Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  On June 17, he and his party were back at the falls near Montreal. Champlain confronted Vignau and demanded an explanation. The young Frenchman confessed that he had never been to the northern sea, and had lied about it so that he would be taken back. He asked Champlain “to leave him in the country among the Indians.” Champlain asked some of the Indians to take him in, but wrote that “none of the Indians would have him, in spite of my request, and we left him in God’s keeping.” Vignau walked off into the forest, and Champlain never saw him again. Perhaps he formed a union with an Indian woman, or possibly he became a solitary trader. He may have been killed by the Indians, who hated a liar more than a murderer. His fate is unknown.64

  Champlain never reached Hudson Bay, but on his long journey he succeeded in exploring the Ottawa Valley and made alliances with many Algonquin nations. He returned to Quebec, but could stay only briefly. It was time to go home and deal with problems and intrigues on the other side of the Atlantic. He sailed from Tadoussac on August 8, 1613, and reached France on September 26, in time to resume his labors there.

  Within a few weeks of his return, Champlain had formed a new investment group called La Compagnie du Canada. He worked hard to bring together merchants of La Rochelle, Rouen, and Saint-Malo as investors in a single company, each town holding one-third of the shares. The object was to unite three leading centers in a single venture, all licensed by the viceroy. Champlain organized a meeting on November 13, 1613, and men from Rouen and Saint-Malo were present. Among the drivers were merchants of three families: Le Gendre, Porée, and Boyer. They agreed to the proposal, and saved a third of the shares for the men of La Rochelle.65

  The company was formally founded on November 20, 1613, with Condé’s active sponsorship. The investors were granted a monopoly of the fur trade in the St. Lawrence Valley to Quebec and beyond, for a period of eleven years. In return, the company agreed to contribute 1,000 crowns each year, and transport at least six families of settlers every season, which pleased Champlain. It also promised to make an annual gift to the viceroy of a highbred horse worth a thousand écus, an arrangement that greatly gratified the prince.66

  The company appeared to work for a time, but at the last minute the merchants of La Rochelle withdrew, and somehow they persuaded the prince to give them a special “passport” to send their own trading vessel to the St. Lawrence. One wonders how many blooded horses that arrangement may have cost. In that act, Condé broke the monopoly of Champlain’s company, fueled intense animosities between the trading towns, and gave rise to twenty years of litigation. Undeterred, Champlain went to Rouen to meet his business partners, and left them “well pleased with the mission.” he merchants of Rouen pledged to support settlers and to keep them in provisions.67

  The prime mover was Champlain himself. The leading historian of trading companies in New France calls this new group “Champlain’s Company.” Champlain himself was careful to call it the Compagnie de Condé. It represented a change of leadership. The sieur de Mons continued as an investor, but not as an officer of the company. After ten years of faithful leadership he moved to the periphery and Champlain replaced him at the center. Under the auspices of the new viceroy, Champlain became the leader of the colonizing effort in New France, and would continue in that role for twenty-two years, from 1613 until his death in 1635.68

  While working with his investors, Champlain somehow found the time to finish another book called Les voyages du Sieur de Champlain, Xaintongeois, capitaine ordinaire pour le Roy, en la marine. It bore the date of 1613 and was published by Jean Berjon, at the sign of the Flying Horse on the rue St. Jean de Beauvais in Paris. It was a work of extraordinary quality and detail, both in its text and in its maps. Champlain included thirteen very accurate charts of harbors and coasts in North America, based on his meticulous surveys and drawn with his own hand.69

  He also published three larger maps of New France. One of them was called a “Carte Géographique de la Nouvelle France (1612),” a long narrow map that centered on the St. Lawrence Valley. The cartography was not his best, but the plate was a superb work of art—the most beautiful and visually appealing of all his maps. Its object was to attract interest in the colony and its native inhabitants, with very handsome engravings of the Indians, the flora and fauna. Most of all, it was meant to draw and hold the attention of the queen regent, young Louis XIII, and their ministers. The royal arms were added, not on the land but on the sea. The map appears on the front endpaper of this book.70

