defenceless,
117; attacked by Menendez, massa-
cre at, 123, 124; the fugitives at,
125, 128; ferocity of the Spaniards
at, 127; called San Mateo, 149; the
massacre at, avenged, 173.
Fort Coligny, name given to Hugue-
not settlement at Rio Janeiro, 26.
Fort George Island, 162.
Fort San Mateo, Gourgues prepares to
assault, 171, 171 note ; taken by
Gourgues, 173. See Fort Caroline.
Fort Ticonderoga, 346.
Fort William Henry, 347.
Fortress Monroe, 311. -
Foucher, attacked at Cape Tourmente,
435.
Fougeray, at St. Croix, 251.
Fountain of Youth, 10, 10 note.
Fourneaux, ringleader of buccaneers,
72; shot for a mutiny, 76.
France, in the sixteenth century, 21;
corruption at the court of, 101; her
mission in America, 179 ; her vi-
tality wasted in Italian wars, 192;
after her thirty years’ conflict, 235;
her policy in Indian politics, 337;
her desire to reinstate herself in
New France, 447; her weapons of
conquest, her instruments of pro-
selytism, 452.
France and Spain, state of their inter-
national relations, 151.
France-Roy, named by Roberval, 225.
Francis of Assisi, St., founder of the
Franciscan Order, 385.
Francis the First, character of, 193;
sends Werrazzano on voyage of dis-
463
covery, 194; at battle-field of Pavia,
198; mentioned, 199, 215; quoted
concerning Cartier’s voyage, 217.
Franciscans, the, in Spanish America,
386 -
Franklin Inlet, 395.
French account of the massacre at
Fort Caroline, 145, 146.
French adventurers in America, 188.
French Cape, 36. -
French colonization compared with
English, 431.
French court, demands redress for the
massacre at Florida, 153, 154.
French fishermen at Canseau, 230.
French Protestantism in America, 179.
French River, 394.
Frenchman's Bay, 302.
Frenchmen, arrival of, in Florida, 48,
50; the massacre of, at Fort Caro-
line, 124–126; number slain at Fort
Caroline, 127; shipwrecked at Ma-
tanzas Inlet, 133 ; endeavors to
reach Fort Caroline, 133; interviews
with Menendez, 135; surrender to
Menendez, 138 ; butchery of, by
Menendez, 143 ; survivors of the
massacre, 149, 150; an attempt to
drive them from Acadia, 434. See
Fort Caroline.
Fugitives from the massacre at Fort
Caroline, 125, 128.
Fur-Trade, concerning the, in Nova
Scotia, 243, 325; of the Dutch along
the St. Lawrence, 271; at Tadous-
sac, 327; monopolized by the Caen
brothers, 427, 427 note.
Fur-Traders, the, at Newfoundland,
230, 230 note; at Tadoussac, 360; at
Quebec, 420.
G.
Gaillon, Michel, 226.
Gambie, Pierre, trader to the Indians
in Florida, 78; marries a chief's
daughter, 79.
Gamabara, former name for Rio Ja-
neiro, 26; arrival of Calvinist minis-
º at, 28; seized by the Portuguese,
3
Garay, Juan de, discoveries of, in
Florida, 11.
Gaspé, 200, 326.
Genesee River, the, 346.
Geneva, sends colonists to Florida, 27.
Genre, plots against life of Laudon-
nière, 69; his treachery to Laudon-
nière, 70.
Georgia, State of, 15.
Georgian Bay, 395.
464
INDEX.
Goat Island, 257.
Godfrey, 102.
Gouldsborough Hills, 302.
Gourgues, Dominique de, his early
life, 157, 158; his religious senti-
ments, 157; his hatred of Spaniards,
157; vows vengeance against them,
158 ; commissioned to the slave-
trade, 159, 159 note; plans an ex-
pedition, 159, 159 note; his follow-
ers, 159 ; sails for Africa, 159 ;
addresses his followers, 160; lands
at Cape San Antonio, 160; anchors
off St. Mary’s River, 162; wel-
comed by the Indians, 162; forms
alliance with them against the
Spanish, 163; his gifts to the In-
dians, 165; advances on the Spanish,
167, 168, 169 ; makes the attack,
170; a spy in his camp, 172; takes
Fort Sam Mateo, 173; addresses the
Spanish prisoners, 174; his inscrip-
tion over the murdered Spaniards,
174; his mission fulfilled, 174; gives
thanks for his victory, 175; returns
to France, 176; coldly received at
Court, 176; retires to private life,
176; enters the service of Elizabeth
of England, 177; death of, 177.
“Grace of God,” the, vessel which
bore the Jesuits to Port Royal, 289.
Grand Bank, the, 326.
Grandchemin, massacred at Fort Caro-
line, 126.
Grand Isle, 345.
Granville, 329.
Gravier, M. Gabriel, 301 note.
Great Head, 302.
Green Mountain, Mt. Desert, 302.
Green Mountains, the, of Vermont,
345.
Grotaut, agent among the Indians in
Florida, 78
Guercheville, Marquise de, her adven-
ture with Henry IV., 283–285; a
patroness of the Jesuits, 286; assists
Fathers Biard and Masse to go to
Port Royal, 288; her land grants in
America, 297 : arranges to take
possession of her American domain,
300; her pious designs crushed, 320.
Gulf of California, 12 note.
Gulf of Mexico, 12.
Gulf of St. Lawrence, 192.
H.
Hamlin, F. L., 304 note.
Hampton Beach, 254.
Hampton Roads, 311.
Harbor, the, selected by the Jesuits ai
Mount Desert, 304, 304 note.
Havana, 108.
Havre, city of, 35.
