Canada: the Empire of the North Part 10

Yearly, when the Algonquins came down the Ottawa to trade, Jesuits and young French adventurers accompanied the canoes back up the Ottawa, hoping to reach the Unknown Land, which rumor said was bounded only by the Western Sea. However, the priests went no farther than Lake Nip.i.s.sing; but two nameless French wood runners came back from Green Bay in August of 1656 with marvelous tales of wandering hunters to the north called "Christines" (Crees), who pa.s.sed the winter hunting buffalo on a land bare of trees (the prairie) and the summer fishing on the sh.o.r.es of the North Sea (Hudson's Bay). They told also of fierce tribes south of the Christines (the Sioux), who traded with the Indians of the Spanish settlements in Mexico.

{104} All New France became fired by these reports. When Radisson returned from Onondaga in April of 1659, he found his brother-in-law, Chouart Groseillers, just back from Nip.i.s.sing, where he had been serving the Jesuits, with more tales of this marvelous undiscovered land. The two kinsmen decided to go back with the Algonquins that very year; for, confessed Radisson in his journal, "I longed to see myself again in a boat."

Thirty other Frenchmen and two Jesuits had a.s.sembled in Montreal to join the Algonquins. More than sixty canoes set out from Montreal in June, the one hundred and forty Algonquins well supplied with firearms to defend themselves from marauding Iroquois. Numbers begot courage, courage carelessness; and before the fleet had reached the Chaudiere Falls, at the modern city of Ottawa, the canoes had spread far apart in utter forgetfulness of danger. Not twenty were within calling distance when an Indian prophet, or wandering medicine man, ran down to the sh.o.r.e, throwing his blanket and hatchet aside as signal of peace, and shouting out warning of Iroquois warriors ambushed farther up the river.

Drunk with the new sense of power from the possession of French firearms, perhaps drunk too with French brandy obtained at Montreal, the Algonquins paused to take the strange captive on board, and returned thanks for the friendly warning by calling their benefactor a "coward and a dog and a hen." At the same time they took the precaution of sleeping in mid-stream with their canoes abreast tied to water-logged trees. A dull roar through the night mist foretold they were nearing the great Chaudiere Falls; and at first streak of day dawn there was a rush to land and cross the long portage before the mist lifted and exposed them to the hostiles.

To any one who knows the region of Canada's capital the scene can easily be recalled: the long string of canoes gliding through the gray morning like phantoms; Rideau Falls shimmering on the left like a snowy curtain; the dense green of Gatineau Point as the birch craft swerved across the river insh.o.r.e to the right; the wooded heights, now known as Parliament Hill, {105} jutting above the river mist, the new foliage of the topmost trees just tipped with the first primrose shafts of sunrise; then the vague stir and unrest in the air as the sun came up till the gray fog became rose mist shot with gold, and rose like a curtain to the upper airs, revealing the angry, tempest-tossed cataract straight ahead, hurtling over the rocks of the Chaudiere in walls of living waters. Where the lumber piles of Hull on the right to-day jut out as if to span Ottawa River to Parliament Hill, the voyageurs would land to portage across to Lake Du Chene.

Just as they sheered insh.o.r.e the morning air was split by a hideous din of guns and war whoops. The Iroquois had been lying in ambush at the portage. The Algonquins' bravado now became a panic. They abandoned canoes and baggage, threw themselves behind a windfall of trees, and poured a steady rain of bullets across the portage in order to permit the other canoes to come ash.o.r.e. When the fog lifted, baggage and canoes lay scattered on the sh.o.r.e. Behind one barricade of logs lay the French and Algonquins; behind another, the Iroquois; and woe betide the warrior who showed his head or dared to cross the open. All day the warriors kept up their cross fire. Thirteen Algonquins had perished, and the French were only waiting a chance to abandon the voyage. Luckily, that night was pitch-dark. The Algonquin leader blew a long low call through his birch trumpet. All hands rallied and rushed for the boats to cross the river. All the Frenchmen's baggage had been lost. Of the white adventurers every soul turned back but Groseillers and Radisson.

The Algonquins now made up in caution what they had at first lacked.

They voyaged only by night and hid by day. No camp fires were kindled.

