A Historical Geography of the British Colonies Part 19

[Sidenote: _Acadia under French rule._]

When Temple retired in 1670 in favour of a new French commander, De Grandfontaine, the total number of settlers in Acadia did not exceed 400. Some new French colonists now came in: the beginning of settlement was made at Chignecto and the Basin of Mines, and communication was for a time opened by land between Acadia and Quebec. The great majority of the French inhabitants were at Port Royal; but Pentegoet on the Pen.o.bscot was the seat of government, until, in 1674, it was taken and plundered by a Dutch privateering vessel, the same fate befalling the fort of Jemseg on the St. John river. Chambly, who had succeeded Grandfontaine as Commander in Acadia, was carried off a prisoner to Boston, and Pentegoet was for the time abandoned by the French. Two years later, in 1676, it was occupied by the Dutch; but the latter were in their turn driven out by the New Englanders,[11] and the place pa.s.sed into the hands of a Frenchman notable in Acadian border warfare, the Baron de St. Castin.

[Footnote 11: In the Government records at The Hague, under date Oct.

27, 1678, there is a claim of the Netherlands West India Company against Great Britain to the forts of Pen.o.bscot and St. John in Acadie and Nova Scotia, and a request that they may be allowed to remain in quiet and peaceable possession thereof.]

[Sidenote: _St. Castin at Pentegoet._]

He was a Bearnese, and had come out to Canada as an officer in the Carignan Regiment. Finding, like other Frenchmen, a charm in forest life, he drifted off to Acadia and lived as an Indian among Indians, a devout Roman Catholic, but in other respects a native chief, with his squaws and following of savage warriors. He established himself at Pentegoet, on or near the site of the old fort, where Castine now stands; he raided and was raided; in time of peace making money by trade, in time of war joining in the border forays. For Pentegoet was the southernmost {182} station of the French, standing on soil claimed by the English, and granted by Charles II to the Duke of York. Similarly, Pemaquid, near the Kennebec, established in 1677, was the northernmost post of the English; and, if there was a line between the two nations, it was between Pentegoet and Pemaquid. But French influence extended to the Kennebec river, and Indian converts of French priests were to be found in the immediate neighbourhood of Pemaquid.

[Sidenote: _French priests and the Abenaki Indians._]

In 1676, the war between the New Englanders and the neighbouring Indians, known as Philip's war, came to an end, leaving bitterness between the conquered natives and victorious colonists. Hatred of the English meant love of the French; and the Abenaki Indians of Acadia and Maine, under the tutelage of fanatical and unscrupulous French priests, became trained to enmity with the heretics; many of them migrated to mission stations in Canada; while those who remained behind were ever ready to obey the call to murder and pillage. In Acadia, even more than in Canada proper, the Indian as a convert became the tool of the Frenchman, and the Frenchman lent himself to the barbarism of the Indian. The full effects of the unnatural blend were seen and felt a little later on; but for twenty years after the Treaty of Breda and the restoration of Acadia to France, there was more often peace than war between the English and the French; and the Boston fishermen were, about 1678, licensed for the time being by the French Commandant, La Valliere, to ply their trade on the Acadian coasts.

[Sidenote: _French Governors and colonists of Acadia._]

With some trading of this kind and with a good deal of privateering, the years pa.s.sed by. Perrot, who had been Governor of Montreal and had distinguished himself even among French officials of the time for corrupt practices, succeeded La Valliere in 1684, with a commission as Governor of Acadia. Still intent on enriching himself by illicit trade, he was recalled in 1687, and his place was taken by Meneval.

The latter, like Perrot, was subordinate to the {183} Governor-General of Canada, and the number of colonists whom he ruled was, according to a census held in 1686, 858, 600 of whom lived at or near Port Royal, and the remainder chiefly at Beauba.s.sin at the head of Chignecto Bay, and on the Basin of Mines.

[Sidenote: _Acadia ceded to England by the Peace of Utrecht._]

In 1688, Andros, then Governor of the New England colonies, plundered St. Castin's station at Pentegoet; the French and Indians retaliated, taking the fort of Pemaquid in the following year; and there followed a long series of butcheries and reprisals, of which an account has already been given in a preceding chapter, the taking of Fort Royal by Phipps in 1690, and, in 1710, its final surrender to Nicholson. In the end, the Treaty of Utrecht provided in its twelfth article that 'all Nova Scotia or Accadie with its ancient boundaries' should be 'yielded and made over to the Queen of Great Britain and to her Crown for ever.'