Havre de Grace, 242.
Hawkins, Sir John, arrival of, at Fort
Caroline, 90; advice to his crew, 90;
his traffic in Guinea slaves, 90; his
character, 91; knighted, 91 note;
relieves the French at Fort Caroline,
92.
Hayti, 108.
Hébert, Louis, at Quebec, 417, 437.
Henry the Second, 25, 27.
Henry the Fourth, receives the con-
victs from Sable Island, 234; por-
trayed, 236; grants a patent to De
Chastes, 241; mentioned, 276, 278;
assassination of, 281; his passion
for the Marquise de Guercheville,
283–285, 285 note.
Heretics, massacre of the, by Menen-
dez, 134–44.
Hilton Head, 39, 41.
Hispaniola, landing of Gourgues at,
160.
Hochelaga, the town and its forti-
fications, 205, 208; Cartier marches
to explore, 207; the Indians at, 208
note, 210; Cartier at, 221; its popu-
lation vanished, 242.
Hochelaga River, named by Cartier,
202 mote. See St. Lawrence River.
Honfleur, 301.
Horse-foot crab, the, 255.
Hostaqua, Indian chief, 62, 78.
Houél, secretary to the King, 384.
Hudson, Henry, 368 note.
Hudson River, the Dutch fur-traders
on the, 296, 296 note, 347.
Hudson’s Bay, 328.
Huet, Paul, a Récollet, says mass at
Tadoussac, 418.
Huguenot party, character of the, 33,
34
Huguenots, the, at Geneva, 21;
arrival of, at Rio Janeiro, 26; Col-
igny's party composed of, 49; con-
cerning Menendez's massacre, 152;
instrumental in settling Florida, 156;
their heretical psalms at Quebec,
419 ; excluded from New France,
431; revolt of, in France, 433.
Hundred Associates, the, 436, 446.
Hungry Bay, 401.
Huron Indians, the, 359; their trust
in Champlain, 363; Le Caron cele-
brates mass among the, 397; led by
Champlain, start for an attack on
the Iroquois, 400; engage in a deer
hunt, 401; land in New York, 401;
indulge in a skirmish, 402; cap-
INDEX.
ture some prisoners, 402; attack
the Iroquois, and retreat with their
wounded, 404; return to Lake On-
tario, 406.
Huron-Iroquois Indians, 208, 337 7,0te.
I.
Indian cemetery on the Ottawa, 375.
Indian converts at l’ort Royal, 279,
28().
Indian pantomime, 205.
Indian warriors, a gathering of, at
Cahiagué, 400.
Indian's nightmare, 382.
Indians, the, of Florida, welcome Ri-
baut, 36; their religious festival,
42; hospitality to the colonists, 43;
their reception of Laudonnière, 50–
52; two veteran chiefs, 51; the three
confederacies of Florida, 57, 58;
at Hochelaga, 208 note, 210 ; at
Cape Cod attack Champlain's party,
255, 264; Champlain's policy con-
cerning, 389; at Quebec turn hos-
tile, 422.
Indies, the wealth of, 194.
Iroquois Indians, the, 337; their hunt-
ing ground, 345; their war dance,
348; their armor, 350, 350 note ;
Champlain attacks them, 350; van-
quished, 351; a second fight with the
Montagnais, 354-358; attacked by
Champlain, 404; attack the Récollet
convent, 423; canoes, their construc-
tion, 348 note.
Island of Bacchus, now Orleans, 203.
Island of Orleans, 329, 435.
Isle à la Motte, 345.
Isle des Allumettes, 374 note.
Isles aux Coudres, 202 note.
Isles of Demons, 191 vote, 222.
Isles of Shoals, 253.
J.
Jamay, Denis, a Franciscan, 386; at
Quebec, 387.
James the First, his land grant of
North America, 313; mentioned,
321.
James River, Englishmen at, 295;
English colonization at, 305.
Japan, 368.
Jeannin, President, 368.
Jesuits, the, their influence over the
public mind in Spain, 96; project of
sending them to America, 277; their
origin and policy, 278; their patron-
ess, the Marquise de Guelcheville,
465
278-288; their arrival at Port Royal,
289; the extent of their influence,
289; become landed proprietors in
America, 297 ; at Port Royal, quarrel
with Biencourt, 298: their bad treat-
ment of Poutrincourt, 300; they sail
in the “Jonas '' to Acadia, 301; ar-
rival at Port Royal, 301; at Mount
Desert, 302; select a harbor to dis-
embark, 304; attacked by Argall,
308; at Jamestown, 312; received
by Sir Thomas Dale, 312; arrival
of, in Canada, 424; their increase in
New France, 425; their mission in
New France, 452.
“Jesus,” the, one of Sir John Haw-
kins’s vessels, 89.
Jeune, Paul le, at Quebec, 448, 449.
Joachims, rapids of, 393.
“Jonas,” the, her mutinous crew, 260,
303; sails for France, 274; fitted out
by the Jesuits for Acadia, 301.
Jordan River, 11 note, 39 note.
K.
Kamouraska, 329.
Kennebec River, 253.
Kirke, David, 434 note; demands
Champlain’s surrender, 436; disap-
pointed with his ventures, 440; con-
tinues his depredations, 443; sails
for England, 443; not reimbursed
º his conquests, 444; knighted,
9.
Kirke, Gervase, fits out an expedition
to Canada, 434.
Kirke, Lewis, plants the cross of St.
George at Quebec, 439; visits the
Récollets and Jesuits, 439; hospital-
ity to Hébert, 440.
Kirke, Thomas, 434; seizes a French
ship in the St. Lawrence, 440; re-
signs Quebec, 448.
L.
