When they were within eighty leagues of the Grand Bank, they met thick fog and mountains of floating ice. Several times they came close to collision with icebergs. Champlain reckoned their height at 180 to 240 feet, three times higher than the mastheads of his ship, and these mountains of ice were moving at high speed before the wind. As they dodged among the biggest bergs, small fields of floe-ice crunched dangerously beneath the ship. They crossed the Grand Bank, but Champlain found that winds and currents had set them still farther north. They could not get below 44 degrees, 30 minutes.5
So cold was the North Atlantic, that even in the latitude of today’s Halifax, Champlain found himself on the edge of a “great bank of ice that extended as far as the eye could see.”6 Soon they were surrounded by it. Night came with rain, snow, and wind so strong that the ship “could hardly carry our mainsail.” With great effort, they worked their way south and got clear of the pack ice, only to enter another ice field surrounded by “thousands of ice floes on all sides.” Champlain wrote, “More than a score of times we thought we should not escape with our lives.”7
“The cold was so great,” he recalled, “that all of the ship’s running rigging was frozen and covered with big icicles, so that we could not manoeuvre or even stand on the ship’s deck.”8 At one point they struck their sails and drifted with the ice. In the night they hoisted sail again but could find no passage, and the ice was closing in. They tried to force their way. Seamen in the forward part of the ship worked with iron bars and long poles to ward off the most dangerous floes. Time and again, new ice appeared in their path. It was now the last week of April, and they had been nearly two months on the North Atlantic. In thick fog, Champlain wrote, “We tacked a hundred times from side to side, and many times thought we were lost.”9
Then suddenly the fog lifted. “When we looked about us,” Champlain remembered, “we saw that we were enclosed within a small pond, less than a league and a half in circumference.” In the distance they sighted land, which Champlain recognized as Cape Breton. At last they left the ice behind, and reached Tadoussac on May 13, 1611, after eleven weeks at sea. It was one of Champlain’s hardest crossings.10
As Champlain sailed up the St. Lawrence River, he was surprised to find “the whole country almost covered with snow” even in mid-May. It had been one of the coldest winters on record. He found the Indians in a desperate state, particularly the Montagnais, who came to meet Champlain’s ship, with “only a few articles which they wished to barter merely in order to get food.”11
Champlain gave them food and hurried on. His purpose was to sail up the St. Lawrence River to the great rapids beyond Montreal, where he hoped to “meet the Algonquins and other nations who had promised … to be there with the young lad” he had given them. The lad was Étienne Brûlé, who had been sent to live among the Indians and to discover what lay to the west and north. They had agreed to meet on May 20. Champlain was consumed with curiosity “to learn from him what he had seen while wintering in the interior.”12
So eager was Champlain that he left his ship at Tadoussac to buy furs from the Indians, and sailed upriver in a battered barque that was barely seaworthy. Halfway to Quebec, the leaky boat took on much water and was in danger of foundering. He reached Quebec just in time. Champlain was happy to find that the settlement had survived the winter with no losses. Commandant Jean Godet du Parc and his sixteen companions were “all very well, without any sickness,” a credit to du Parc’s leadership. Once again this able and self-effacing young nobleman had held the colony together. The habitants told Champlain that they had enjoyed good hunting through the winter. He took their experience as further proof that fresh meat prevented scurvy.13
Champlain pushed forward with the repair of his boat. When the work was done he was off again, driving his men up the river. They reached the Great Rapids beyond what is now Montreal by May 28, eight days late for a prearranged meeting with the Indians, and found nobody there.14 In their absence, Champlain came upon a battered canoe. With two men he used it to explore the riverbanks below the rapids. He was searching for a “site of settlement” near the head of navigation on the St. Lawrence River. Champlain examined the banks for eight leagues and studied the high hill that Cartier had named Le Mont Réal. Finally he found a stretch of level land a league downstream near a small tributary called the Rivière Saint-Pierre. It included more than sixty arpents that had been cleared long ago for cornfields and were now open meadow, mixed with young trees. Champlain was told that “formerly the Indians had cultivated these lands, but they abandoned them on account of the frequent wars which they carried on there.”15 He studied the land with a soldier’s eye and thought that a large area could be moated and fortified. Champlain named it la Place Royale and set his men to leveling the ground. He built a small house and a masonry wall ten yards long, “to see how it would last during the winter when the waters came down.” Then he planted his usual test gardens, “one in the meadows and the other in the woods,” and sowed an abundance of seeds. He was happy to observe that they “came up quickly and in perfect condition.”16