No muskets were fired even for game; and the paddlers were presently reduced to food of _tripe de roche_--green moss sc.r.a.ped from rocks.

Birch canoes could not cross Lake Huron in storm; so the Indians kept close to the south sh.o.r.e of Georgian Bay, winding among the pink granite islands, past the ruined Jesuit missions across to the Straits of Mackinac and on down Lake Michigan to Green Bay.

{106} "But our mind was not to stay here," relates Radisson, "but to know the remotest people." Sometime between April and July of 1659 the two white men had followed the Indian hunters across what is now the state of Wisconsin to "a mighty river like the St. Lawrence." They had found the Mississippi, first of white men to view the waters since the treasure-seeking Spaniards of the south crossed the river. They had penetrated the Unknown. They had discovered the Great Northwest--a world boundlessly vast; so vast no man forever after in the history of the human race need be dispossessed of his share of the earth.

Something of the importance of the discovery seems to have impressed Radisson; for he speaks of the folly of the European nations fighting for sterile, rocky provinces when here is land enough for all--land enough to banish poverty.

The two Frenchmen's wanderings with the tribes of the prairie--whether those tribes were Omahas or Iowas or Mandanes or Mascoutins or Sioux--cannot be told here. It would fill volumes. I have told the story fully elsewhere. By spring of 1660 Radisson and Groseillers are back at Sault Ste. Marie, having gathered wealth of beaver peltries beyond the dreams of avarice; but scouts have come to the Sault with ominous news--news of one thousand Iroquois braves on the warpath to destroy every settlement in New France. Hourly, daily, weekly, have Quebec and Three Rivers and Montreal been awaiting the blow.

The Algonquins refuse to go down to Quebec with Radisson and Groseillers. "Fools," shouts Radisson in full a.s.sembly of their chiefs squatting round a council fire, "are you going to allow the Iroquois to destroy you as they destroyed the Hurons? How are you going to fight the Iroquois unless you come down to Quebec for guns? Do you want to see your wives and children slaves? For my part, I prefer to die like a man rather than live a slave."

The chiefs were shamed out of their cowardice. Five hundred young warriors undertook to conduct the two white men down to Quebec. They embarked at once, scouts to the fore reconnoitering all portages, and guards on duty wherever the {107} boats landed. A few Iroquois braves were seen near the Long Sault Rapids, but they took to their heels in such evident fright that Radisson was puzzled to know what had become of the one thousand braves on the warpath. Carrying the beaver pelts along the portage so they could be used as shields in case of attack, the Algonquins came to the foot of the Long Sault Rapids near Montreal, and saw plainly what had happened to the invading warriors. A barricade of logs the shape of a square fort stood on the sh.o.r.e. From the pickets hung the scalps of dead Indians and on the sands lay the charred remains of white men. Every tree for yards round was peppered with bullet holes. Here was a charred stake where some victim had been tortured; there the smashed remnants of half-burnt canoes; and at another point empty powder barrels. A terrible battle had been waged but a week before. Radisson could trace, inside the barricade of logs, holes scooped in the sand where the besieged, desperate with thirst, had drunk the muddy water. At intervals in the palisades openings had been hacked, and these were blood stained, as if the scene of the fiercest fighting. Bark had been burnt from the logs in places, where the a.s.sailants had set fire to the fort.

From Indian refugees at Montreal, Radisson learned details of the fight. It was the battle most famous in early Canadian annals--the Long Sault. All winter Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal had cowered in terror of the coming Iroquois. In imagination the beleaguered garrisons foresaw themselves martyrs of Mohawk ferocity. It was learned that seven hundred of the Iroquois warriors were hovering round the Richelieu opposite Three Rivers. The rest of the braves had pa.s.sed the winter man-hunting in the Huron country, and were in spring descending the Ottawa to unite with the lower band.

Week after week Quebec awaited the blow; but the blow never fell, for at Montreal was a little band of seventeen heroes, led by a youth of twenty-five,--Adam Dollard,--who longed to wipe out the stain of a misspent boyhood by some glorious exploit in the service of the Holy Cross.