La Baye Françoise, named by De
Monts, 247.
Labrador, how named, 216 note.
La Caille, joins Ribaut in attack on
Menendez, 116; emissary to Menen-
dez, 141
La Chenaie, 329.
La Chère, one of the Coligny colonists,
killed, 44, 46.
La Flèche, a priest with Poutrincourt,
279.
La Grange, French officer at Florida,
114; drowned, 133.
30
466
INDEX.
La ºve arrival of La Saussaye at,
301
Lake Champlain, discovery of, 345;
the scenery of, 346.
Lake George, 346.
Lake, Huron, discovery of, by Cham-
plain, 395, 414.
Lake Monroe, 65.
Lake Oneida, 401.
Lake Ontario, 401, 407.
Lake of St. Peter, 242, 340.
Lake of the Chaudière, Champlain at,
371.
Lake of Two Mountains, 368.
Lake Simcoe, 399, 400.
Lake Weir, 80 note.
Lalemant, Charles, Jesuit, arrival of,
in Quebec, 424, 425 note.
La Motte, at St. Croix, 251; lieuten-
ant to La Saussaye, 308; sent to
France, 320.
La Pommeraye, in Cartier's party,
207.
La Rivière des Etechemins, discov-
ered by Champlain, 248.
La Roche, Marquis de, proposal to col-
onize New France, 231; power given
him by the King, 231; lands his con-
victs at Sable Island, 232; explores
the neighboring coasts, 232; driven
by a storm back to France, 233;
thrown into prison, 234; death of,
235
La Roche Ferrière, agent to the Indi-
ans in Florida, 78.
La Roquette, plot of, to kill Lau-
donnière, 69. &
La Routte, a pilot, 340, 341.
La Salle, 336.
La Saussave, chief of the Jesuit col-
ony, 301; sails for Acadia, 301; ar-
rives at Port Royal, 301; at La
Hève, 301; at Mount Desert, 302;
harbor selected by, 304; attacked by
the English, 308; flees but returns,
309; turned adrift by Argall, 310;
arrived at St. Malo, 310; sent to
France, 320.
Laudonnière, René de, commanded
squadron to Florida, 48; portrayed,
48; landing with colonists at Flor-
ida, 50; reception by the Indians,
50, 52; explores the coasts, 52, 55;
his promise to Satouriona, 54; builds
Fort Caroline, 56; forms alliance
with Satouriona, 57; releases Satou-
riona’s prisoners, 64; his followers
discontented, and plot to kill him,
69: illness of, 70, 72; the complaints
of La Caille to him, 71, 72; made
prisoner by mutineers, 73; released
by Ottigny, 74; describes the famine
at Fort Caroline, 82, 83; demands
provisions of Outina and takes him
prisoner, 83, 84; releases his pris.
oner, 85; illness of, 94; resigns
command at Fort Caroline, 94; his
reception of Jean Ribaut, 94; charges
made against him, 94; plans with
his officers to attack Menendez, 114;
left at Fort Caroline defenceless,
117; escapes from the massacre,
124; returns to France, 129; con-
cerning his expeditions, 152.
Laudonnière, vale of, 55.
Laverdière, Abbé, 256 note.
La Vigne, French officer at Fort Caro-
line, 117, 123.
Le Caron, Joseph, a Franciscan, 386;
his missionary efforts at Montreal,
388 ; goes up the Ottawa, 390;
quoted concerning his journey, 390;
celebrates mass at a Huron village,
397; joins Champlain in his travels,
413; concerning the arrival of the
English fleet, 435.
Le Clerc, 402 note.
Ledyard, L. W., 403 note.
Le Jeune, eulogizes Richelieu, 450.
Le Moyne, artist with Laudonnière,
56; a portrait of Outina by, 81 note ;
joins Ribaut in attack on Menen-
dez, 116; at the massacre at Fort
Caroline, 124; his escape from the
massacre, 129; account of the mas-
sacre, 146 note.
Léry, Baron de, attempt to settle on
Sable Island, 193.
Léry, Jean de, a Calvinist colonist, 31.
Lescarbot, Marc, his desire to venture
to Acadia, 258; his verse-making,
religion etc., 259; Sails for Acadia in
ship “Jonas,” 260; his poem “Adieu
à la France,” 260; on reaching land,
261'; quoted, 261, 265; his emotions
on being at sea, 261; arrival at
Port Royal, 262; left in charge at
Port Royal, 264; explores the river
Equille, 266; plants crops, 266; per-
sonates Neptune, 266; his religious
services, 267; preparing his History
of New France, 267; abandons Port
Royal and sails for France, 273, 274.
Levis, Henri de (Duc de Ventadour),
assumes lieutenancy of New France,
424. -
Libourne, probably Skull Creek, 39,
Limoilou, Cartier's mansion, 222 note.
Liverpool Harbor, 246.
Long Island, 345.
Long Saut, 369.
“L’Ordre de Bon Temps,” at Port
Royal, 268; the ceremony at their
dinners, 269. -
INDEX.
Lorraine, Cardinal of, 22, 30, 49.
Los Martires, 148.
Louis the Thirteenth, 297, 429.
Loyola, his followers in Canada, 424,
450 -
Luther, Martin, 30, 201.
M.
Madeira, Island of, 194.
Maine, the grant of, 313.
Mal Bay, 440. -
Mallard, Captain, rescues the fugitives
at Fort Caroline, 129.
Manitou, the Indians' offering to, 370
mote, 382.
Marais, arrives at Quebec, 336; joins
Champlain in attacking the Iro-
quois, 340, 341.
Maramme, a word of reproach, 174
720te.
Marguerite, the story of, 223, 224, 225
700te.
