I arrived in Green Bay in June, while the mosquitoes were in full bloom. Most of the winter snow had melted, and there were even leaves on some of the trees. Green Bay looked as good as it was ever going to look. I took an apartment on the edge of the Fox River, rented a noisy Renault with all the acceleration of a golf cart, and began going in to the office. My job? Well, I was the boss’ son, so mostly it was to learn the business. I talked with people, went to lunch with managers, kept my mouth shut and tried to stay out of the way.
At the end of each day I went back to my apartment and tried to find something to do. Not an easy task. Green Bay might be a national capital, but its cultural scene seems to revolve around cheese tastings and lacrosse matches. How much cheese can you eat? I spent a lot of time walking the streets and dodging mosquitoes the size of pigeons. I was relieved to find the city didn’t smell as bad as its reputation. The waters on the edge of town – Green Bay – tend to be pretty marshy, and various algae blooms lead to the historical Indian name for the place – “Bay of the Stenches.” I wondered if the city should advertise its new-found lack of odors – “Green Bay – we don’t smell as bad as people expect.” I considered sending the suggestion to the local newspaper, but given how little humor the French have, it struck me as a wasted effort.
What does this place look like? I agree with all other visitors that it is much different than we expect. For one thing, there are two halves. The Fox River runs through the middle of town, separating the town – and separating the classes. The eastern side of the river is where the aristocrats live, and where all the main national buildings and embassies are. And yes, I know that Canada, like France, is post-revolution and supposedly the home of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Sure it is. Except the homes on the east side look like they were built by the same architects who built the mansions of Versailles, and kids from the west side get a pretty good thumping if they are seen with east side girls.
But it is actually the west side that is the most surprising. While our lower classes are cramped into apartment towers, theirs have single-family homes on quarter acre lots. These homes are referred to as “ranch-style” after ranches of the west, and are a single-story in height, and while relatively small, they each have an attached garage and a small lawn. I once went for a drive to see what these neighborhoods looked like, and they went on forever -- mile after mile after mile of little houses with little yards and late-model Renaults beside each. Canadians think they are showing off their wealth in their east-side mansions, but the nation’s real wealth is best seen in how much room they have for their working poor. Each man has his own quarter acre “ranch.” Until you see it, you really cannot appreciate it.
After a month of aimless wandering, I decided it was time to get focused. I was here to undermine the Jolliet clan. That could only happen if I actually met a Jolliet or two. So I started structuring my time. I would go to cheese tastings. I would use the family business to sponsor wine competitions. I would mix socially with the French. If Washington could cross mountains for his country, I could learn to distinguish between forty eight kinds of cheese, and recall the names of fifteen or sixteen lacrosse players. So I did, and eventually, it paid off. It took over a year of receptions, introductions, parties, and endless stupid lacrosse matches at Lambeau Field, before I met the people who could introduce me to the people who had links to other people… You get the idea. I spent a year talking to anyone who might be a Jolliet, or might know a Jolliet, or might have once met a Jolliet at a garage sale. My goal was a meeting with Claude Jolliet, ex-President of Canada and direct descendant of the Jolliet who had stolen North America from the Americans. I wanted a series of interviews that would give me a personal history of the early days of New France. My emphasis, of course, was on a personal history, since personal histories are always more interesting than official histories, and always more damaging.
After fourteen months of effort, I finally made the right connections, and Jolliet agreed to see me at his estate overlooking Lake Winnebago. His appointments secretary had allotted me thirty minutes. But I knew that was a ruse. In truth his political party had largely abandoned him two years earlier in a sectional split and now he spent most of his time writing memoirs and watching his vines grow. I knew that Jolliet had no real demands on his time, and he was trying to appear much more important than he was. Oh well. When you deal with the French…
Now my job was to have a good first meeting so that there might be a second meeting, and a third, eventually leading to some disclosure that I could use. I would charm him. I reread his biography so I could drop a few comments about his past successes (leaving out the time he was visiting Philadelphia and was almost shot), I read yet another book on wines (do the French ever publish anything but wine books?) since I knew he was the usual patrician wine snob, and I bought a new suit from a French tailor, hoping the seams would stay together for this first visit.