{108} When word came that the upper foragers were descending from the country of the Hurons to unite with the lower Iroquois against Montreal, Dollard proposed to go up the Ottawa with a picked party of chosen fighters, waylay the Iroquois at the foot of the Long Sault Rapids, and so prevent the attack on Montreal. Sixteen young men volunteered to join him. Charles Le Moyne, now acting as interpreter at Montreal, begged the young heroes to delay till reenforcements could be obtained: seventeen Frenchmen against five hundred Mohawks meant certain death; but delay meant risk, and Dollard coveted nothing more than a death of glory. At the chapel of the Hotel Dieu the young heroes made what they knew would certainly be their last confession, bade eternal farewell to friends, and with crushed corn for provisions set out in canoes for the upper Ottawa. May 1, they came to the foot of the Long Sault. Here a barricade of logs had been erected in some skirmish the year before, and here, too, was the usual camping place of the Iroquois as their canoes came bounding down the swift waters of the Ottawa. Dollard and his brave boys landed, slung their kettles for the night meal, and sent scouts upstream to forewarn when the Iroquois came. The night was pa.s.sed in prayer. Next day arrived unexpected reenforcements. Two bands of forty Hurons and four Algonquins, under a brave Huron convert of the Christian Islands, had asked Maisonneuve's permission to join Dollard and wreak their pent vengeance on the Mohawks. Early one morning the scouts reported five Iroquois canoes coming slowly downstream, and two hundred more warriors behind. There was not even care to bring a supply of water inside the barricade or remove kettles from the sticks. Posted in ambush, the young soldiers fired as soon as the first canoes came within range. This put the rest of the Iroquois on guard. The whites rushed for the shelter of their barricade. The Indians dashed to erect a fort of their own. Inside Dollard's palisades all was activity. Cracks were plastered up with mud between logs, four marksmen with double stands of arms posted at each loophole, and a big musketoon leveled straight for the {109} Iroquois redoubt. The Iroquois rushed out yelling like fiends, and jumping sideways as they advanced, to avoid becoming targets; but the scattering fire of the musketoon caught them full abreast and a Seneca chief fell dead. The Iroquois then broke up Dollard's canoes and tried to set fire to the logs; but again the musketoon's scattering bullets mowed a swath of death in the advancing ranks, and for a second time the red warriors sought shelter behind the logs. Probably to obtain truce till they could send word to the other warriors on the Richelieu, the Iroquois then hung out a flag of parley; but the Huron chief knew what peace with an Iroquois meant. He it was, on the Christian Islands, who, when the Iroquois had proposed a similar parley for the purpose of ma.s.sacring the Hurons, invited their chiefs into the Huron camp and brained them for their treachery. Dollard's band made answer to the flag hoisted above the Iroquois pickets by rushing out, securing the head of the Seneca chief, and elevating it on a pike above their fort.

But as the fight went on, the whites had to have water, and a few rushed for the river to fill kettles. This rejoiced the hearts of the Iroquois. They could guess if the whites were short of water, it only required more warriors to surround the barricade completely and compel surrender. Scouts had meanwhile gone for the Iroquois at Richelieu; and on the fifth day of the siege a roar, gathering volume as it approached, told Dollard that the seven hundred warriors were coming through the forest. Among the newcomers were Huron renegades, who approached within speaking distance of the fort and called out for the Hurons to save themselves from death by surrender. Death was plainly inevitable, and all the Hurons but the chief deserted. This reduced Dollard's band, from sixty to twenty. The whites were now weak from lack of food and sleep; but for three more days and nights the marksmen and musketoon plied such deadly aim at the a.s.sailants that the Iroquois actually held a council whether they should retire. The Iroquois chiefs argued that it would disgrace the nation forever if one thousand of their warriors were to retire before a handful of beardless white boys. {110} Solemnly the bundle of war sticks was thrown on the ground. Then each warrior willing to go on with the siege picked up a stick. The chiefs chose first and the rest were shamed into doing likewise. Inside the fort, Dollard's men were at the last extremities.