Champlain mapped the area with much attention to the river, its islands, and the terrain. On the north bank of the river he literally put Cartier’s name “Montréal” on the map—its first published appearance.17 An attractive island in the river was three-quarters of a league in circumference, with “space to build a good strong town.” He named it Isle Sainte-Hélène, probably in honor of his reluctant bride.18 Champlain and his men were surprised by the fertility of the land. Everywhere they found wildlife in unimaginable numbers. They came upon an island covered with “so many herons that the air was completely filled with them.”19
Above Montreal were the rapids, a roaring cataract of white water. He described one stretch of “seven or eight waterfalls” that “descend from ledge to ledge, and the smallest of them is three feet high…. Part of it is completely white with foam that marked the most fearful place. The roar is so loud that one would have said it was thunder, as the air rang with the sound of these cataracts.”20 It was a place of beauty and danger. While Champlain was there, an impetuous young Frenchman named Louis and two Indians tried to run the rapids in a canoe. They capsized, and two of the three were drowned. Champlain and the sole survivor went searching for their bodies: “When he showed me the spot,” Champlain wrote, “my hair stood on end to see so terrifying a place.” He described the rapids as fort dangereux, effroyable, espouvantable— very dangerous, frightful, terrifying. It was a language of fear that rarely appeared in his writings. So violent were the rapids that the Frenchman’s body was never found. Champlain named this place the Grand Sault Saint-Louis, perhaps to commemorate the Frenchman who died there. Today they are called the Lachine Rapids, an ironic echo of Champlain’s search for a passage to China.21
On June 1, 1611, while Champlain was busily exploring the river above Montreal, Pont-Gravé arrived from Tadoussac in search of trade. He had crossed the Atlantic after Champlain, and was followed by fur traders in unexpected numbers. By June 12, thirteen barques and pataches were moored below the rapids. The next day, the Huron began to arrive, two hundred warriors led by three chiefs who were friends of Champlain. He went to greet them in a canoe, and they responded with loud shouts of celebration. The French replied by firing their weapons in a feu de joie that alarmed the Huron, some of whom had never seen a gun.
Champlain brought forward Savignon, who spoke well of his reception in France. The Huron produced Étienne Brûlé, who was dressed as an Indian, and had learned to speak the Huron and Algonquian languages.22 The following day, the Indians invited Champlain and Brûlé to meet with them. The Huron insisted that they come alone—another sign of the special relationship that Champlain had formed with them. The Indians said that they wished to make a “close alliance” with Champlain, but they were not happy to find so many traders on the river, and “saw clearly that it was only a love of gain and avarice that brought these people together.” The
Huron feared that these mercenary Frenchmen “would do them harm.”23 Champlain defended the traders, and assured the Indians, “we all served the same king.” After much discussion, the Huron made Champlain a princely gift of a hundred fine beaver pelts, and Champlain responded with presents of his own. He talked with them about the river’s source, and they told him of “many things, both of the rivers, falls, lakes and lands, and of the nations living there.” Four Hurons said that they had seen a sea far from their own country, but there were many enemies in between, and the country was difficult. Champlain wrote: “They spoke to me of these things in great detail, showing me by drawings all the places they had visited, taking pleasure in telling me about them. And as for myself, I was not weary of listening to them.”24
The head of navigation on the St. Lawrence River were these roaring rapids, which Champlain called le grand sault St. Louis. Stripped to his shirt, he ran them in a birch canoe with skilled Huron paddlers and barely survived. Near the falls he met many Indian nations in tabagies, and framed a web of western alliances.