Marquette, discovery of Mississippi
River by, 15.
Marshfield, 254.
Martyr, Peter, 10 note.
Massachusetts Bay, 254.
Masse, Enemond, a Jesuit priest, 287;
sails for Port Royal, 288; his life
among the Indians, 295; carried by
La Saussaye to Mount Desert, 302;
mentioned, 310; arrival of, in Que-
bec, 424.
Matanzas Inlet, 36, 133.
Matchedash, Bay of, 395.
Mattawan, the, 393.
Mavila, Indian town in Florida, 16.
Mayarqua, village of Florida, 65.
May-day in Florida, 37.
“Mayflower,” the, of the Jesuits, 301.
Mayport, village of Florida, 50, 161.
Meaux, an Ursuline convent at, 422.
Medicis, Catherine de, 22, 40, 41, 151;
her policy at Court, 101; concerning
the French claim to America, 153.
Medicis, Marie de, patroness of the
Jesuits, 277; Queen Regent, 282.
Membertou, an Indian ally at Port
Royal, 263; his vengeance against
the Armouchiquois, 273 ; his vil-
lage, 273; baptism of himself and
his squaws, 279; death of, 293.
Mendoza, Francisco Lopez de, chap-
lain of Menendez expedition, 105;
quoted, 107, 109, 112, 118, 120,
128, 132, 139; keeping watch at
St. Augustine, 131.
Menendez, Bartholomew, at St. Augus-
time, 131. -
Menendez de Avilés, Pedro, boyhood
467
of, 97; petition to the King, 97, 99;
early adventures, 98; receives com-
mission to settle Florida, 100; des-
timed to save Florida from the heretic
French, 102; his followers enroll
themselves, 102; their religious zeal,
102; the power invested in him, 103;
proposes to extend his dominion
from Newfoundland to the South
Sea, 103; his despatches to the
King, 103, 104 note; his plans of
settling the New World, 103; his
fleet, 104; who comprised his com-
pany, 104; sails from Cadiz, 105;
at the Canaries, 105; extract from
his letter, 105 note; overtaken by a
storm, 106; reaches Dominica, 106;
some of his men desert, 107; arrival
at Porto Rico, 107; quoted, 108; be-
calmed in the Bahama Channel, 108;
invokes heavenly aid on his attack,
109; lands at Florida, 109; descries
Ribaut's ships, 109; interviews the
Frenchmen, 110, 111 note ; attacks
their ships, 1.12; founds St. Augus-
time, 113; escapes the attack of the
French through divine interposition,
118; resolves to attack Fort Caro-
line, 1.19; marches with five hun-
dred men, 120–122; attacks the fort,
123; his massacre of the Frenchmen,
124–126; his humanity to women
and children, 126; ignominious treat-
ment of his prisoners, 127; his piety,
132; goes to reconnoitre, 132; re-
turns to St. Augustine, 132; marches
to Matanzas Inlet, 134; the King's
indorsement of his atrocities, 134,
150 note ; interview with the French-
men, 135–137; the French surren-
der to him, 138; butchery of the
French heretics, 139; quoted, con-
cerning the massacre, 139; meets
Ribaut at Anastasia Island, 141;
interview with Ribaut, 141, 142;
butchery of Ribaut and his party,
143; quoted, concerning death of
Ribaut, 1.44; his return to St. Au-
gustine, 147; his deeds applauded,
147; his despatch to the King, 148;
returns to Spain, 155; strengthens
Fort Caroline, 161; his inscription
over the massacred Frenchmen, 173;
returns to America and rebuilds San
Mateo, 177 ; summoned home, 178;
death of, 178, 179 note; crushed
French Protestantism in America,
179; quoted, 230.
Mercoeur, Duc de, 237.
“Mer Douce,” (Lake Huron,) 395.
Mexico, conquest of, by Cortés, 11;
mentioned, 16, 305.
468
INDEX.
Michel, Captain, a Calvinist, joins the
expedition against Quebec, 434; his
bitterness against Kirke and the Jes-
uits, 441; his quarrel with Brébeuf,
442; death of, 443.
Micrºnac Indians of Acadia, 253.
Mississippi River, 12 note, 16; dis-
covery of, by Marquette, 15; dis-
covery of, by De Soto, 15.
Mississippi, State of, 15. -
Mitchell, Henry, of Coast Survey,
256 note.
Moscosa, 202 note.
Mohawk River, the, 346.
Mohier, Gervais, at an Indian feast at
Tadoussac, 418
Mollua, Indian chief, 62.
Monomoy Point, 264.
Montagnais, a tribe of the Algonquins,
328; their habits, 328; a band of,
at Quebec, 333; cared for by Cham-
plain, 334; meet and attack the
Iroquois, 354—358; their victory,358.
Montcalm, 204.
Montgomery, 204.
Montluc Blaise de, 159.
Montmorenci, Charlotte de, 365, 365
720te.
Montmorenci, cataract of, 242.
Montmorenci, Duc de, 22, 421, 429;
action concerning the traders at
Quebec, 423; sells his lieutenancy
of New France, 424.
Montpensier, Duc de, quoted, 158 note.
Montreal, the site of, 207; named by
Cartier, 211; view from the summit
of, 212; mentioned, 242; considered
as a site for a settlement, 325;
Champlain makes a clearing at, 362;
a trading-station, 418.
Mont Royal (Montreal), named by
Cartier, 211.
