Poutrincourt also tried to suppress Indian rituals of death and burial, with no success whatever. Membertou insisted on practicing two religions at the same time. Without abandoning his own original faith, he took up Christianity with the proverbial zeal of the convert and proposed to “make war on all who refused to become Christians.” The French urged him to make converts by persuasion rather than by the sword, for they had seen too much of that at home.72
Champlain thought of Membertou in a third way. He recognized Membertou’s many virtues, and found him to be honorable and trustworthy in his dealings with friends, neighbors, and guests. But he tried to understand the Indian leader in his own terms. He understood that Membertou lived by ethics very different from those of the French. In a wilderness that was ruled by fang and claw, he kept the hard code that the Romans called lex talionis, the rule of justice by retaliation, often by sudden raids and surprise attacks. Cham plain wrote that in war Membertou “had a reputation of being the worst and most treacherous of all his nation.”73 In the summer of 1607, for example, Membertou led his people to war against the Saco Indians. Champlain observed that “this entire war was solely about a member of Membertou’s nation who had been killed at Norumbega.”74 After the body of the slain kinsman was recovered, Membertou arranged an elaborate funeral. The friends and family of the murdered man painted their faces black, “which is their manner of mourning,” Champlain observed. The body was arrayed in red cloth that Champlain supplied. Instead of trying to suppress the Mi’kmaq burial customs as Poutrincourt did, Champlain supported them.75
These very different ways of thinking about the American Indians met and mixed among the French humanists who settled at Port-Royal.76
As the winter of 1606–07 came to an end, the men of Port-Royal made ready for another planting season. One imagines them toiling around the fire at night, mending their tools, sharpening blades, and replacing handles. Once again the leaders urged every man in the settlement to cultivate his own garden. They encouraged a spirit of rivalry that spurred them on to greater effort. “Near the end of March,” Lescarbot recorded, “the best-disposed among us set themselves who should best till, with a pride of ownership and achievement, and a feeling that they were working for themselves that spurred them to greater labor.”77
The seeds sprouted quickly, and the French were astonished by the results of their labor. “When each of us had finished his sowing,” Lescarbot continued, “it was a marvelous pleasure to see them grow and increase day by day, and still a greater contentment to make abundant use of them…. This commencement of good hope made us almost forget our native country.” They also went to work on the fishing in the same spirit, and “were yet more astonished by the abundance of their catch…. The fish began to seek the fresh water and to come in such abundance into our brooks that we knew not what to do with them.”78
On May 24, 1607, the habitants of Port-Royal saw a sail coming up the great sound. It proved to be a small barque du port of about six or seven tons, flying a French ensign. In command was a young captain of Saint-Malo named Chevalier.79 He brought letters from the sieur de Mons, and they were heavy with bad news. The colonists were shocked to learn that the company had failed. It had been brought down by many blows. Individual investors had been cheating the company; they sent their own ships to trade for fish and furs, and kept the profits for themselves. Then came the crowning blow. The Royal council found that de Mons had failed to meet the conditions of his patent, and they terminated his monopoly of the fur trade. Without it, the company was no longer able to support a colony in Acadia. With much sadness, the sieur de Mons ordered Poutrincourt to abandon Acadia and bring the settlers back to France.80
Some habitants of Port-Royal were delighted to go home, but the leaders did not want to leave quickly. The crops were coming splendidly, and the sieur de Poutrincourt wanted to see the result. Champlain’s work of surveying and mapmaking was unfinished. Others believed that they could obtain furs and fish sufficient to help the sieur de Mons weather a financial crisis. They decided to remain in Acadia for another three months, and make the most of the time.81
In July, another message arrived from France. It was Ralluau again, with more peremptory orders to return home. A ship had been sent for that purpose, the ill-named Jonas, and she was waiting at Ingonish on Cape Breton. The settlers closed up the colony, and went aboard the company’s vessels. Most sailed in two barques on July 30, 1607, but still the leaders were reluctant to depart. Poutrincourt wanted to stay for a few more weeks until the first grain crops ripened. They also wanted to say farewell to Membertou, who had been away leading a war party against the Almouchiquois at Saco.82
On August 10, 1607, Membertou returned in triumph. The next day, the French harvested some grain from their fields, put it aboard their small shallop, and made ready to depart. Membertou and the Indians were sorry to see them go. There were tears and lamentations. The Indians promised to protect the settlement, which they did with complete fidelity. The French leaders sailed on August 11, and met the ship Jonas at Canso for the voyage home.83 The habitants left with a sense of pride and achievement. They had nothing but praise for their leaders. Although Poutrincourt had not done well in command of exploring expeditions, he was more successful in command of a fortified post among Indians who repeatedly demonstrated their friendship.
Champdoré brought from Acadia a beautiful blue amethyst, which he had cut in two pieces, and “gave half to M. de Mons and the other to M. de Poutrincourt,” as a token of esteem. The two men had the stones handsomely set, and presented them to the king and the queen as glowing symbols of New France, and of the “beautiful things that lie hidden in these countries, knowledge of which has not yet been given to us.” The leaders believed that something had gone profoundly right at Port-Royal—with the Indians, with one another, and with the place itself. They thought of Port-Royal as an ideal settlement, and held it up as “a successful model, well suited to conditions in North America.” The leaders were determined to try again, and plant another settlement that might endure. But first they had some urgent business in France.84
FOUNDER OF QUEBEC
11.
