Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  The merchants continued to protest, and took their case to other officers at the Admiralty. They got nowhere, and Louis XIII himself intervened. Champlain wrote that the merchants finally “listened to reason.” They had succeeded only in diminishing their credit with the king and his ministers, who increasingly regarded their resistance as an act of lèse majesté. The merchants of Rouen were allowed to send trading ships to New France for one more year, but the days of their company were numbered.10

  Champlain returned to North America in 1620 with greater powers than ever before. He held the rank of captain in the king’s navy, the office of lieutenant to the absentee viceroy of New France, and the role of commandant in Quebec. He had the full cooperation of the intendant, the confidence of the viceroy, and the active support of Louis XIII himself, who sent him on his way with a personal letter. The king wrote carefully: “I shall be very agreeable to the service that you will render to me on this occasion, especially if you keep the country in obedience to me, making the people there live as closely in conformity with the laws of my kingdom as you can.”11 It was a strong expression of support, but also a statement of purpose that was not the same as Champlain’s. The king instructed Champlain to impose a top-down system of absolute authority over the Indians, which he was unable to do and unwilling to attempt. Always he made a point of working with the Indians in another way.

  Armed with his new powers, Champlain sailed from Honfleur in May 1620, aboard the ship Saint-Étienne. Traveling with him for the first time was his wife, Hélène, with her companion and maid, Isabelle Terrier, a retinue of household servants, and Champlain’s manservant, a young man who would later be sent to live among the Indians and learn their language. Champlain called them his family, and it was a large one. But there were no children.12

  Also aboard were three Récollet friars in their brown Franciscan robes, led by Georges le Baillif, a man of noble birth who had been strongly recommended by the viceroy and was “highly regarded by the king.” Others who came out to Quebec were Intendant Dolu himself and an officer named Baptiste Guers, who functioned in yet another royal office as commissionnaire to the viceroy, the intendant, and Champlain. There was also a small detachment of the king’s soldiers—only a handful, but sufficient to show the flag, patrol the river, man the guns at Quebec, guard the commandant’s habitation, and keep order in the settlement. Champlain was their commander. They were merely a corporal’s guard, but he assumed yet another title: Lieutenant General for New France.13

  Saint-Étienne left Honfleur very late in the season, on May 8, 1620. Champlain wrote that they had a rough passage in stormy seas, and his family “suffered much discomfort.” They reached Gaspé after about seven weeks on June 24 and sailed up the St. Lawrence River toward Tadoussac, keeping very close to the south shore.14 Champlain was concerned about his wife’s safety, and took many precautions on this voyage. Illegal traders were on the river in fast-sailing, heavily armed vessels, and some were selling arms to the Indians. Not knowing who might be lurking in Tadoussac, Champlain took his ship into a secluded cove called Moulin-Baude two miles downriver, and dropped anchor on July 7. He made sure that Tadoussac harbor was safe, then brought Saint-Étienne in. “All praised God,” he wrote, “to find ourselves safely at our journey’s end, and I most of all on account of my family.”15

  The Gust of Wind, by Willem van der Valde, typical of conditions that Champlain met on many Atlantic crossings, and especially on the rough voyage in 1620 when his wife, Hélène, and their household came to America.

  On July 11, 1620, Champlain and his party transferred to a small barque and continued up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec. The arrival was carefully staged as a piece of political theater. He sent ahead a vessel filled with supplies for the settlement and brought another boatload of provisions, which guaranteed a warm welcome from the hungry habitants. Then he came ashore in high state, led a procession to the chapel, and once again “gave thanks to God.” The next morning, a Récollet father sang a mass and delivered a “sermon of exhortation.” He reminded the congregation of their obligation to “devote themselves to the service of His Majesty and the seigneur de Montmorency.” Champlain noted that the sermon ended in a declaration that “everyone must act in obedience to my commands, according to his Majesty’s Patents, as bestowed upon His Grace the Viceroy and given to me as his lieutenant.”