The next night the Huron summoned Champlain again and he found them all in council. They explained their custom of nocturnal councils, “for at night we thought only of listening,” and they told Champlain that they wanted to “tell me their desire in secret.” Once again they said that they were “afraid of the other vessels on the river” and “displeased at seeing so many Frenchmen who were not very friendly towards one another.” They added that they “much mistrusted” the many traders. The Huron gave Champlain more gifts and asked him to come to their country. They talked together through the night.25
This finely woven wampum belt represented four Huron chiefs or clans, who presented it to Champlain in 1611 as an emblem of their esteem and a token of alliance. He in turn gave it to the King, and it survives today in the royal collections of France.
In the morning, the Huron withdrew another eight leagues, increasing their distance from the French traders, and once more they invited Champlain to visit them alone. This time they discussed the possibility of an alliance against the Iroquois. Champlain observed the complexity of their feelings and the autonomy of individual warriors. One of the Huron had been tortured by the Iroquois and wanted revenge. The chiefs did not support him, but could not restrain him. Champlain promised help if they were attacked but he also expressed a strong wish for peace, which they also shared.26
After the meeting Champlain asked the Huron to take him back to his vessel below the rapids. They agreed and brought eight canoes to run the rapids, much to Champlain’s alarm. He did not want to do it but felt he could not back away without forfeiting the respect of the Indians. He wrote, “They stripped naked, but left me in my shirt, for it often happens that some are lost running the rapids.” The Huron advised everyone to “keep close to one another in order to give prompt help.” They told Champlain: “If unfortunately my canoe should upset, since I did not know how to swim, I ought under no circumstances to let go, but to keep hold of the small pieces of wood (thwarts) in the center of the canoe; for they would easily rescue me.”
Champlain was a man of courage, but he confessed that he was terrified by that roaring cataract. He told his readers, “I assure you that even the bravest people in the world who have not seen nor passed this place in small boats such as theirs, could not do so without apprehension.”27 With a show of outward calm and inner terror he hitched up his shirt and climbed into his canoe. It was one of the great rides of his life. The rushing water seized the boat and swept it forward through massive boulders that could have crushed it in an instant. The fragile craft bucked and twisted in the roaring river, and many times Champlain thought they were lost. But the Indian paddlers brought him through and he was astonished at their skill. “These nations are so clever at shooting rapids, that this is easy for them,” he wrote. “I ran this one with them, a thing I had never done before, nor had any other Christian, except my young man [Brûlé].”28
The Huron went on their way and Champlain remained at the rapids to meet the Algonquin who arrived on July 12. Another large celebration followed, with yet more tabagies. Champlain worked to build an alliance with them. Once again he was planning for the long run. More young lads were exchanged by the French and the Algonquin, so as to learn each other’s customs. After much discussion, the meetings came to an end.29
Champlain headed quickly down the river for Quebec. He made thirty leagues to Trois-Rivières on the first day, and reached Quebec on July 19. Champlain remained only one day at Quebec but made the most of it. He inspected the settlement, “ordered repairs made,” and planned other improvements. Thinking always of the world as a garden, he found a moment to plant roses in Quebec. He was also planning new possibilities for commerce, and carried home some split oak to be tested in France for wainscoting and window frames. Champlain hoped that the American forest might yield an export commodity.30 All this activity was the work of a single crowded day. Champlain wrote that he “gave directions about the things at our settlement, according to the charge given me by the Sieur de Monts.” He departed as suddenly as he arrived, and sailed away for France in a Rochelais vessel. They reached La Rochelle on September 10, 1611.31
• • •
From La Rochelle, Champlain went to visit the sieur de Mons at his château near Pons in Saintonge. De Mons had very bad news. His investors had informed him that they were “unwilling to continue the partnership,” because the lost monopoly of the fur trade appeared to be irrecoverable. He had bought them out with his own money. There was also some other “unexpected and important business,” probably a reversal in his private affairs.