  Two other Champlain maps of this period (1611–13) were interesting in other ways. They are less striking as works of art, but more developed as works of cartographic science. They are two different states of the same base-map, and to study them together is to see how Champlain’s cartographic knowledge was growing. The first state of this map was begun in 1611 with the collaboration of David Pelletier, a highly skilled engraver, and finished in 1612. It has a rectolinear projection centered on the 45th parallel of latitude. After it was done, Champlain returned to America and explored the Ottawa River. He also saw a newly published work called Tabula Nautica by Hessel Gerritsz, which showed the explorations of Henry Hudson in northern waters and Hudson Bay. On the basis of this new information, Champlain revised his earlier map. The result added more information about North America and made an important point about the possibility of a northwest passage.71 In all these works, writes a student of Champlain’s cartography, “the input of effort and outpouring of information is astonishing in itself, but the real miracle of Champlain’s work is its quality and originality.” He dedicated his books and maps to the young King Louis XIII and the Queen Regent. He desperately needed their help.72

  Champlain’s Voyages (1613) were issued in two books bound as one. This was his handsomest work, with fourteen maps and much of his best surviving art. The work described his travels (and travails) in America and France from 1604 to 1611. It was dedicated to the young King and the difficult Queen Regent.

  • • •

  In 1614, thinking partly of their concerns, Champlain returned to the old problem of religion in New France, and searched for a new solution. He decided to recruit some “good friars” to “plant the faith” in Canada, or at least to do what was possible in the way of their vocation. The way he went about it is very revealing—both of the man himself and of the enormous problems that he faced.73

  He consulted with his friend Louis Hoüel, the king’s secretary and controller general of the salt works at Brouage. Hoüel was “a man of pious habits, and inspired with a great zeal and love for the Honour of God.” He had a particular fondness for the “good fathers of the Récollets,” a Franciscan order that had been founded in Spain as early as 1484, and been admitted to France in 1592. Hoüel urged Champlain to take a few Récollets to New France, offered to support them from his own pocket, and promised to find other donors.74

  This proposed solution created problems within the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Récollet fathers were reluctant to act without a commission of the Pope, and the Papal Nuncio Roberto Ubaldini refused to help. In another amazing scene, Champlain went to an assembly of all the French cardinals and bishops, who had gathered in Paris for the meeting of the Estates General in 1614. His talks with them were a great success. The French prelates gave Champlain their full support, and even contributed 1,500 livres to support the mission.75

  Champlain at last was having some success in building a broad base at home for his purposes in North America. During the difficult period from 1610 to 1614, he had gathered a powerful group of supporters at court, and worked closely with them. At the same time, he also founded a new investment company to replace that of the sieur de Mons. And he established close relations with Catholic leaders and the Récollets, while keeping on good terms with Jesuits and other groups.

  Although things were going better for Champlain in his public affairs, he suffered a calamity in his private life. His marriage came apart. Hélène Boullé Champlain was by all accounts a
beautiful, intelligent, and high-spirited young girl. When they married in 1610, Champlain was more than three times her age, and they had little in common. She was a young, city-bred Parisienne of affluent family; he was a middle-aged, battle-scarred soldier and seaman of modest provincial origins. She longed to be among family and friends; he enjoyed the company of Indians, soldiers, and seamen. She lived among the ceremonies of the court; he was away for long periods, often living among the Indians.

  Champlain’s Geographic Map of New France in Its True Meridian survives in two printers’ states. This, the first of them, shows the results of his explorations through 1611.

  Another divisive issue may have been the religion that they had in common. Both appear to have been catechized as Protestants and become devout Catholics. Each of them embraced their Catholic faith with a fervor that may have kept them from embracing each other. They drew a veil of silence over their marriage, and we shall never know the secrets of their life together. But two facts were clear enough. Champlain was devoted to his young wife but from a distance. And Hélène Boullé was deeply unhappy.