QUEBEC
The First Permanent Colony, 1608–09
Those who know the least shout the loudest.
—Champlain, 16071
IN THE AUTUMN OF 1607, Champlain sailed home to France in the battered barque Jonas with the sieur de Poutrincourt, Marc Lescarbot, the Port-Royal colonists, and a young Indian convert. It was a miserable crossing in a crowded ship, with short rations and a fragrant cargo of 100,000 codfish. Foul winds forced them into the port of Roscoff on the west coast of Brittany, where, by Lescarbot’s account, they “remained two and a half days to recuperate.” They went ashore to recover their land legs, and Champlain took delight in the Indian’s discovery of Europe. The lad was “astonished to see the buildings, spires, and windmills of France” and amazed by “the women whom he had never seen dressed in our manner.”2
When the wind turned fair, they went aboard and sailed east to Saint-Malo. There the passengers scattered in various directions. Poutrincourt and Lescarbot took the Indian boy to court and presented him to Henri IV as evidence that the natives were converting to Christianity. They also offered the first crops of corn, wheat, rye, barley, and oats from Port-Royal as proof of the colony’s success as an agricultural settlement. With his usual flourish, Poutrincourt gave the king five young Canada geese (outardes) that he had raised from hatchlings aboard ship. Those indestructible birds were soon swimming in the pools of Fontainebleau.
The king was gracious to the young Indian and pleased with the gifts, but he was keenly aware that the De Mons Company had failed and its colony had been abandoned. Once again, after so much effort, no French settlements survived in North America. In the gardens of Fontainebleau, the honk of Canada geese made a mocking chorus on the fate of New France.3
Champlain was not part of that scene. For the first time, h
e did not go directly to court. He was deeply troubled by the failure of the De Mons Company and wanted to know why it had happened. In a phrase of Winston Churchill’s, who knew a thing or two about leadership in large causes, Champlain was always “Lord Root-of-the-Matter.” Before he met the king he turned in another direction and moved straight to the heart of the problem. “I went to find the sieur de Mons,” Champlain wrote, “and found him living on a pleasant street in Paris, happily called rue Beaurepaire.” Champlain greeted his friend, and spoke of the “things I had seen since his departure.”4
After the failure of Port-Royal and the collapse of its funding, Poutrincourt returned to France, met Henri IV, and made him a present of Canada geese. In the gardens and pools of Fontainebleau, the cry of geese made a mocking chorus in what appeared to be the tragedy of New France.
He also presented “a map and drawings of the coasts and ports” in Acadia. This may have been the map now in the Library of Congress, which bears Champlain’s signature with the date 1607. It is the only manuscript map known to come directly from his hand—a miracle of survival, and a superb work of cartographic art.5 De Mons must have examined it with great interest. Historian David Buisseret suggests that its quality comes clear when we compare the “sober work of Champlain” with Captain John Smith’s map of New England (1614)—also a very good piece of work but in a different way. In Buisseret’s phrase, Champlain’s map seeks “simply to set out the main geographical features,” and also gives much attention to the Indians. His chart work is meticulous in its detail, and could only come from “a series of observations made from a small boat, working along the coast.” Smith’s map by comparison is finely engraved but frequently inaccurate in detail. It gives little attention to the Indians. The dominant features are a large portrait of Smith himself and the arms of England. Buisseret observes that Smith “seems determined to impose his presence on the land about to be seized.”6 Champlain’s work was very advanced in its cartography. He used new mathematical work of Guillaume de Nautonier on compass declination to orient his map and its elements, with somewhat mixed results but to a very high standard of accuracy and integrity. The sieur de Mons would have studied the map in two ways—for what it displayed of the American coast, and also for what it revealed of its maker. It may have made a difference in the events that followed.7
Champlain’s manuscript map of New France (1607–08) is a work of meticulous detail for coasts that he explored in Acadia and Norumbega, but less so for Cape Cod and beyond. His map is attentive to the land itself and the towns of the Indians, with no symbols of imperial dominion, and nothing of self-advertising.
By comparison, John Smith’s map of New England (1614) is roughly right in its main lines, but sketchy and careless in detail. It is inattentive to the Indians and imposes emblems of British sovereignty on the land with an English armada on the sea. The dominant element is a self-promoting portrait of John Smith.