Monts, Pierre du Guast, Sieur de,
schemes for colonization of Acadia,
243; made Lieutenant General, 243;
power granted him, 243, 244; his
action with the fur-traders, 243,
244; his incongruous company, 244;
sails from Havre de Grace, 245;
lands at St. Mary’s Bay, 246; makes
a prize of a fur-trader, 246; settles
the colony at St. Croix, 248, 250;
explores the coast of Maine, 253;
determines to settle at Port Royal,
256; returns to France, 257; at
Paris, 258; forms another company
for Acadia, 260: endeavors to find
a priest for Acadia, 260; his gener-
osity in freighting the ship “Jonas,”
268; his patent for Port Royal an-
nulled, 271; transfers his lands to
Madame de Guercheville, 297; his
passion for discovery, 324; obtains
a patent for the fur-trade, 325; sends
two vessels to Canada, 326; en-
gaged in the fur-trade, 354; a death
blow to his trade, 360; concerning
his colonization scheme, 363.
Mosquitoes, 356; account of Sagard
concerning, 392.
Mº Desert, named by Champlain,
25:
53.
Muskrat Lake, 373.
N.
Nantasket Beach, 254.
Nantes, Jean de, 226.
Narvaez, Pamphilo de, explorations
in Florida, his death, 12
Natel, Antoine, reveals a plot to Cham-
plain, 331.
Nation of Tobacco, Indian tribe, 413,
and note.
Nausett Harbor, called Port Malle-
barre, 255.
Navarre, 22, 49.
Neutral Indians, their position, 396,
396 mote.
Newfoundland, the fisheries at, 189,
190, 200, 229.
New France, how divided, 202 note ;
adventurers flocking to, 361; the
prospects of, 366; the nursling of
authority, 428 ; Richelieu assumes
control of, 429; Richelieu’s plan for
trading and settling, 430; restored
to the French crown, 443, 446; the
ºtrous attempts at settlement,
Newport, Captain, 305.
Newport, Verrazzano at, 197.
Newport Mountain, 302.
Newport News, 311.
New Spain, 12.
Nibachis, Indian chief, quoted, 375.
Nichols Pond, 402 note.
Nipissing Indians, the, 377, 377 note.
Noel, Jacques, engaged in American
fur-trade, 231.
Noirot, Father, arrival at Quebec, 425.
Norem bega; the city of, 253 note.
Norman fisherman at Newfoundland,
229.
Norman sailors, piratical character of
Normans, the, in America, 18.
“Northern Paraguay,” the, 322.
Norumbega, 202 note.
“No-see-'ems,” the insects known as,
393. -
Nottawassaga Bay, 394 note.
Nouè, Anne de la, at Quebec, 448.
INDEX.
O.
Oathcaqua, Indian chief, marriage of
his daughter, 80.
Old Point Comfort, 311.
Olotoraca, Indian scout, 166, 168, 170.
Onatheaqua, Indian chief, 62.
Onondaga River, the, 346.
Onondagas, the, defences of their town,
402, 402 note.
Oracle, the, of the Indians, 344, 344
70té.
Orillia, township of, 399.
Orleans, channels of, 435.
Otouacha, a Huron town, Champlain
at, 395.
Ottawa cemetery, the, 375.
Ottawa River, the, 337; at dawn of
day, 369; Champlain explorations
on the, 369, 371; the scenery on the,
37().
Ottigny, lieutenant to Laudonnière,
52; his voyage up St. John River,
59; his visit to the Thimagoa In-
dians, 61; releases Laudonnière from
mutineers, 74; joins Outina in at-
tacking Potanou, 80; deceived by
Outina, attacks and takes him pris-
oner, 84; goes to Outina for pro-
visions, 85; attacked by the Indians,
86; in battle with them, 87, 88; con-
cerning the attack on Menendez,
114; escapes from the massacre,
24.
Ouadé, Indian chief, 43.
Outina, Chief of Thimagoa Indians,
58, 62; attacked by Satouriona, 63;
joined by Ottigny attacks Potanou,
80; taken prisoner by the colonists,
83, 84; released by Laudonnière, 85; .
warns the Frenchmen of war, 86.
Overman, Captain, 373 note.
P.
Panama, 239.
Panuco River, 17.
Paris, 372.
Parmentier, Jean, 190 note.
Parry Sound, 395. -
Passamaquoddy Bay, 248.
Passamaquoddy Indians, 248.
Patiño, one of Menendez's officers,
Paul the Fifth, Pope, 77, 385.
“Pearl,” the name of a vessel, 127.
Penetanguishine, Harbor of, 395, 409
72O76.
Penobscot River, called the Pemeti-
goet, etc., 258.
Peru, 305.
469
Philip the Second, 21, 101; commis-
sions Menendez to settle Florida, 99;
congratulates Menendez, 150, 150
note; complaims of the French inva-
sions in America, 152; concerning
redress for the massacre in Florida,
155.
Pierria, Albert de, commanded colony
at Port Royal, 41; his tyranny over
the colony, 44; murdered by the
colonists, 44.
Pillar of Stone erected by Ribaut, 38.
Pinzon, joins Columbus in his voyage,
188
Place de la Grève, 351.
Place Royale, named by Champlain,
362, 362 note.
Plessis, l’acifique du, a Franciscan,
386.
Plymouth, Champlain at, 254; the set-
tlement of the Puritans at, 427.
Plymouth Rock, 427.
Pocahontas, abduction of, 306; mar-
ried to Rolfe, 306.
Point Allerton, 254.
Point Callières, 362.
Point Levi, 329, 435.
Pommeraye, Charles de la, sails with
Cartier, 201.
Ponce de Leon, Juan, discovery of
Island of Bimini by, 10; search for
the fountain of youth, 10; bargain
with the king concerning the island,
10 note; discovers Florida, 11: at-
tempts at colonization in Florida,
11; death of, 11.
Pontbriand, Claude de, sails with Car-
tier, 201, 207.