  In August of 1613, when Champlain returned to France, Hélène’s parents ordered her to move in with her husband as the prenuptial contract had required. During the weeks that followed Hélène rebelled. According to the testimony of Hélène’s parents, things began to go wrong in the fall. The breaking point came on January 4, 1614, when Hélène suddenly fled from her husband’s house. Nobody could find her. Her parents were frantic with anger, worry, and embarrassment. They raged against Hélène for the “atrocious and scandalous injury” that she had done to the “honor and good name” of her family. On January 10, 1614, her parents called in two notaries and disinherited her.76

  The second state of the same map is similar in most ways, but it includes new information from Champlain’s travels in 1612, and also from a new Dutch account of Henry Hudson’s voyage to the north. In this revision one sees Champlain’s passion for truth and his hunger for new knowledge.

  Somehow her husband and parents tracked her down. Hélène was convinced or compelled to return to her husband, and a reconciliation of sorts followed. They lived in the same house, but there were no children, and one wonders if they were living as man and wife. Champlain, for his part, declared on his deathbed that Hélène was the only woman he ever loved.77 She became a dutiful consort to her husband and made a determined effort to support him. She would go to Canada with him of her own free will, and stayed with him there for five years. She helped promote his cause in France. Little evidence survives about the interior of this marriage. Scraps of material suggest that it grew very cold around the year 1614, warmed about five years later, and grew colder again in the late 1620s. But even when they lived together, it was one of the most difficult of all triangles: a younger woman, an older man, and a grand design.

  15.

  HURONIA

  A Year Among the Indians, 1615–16

  It is not the act of a warrior, as you call yourself, to behave cruelly toward women who have no other defence than their tears, and who … one should treat with humanity.

  —Champlain to Iroquet, war chief of the Algonquin Petite-Nation, 16151

  AS SPRING APPROACHED IN 1615, Champlain was anxious to leave for America. At the end of February, he left Paris for Rouen and met his merchant-partners. The meetings went well. Old investors rallied to the enterprise, and new ones came forward.2

  Champlain asked the merchants to support a few missionaries in Canada and wrote that “our associates were well pleased with this.” On the last day of winter, March 20, 1615, he organized yet another meeting in Rouen, so that the venture capitalists could meet the Récollet fathers. Each group was vital to the success of New France, but together they made a difficult combination. One part of the problem was the eternal tension between God and mammon. Another was the continuing strife between Protestant investors and Catholic clergy.3

  Other leaders might have kept these groups apart. Champlain brought them together in the same room. He was effective in the role of intermediary, conciliator, and what the French call a porte-parole.4 “We sojourned together for some time,” Champlain later recalled. The Récollet fathers grew more enthusiastic for their mission. The venture capitalists promised to “assist the said fathers to the utmost” and offered “to keep them in provisions.”5

  In early April Champlain led the Récollets and some of the merchants down the river Seine from Rouen to Honfleur, where a great ship was loading for New France. In that small but busy port, Champlain had raised enough money to charter the Saint-Étienne, a large navire of 350 tons. She was a good ship and a fast sailor. Once again her captain was Champlain’s old friend and shipmate Pont-Gravé.6

  • • •

  Rouen in 1550. This city on the lower Seine was the center of commerce and capital in Normandy. Champlain often met with his investors here and had much business before its courts. He suff ered many defeats at the hands of monied men who regarded his dream as a drain on their capital—which it was.

