Jean Biencourt de Poutrincourt was a Catholic nobleman from Picardy who fought against Henri IV until the king’s conversion, then joined him. He envisioned Acadia as his own feudal utopia, but he was also a humanist, classicist, mathematician, and musician. Some believe that this is his image; others think it is his cousin’s. It represents the dress and appearance of these men.
A party of seamen (matelots) also clubbed together as shipmates and messmates. Most of them sailed back to France at the end of the first summer, but at least twelve remained in the colony through the winter to sail its barques and shallops. Another interesting group were professional hunters, probably recruited from gamekeepers on country estates in France. They appear to have been very independent. They preferred to spend as much time as possible in the open air, ranging across the countryside.
Another very interesting character may have been recruited for the purpose of communicating with the American Indians. His name was Mathieu Da Costa, or De Coste in French documents which described him as a “nègre” or “naigre” of African origin who “spoke the languages of Acadia.” One wonders how he learned them. His name suggested that he had been baptized in Portugal or Spain or perhaps the Cape Verde Islands. Somehow Da Costa had found his way to Acadia, perhaps on a Portuguese or Basque or Spanish ship. He may have been shipwrecked on the coast, or jumped ship, or marooned by an angry captain in North America. However it happened, Mathieu Da Costa appears to have been an African who lived for a time among the Indians of Acadia and learned to speak their Algonquian languages. His services were much sought by merchants in the American trade. On at least one occasion he appears to have been kidnapped by Dutch corsairs. The sieur de Mons was able to hire him, and later became involved in litigation with other men who wanted Da Costa’s skills.32
Another purpose was represented by three men of the cloth who were specially recruited, perhaps on orders from the king. One was a young Catholic priest, Nicolas Aubry, of a “good family” in Paris. He came along despite the strong opposition of his parents, who were frantic with anxiety. They followed him to Honfleur in a desperate effort to persuade him not to go.33 With Father Aubry was another Catholic priest whom Champlain called “le curé,” and a Protestant pastor called “le ministre.” Their names have not been found.34
A spirit of toleration was fully embraced by the leaders of the expedition, both Protestants such as sieur de Mons and Catholics such as Champlain. They shared the king’s religious policy, which combined Catholicism as the established religion with toleration for Protestant dissenters. Unhappily that spirit was not shared by the curé and the minister. From the start they raged against each other, and even came to blows, much to the disgust of others in the expedition, who showed more of the Christian spirit than either of these two religieux.
This expedition consisted entirely of males. No French women were aboard, no families or farmers. That fact makes very clear the purpose of this mission. Its object was not to plant a permanent settlement with a population that could grow by natural increase, but rather to build an avant-poste, an outpost of empire in North America. The sieur de Mons intended to construct an advanced base in the center of Acadia, analogous to a space station in our time, a safe and secure platform, strong enough to defend itself against the possibility of attack by Spanish or English raiders. Its function was to provide a base for exploring missions, to map the coast, and find sites for colonies where French families might settle and start small populations growing.
