Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  After that meeting the French departed, sailing southwest to the Island Cape (Cape Ann), and entered an excellent harbor that they called Beauport. It is the site of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Hundreds of Indians gathered and appeared friendly, but things went wrong again. French presents were spurned. An Indian with a wounded foot refused treatment by the French, with expressions of distrust. The French gave a gift of grape juice and the Indians spat it out “thinking … that it was poison.”75

  The next day some of the French crew were doing laundry ashore, while others were mending their leaky barque. Poutrincourt caught sight of “a great many Indians” in the woods with weapons in hands. They appeared to be sneaking toward the French who were washing clothes, “with the intention of doing us some injury.” Champlain ran alone to intercept them. They received him well, and began to dance. He asked them to dance some more, which they did, putting their arms inside a circle, and tensions diminished. Suddenly the Indians saw Poutrincourt marching toward them with a file of musketeers, and “withdrew in all directions, being apprehensive lest some bad turn should be done to them.” Here were two French approaches to the Indians. Champlain’s worked; Poutrincourt’s failed. Tensions began to rise again.76 The French learned that a hundred canoes were approaching with six hundred men. Poutrincourt ordered a hasty departure. They put out to sea, and sailed all night. By dawn they were in Cape Cod Bay, where they explored the inner cape, and Champlain admired the cultivated landscape of cornfields, meadows, beautiful beaches, small coves, and fine stands of trees.77 They found “a good safe harbor,” with “plenty of oysters of very good quality,” and named it Port-aux-Huistres. It is today’s Wellfleet, and the oysters are still of “very good quality.”

  In September 1606, Poutrincourt led a third cruise. They found a handsome harbor and called it Beauport (now Gloucester, Massachusetts). Hundreds of Indians gathered, and Champlain began to make contact, but Poutrincourt approached with arquebusiers, and Indians fled, “fearing some bad turn.” The French departed in haste.

  After a brief visit they left the bay, rounded Cape Cod, and sailed south along its Atlantic coast to its outer elbow. There they found a harbor called Port-Fortuné, now Stage Harbor in the town of Chatham. The harbor mouth was barely deep enough to float their ship. They scraped bottom on a shoal and damaged their rudder, but they found their way to an anchorage. Champlain was impressed by the density of Indian settlement and deeply interested in their way of life. “Regarding their polity, government and religious belief,” he wrote, “they have chiefs whom they obey in regard to matters of warfare but not in anything else. The chiefs work, and assume no higher rank than their companions. Each possesses only sufficient land for his own support.”78

  Champlain thought that the region was very suitable for a colony, but trouble developed with the Indians. Poutrincourt decided to stay a while. He showed no sign of leaving and appeared to be settling in. The French built an oven on the beach, gathered firewood without permission, and began to bake bread. In the harbor, shipwright Champdoré repaired the damaged rudder while Champlain surveyed the anchorage and made a chart. Each day Poutrincourt went ashore with a heavily armed party of ten or fifteen musketeers and marched through the countryside. He entered Indian villages and “passed among their wigwams, where there were a number of women, and gave them bracelets and rings.”79

  The French began to notice columns of white smoke rising on the coast. Champlain wrote: “Some eight or nine days later, on the sieur de Poutrin-court’s going out walking as he had done before, we observed that the Indians were taking down their wigwams and sending their wives and children into the woods, along with provisions and other necessaries of life…. That made us suspect some evil design.”80 Every day Poutrincourt continued to march his musketeers four to five leagues through the Indian settlements. As tensions continued to rise, he sent two men ahead with swords drawn, and instructed them to engage in mock swordplay, a source of puzzlement to the Indians. He also ordered demonstrations of musketry and showed that bullets could penetrate a log. All this was meant to overawe the Indians. It succeeded only in alarming them. Champlain noted that “when passing near us they trembled for fear lest we should harm them.”81

  Poutrincourt sailed south to Cape Cod and entered Port Fortune (now Stage Harbor in the town of Chatham). Here Champlain made another chart and mapped the many Indian settlements, but more trouble followed.

  On October 14, 1606, Poutrincourt came ashore yet again. This time he erected a cross, which the Indians perceived as a symbol of possession. He put up crosses frequently without asking. Champlain did so less often, usually by permission, and he invited Indians to participate. Tensions were mounting dangerously. Poutrincourt issued standing orders that “all things should be in readiness” to repel an attack, and all the French should come aboard the barque at night. Once again his men refused to obey him. A party of four remained on the beach, tending the oven. Tree defied Poutrincourt’s orders to return aboard. Two others also disobeyed their commander and left the ship to join the beach party. Champlain was shocked by their defiance, “despite remonstrances made to them on the risks they were running and the disobedience they were showing to their chief.”82

  Early the next morning, October 15, 1606, a scouting party of Indians crept up to the French on the beach, found most of them asleep and one tending the fire. “Seeing them in this condition,” Champlain wrote, “Indians to the number of 400 came quietly over the little hill” and attacked the Frenchmen. They “shot such a salvo of arrows at them as to give them no chance. All the men were hit by arrows. They struggled to their feet and retreated toward the barque, shouting ‘Help! Help! They are killing us!’”83