[Sidenote: _Henry Hudson sails to the Arctic regions and is lost._]

[Sidenote: _The search for the North-West Pa.s.sage._]

[Sidenote: _b.u.t.ton._]

We have seen[12] that, in 1609, Henry Hudson led Dutchmen into the present State of New York, and left his name to the river on which the city of New York stands. In the following year, he took service under an English syndicate, to make a further attempt to find a North-West Pa.s.sage to the Indies. In April, 1610, he started in a small ship, the _Discovery_, found his way through Hudson Straits into Hudson Bay, wintered at the extreme south-eastern end of James'

Bay, and, cast adrift by his mutinous followers in the following summer, never saw home again, 'dearly purchasing the honour of having this large Strait and Bay called after his name.'[13] The Arctic seas, where he met his death, and where his name has lived through the centuries, were visited again and again by English explorers, still seeking for the North-West Pa.s.sage. One voyager after another went out, hoping to return by China and the East. In April, 1612, Captain b.u.t.ton set forth with two ships, one of which was {184} Hudson's old vessel, the _Discovery_, reached the western coast of Hudson Bay--which was long called after him, b.u.t.ton's Bay--wintered at Port Nelson, at the mouth of the Nelson river, and returned in the autumn of 1613.

[Footnote 12: See above, p. 63.]

[Footnote 13: Oldmixon's _British Empire in America_ (1741 ed.), vol.

i, p. 543.]

[Sidenote: _Royal charter granted to the Merchants Discoverers of the North-West Pa.s.sage._]

His instructions had been drawn up by the young Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, who died not long afterwards; and three months after b.u.t.ton started, the merchants at whose expense both his expedition and Hudson's had been fitted out, were incorporated under royal charter as the 'Company of the Merchants of London Discoverers of the North-West Pa.s.sage,' having the Prince of Wales as governor or 'Supreme Protector,' and including among many well-known names that of Richard Hakluyt.

[Sidenote: _Gibbons._]

[Sidenote: _Bylot and Baffin._]

In 1614, the _Discovery_ was sent out again under the command of Captain Gibbons, but returned in the same year, having penetrated no further than Hudson Strait. In 1615, Bylot and Baffin set sail for the North, again taking with them the _Discovery_; they too returned in the same year, concluding that the North-West Pa.s.sage was not to be found by the way of Hudson Straits. Once more, in the next year, 1616, the same men went out, and once more the stout old ship, the _Discovery_, carried them, the voyage resulting in the exploration of Baffin Bay. For two years after their return there was a respite from Arctic voyages, but in 1619 Captain Hawkridge led a fresh expedition, which proved a failure.

[Sidenote: _Luke Foxe and Thomas James._]

Much money had now been spent in the attempt to find a North-West Pa.s.sage, and little had been achieved; but after an interval of twelve years, in 1631, two more Arctic voyages took place. One expedition was commanded by a Yorkshireman, Luke Foxe, the other by Captain Thomas James, who was connected with Bristol. The former was backed by London merchants, the latter was a Bristol venture; but both received sanction and encouragement from the King. James' voyage was unfortunate and barren of result; but Foxe, {185} though he did not find the Pa.s.sage, which was the one aim and object of all these early attempts, completed the exploration of Hudson Bay, and penetrated further north than previous sailors by the way of what is still known as Fox Channel.

[Sidenote: _The period of discovery in the far North followed by trading enterprise._]

With these two voyages the first chapter in Arctic discovery comes to an end. As in the record of English colonization we have a distinct break between the time of discovery and adventure on the one hand, and the time of trade and settlement on the other, so even in the far North there was a time of exploration, followed after an interval by a time of trade. All the early voyages, which have been recounted above, were voyages of discovery, and, though they were fitted out for the most part by syndicates of merchants, their object was not to bring back furs, or to establish trading stations, but to search for a new route to the East.[14]

[Footnote 14: A most excellent account of the early voyages in search of a North-West Pa.s.sage is given in Mr. Miller Christy's Introduction to the _Voyages of Foxe and James to the North-West_ (Hakluyt Society, 1894).]

[Sidenote: _Zachariah Gillam._]

[Sidenote: _Radisson and Des Groseilliers._]

Forty years pa.s.sed away and, in the year 1668, an English ship once more found its way into Hudson Bay. The ship was named the _Nonsuch_, her commander was Captain Zachariah Gillam, and Prince Rupert seems to have had a hand in sending her out. The expedition was designed to establish trade with the Indians, and Gillam wintered in James Bay, near where Hudson had wintered in 1610, building a fort called Charles Fort at the mouth of a river which was named Rupert river.

The fort was subsequently known as Fort Rupert or Rupert House. It is stated that this new enterprise was undertaken in consequence of information received from two French settlers in Canada named Radisson and Des Groseilliers, and that the latter was on board Gillam's ship, while Radisson had embarked on another vessel which started from England with Gillam, but put back on account of stress of weather.

{186} [Sidenote: _French claims to priority in Hudson Bay._]

How far these two Frenchmen contributed to the beginning of trade in Hudson Bay, and to the founding of the Hudson Bay Company, has been a matter of much controversy. The question was originally of some importance, for French claims to priority of occupation in the Arctic regions rested in large measure on the real or the alleged doings of the two adventurers. Like the rest of the world, they must have heard of the existence of Hudson Bay, for the voyages to discover the North-West Pa.s.sage, though not made by Frenchmen, were not made in secret; and they had gathered information from the Indians of Canada as to the possibilities of fur trading in these northern regions.