All these adventurers gathered in the Norman seaports of Honfleur and Le Havre, and crowded aboard two ships. One of them again was La Bonne-Renommée, 120 tons burthen, under three experienced seamen: Pont-Gravé as her commander, Captain Nicolas Morel of Honfleur as master, and Guillaume Duglas as pilot.35 The other vessel was Don de Dieu (Gift of God), 150 tons burthen, and a hundred feet long. She was the “amiral” or flagship of the expedition. On board were sieur de Mons as her commander, Captain Timothée le Barbier of Le Havre, her master, Louis Coman as pilot, and Champlain.36
These ships were very small by comparison with ocean-going vessels of later generations, but they were large by the standards of their time. The Don de Dieu was described as “one of the largest Norman ships that went every year to the Newfoundland cod fisheries.”37 Their holds were packed with absolutely everything that life required, as if they were going to the moon. There were tons of provisions: casks of red wine, hard cider, and water; barrels of salt pork, herring and cod, sacks of grain, dried vegetables and fruits, live sheep, swine, and chickens. They carried building supplies, prefabricated housing, sawn timbers, windows and doors, and everything that a shipwright would need to repair a vessel or build a new one. Also aboard were prefabricated parts for several shallops and skifs. Perhaps sailing in company with the larger vessels was a 40-foot patache of 17 or 18 tons.38
After much labor and tedious paperwork, some of which still survives, the expedition was ready. On April 7, 1604, the Don de Dieu left her mooring in Le Havre. Pont-Gravé followed in Bonne-Renommée on April 10. The two ships sailed independently with orders to meet at the fishing harbor of Canso on the northeastern tip of what is now Nova Scotia.39 Their departure had the air of a great occasion. They sailed as the king’s ships, and flew the naval ensign of France with the royal standard of Henri IV. Salutes were fired in their honor from other vessels and forts at Le Havre. Other French ships deferred to them. One man wrote, “It is a custom at sea for a merchant ship meeting a king’s ship such as ours, to come under her lee, and to sail parallel to her but at an angle, and also to dip her ensigns.”40
A Mi’kmaq petroglyph of an early European ship with a high poop, carved into the rocks of Kejimkujik Park, Nova Scotia. This Indian nation was familiar with Europeans long before Champlain. A leader, Membertou, acquired his own French shallop, painted its sails with his totem, and traded with fishermen far out at sea.
Don de Dieu was a fast sailor. Once at sea she made excellent time, but it was a lively passage and probably hard on landsmen who had never been afloat. They had favorable winds from the east in the North Atlantic, a rare occurrence in early spring, and went spanking along with a following sea and waves so high that they smashed the stern gallery of the flagship. We are told that “a carpenter was carried overboard by a wave,” but he “held fast to a line that happened to be hanging down the ship’s side.” One can only imagine conditions on the lower decks, which were crowded with frightened animals and seasick passengers.41
As they approached the new world, the ships began to meet floating ice in their path. The sieur de Mons ordered the Don de Dieu to steer a more southerly course, toward the lower coast of Acadia. They were moving very fast, and the pilot had more than the usual difficulty in calculating their position. On May 1, they were amazed to see the low sandy beaches of Sable Island on the outer edge of the great fishing banks. It was a surprise to the navigators, as they were only three weeks out of Le Havre, and their reckoning was off the mark. Champlain wrote that they were nearly wrecked on that unfortunate island, which was littered with the bones of broken ships.42
With luck they got clear and sailed onward to the coast of Acadia. On May 8, 1604, they sighted a headland with cliffs more than a hundred feet high. Champlain called it Cap de la Hève, after a French landmark near Le Havre with the same name and similar appearance. It marked the start of Champlain’s long career as an inventor of names for the land of North America. Many are still in use. Most of his early names were French. Later, as he began to work with Indian guides, they drew from native languages.43
Champlain’s chart of Port de la Hève (now La Have), a handsome harbor on the Atlantic coast. It was the first place where he and de Mons came ashore in Acadia, May 8, 1604. Note the Indian and European houses, side by side.