After the two men discussed the map, de Mons told Champlain what had happened to the investment company—and it made a long litany of woe. One ironic factor in its demise was a change of fashion in Paris hats. Feathers were out; beavers were in. Demand for beaver pelts of high quality was insatiable in Europe, and it was growing at a great pace. Also in favor were lustrous furs from higher latitudes of North America: marten, lynx, white fox, and the beautiful black otter. The best source was the St. Lawrence Valley, where furs could be bought for a small fraction of their Paris price. Ironically, the increasing value of American furs made big trouble for the settlement of New France. Many merchants wanted a share of this lucrative trade and they joined forces to break the monopoly of the sieur de Mons. Champlain was told that “the Bretons, the Basques, the La Rochelle and Normandy people were renewing their complaints, and getting the ear of those who were ready to show them favor.” In Paris, the powerful Hatters’ Association joined in. Some of its members complained that a monopoly in America would drive up the price of furs. Others hoped to be monopolists themselves.8
The beaver was second only to the cod in the economy of New France. Philosophes were fascinated by these appealing animals and celebrated their busy lives, collective labor, and social ethic. A happy example is this image from Henri Chatelaine’s ‘Carte très curieuse’ (1719).
These rivals had deep pockets, and money changed hands in the dark corridors of the Louvre. “At Court,” Champlain wrote, “people were not wanting who promised for a sum of money to annul the commission of the sieur de Monts.” He added that “in a short time his Majesty’s patent was revoked for a certain sum which a certain person received without his said Majesty knowing anything about it.”9
De Mons knew the identity of this “certain person.” Once again it was his old rival, the duc de Sully. In a court case, de Mons later testified that the “monopoly of ten years was revoked by the king around the fourth year [1607] because it was wanted by monsieur le duc de Sully, at the request of several hatters in the city of Paris.”10 In 1607, Sully was at the peak of his career as the king’s most powerful minister. While in office, he also built a very large private fortune. Much of it was the gift of a grateful monarch, but the Paris hatters pitched in.11 Sully appears to have been corrupt in an honorable way, a man of principle who practiced what in America would later be called “honest graft.” He accepted bribes only for actions that he believed to be good for the king and the country.12 Sully had never been a friend of colonization and often argued that “lands beyond the seas can only entail considerable cost while being only of slight or extremely little use.” His repeated view was that nothing could come from American colonies above the fortieth parallel (the latitude of Philadelphia).13
The whirl of fashion in Paris hats created an insatiable demand for beaver pelts and made big trouble for de Mons and Champlain. Hatmakers, fur merchants, and their friends at court broke the trading monopolies that paid for the colonization of New France.
Sully had long wished to put an end to French settlement in North America, but knowing the king’s feeling, he bided his time. In 1607, he saw an opportunity. On the fishing coast, agents of the sieur de Mons had seized French vessels in a high-handed way. The result was a wave of anger in French seaports, and a tangle of litigation. For every ship that was seized, many others defied the monopoly with impunity. In 1607, Champlain estimated that eighty ships were trading illegally for furs in the St. Lawrence. Most were owned in France; some were Dutch ships with French pilots. The monopoly was not working, and it caused deep resentment.14
The sieur de Mons also had another problem. He was losing his investors. They had not received the dividends they had been promised after the first year, and they balked at the costs of colonization that they were expected to bear. Champlain later observed that de Mons had spent more than 100,000 livres to found the settlements at Sainte-Croix and Port-Royal, with very little to show for it. Sainte-Croix had failed as a colony, with heavy loss of life. Port-Royal had failed as an investment. Both settlements lay at a long distance from the most profitable centers of the fur trade. Even some of de Mons’ leading investors, led by a truculent merchant of Rouen named Daniel Boyer, sent their own traders to Canada in violation of the monopoly.15
With this dismal record in hand, Sully persuaded the Royal Council that the sieur de Mons had not met the terms of his commission, and argued that the monopoly should be revoked. The council showed sympathy for de Mons, and authorized him to receive 6,000 livres in cash payments “from the ships that went out to trade in furs,” as compensation for his loss. But when de Mons tried to collect the money, hostile courts in Saint-Malo and other towns told him he had the wrong names, or the defendants had disappeared, or the suits were invalid for technical reasons. It proved impossible to collect so much as a sou from these slippery contrebandiers, as they were called.16 Champlain remarked, “To find out who had been trading, and what amount should be levied on more than eighty vessels that frequented those coasts … was like trying to drink the sea!”17
All these blows did heavy damage to the company of de Mons, and were a severe setback for the grand design that he shared with Champlain. Some people would have given up, and de Mons came close to that decision in the fall of 1607. Champlain wrote that the “sieur de Mons spoke … several times about his intentions.” It must have been a painful subject, but they kept talking, and de Mons decided to try one more time. In Champlain’s words, he resolved “to continue such a noble and worthy enterprise, notwithstanding the pain and labor it had cost him.”18
De Mons also made another decision. To protect the enterprise at home, he had to stay in France. Someone else would have to take the lead in America, but whom should he choose? The senior men were not quite right for the job. Pont-Gravé was a great seaman and a good trader, but he was not in good health and his behavior was increasingly erratic. Poutrincourt had his own purpose in seeking to found a feudal utopia in Acadia, and he had failed as a leader on the coast of Norumbega. A third candidate came to mind. The sieur de Mons had watched Champlain in 1604 and 1605, when the two men had worked closely together. Champlain had done well in independent commands, better than his superiors in the same role. Others were beginning to notice his gift of leadership. One of them was Marc Lescarbot, who wrote a sonnet to Champlain about it:
And if you accomplish your beautiful enterprize,
One cannot estimate how much glory will one day
Champlain's Dream Page 26