On top of that, de Mons had lost his access to the throne. Marie de Medici continued to make clear that he was not wanted in her presence. This Protestant friend and companion of Henri IV was no longer welcome in the Catholic court of the queen regent. De Mons said sadly that where New France was concerned, he was no longer permitted “to prosecute the matter at Court.” Champlain’s old patron promised that he would continue to help behind the scenes as a silent partner, friend, and adviser, and this Protestant angel for New France did just that. But he told Champlain that he must relinquish the role of leadership for the enterprise of New France.
Both men agreed that the project should be managed by someone else, preferably a Catholic, who would be more acceptable to the queen regent. The sieur de Mons turned to his younger friend, and in Champlain’s words, “he left to me the task of finding the ways and means of keeping New France,” and “laid upon me the entire responsibility for it.” De Mons advised Champlain to go back to court and “put this business in order.”32
With a heavy heart, Champlain left his friend and headed for court. He set off on the long journey, traveling by horseback on the rough country roads of France. Fate seemed to be conspiring against him. Along the way, he wrote, “my wretched horse fell on me, and nearly killed me; this fall delayed me for a long time.”33
As soon as he was able to travel, Champlain was on the road again, thinking about the task ahead. Marie de Medici’s court was dominated by great noblemen and he was a commoner. Champlain decided to begin by approaching the three members of his American circle once more. They had been helping him for several years. He tells us that he went to M. le President Jeannin, and gave him a “mémoire,” summarizing recent events in New France, stressing his expanding alliances with the Huron and the western Algonquin nations. Once again Champlain argued for the importance of American enterprise. Jeannin responded positively. Champlain wrote, “he approved my project and encouraged me in its pursuit.” Jeannin was a man who could make a difference at court. Even the queen deferred to him, and the merchants treated him with respect.34
Champlain tells us that he also went to see other powerful “Lords of the Court” whom he did not name. One of the most helpful people was the sieur de Beaulieu, a royal councillor, almoner, and chaplain in ordinary to young King Louis XIII. With Beaulieu’s help, Champlain move
d closer to the boy-king himself and made an effort to befriend the young lad by friendly attention, small acts of kindness, and gifts from New France.35
He also talked with his advisers about the most pressing problem, which was to secure an income for New France, to overcome rivalries of merchant-investors and attract them to the support of the colony. Champlain and his friends at court worked out an ingenious solution to this problem. As historian Gustave Lanctot writes, it was Champlain himself who “conceived the notion of putting the scheme into the hands of some illustrious person, whose influence would greatly outweigh that of the selfish ‘merchandisers.’” He and his advisers decided to recruit a prince of the blood, a great nobleman related to the ruling Bourbon dynasty, and in the line of succession to the throne. He would be invited to rule over New France and regulate its trade with an authority that merchants would not be able to challenge.36
An eligible candidate was Charles de Bourbon, comte de Soissons, governor of Normandy and Dauphiné. He was deeply interested in America. Champlain approached him through the sieur de Beaulieu, and asked if he would be willing to serve the cause of New France by becoming its titular head. Soissons was indeed willing. One by one, Champlain and his friends enlisted the support of the most powerful noblemen at court. Then he submitted a proposal to “the King in Council,” and on October 8, 1612, young Louis XIII granted a royal commission to the comte de Soissons as governor of New France. Soissons instantly appointed Champlain as his lieutenant. Everything was arranged—and disaster struck yet again. The comte de Soissons fell ill and died suddenly, perhaps of smallpox, on November 12, 1612, after little more than a month in office.37
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