The Don de Dieu entered a long bay and dropped anchor. The date was May 8, 1604, and they had made a very fast crossing. Champlain wrote, “The weather was so favorable that we were only a month to Cap d
e la Hève.” The average speed of Don de Dieu was about five knots, with daily runs that would have been above eight knots—faster than some transatlantic convoys in the Second World War.44
The passengers and crew were happy to go ashore on terra firma, and thanked God that they were still alive. Champlain got a small skiff and surveyed the bay with great care. He sounded its depth, calculated the latitude, measured compass variation, and made a very accurate chart.45 On both sides of the bay he mapped two large Indian camps where the Mi’kmaq (he called them Souriquois) came every summer to fish along the coast. They returned to their forest hunting grounds in the winter. A web of Indian paths bore witness to the importance of this place, and old burial grounds testified to its long use.46
The Mi’kmaq had met many Europeans on the coast long before Champlain and the sieur de Mons arrived. Their legends recorded memories and dreams of earlier contact. One was clearly an account of Vikings. Another was recorded as the dream of a young Mi’kmaq woman who one morning looked out to sea and saw a “little island” which had “drifted near to the land” with “trees on it and branches to the trees on which a number of bears as they supposed were crawling about.” The Mi’kmaq seized their bows and spears and went to shoot the bears, and were amazed to discover that “these supposed bears were men, and that some of them were lowering down into the water a very singularly constructed canoe, into which several of them jumped and paddled ashore.” Among them was a man dressed in white who “came towards them making signs of friendship, raising his hand towards heaven, and addressing them in an earnest way, but in a language which they could not understand.” The young woman described the other men as dressed in skins, which suggested that they were Basques. European accounts of the fishing coast noted that Basques wore “good garments of skins,” and that they were on the coast of Acadia long before Champlain arrived.
The Atlantic coast of North America was already a busy place in 1604, with much traffic by seaborne Indians, European fishermen, Basque whaling ships, and trading vessels of many nationalities. By every account, the Mi’kmaq welcomed the French, and offered to help them.47
The harbor at La Hève was an attractive site for settlement but in 1604 it seemed dangerously exposed to seaborne predators of many nations. The French stayed four days and moved on, running south along the coast in search of opportunities.
On May 12 they sailed about twenty-five miles to another harbor, now called Liverpool. Here they surprised a small French trading vessel of about 50 tons called La Levrette (Greyhound). Her captain, Jean de Rossignol of Le Havre, was busily bartering furs from the Indians. He claimed to have a license from the French admiralty, but it was only for trade on the coast of Florida. The sieur de Mons told him that he was in violation of the king’s patent, and probably offered terms, but Rossignol was defiant. De Mons seized the ship and made the captain a prisoner for return to France. Champlain mapped the harbor and named it Port au Rossignol.48
A memory of this event survives in the oral traditions of the Mi’kmaq people of Bear River Reserve. It was recorded in the early twentieth century by a Métis guide named Henry Peters. “Well,” said he, speaking of Champlain’s vessel, “they came into Liverpool one time and there was a ship there that wasn’t supposed to be. They boarded the ship, and there was just the mate and cook on board. Well, they had to tell where the captain and the crew were. They were upriver trading with the Indians, which they didn’t have permission from the governor to do. Well, when the traders came down the river they waylaid them and took the canoes of fur and the crew. They thought they got them all. Rossignol was the captain and that’s where Lake Rossignol, the largest lake in Nova Scotia, got its name.” Peters remembered that two of Rossignol’s seamen were named Peter and Charles. They slipped over the side of their canoe, and “swam to shore underwater to keep them from being shot. So where were they to go? They went back up the river to Kedgie.”49
This was a Mi’kmaq community on islands in Lake Rossignol. Peters recalled that each Mi’kmaq family had its own island. The two European seamen took Indian wives, but no islands were left for them, so they settled on the lakeshore, at places that came to be called Peter’s Point and Charles Point. Henry Peters himself was descended from the seaman named Peter, and learned the story from his father, who had heard it from his father. It describes a process by which a unique population began to grow in Acadia as early as 1604—a mix of Indians, French, English, Scottish, Basques, Portuguese, and Africans.50
After this affair, the sieur de Mons and Champlain sailed on, with little Levrette in company and master Rossignol an angry prisoner below. They went about ten miles along the Atlantic coast of Acadia and entered another very beautiful bay with open cleared land. Champlain named it Port au Mouton after a sheep that fell overboard, and was “eaten as a fair prize.” It was an inviting place, with fresh water, game, and birds. De Mons decided to bring his men ashore and give them a rest from their seaboard routine. He ordered them to make camp at Port au Mouton on high ground between the bay and two fresh water lakes. The men improvised their own cabins “Indian fashion,” or “according to their fantasy,” in Champlain’s words.51
Port au Mouton (pronounced Matoon in Nova Scotia) was named by Champlain after a sheep fell overboard and drowned there. De Mons led his men ashore, and they built their own shelters, “each according to his fancy,” while Champlain went exploring.