  In Honfleur, Champlain recalled, “we remained some days, waiting for our vessel to be fitted out, and laden with the necessary things for so long a voyage.” Mountains of provisions and trading goods on the quayside were carried aboard the Saint-Étienne and stowed below. More investors signed on, and the crew was rounded out with seamen from the port of Le Havre, across the Seine.7

  These rough seafaring men were a vital part of colonial enterprise, but they are often anonymous in its history. At Honfleur Champlain turned his attention to them in a new way. He encouraged the Récollet fathers to look after their spiritual condition. In Champlain’s words, each seaman and soldier was invited “to examine his soul, to cleanse himself of his sins, to receive the sacrament and put himself in a state of grace so as to become afterward more free (plus libre) in his own conscience and in God’s keeping, when he exposed himself to the mercy of the waves in a great and dangerous sea.”8

  Here we see the continuing growth of Champlain’s Christian faith—and its special character. There was little theology in his thinking and no ecclesiology at all, but much of Christian piety. In the best spirit of the universal Catholic Church, Champlain’s piety reached out to embrace all humanity—an attitude very different from that of the Calvinists who founded New England and New Netherland. Champlain believed that Christianity made men more free, “plus libre” in his phrase. He was thinking of grace as liberation from sin, and of Christianity as the freedom to be one with Christ in communion with other free souls. These ideas were growing more important in his own life, and in the history of New France.9

  While Champlain looked to the spiritual condition of his migratory flock, he also tended to the expedition’s material needs. One of his last tasks was to load shallops aboard his ship, and to acquire several midsized shallow-draft vessels, designed for exploration and trade on the St. Lawrence River. Champlain called them his barques. They were larger than a shallop and smaller than an ocean-going navire. One wonders how he got them to America. Were they knocked down in the hold or nested together on the weather deck of the Saint-Étienne? Such techniques worked better for small shallops than for middling barques. Did they come at the end of a towline? A long tow was dangerous in a following sea. Or did his moyennes barques sail independently? Perhaps the Saint-Étienne led them in convoy across the ocean, like a mother duck with her straggling brood. Whatever the method, Champlain was delighted with the result. His versatile moyennes barques were vital to the life of New France.10

  At last the work was done. Passengers and crew approached the moment of departure, when a seaman’s pulse begins to race and even landsmen share the excitement of a fresh start. On April 24, 1615, Champlain and Captain Pont-Gravé came aboard the Saint-Étienne. The Récollet fathers blessed the ship and all who sailed in her. Deckhands hauled in the long, heavy anchor cable until it was “up and down.” On command the ship’s anchor came “aweigh” from the bottom. Topmen raced aloft,
and released the billowing sails from their gaskets. On the weather deck, hands went to braces, and the sails began to fill. The wind and tide carried the ship away from her mooring. As she gathered steerage way the pilot guided her safely out of Honfleur’s tight little harbor into the brown current of the Seine, and turned her prow toward the deep blue water of the North Atlantic.

  It was a late crossing, and a lucky one. In fine spring weather, the Saint-Étienne spread her sails before a “very favorable wind,” and they went flying across the western ocean. The timing of the voyage made a difference. Champlain noted with relief, “We made the voyage without meeting any ice, or other hazards, thanks be to God, and in a short time arrived at the place called Tadoussac on the 25th day of May.” Allowing for the long passage up the St. Lawrence River, which often took ten days or more, the ocean crossing to the Grand Banks must have lasted no more than twenty days. It was a passage of surprising speed for an east-west voyage, and a tribute to the seamanship of her commanders.

  Between the two of them, Pont-Gravé and Champlain had made more than fifty crossings of the North Atlantic, and they never lost a large ship at sea. A lucky voyage was one thing. A long run of lucky voyages was quite another, and it had deep meaning for men who went down to the sea in ships. With every voyage, Champlain was gaining a reputation as a fortunate commander. Seafaring men are superstitious that way. They know what a rogue wave can do, or a white squall that could strike without warning and blow a navire as big as the Saint-Étienne on her beam-end.

  In their day and ours, sailors who survive those events come to believe in fortune as a driving force in their dangerous world. They observe from experience that some people have good fortune and others do not. They also think that fortune is a fickle goddess, and make every effort to propitiate her. Even in our own time, seamen with postgraduate degrees in science will go out of their way to avoid starting a long voyage on a Friday. Modern naval officers trained to reason and empiricism make a habit of never setting their caps upside down, in fear that they might fill with water and sink. They like to sail with lucky captains and dread a leader who is thought to be a Jonah.