They had more than once attempted, between 1658 and 1663, to make their way by land to the bay, but never seem to have reached its sh.o.r.es; and the first recorded overland visit from Canada, is that of a French priest, Albanel, who, in 1671-2, journeyed from Quebec to Lake St. John, and thence, by the line of the Rupert river, came to the sea, to find an English factory already established at the mouth of the river.

[Sidenote: _Incorporation of the Hudson Bay Company._]

[Sidenote: _Rupert's Land._]

Gillam returned to England in 1669, and on May 2, 1670, the Hudson Bay Company came into existence. On that day Charles II issued a royal charter, creating a corporate body under the t.i.tle of 'The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay.' Prince Rupert was the first Governor; Albemarle, Ashley, and Arlington were among the original grantees. The preamble of the charter recited that the persons named had 'at their own great cost and charges, undertaken an expedition for Hudson's Bay, in the North-West part of America, for the discovery of a new pa.s.sage into the South Sea, and for the finding some trade for furs, minerals, and other considerable commodities'; and in their corporate capacity the Company were const.i.tuted absolute lords and proprietors, with a complete monopoly of trade of all the lands and seas 'that lie within the entrance of the straits, commonly called Hudson's {187} Straits,'

so far as they were not already actually granted to or possessed by British subjects, or the subjects of any other Christian Prince or State. The charter enacted that 'the said land' should be 'from henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of our plantations or colonies in America, called Rupert's Land.'

[Sidenote: _Operations of the company._]

Armed with practically unlimited powers over an unlimited area, the company lost little time in sending out ships and establishing factories. In addition to Fort Rupert at the south-eastern end of James Bay, Fort Hayes, or Moose Fort, was constructed at the south-western end of the bay, at the mouth of the Moose river; and some distance to the north of the latter fort, Fort Albany was placed at the outlet of the Albany river. Voyages were also made to the mouth of the Nelson river, on the western sh.o.r.e of Hudson Bay, but no attempt was made to plant a factory there till the year 1682.

[Sidenote: _Collision between French and English in Hudson Bay._]

[Sidenote: _A Canadian company formed._]

It was in that year and at Fort Nelson, as it was called, that French and English first came into collision in the far North. Radisson and Des Groseilliers, who had taken service with the English in consequence of being fined by the Governor of Canada for making their early journeys without his licence, subsequently returned to Canada, and piloted their countrymen by sea into Hudson Bay. A company was formed in Canada in 1682, the Compagnie du Nord, and sent out an expedition from Quebec with these two men on board. They reached the Nelson river; a few days before they arrived a Boston vessel appeared on the scene, and a few days subsequently a vessel came from England, sent by the Hudson Bay Company to build a fort. After a short interval the French overpowered the English; but two years later, in 1684, Radisson and Des Groseilliers having in the meantime again come back to the Hudson Bay Company, that company recovered its fort, and the French lost their footing on Hudson Bay.

{188} [Sidenote: _Attack made overland from Canada on the English forts on Hudson Bay._]

In the following year two Frenchmen pa.s.sed overland from the bay to Canada by the Abbitibbi river, Lake Temiscaming, and the Ottawa; and it was determined to send a Canadian expedition by that route to attack the factories of the Hudson Bay Company. The rulers of Canada viewed with distrust English settlements to the north of New France, as they feared and distrusted the English colonies on the southern side, and they determined if possible to strangle them in infancy.

Denonville was now Governor of Canada; and early in the year 1686 he dispatched a party of soldiers and Canadians to attack the forts on Hudson Bay. It was the kind of expedition in which French Canadians excelled, indifferent to privation and hardship, trained to toil through ice and snow, through unknown forests, making the rivers the highways for sleigh or canoe. Their leader was De Troyes, and with him went three sons of the celebrated Le Moyne family, including the most noted of them, Iberville. The Frenchmen followed the line of the Ottawa and the Abbitibbi, and in June, 1686, surprised and took Fort Hayes on the outlet of the Moose river. Crossing the eastern end of James Bay on the floating ice, they next reached Fort Rupert, seized a ship which was moored in front of the fort, and overpowered the fort itself. The sea was by this time open to navigation, and in canoes and the captured vessel the victorious Frenchmen turned west to attack Fort Albany. There was here some semblance of siege, but the little English garrison was forced to capitulate, and leaving Iberville in charge of the fort, which was renamed Fort St. Anne, De Troyes returned in November to Canada.

[Sidenote: _Complaints of the Hudson Bay Company against the seizure of their forts._]

[Sidenote: _The English forts recovered._]

This successful raid was organized and carried out in a time of peace between the English and French Crowns; and, when the Englishmen who had been taken prisoners at the forts found their way home, the Hudson Bay Company laid the case before the Government, demanding satisfaction for the wrong done and rest.i.tution of their property.

{189} There was little likelihood of redress while James II was King of England. On November 16, 1686, he concluded a treaty of neutrality with the French King, the Treaty of Whitehall; and a mixed commission of French and English was appointed to inquire into the claims of the company. No settlement was arrived at: in 1688 came the Revolution in England; in 1692 the battle of La Hogue crippled the French at sea; and at length, in 1693, an English expedition was sent to Hudson Bay which recovered all the forts in James Bay.