Pontgravč, a merchant of St. Malo,
235, 237, 241; settles a colony at
Tadoussac, its untimely end, 235;
sails from Havre de Grace, 245;
captures some fur-traders, 246; re-
turns to St. Croix, 252; left in com-
mand at Port Royal, 257; leaves
Port Royal, 262; and returns, 263;
returns to France, 264; accident oc-
curs to his son, 265; Biard’s visit to
him, 292; sails for Canada, 326; ar-
rives at Tadoussac, 326; encounters
the Basques, 327; wounded, 327 ;
returns to France, 333; returns to
Tadoussac, 336; returns to France,
353; again sails for Canada, 353;
at Montreal, 388.
Popham and Gilbert's colonists on the
Kennebec, 291.
Porcupine Islands, 302.
Port la Hève, 280.
Port Mouton, 246.
Porto Rico, Island of, 10, 11, 100,
107
470
INDEX.
Port Royal, Nova Scotia, granted to
Poutrincourt, 248; De Monts deter-
mines to settle at, 257; the survi-
vors of, greet Lescarbot, 262; a re-
union at, 263; how built and forti-
fied, 267; “L’Ordre de Bon Temps”
at, 268; the bill of fare at Poutrim-
court’s table, 268; the ceremony at
the dinners at, 269 ; a pleasant win-
ter at, 270; the busy life at, 270;
arrival of Chevalier at, with bad
tidings, 271; De Monts’ monopoly
at, rescinded and patent annulled,
271; to whom the trouble was due,
271; the colony abandoned, 272, 273;
discord at, 295; the Jesuits obtain
possession of, 297; demolished by
Argall, 314; the survivors of, 321;
E.". rebuilt, 322; captured by
Širke, 444.
Port Royal, S. C., Ribaut’s visit to,
39; a garrison to be planted at, 103,
104 note.
Portsmouth Harbor, 253, 254. -
Port St. Louis, former name of Ply-
mouth, 254.
Portugal, king of, concerning expedi-
tion to America, 219.
Portuguese fishing vessels at New-
foundland, 230.
Potanou, an Indian chief, 57, 62; at-
tacked by the Frenchmen and put
% rout, 67; attacked by Outina,
Poutrincourt, Baron de, 24.4; obtains
a grant of Port Royal, 248; returns
to France, 250; determines to go to
Acadia, 258; forms a company to-
gether with Lescarbot, 260; sails for
Acadia in ship “Jonas,” 260; arrival
at Port Royal, 262; explores with
Champlain the Massachusetts coast,
264; the bill of fare at his table, 268;
his busy life at Port Royal, 270;
abandons Port Royal, 272,273; sails
for France, 274; obtains a confirma-
tion of his grant to Port Royal, 276:
his religious sentiments, 277; his
possessions in Champagne, 278 ;
makes a second voyage to Acadia,
278; evades taking Jesuits to Port
Royal, 278; arrival at Port Royal,
278; begins to Christianize the In-
dians at, 279; sentiments toward
Father Biard, 290; sails for France,
291 : thrown into prison by the
Jesuits, 300; mentioned, 303, 360;
quoted, 317; comes again to Port
Royal, 321; returns to France, 321;
in the attack on Méry, 322; death
of, 322, 322 note.
Prescott Gate, 330.
Protestantism in New England, its
character, 427.
Prout’s Neck, the Indians at, 254.
Puritans, the, their character, 35; their
settlement at Plymouth, 427; their
religious despotism, 427, and note ;
their church discipline, 428.
Q.
Quebec, mentioned, 202 note, 203 note,
242; Cartier's visit to, 204; the
site of 204, 329 ; origin of the
name, 329 note : Champlain com-
mences building at, 331; a dreary
winter at, 335; the coming of spring,
335; Champlain begins a farm at,
417; the rival interests of the col-
ony at, 419 ; the fur-traders at, 420;
Champlain endeavors to secure trade
to, 421; the vagabond condition of
the colony at, 422; the monopolists
at, 423; Champlain attempts to re-
build the fort at, 427; the starving
colony at, 434; news received from
Cape Tourmente, 435; the English
fleet at, 436; the suffering increases
at, 437; the terms of capitulation,
439; taken possession of by Caen,
448; Champlain again assumes com-
mand, 449; becomes a mission, 451.
Queen Henrietta Maria, concerning
her dowry, 444.
Quentin, Father, sails for Acadia, 301,
•
R.
Ravaillac, the assassin of Henry the
Fourth, 281, 351.
Razilly, Claude de, 443, and note.
Récollet Friars, interested in Cham-
plain's mission, 384; granted letters
patent, 385; embark for Canada,
387; their arrival at Quebec, 387;
assign to each his missionary prov-
ince, 387, 424; their garb, 387, and
note; celebration of mass by the,
387; build at Quebec, 417; their
convent attacked by the Iroquois,
423; apply to the Jesuits for assist-
ance, 424; excluded from Canada,
450.
Red River, 12 note.
Ribaut, Jacques, 127, 130; his escape
from Menendez, 128.
Ribaut, Jean, expedition to Florida
with Coligny colonists, 35; landing
on coast of Florida, 37; erects a
pillar of stone at mouth of River of
INDEX.