  Two Frenchmen died on the beach, and a third in the water. A fourth was mortally wounded, and a fifth struggled out to the barque with an arrow in his chest. A sentry on the barque shouted, “To arms! To arms! They are killing our men.” The crew boiled out of the hold, and fifteen or sixteen went ashore in the shallop. Their leaders were Champlain, Robert Gravé, Daniel Hay, the apothecary Hébert, the surgeon, a trumpeter, Poutrincourt himself, and his son Biencourt de Poutrincourt.84

  The Indians fled. Champlain wrote, “All we could do was carry off the bodies and bury them near the cross.” One of the dead Frenchmen was found with a small dog on his back, both shot by the same arrow. The dead Frenchmen were laid into the ground with their shirts for winding sheets. During the burial, the Indians “did dance and howl a-far off.”85 The French went back to their vessels, and three hours later the Indians returned. The French fired at them. Champlain wrote: “Whenever they heard the report they threw themselves flat on the ground to avoid the charge. In derision they pulled down the cross, and dug up the bodies, which displeased us greatly and made us go after them a second time.” The bodies were reburied and Indians dug them up again, and “turning their backs toward the ship, they threw sand with their two hands betwixt their buttocks in derision, howling like wolves.” There was desperate talk of seizing captives and binding them with chains of rosary beads! The French baited a trap, but the Indians were old hands at this game. They trapped the French instead, and killed several more of them.

  Finally, on October 16, 1606, Poutrincourt ordered his men to weigh anchor and they sailed away, steering south toward Nantucket Sound. Once out of sight from the land, he ordered a change of course and they headed north. Trouble continued to dog them, and they suffered more misadventures at sea. Their shallop bucked and surged at the end of a towline, and smashed the rudder of the barque. Champdoré managed another miraculous repair at sea, and they got back to Port-Royal.

  At Port Fortune, Poutrincourt marched soldiers through Indian villages, took crops without permission, and raised a cross without leave, and the Indians were not happy. Poutrincourt responded with a show of force, which provoked an attack on October 15, 1606. The French lost many men—and a region of North America.

  Here were three voyages by three French leaders,
with three very different results. Champlain, de Mons, and Poutrincourt had many of the same values and purposes. All shared a genuine ideal of humanity, and wanted very much to establish good relations with the natives. But when they actually met the Indians, they conducted themselves in different ways.

  Champlain’s first voyage to Norumbega in 1604 repeated the success at Tadoussac in 1603. He approached the Indians with only a few men, and made no display of weapons (though his men were armed and ready on their ship). He sat down with the Indians in another tabagie, took an interest in their ways, honored their customs, and treated them with respect. They responded in the same spirit, with warmth and trust that grew on both sides. Together they formed an alliance that lasted for many years.

  After the voyages of de Mons and Poutrincourt, the French turned north to Acadia and the British became more active to south. Bartholomew Gosnold (in this de Bry engraving) explored the coast and planted a post on Cuttyhunk Island in 1602. Th irty British settlements followed by 1625, and Norumbega became New England.

  De Mons’ results in 1605 were mixed at best: a slow beginning, lack of focus, failed communications, and loss of rapport with the Indians. There were no tabagies or other meetings. He kept his distance and seemed unsure of the Indians. They perceived his distance as arrogance and his insecurity as enmity. The result was growing fear and hostility that compounded on itself. It ended in a needless fight.

  Poutrincourt’s relations with the Indians were a disaster. He could not control his men and alienated the Indian nations of Norumbega. He was fearful of them and insensitive to their feelings. Poutrincourt went among the Indians heavily armed, marched his men across their lands without warning, took crops from their fields without permission, and erected crosses that were perceived as emblems of possession. The Indians became deeply distrustful of his intentions. As things began to go wrong, Poutrincourt responded with a stronger show of force. He ordered his men to unsheathe their swords and fire their weapons in a demonstration of power. The Indians were terrified of him, literally trembling with fear. They sent away their women and children, and suddenly attacked. The result was a total rupture of relations.

  These failures put an end to French colonization south of the Penobscot River and marked the beginning of English hegemony in this region. But with Champlain’s success north of the Penobscot, a new leader emerged in New France. His way of working with the Indians made the difference.

  10.

  PORT-ROYAL

  A Model Colony Fails at Home, 1605–07

  These people called savages … are men like ourselves…. They have courage, fidelity, generosity, humanity, and their hospitality is so innate and praiseworthy that they receive among them every man who is not an enemy. They are not simpletons like many people over here; they speak with much judgment and good sense.