The sieur de Mons decided to stay there for several weeks with Don de Dieu and Levrette moored in the bay, while he ordered two smaller craft to explore the coast in opposite directions. A shallop with Indian guides was sent northeast in search of Pont-Gravé and Bonne-Renommée, which carried many of the expedition’s supplies. At the same time, de Mons asked Champlain to take command of a small barque of eight tons. Champlain’s orders were to proceed with Jean Ralluau, the secretary of the expedition, and maître Simon, one of the Balkan miners. They were told to search the “coasts, ports and harbors” and find “where our vessels might proceed in safety.”52
Champlain left on May 19, 1604, and found himself on a dangerous Atlantic coast with many capes, rocks, and treacherous shoals that extended far from shore. He had to stand well out into the ocean to keep clear of them, then work his way back, chart the coast, and set maître Simon ashore to search for mineral deposits, while he and Jean Ralluau examined the soil for its fertility. Then he returned to the sea, dodged sunken obstructions that could sink his boat, and repeated the operation at the next cove. It was slow and tricky work, with rough seas, rip tides, and strong currents.53
By this laborious method Champlain followed the deep-indented Atlantic coast of Acadia, and found more than ten coves and bays in a stretch of forty miles. At last he came to Cape Sable, an island that marked the extreme southeastern tip of Acadia. Near it Champlain found a haven “where vessels can anchor without the least fear of danger.” It was a promising place for a fort and trading post.
Then he rounded the southern end of Acadia and came upon islands with an unimaginable abundance of nesting birds. Champlain named one of them Isle aux Cormorans “because of the infinite number of these birds of whose eggs we took a barrel full.” On another island he found birds he called tan-gueux, probably gannets, and wrote that “we killed them easily with a stick.” On two other islands, he wrote, “the abundance of birds of different kinds is so great that no one would believe it possible unless he had seen it: such as cormorants, ducks of three kinds, snow geese, murres, wild geese, puffins, snipe, fish-hawks and other birds of prey, sea-gulls, curlews, turnstones, divers, loons, eiders, ravens, cranes and other kinds unknown to me which make their nests there.”54
The beaches of these islands were also “completely covered with seals, whereof we took as many as we wished,” and he discovered a taste for seal meat, which with a marinade makes very good eating. In the face of this vast abundance of life, the first thought of these hungry men was to kill as many as possible for pleasure and the pot, then gorge t
hemselves, kill again, and eat once more.55
Champlain and his crew sailed on, along the short southern coast of Acadia, and found more harbors. They took a close look at Cap Fourchu (which resembled the tongs of a fourchette, or fork), and Champlain studied an attractive harbor that is now the port of Yarmouth. Nearby, maître Simon found what might have been mines of iron and silver. Then they turned north and entered the long inlet of St. Mary Bay, where Champlain discovered an attractive site for settlement with open meadows and “soil among the best I’ve ever seen.” He named it Port Sainte-Marguerite. Maître Simon also thought he had found a deposit of iron and silver.56
They could go no farther. With provisions running low, Champlain came about, and returned the way he had come. On the Atlantic coast he was overtaken by a wild gale, and saved his barque only by running her ashore in a safe place. After the storm passed, they sailed on and reached Port-au-Mouton the next day. Champlain wrote, “The sieur de Mons was expecting us from day to day, not knowing what to think of our delay except that some accident must have happened.”57
Champlain had acquitted himself well in his first independent command. It was no small feat to navigate so difficult a coast with twelve men in a small barque. He had followed de Mons’ instructions to the letter. The sieur de Ralluau (a skilled seaman himself) appears to have made a favorable report, and Champlain was given more responsibility.58
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