May, 38; account of Florida, 38, 38
note ; speech to his company, 40;
returns to France, 41; arrival at Fort
Caroline with reinforcements, 93;
about to sail for Florida, 100, 105;
his ships attacked by Menendez,
112 ; plans to attack Menendez,
115; sails to the attack, 116; the
Spaniards escape him, 118; lands
at Anastasia Island, 140; interview
with Menendez, 141, 142; offers a
ransom for his men, 142; and his
party massacred by Menendez, 143;
concerning his surrender to Menen-
dez, 147; concerning his expedi-
tions, 152. :
Richelieu, the champion of absolutism,
428 ; his influence in the destiny
of New France, 428 ; his character
portrayed, 429; forms a company of
traders with New France, 429; as-
sumes control of New France, 429;
constitutes to himself certain offices,
429 ; his plan for settling New
France, 430; his action concerning
the Huguenot revolt, 433; his views
concerning the restoration of New
France, 447; eulogized by Le Jeune,
450.
Richelieu River, or St. John, 340, 354.
Rio del Oro, river, 159.
Rio Janeiro, arrival of Huguenots at,
26; arrival of Calvinists in, 28.
Rip Raps, the, 311.
River Annapolis, called the Equille
and Dauphin, 257.
River Caloosa, 79.
River of Cape Rouge, the treasures
found on its banks, 220.
River of Dolphins, named by Laudon-
nière, 50.
River of May, in Florida, 38; arrival
of French squadron at, 48, 50; the
'site proposed for the colony, 54.
River of Palms, 18.
Rivière des Iroquois, called the Riche-
lieu, and St. John, 340.
Rivière du Guast, probably the
Charles, 254.
Roberval, Sieur de, joins Cartier on his
second voyage, 216; Viceroy of
Canada, 216; his commission, 216
mote ; sets sail from Rochelle, 221;
arrives at St. John, 221; sails up
St. Lawrence, 225; settles the col-
ony at Cap Rouge, 225; his arbi-
trary discipline, 226 ; the ill fate of
the colony, 226; death of, 227.
Robin, associated with Poutrincourt,
7
Rochelle, city of, 243; divided between
trade and religion, 260; the dis-
471
orderly crew of the “Jonas' at,
260; the merchants of, their illicit
traffic at Quebec, 419 ; the Huguenot
revolt at, 433.
Rocher Capitaine, 393.
Rock of Plymouth, 427.
“Roi Chevalier,” the, 22.
Rolfe, marries Pocahontas, 306.
Roque, Jean François de la, Sieur de
Roberval, his titles, 216.
Roquemont, sails from Dieppe with
supplies for Quebec, 433; arriving
with supplies for Quebec is seized
by Engiish fleet, 437.
Rossignol, a fur-trader, 246.
Rouen, city of, 243; the merchants of,
suppressed at Quebec, 423.
Rougemont, Philippe, death of, 213.
Rue de la Ferronnerie, 281.
Rye Beach, 254.
S.
Sable Island, La Roche lands his party
at, 232.
Saco Bay, 253.
Sagard, Gabriel, a Franciscan friar,
245; his experience with the In-
dians, 391, 392; quoted concerning
the mosquitoes, 392.
Saguenai, 202 note.
Saguenay River, 235.
Sailor, a, escaped from the massacre of
Menendez, 145.
Saint Cler, French officer at Fort Cayo-
line, 117.
Sainte Marie, French officer in Florida,
114.
San Augustin, named by Menendez,
113
“San Pelayo,” the, one of Menendez's
ships, 104, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114.
Santander, Dr. Pedro de, proposal to
settle Florida, 18 note.
Santilla River, called St. Mary's, 162.
Sarrope Lake, 80 note.
Satourioma, an Indian chief, 51, 54;
comes to Fort Caroline, 56; por-
trayed, 56; forms alliance with
Laudonnière, 57; attacks the Thi-
magoas, 63; returns with prisoners,
64; turns against the French at Fort
Caroline, 81; begs the prisoner
Outina from Laudonnière, 85; joins
Gourgues against the Spanish, 164.
Saut at Récoiſet, 425.
Saut St. Louis, 406.
Savalet, a fisherman, 274.
Savannah River, the, 43.
Scalping, the practice of 351 note.
472
INDEX.
Scenery, on the St. John River, 37, 52,
53, 5.), 60; in the wilderness of
I'lorida, 66; through the Huron
country, 395, 399; at dawn of day
on the Ottawa, 369, 370, 371; along
the banks of the Ottawa, 371; the
Huron woods, 411, 412.
Schooner Head, scenery at, 302.
Scituate, 254.
Severn River, 399.
Sev,lle, Cardinal of, 219.
Sewell's Point, 311.
Silk worms, the, in Florida, 37 note.
Slafter, Rev. Edmund, 256 note.
Slave-trade, the father of the, 90.
Smith, Buckingham, 12 note.
Smith, John, the Virginia colonist,
305.
Soissons, Comte de, made Lieutenant
General of New France, 364; death
of, 365.
Solís de las Meras, Dr., 134.
“Solomon,” the, name of a vessel, 89.
Sorel, town of, 341.
Soto, Hernando de, expedition of, to
colonize Florida, 13; explorations of
his colonists in Florida, 14–18; dis-
covery of Mississippi River by, 15;
forlorn condition of his colonists, 16;
death of, 16.
Sourin, at St. Croix, 251.
South Sea, 15
Spain, discovery of America by, 9; in
the sixteenth century, 20; under
Jesuit influence, 96.
Spanish adventurers in America, 9,
14–18.
Spanish fishing vessels at Newfound-
land, 230.
Spanish Fleet, sailing of the, for
Florida, 105.
Spanish jealousy of French enterprise
in America, 218.
Spanish policy uppermost in France,
Spice Islands, 368.
Stadacone, former name of Quebec,
204; Cartier arrives at, 212. See
Quebec.
Stadin River (St. Charles), 202 note.
St. Ann's, 369.
St. Augustine, 50; founded by Me-
mendez, 113.