Thus armed, I arrived at his chateau. There is no need to describe this house. Like so many other homes of the elite in New France, it is just a copy of a Loire Valley chateau. There was a circle drive in front where I parked my irritating little Renault. The yard was wide, well-landscaped, and empty. Mine was the only car in the drive. It was obvious immediately that all the rumors had been right – he had been abandoned by his party and left in isolation. A liveried servant waited for me at the front door, as did two secret service men who checked me carefully with a handheld metal detector. Obviously they didn’t understand that I intended to do far more damage with a pen than I could have done with a gun.
Finally the social secretary, a Mr. Picard, came forward to meet me. Before he could open his mouth and attempt any heavily accented English, I greeted him in French and began running on about a friend of his I had met at a Lacrosse match (sitting in a luxury box at Lambeau Field, drinking the local wine while the poor souls on the field beat each other with sticks). We searched briefly for other people we might have in common, found a few, and then he explained that he regretted the President’s schedule was so busy that he could not possibly spare me more than thirty minutes. If his next appointment arrived a bit late, however, he would see if he could get me a few extra minutes with the President. At this point I knew I was right. There was no next appointment and I could stay as long as I behaved myself.
Then with proper solemnity we walked back through the house to the garden where the President took his leisure these days.
Things did not start well. I couldn’t tell if the President had already been sampling his house wine, or if he was just in a mood, but he stretched himself to his full five foot eight inch height and immediately got arrogant. He stood waiting with his hand barely out from his side, making me walk to him and reach and bend to take his hand. Maybe he expected a bow. But Americans don’t bow, and he knew that.
I addressed him clearly and slowly in French, having heard that his hearing was beginning to fade, but he immediately assumed that since I was speaking slowly, I was struggling with the language, and he answered in English. This was a bit of a shock since I had never heard him speak publicly in English, even when he visited Philadelphia and was addressing our Congress or press corps. His attitude seemed to be that English was too crude a language to use and that since all educated people spoke French, he could just address the world in that tongue. The fact that he was speaking to me in English now, could only mean one thing – he thought I was too stupid to speak French. I couldn’t let that stand.
“Mr. President,” I said in French, speaking more quickly this time, “Your English is superb, and I appreciate this gesture of welcome. But this is the heart of New France and you are the leading statesman of our age. I would be deeply embarrassed to speak anything other than French in your presence.” This mollified him substantially and he gestured for me to sit with him at his table.
“My secretary tells me that you are an historian, and that your family has bus
iness dealings in our capital. Are you visiting me today as an historian, or as a businessman?”
“Mr. President, it is my pleasure to visit you today as an historian. Your personal journey is enough to fill the efforts of numerous historians in its own right, but you are also a direct descendant of the Jolliet family which is known throughout the world for their exploits beginning with the discovery of the Mississippi. You embody the history of this nation.” Yes, I know, I sound like a real toady, but at this point I was willing to say anything to get this man to talk.
‘Yes, I am proud to be a Jolliet. It is rare that a family can maintain its lineage and its influence over three centuries. But it is also rare that an American would be interested in such a history. You have your own leading families, your heroes, your victories. Surely there is plenty of history for a young historian to explore in your own country.”
“There are points in history, sir, when our two countries share events. Yes, those events include several wars. But they also include common experiences, especially as our nations took their initial steps across this continent. We share beginnings.”
“I understood you to be a disciple of DeVoto.” This shocked me. It hadn’t occurred to me that his staff might take the time to research my background. But it made no sense to deny what he already knew. So I nodded. “Then you know our countries did not share beginnings. We shared possibilities, you from the east and us from the north, but it was my ancestor who turned the possibility into reality. He got to the Mississippi first, and that was our beginning.”
“Yes, “I nodded, “that was an important beginning for you.”
“No, if we are to talk, we must be honest with each other. You are a DeVoto student. You know it was not important – it was crucial. The fate of our two nations was sealed the instant his canoe rounded the bend at Prairie du Chien and entered the Mississippi. Is it not so?”