Blistered and blackened with powder smoke, the fevered men were half delirious from lack of sleep and water. Some fell to their knees and prayed. Others staggered with sleep where they stood. Others had not strength to stand and sank, muttering prayers, to their knees. The Iroquois were adopting new tactics. They could not reach the palisades in the face of the withering fire from the musketoon, so they constructed a movable palisade of trees, behind which marched the entire band of warriors. In vain Dollard's marksmen aimed their bullets at the front carriers. Where one fell another stepped in his place. Desperate, Dollard resolved on a last expedient. Some accounts say he took a barrel of powder; others, that he wrapped powder in a huge bole of birch bark. Putting a light to this, he threw it with all his might; but his strength had failed; the dangerous projectile fell back inside the barricade, exploding; marksmen were driven from their places. A moment later the Iroquois were inside the barricade screeching like demons. They found only three Frenchmen alive; and so great was the Mohawk rage to be foiled of victims that they fell on the Huron renegades in their own ranks and put them to death on the spot.

Such was the Battle of the Long Sault of which Radisson saw the scars on his way down the Ottawa. It saved New France. If seventeen boys could fight in this fashion, how--the Iroquois asked--would a fort full of men fight? A few days later Radisson was conducted in triumph through the streets of Quebec and personally welcomed by the new governor, d'Argenson.

It can well be imagined that Radisson's account of the vast new lands discovered by him aroused enthusiasm at Quebec. Among the Crees, Radisson and Groseillers had heard of that Sea of the North--Hudson Bay--to which Champlain had {111} tried to go by way of the Ottawa.

The Indians had promised to conduct the two Frenchmen overland to the North Sea; but Radisson deemed it wise not to reveal this fact lest other voyageurs should forestall them. Somehow the secret leaked out.

Either Groseillers told it or his wife dropped some hint of it to her father confessor; but the two explorers were amazed to receive official orders to conduct the Jesuits to the North Sea by way of the Saguenay.

They refused point-blank to go as subordinates on any expedition. The fur trade was at this time regulated by license. Any one who proceeded to the woods without license was liable to imprisonment, the galleys for life, death if the offense were repeated. Radisson and Groseillers asked for a license to go north in 1661. D'Avaugour, a bluff soldier who had become governor, would grant it only on condition of receiving half the profits. Groseillers and Radisson set off by night without a license.

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tLE-PAGE--JESUIT RELATION OF 1662-1663]

{112} This time the Indian canoes struck off into Lake Superior instead of Lake Michigan, and coasted that billowy inland sea with its iron sh.o.r.e and shadowy forests. On the northwest side of the lake, somewhere between Duluth and Fort William, the explorers joined the Crees, and proceeded northwestward with them, hunting along that Indian trail to become famous as the fur traders' highway--from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. The first white man's fort built west of the Great Lakes, the terrible famine that winter, and the visits of the Sioux--are all a story in themselves. Spring found the explorers following the Crees over the height of land from Lake Superior to Hudson Bay. As soon as the ice loosened, dugouts were launched, and the voyageurs began that hardest of all canoe trips in America, through the forest hinterland of Ontario. Here the rivers were a stagnant marsh, with outlet hidden by dankest forest growth where the light of the sun never penetrated. There the waters swollen by spring thaw and broken by the ice jam whirled the {113} boats into rapids before the paddlers realized. There was wading to mid-waist in ice water. There were nights when camp was made on water-soaked moss. There were days when the windfall compelled the canoemen to take the canoes out of the water and carry them half the time. "At last," writes Radisson, "we came to the sea, where we found an old house all demolished and battered with bullets. The Crees told us about Europeans being here; and we went from isle to isle all that summer." At this time the canoes must have been coasting the south sh.o.r.e of James Bay, headed east; for Radisson presently explains that they came to a river, which rose in a lake near the source of the Saguenay--namely Rupert River.

What was the old house battered with bullets? Was it Hudson's winter fort of 1610-1611? The Indians of Rupert River to this day have legends of Hudson having come back to his fort when cast away by the mutineers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE JESUIT MAP OF LAKE SUPERIOR (From the Relation of 1670-1671)]

The furs that Radisson and Groseillers brought back from the north this time were worth fabulous wealth. The cargo saved New France from bankruptcy; but the explorers had defied both Church and Governor, and all the greedy monopolists of Quebec fell on Radisson and Groseillers with jealous fury. They were fined $20,000 to build a fort at Three Rivers, though given permission to inscribe their coats of arms on the gate. A $30,000 fine went to the public treasury of New France, and a tax of $70,000 was imposed by the Farmers of the Revenue. Of the total cargo there was left to Radisson and Groseillers only $20,000.