St. Charles River, called the St. Croix,
explored by Cartier, 204, and note,
329, 417, 435.
St. Croix Island, Champlain settles
the colony at, 248, 250; a severe
winter at, 251; sickness and death
at, 252; Pontgravč returns from
France to, 252.
St. Croix River, 249,
St. Francis of Assisi, 385.
St. Helen, island of, 368.
St. Jean, 329.
St. John's Bluff, landing of Laudon-
mière at, 55, and note, 82.
St. John’s River, Florida, 38, 51; a
hunter’s paradise, 59.
sº John River, Nova Scotia, 248, 329,
41.
St. Lawrence, Bay of, named by Car.
tier, 202.
St. Lawrence River, concerning its
communication with Chesapeake
Bay, 148; concerning the passage
of the, 148, 149 note, 200, 328;
called by Cartier the Hochelaga,
202 note; explored by Cartier, 233;
Indians' plans of it, 242, and note ;
the English fleet on, commanded by
David Kirke, 437.
St. Louis, the castle of, 417.
St. Louis River, 102; the rapids of,
Champlain at, 242; descending the
rapids of, 363, and note.
St. Malo, the merchants of, 201; town
of 219, 200, 243; concerning the
American fur-trade, 231; arrival of
the colonists at, from Port Royal,
274; the merchants of, enlisted in
the fur-trade, 366: the fur company
of, suppressed, 423.
St. Martin, 148.
St. Mary's Bay, 246; search for iron
and silver at, 248.
St. Mary’s River, called the Seine,
39, 162.
St. Roche, 329.
St. Sauveur, now Frenchman’s Bay,
302, 304.
Sturgeon Lake, 401.
Sully, the King's minister, 243.
Susquehanna River, 407.
Suza, convention of, 446.
“Swallow,” the, name of a vessel, 89.
T.
Tadoussac, Pontgravé settles at, 235;
mentioned, 240, 242; the centre of
the fur-trade, 327; the fur trade at,
354; a trading-station, 418; mass
said at, by Paul Huet, 418; arrival
of the English fleet at, 435, 436.
Tampa Bay, 14.
Tancred, 102.
Tequenonquihaye, a Huron town, 397.
Terra Corterealis (Labrador), 202
720te.
Terre des Bretons, name given to
northern portion of America, 152.
INDEX.
Tessouat, Indian chief, his village,
375, and note ; his feast in honor of
Champlain, 376; his speech to
Champlain, 378; accuses Vignau of
imposture, 379.
Thet, Gilbert du, a Jesuit at Port
Royal, 298; returns to France, 299.
Theyet, André, 28 rºote; account of the
Isles of Demons, 191: quoted, 218
note, 222, 225 note, 226.
Thimagoa Indians, 54, 57, 60; mus-
ter for an attack on Potanou, 66;
their treachery and battle with the
Frenchmen, 86–89.
Three Rivers, a trading station, 418;
the Indians at, hostile to the French,
422
Thunder Bay, 395.
Ticonderoga, 347.
“Tiger,” the, a vessel, 89.
Touaguainchain, a Huron town, 397.
Trent River, the, 401.
“Trinity,” the, Ribaut's flagship, 110.
Trois Rivières, 425.
Turnel, Argall’s lieutenant, 318; ar-
rives at Pembroke, Wales, 319; at
Fayal, 319; treatment of Biard while
at Fayal, 319; commends his pris–
oners to the Vice-Admiral, 320.
V.
Wasseur, an officer with Laudonnière,
61; voyage up the St. John River, 61;
interview with the Thimagoa Indi-
ans, 62; makes alliance with Outina,
62; carries Satouriona’s prisoners to
Outina, 65; attacks Outina and takes
him prisoner, 84.
Vera Cruz, 148; Champlain at, 239.
Verdier, 93.
Verrazzano, Hieronimo da, his map,
Verrazzano, John, birth and character
of, 193; sails for America, 194;
lands at Wilmington, N. C., 195;
describes the natives, 195; sails into
Bay of New York, 196; arrives at
Newport, , 197; surveys along the
New England coast, 197; return to
France, 198; dealings with the In-
dians, 196, 197; death of, 199; nar-
ratives of his voyage, 227 note.
Vicente, one of Menendez's officers,
473
Wiel, Nicolas, a friar, drowned by
Indians, 425.
Vignau, Nicolas de; his winter with
the Indians, 367; his pretended dis-
coveries, 368; accompanies Cham-
plain in explorations, 369; fearful
of an exposure of his imposture,
372; pronounced an impostor by
Tassouat, 379; confesses his impos-
ture, 381; at Montreal, 383.
Willafañe, Angel de, commands a
squadron to Florida, 18.
Villaroel, Gonzalo de, 173 note.
Willegagnon, Nicolas Durand de, in
expedition against Algiers, 23; in
war against Malta, 24; his character
and quarrels, 25; carried Mary
Stuart to Paris, 25, and note; plan
for a Huguenot colony in America,
25; arrival with colonists at Rio
Janeiro, 26; his tyranny in the col-
ony, 26; plot for his destruction,
27; his reception of the Calvinists,
28, and note; his polemics, 29; tyr-
anny to Calvinists, 30; reconverted
to Romanism, 30; return to France,
31; controversy with Calvin, 31.
Vincelot, 329.
Virginia, King James’s grant of, 313.
W.
Wampum, 414 note.
Washington, City of, 312.
Wells Beach, 254.
White Mountains, 253.
Wilmington, N. C., landing of Ver-
razzano at, 195; the inhabitants of.
195.
Wolfe, 204, 439.
Y.
Yonville, French officer in Florida,
114.
York Beach, 254.
Z.
Zacatecas, concerning the mines at,
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