  —Marc Lescarbot on the Indians of Acadia1

  IN THE SPRING OF 1605, the sieur de Mons decided to move his settlement from Sainte-Croix Island. The new site was Port-Royal, near the present town of Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia. It was (and is) a beautiful setting, with a magnificent harbor. The soil in this part of Acadia is fertile, and the winters are more temperate than on Sainte-Croix Island. One French visitor wrote, “No earthly paradise could be more agreeable than this place.”2

  Most important, the Indians were friendly. The Mi’kmaq (Champlain’s Souriquois) wanted close trading relations and an alliance against their enemies. They welcomed the French settlers, wanted them to found a colony there, and gave much vital assistance. One settler wrote, “We were not, as it were, marooned on an island, as was M. de Villegagnon in Brazil, for this nation loves the French, and would if necessary take up arms, one and all, to aid them.”3

  Once de Mons made his decision to resettle at Port-Royal, his small band of colonists went to work with a will. “The time being short,” Champlain wrote, “we fitted out two barques, which we loaded with the woodwork of the Sainte Croix, to transport it to Port-Royal twenty-five leagues distant.” Every structure was dismantled except the storehouse, which was too big to move. Many trips were needed to carry the buildings across the bay.4

  The sieur de Mons stayed in Port-Royal until “everything had been set in order,” and then he hurried home to France. The colony had powerful enemies at court, and rival merchants were challenging his monopoly. His own investors were growing restless. After the winter at Sainte-Croix, the tropics seemed more attractive for settlement. In the summer of 1605, Henri IV was thinking seriously about planting a French colony between Portuguese Brazil and New Spain. He appointed a soldier named Daniel de la Revardière to be lieutenant general for the territory from the Amazon to Trinidad.5

  Champlain’s map of Port-Royal is on a diff erent scale from his other charts. The protected harbor was fifteen miles long, the soil was more fertile, the climate was less severe than Sainte-Croix, and the Mi’kmaq nation very welcoming.

  New France was in danger at home, and de Mons needed to “obtain from His Majesty what was necessary for his enterprise.” To that end, he carried back many gifts in the hope of reviving the king’s interest in North America. The most striking present was a big birchbark canoe, thirty feet long and stained bright red. It was launched on the River Seine by returning sailors, who paddled past the Louvre at “an incredible speed,” much to the pleasure of the king and the delight of the little Dauphin, four years old, who would become Louis XIII. Other presents included a baby moose (six months old and already “as big as a horse”), a caribou (the first recorded use of that word), a muskrat (rat musqué, they called it), a huge set of moose antlers, a living hummingbird, a collection of dead birds, plus bows and arrows, Indian portraits, and other marvels for the royal collection.6

  Before he left Acadia, the sieur de Mons appointed an acting lieutenant to govern Acadia in his absence. His first choice had been the sieur d’Orville, a French nobleman who was still suffering the effects of scurvy and unable to serve. Next in line was Pont-Gravé, who took the job.7 Champlain could have gone home with de Mons, but he wanted to stay at Port-Royal in the hope of “making new discoveries towards Florida.” The sieur de Mons “highly approved,” and Champlain received many privileges as well as strong support for his explorations.8

  The settlement of Port-Royal rapidly took form. Champlain made a sketch and described its plan as a tight rectangle, sixty feet long and forty-eight feet wide. He called it the fort. These men were always thinking of military defense—not against Indians but European attackers. Their experience of incessant war at home inspired a habitual sense of insecurity.9 The settlement at Port-Royal resembled a fortified farming hamlet in France. It stood on the crest of a low hill, completely enclosed by outer walls nearly two hundred feet in circumference. At one corner of the rectangle, the builders added a projecting bastion with four guns that commanded the anchorage and covered two walls of the fort. At another corner, a log platform of similar design protected the gate and a third wall.10

  The interior was carefully planned to maintain social rank and internal order. Standing alone at the northern corner of the fort was an elegant little house with a high-hipped roof and “handsome woodwork.” This was the same building that had been prefabricated in France, and erected for the sieur de Mons on Sainte-Croix Island. At Port-Royal it became the residence of Pont-Gravé and Champlain. These old friends lived comfortably together, and their harmony set a tone for the settlement.

  Next to their house on the northwestern side was a row of smaller dwellings for officers of rank. The Catholic priest and Protestant pastor lived there, the surgeon Deschamps, and the skilled shipwright Champdoré. On the southwest was a dormitory for artisans.11 To the southeast was the bakery, kitchen, blacksmith shop, and a “maisonette” for small boats and rigging. Probably some of the laborers and servants slept in the kitchen, bakery and smithy, which would have been warm in the winter. On the northeast side was the vital magasin, a storehouse with a “very fine cellar, five or six feet
deep” that held the colony’s stock of wine, cider, grain, and other provisions. The end closest to the commander’s house may have served as an armory and barracks for the small detachment of Swiss soldiers who were billeted between officers and “other ranks,” much like marines aboard warships.12

  Champlain’s sketch of the habitation at Port-Royal, ca. 1605–06, shows a fortified settlement surrounded by fertile gardens on rising ground above the harbor. It was a highly successful colony—until its funding failed in France.

  Pont-Gravé kept the colonists at work on the settlement, urging them to make the fort weather-tight before winter. He was a driver, but not unpopular with the men. They admired his large spirit even as they feared his temper. Lescarbot wrote, “M. du Pont was not a man to sit still, nor allow his people to remain idle.”13 After the buildings went up, the colonists cleared the outer grounds and created something like a protective glacis around the fort. A year later, a visitor described Port-Royal as “almost wholly surrounded by meadows.”14