“Yes.” I had to smile. He wanted to brag about his family. Marvelous. Let him talk. The more he went on about his family, the sooner he would say something I could use against the whole clan.
“I hear DeVoto is less popular than he used to be. That is too bad, because he was the one historian in your country who understood what my ancestor had accomplished. And even he underestimated the importance of that moment. Let me explain it to you. It was essential that we take the Mississippi. Think about how things might have turned out otherwise. We would have had a minor province in Quebec with some presence in the Great Lakes region, and then there would have been our outpost in New Orleans – really just a trading and shrimping station constantly under siege by malaria, hurricanes, and Spanish raiders. You English were already wandering west and were bound to cross your Alleghenies eventually. Once over the mountains you would have kept coming until you took the interior all the way to the Rockies. Who knows, you might even have linked up with the English-speaking countries of California and Oregon.
“The Mississippi changed everything. By joining Quebec to New Orleans, it strengthened both. Now suddenly we had our own highway through the interior. And like any highway, it was inevitable that towns would be built along the way, people would gather and civilization would grow. Once we had the Mississippi, it was inevitable that we would take the interior of the continent and New France would follow. DeVoto saw part of that. He saw what the US might have become. What he never paid attention to was what would have happened to France if we had not discovered the Mississippi.”
“Ah, Mr. President,” I smiled and nodded pleasantly, “you have found the problem already. We Americans see events from our side. Even DeVoto never looked past the impact of the discovery on the U.S. We know nothing about how these events were viewed from your side. Even something as fundamental as the discovery of the Mississippi is not seen in proper perspective.”
“And it is your goal to provide that perspective?” He stared directly at me as he asked the question. This was the moment of truth. Either I convinced him now, or the interview was over and I had spent a year shivering in Green Bay for nothing.
“Yes. That is why I am here. You are right, I am a disciple of DeVoto. I have studied all his works. I value what he alone was able to see in our history. But I also see that his vision was incomplete. He saw the American side of events. I want to be the historian who expands his vision to include both sides.” Enough of that was true that I was able to say it while meeting his gaze.
We sat quietly for a moment and then the President turned to me and said, “Do you know much about wine?” I mentioned that I had visited a few estates in the area around Green Bay, to which he replied, “Let me show you how we grow grapes here on the Winnebago.”
His chateau was on the ridge east of Lake Winnebago, and his vines descended the hill towards the lake in carefully managed terraces. He led me down one terrace after another as we slowly descended toward that huge lake. At seventy-six the President might be presumed to be too old to do more than drink his wine, but it soon became apparent he was still active in the family wine business.
“When Pere Marquette and my ancestor first canoed down the Fox, the Winnebagoes called this “stink lake.” Of course we paid them back by naming the lake after them.” He laughed at his own joke. “They pretended it wasn’t an insult, and so did we. But we both knew better. As it turned out, once we put in some dams and raised the water levels enough to improve navigation, the stink disappeared. It is still just a few meters deep, but that is enough”
“It took a century after that first visit for one of our ancestors to see the obvious. This side of the lake is gently elevated. Being on the east side of the lake, the cold west wind has to blow across the lake before it gets here and so is moderated enough to help protect the vines. Not that we can use the same vines as in Bordeaux or even Alsace, but our oenologists found varieties that could withstand the cold. The slope gave us the drainage we needed, and of course with the lake and the Fox so handy, early settlers knew it would be easy to transport their wines to population centers. But then what am I telling a Yankee about business for? Obviously you understood this immediately.”
“You are too kind in mentioning Yankee business skills.” I ignored the gentle slur about my background. “But I am interested in your vines. While the slope helps with drainage, I had heard that the soils here are mostly clay and so various root rots are a problem. Could you tell me how you responded to this?”
“Oh, you do know your wine.” He stopped and looked at me as if he was doing yet another reassessment of my abilities. Was he amazed that I had read one of about forty million French wine books? Yes, I could read, and yes, I had been to vineyards before. Rather than be insulted I decided things were going well if it took so little to impress him.