Disgusted, the two explorers personally appealed to the Court of France; but there the monopolists were all-powerful, and justice was denied. They tried to induce some of the fishing fleet off Cape Breton to venture to the North Sea; but there the monopolists' malign influence was again felt. They were accused of having broken the laws of Quebec. Zechariah Gillam, a sea captain of Boston, who chanced to be at Port Royal, offered them his vessel for a voyage to Hudson Bay; but when the {114} doughty captain came to the ice-locked straits, his courage failed and he refused to enter. Finally, at Port Royal, with the last of their meager and dwindling capital, they hired two ships for a voyage; but one was wrecked on Sable Island while fishing for supplies, and instead of sailing for Hudson Bay in 1665, Radisson and Groseillers were summoned to Boston in a lawsuit over the lost vessel.

In Boston they met commissioners of the English government and were invited to lay their plans before Charles II, King of England. At last the tide of fortune seemed to be turning. Sailing with Sir George Carterett, after pirate raid and shipwreck, they reached London to find the plague raging, and were ordered to Windsor, where Charles received them, recommended their venture to Prince Rupert, and provided 2 pounds a week each for their living expenses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles II]

From being penniless outcasts, Radisson and Groseillers suddenly wakened to find themselves famous. Groseillers seems to have kept in the background, but Radisson, the younger man, enjoyed the full blaze of glory, was seen in the King's box at the theater, and was presently paying furious court to Mistress Mary Kirke, daughter of Sir John Kirke, whose ancestors had captured Quebec. What with war and the plague, it was 1668 before the English Admiralty could loan the two ships _Eaglet_ and _Nonsuch_ for a voyage to Hudson Bay. The expense was to be defrayed by a band of {115} friends known as the "Gentlemen Adventurers of England Trading to Hudson Bay," subscribing so much stock in cash, provision, and goods for trade. Radisson's ship, the _Eaglet_, was driven back, damaged by storm; but the other, under Groseillers, went on to Hudson Bay, where the marks set up on the overland voyage were found at Rupert River, and a small fort was built for trade. During the delay Radisson was not idle in London. He wrote the journals of his first four voyages. He married Mary Kirke--some accounts say, eloped with her. With the help of King Charles and Prince Rupert he organized what is now known as the Hudson's Bay Fur Company; for when Groseillers' ship returned in the fall of 1669, its success in trade had been so great that the Adventurers at once applied for a royal charter of exclusive monopoly in trade to all the regions, land and sea, rivers and territories, adjoining Hudson Bay. The monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company to the Great Northwest was granted by King Charles in May, 1670.

Here, then, was the situation. England was intrenched south of the St.

Lawrence. England was taking armed possession of all lands bordering on Hudson Bay and such other lands as the Adventurers might find.

Wedged between was New France with a population of less than six thousand. If France could have foreseen what her injustice to two poor adventurers would cost the nation in blood and money, it would have paid her to pension Radisson like a prince of the blood royal.

NOTE TO CHAPTER VI. The viceroys of New France were shifted so frequently that little record remains of several but their names. The official list of the governors under the French regime stands as follows:

Samuel de Champlain, died at Quebec, Christmas, 1635.

Marc Antoine de Chasteaufort, _pro tem_.

Charles Huault de Montmagny, 1636.

Louis d'Ailleboust of the Montreal Crusaders, 1648.

Jean de Lauzon, 1651.

Charles de Lauzon-Charny (son), _pro tem_.

Louis d'Ailleboust, 1657.

Viscount d'Argenson, 1658, a young man who quarreled with Jesuits.

Viscount d'Avagour, 1661, a bluff soldier, who also quarreled with Jesuits.

De Mezy, 1663, appointed by Jesuits' influence, but quarreled with them.

{116} Marquis de Tracy, 1663, who was viceroy of all French possessions in America, and really sent out to act as general.

De Courcelle, 1665, who acts as governor under De Tracy and succeeds him.

Frontenac, 1672, was recalled through influence of Jesuits, whose interference he would not tolerate in civil affairs.

De La Barre, 1682, an impotent, dishonest old man, who came to mend his fortunes.

De Brisay de Denonville, 1685.

Frontenac, 1689.

De Calliere, 1699.