“Clay is a terrible soil for vines.” He finally continued. “It holds water too well and leads to root rot. And it also gives the wines a subtle flavor that few like. Not that it mattered two centuries ago when the first vines were planted. Our ancestors were too grateful just to get any kind of wine. But through the generations each vintner worked to improve the soil. Luckily there is limestone under this ridge so various excavations brought more to the surface. And the land was terraced so that there is no flat area. Everything slopes to the lake. But the change in the soils took more than two centuries of work. Even now we cultivate carefully. When you look over these fields you should imagine ten generations of hand labor that may continue for another dozen generations.”
We both stood and looked across his terraces and tried to imagine the history that had taken place where we stood.
“But you didn’t come all this way to look at my vineyard.” He suddenly announced, interrupting our reverie. “You wanted to talk about that little canoe trip that my more famous ancestor took in 1673. Let’s go back up to my grape arbor and talk about those days.”
Actually I didn’t give a damn about “that little canoe trip.”
Yes, Jolliet had passed down this river and the lake right in front of me on his way to the Mississippi. So what? Maybe something interesting happened on that trip, but probably not. But I guess we had to start somewhere. He was determined to tell his tale his way. Luckily he was starting with Louis Jolliet and not going back to some prehistoric Jolliet who had first brought wine to France. So I followed him back up his little hill, back up to his little wine arbor over looking his little vineyard, and accepted the scrap he was prepared to throw me. We would talk about the Jolliett who had wandered around here in the back of a canoe. Oh well, it was a start.
“Maybe it would help,” I said as we seated ourselves around a small glass-topped table. A servant must have seen us coming, since a bottle of the house wine and two glasses were already prepared for us, as was a cheese and cracker plate. “Maybe it would help if I began with what I know of those times.” Yes, and maybe I could move this conversation along. What I didn’t want was a school-book version of events.
“Yes, please do,” Jolliet poured us each a glass of wine and settled back, looking westward over his fields and over the lake toward the industrial city of Oshkosh. I knew hundreds of thousands of people built trucks and made paper products over there, but we sat in complete silence under the shade of the grape arbor.
“First,” I said, “I know that while our two countries have been constant competitors and sometimes combatants, New France had no concern for us in 1673. We were just small towns on the water’s edge to your east. The real problem to your east was not us, but the Iroquois. So taking the Mississippi to cut off our Westward expansion wasn’t even a remote consideration. Your concern was the Spanish. They had Florida and Mexico and New Mexico. If the Mississippi flowed south into the Gulf, you divided their lands and weakened their hold. If it flowed southwest, it might give you a backdoor into the silver mines of New Mexico. If it flowed west, it gave you a route to Asia. Any of the three would be a major boon to your nation.”
“Yes,” he responded with a slight smile, as school master might to a student who had just shown some intelligence. “You remember the Spanish. It has been so many centuries since they had any power in the world, people today have forgotten they ever existed. In the end both our countries broke their power, but yes, as it turned out the termination of the Mississippi in the Gulf hurt them very badly. The day it was established, New Orleans made Florida a worthless swamp. It took two centuries for you Yankees to find anything useful to do with it once you took possession, and then all you could do with it was build golf courses and old people’s homes. An ironic end to the Spanish efforts to find the Fountain of Youth there, don’t you think?”
“Had the Spanish held Mexico, I suppose they could have used Florida as a transshipment point,” I answered, careful not to grit my teeth. Was he trying to be irritating, or was French arrogance so imbued in him and his countrymen that insults just flowed from them like sweat from horses.” but they also had Cuba and dozens of other islands, so why bother. And of course, with you entrenched in the Gulf, now all shipping to Mexico and New Mexico was vulnerable. New Orleans was much more than a thorn in Spain’s side. You could say it was a bayonet.”
“Yes, yes,” the President mused, “The Mississippi did enter the Gulf at a very unfortunate place for them.” I suspected I saw a slight smile under the President’s mustache, but he restrained it very well. Years of diplomatic training will do that.
“Let me continue with what I know.” I paused for effect and then continued. “I know that the esteemed Jolliet did far more than discover the Mississippi. He established four of the eight major cities of New France. You already had a settlement in Green Bay, but he was able to add Oshkosh and Prairie du Chien, then St Louis, and finally Chicago. It took another forty years for Louis the 15th to send a settlement to New Orleans, but Msr. Jolliet made that inevitable. Aside from the cities of Detroit, Duquesne and DeSmet, his choice of camping spots and negotiations with local tribes established the great cities of your nation.”
“Thank you for that,” the President responded and raised his wine glass as in a toast. “Many people recognize him as the discoverer of the mighty Mississippi, but few understand that he was responsible for much of how our country actually took shape.”
“He was clearly a brilliant man as well as a brave leader,” I hastened to add. “But he had one more trait. It appears to me he must have been the greatest politician of his age.”
“Oh?” The president asked. Now he had turned in his chair not quite facing me, but certainly more towards me and less towards the lake than he had been before. I was finally getting him interested.
“He spent five months sharing a canoe with a Jesuit at a time when traders and priests had opposite views on almost everything. Nothing in all the official histories gives any indication of friction between the two men, but peace between the two is highly unlikely. If it did exist, it must have been the result of incredible political skills exercised by Msr Jolliet.” I was going much too far in our first meeting, but I couldn’t help myself. Maybe I could get him to say something derogatory about the Jesuits. What a great start to my book!
“No, I must correct you” the President replied. “You have read that the Jesuits opposed French traders since the traders sometimes brought brandy with them and got the Indians drunk so they could take advantage of them in trade. Such things happened and the Jesuits were right to oppose them. And so there were times of friction with traders. But this is talk of generalities. You and I know that history is made by individuals. Louis and Jacques Marquette had much more in common than generalities might suggest. They became strong friends and useful allies. Had Marquette lived, they would have accomplished great things together.”
“Could you describe them for me? I am afraid our history books tell us much about what they did, but little about who they were.” This was true enough. And of course it was character flaws that I was looking for.
“The history of Louis Jolliet is well known, but possibly I can add a few original comments about him.” He paused at this point so I could express deep gratitude for him upcoming, boring speech. I smiled at him and hated myself for doing so. But this is where I had struggled to be – sitting with Claude Jolliet, hoping enough time, and enough wine, might get him to tell me more than the sanitized version of the family history. So I sat quietly, ready to let him rattle on, and hoping to hear an interesting nugget somewhere in his speech.
And then Picard returned and mumbled something about the President’s next appointment. Of course there was no next appointment, but I had been there nearly an hour already, and if they let me stay longer, it would appear that Jolliet had nothing better to do with his time, a fact that was true but inconvenient.
“Thank you so much for your time, Mr. President,” I said while standing. “I hope I may visit you again sometime soon to hear your description of Louis Jolliet.” God, I hated myself at that moment. I could even feel myself bowing slightly. What a complete toady. But it had taken me a year to get this visit, I wasn’t about to spend another year stuck in Green Bay while I waited for my next interview. I needed to close the deal here and now.
“I would like that.” He took my hand and smiled that politician smile you see on all the portraits. “We will put Picard to work on it and see if he can find a time.” And with that, it was over. My first visit with Jolliet. Picard walked with me back to the house, chatting about lacrosse with more seriousness than any high school graduate should, but promising he would find me another time with the president. I left a happy man.
I also left with one visual image. As we hesitated at the back door of the chateau, I looked west across Lake Winnebago. The sun was about midway in its descent and was reflected on the water. It made a kind of line to the west, to Oshkosh, and to the Fox River. Three centuries earlier, that was where Louis had turned his canoes to the west. I suppose you have to be an histori
an to feel anything special about such a view, but I felt it. A singular moment in the history of mankind had occurred right where I was looking now. That little river had changed the destinies of two great nations.
Then the image was gone, and I was back at my shoddy little car, driving back to mosquitoville on Stench Bay. But I would have a chance to come back and view that body of water again. And for the first time since my arrival in New France, I actually had something to look forward to.
The Canadian Civil War: Volume 1 - Birth of a Nation Page 2