  After the sermon, the new commandant summoned the entire population of Quebec. “I assembled all the people,” he wrote, “and commanded Commissioner Guers to read aloud the King’s commission to the Viceroy, and that of his Grace the Viceroy.” All this was done “so that no one could plead ignorance.” When the reading was complete, the settlers were invited to cry “Vive le Roi,” and cannon were fired as “an expression of joy.” Champlain concluded: “Thus I took possession of the habitation and the country, in the name of My Lord the Viceroy.” He also asked Commissioner Guers to write an account of the ceremonies, “for use when and where required.”16

  One of its most important uses was to reassure Champlain’s superiors in Paris. He was carefully staging ceremonies that were fundamental to the regime in France. The complex ritual of masses and sermons joined the sanctity of the church to the prerogatives of the state. Other rituals in the order of procession and acts of obeisance enacted the concept of order as a hierarchy of estates in which everyone was assigned a place. They linked power to authority, and authority to legitimacy, through the solemn recitation of patents and edicts and royal commands, not by Champlain himself but by a royal commissioner. These rituals were combined with the discharge of cannon, and a parade of soldiers in the king’s uniform that combined the lilies of France, the cross of Jesus, the arms of the Bourbon dynasty, and the royal cipher of Louis XIII. The habitants themselves played a part in a ritual of consent. They were put on notice that if authority failed, power would be backed by force. The results were evident in the flow of events. Champlain faced no recurrence of the mutiny that had threatened his life at Quebec in 1608, although rebellions happened frequently in other French and English colonies.17

  After the ceremonies, Champlain ordered an inspection of the colony. He sent Commissioner Guers and six men upriver to Trois-Rivières, “to learn what was going on in those parts.” Others went downstream on the same errand. They spread the news of Champlain’s arrival and extended his authority through the valley of the great river.

  While that was happening, Champlain himself inspected the settlement of Quebec. On a stormy day he slogged through muddy pathways from one wretched shanty to the next and was appalled by what he found. In his words, the settlement was “in a desolate and ruinous condition.” The roofs were leaking and “the rain was coming in everywhere, and the wind blew in through all the seams in the planks.” Worse, he found that “the storehouse was on the edge of falling down, the courtyard was filthy and disgusting, and one of the dwellings had collapsed.”18

  Champlain attributed this state of things to failures of leadership. “As to the settlement,” he wrote, “it was in a very wretched state owing to the fact that the workmen had been taken off to build a dwelling for the Récollet Fathers about half a league distant on the banks of the River St. Charles, and also two other dwellings, one for the said Hébert at his farm, and one near the settlement, for the locksmith and his baker, who could not be accommodated in the precinct of the dwellings.” Champlain added that he felt not anger, but “pity” for the colonists.19

  One can only imagine what the feelings of his wife, Hélène, must have been. This beautiful young woman had been raised in an opulent Paris household, and at the court of the king himself. She was asked to live in a hovel that would have been thought unfit for animals in her world. Her reaction was perhaps reflected in the tone of Champlain’s account, which had a sense of urgency about it. “I set the men to work at once, both stone masons and carpenters, and in a short time a building was habitable for us.”20

  Champlain was also shocked to discov
er that the settlement was indefensible against attack. English and Dutch ships had been prowling the coast. Some of them were heavily armed, with crews that outnumbered the entire French population of Quebec. “We can hold our ground only by force,” he warned. He was thinking of attacks not only by other European powers but also by pirates and predators who flourished in American waters. At the same time, Champlain was concerned about the Indians. Some of the Montagnais were beginning to show signs of distance and even hostility in a manner very different from their earlier attitudes. He wrote, “Some people think that we are too strong for anyone to venture to attack us in this situation.” Champlain warned that this was a dangerous assumption: “Mistrust is the mother of security.”21

  On written instructions from the king and the viceroy, which he had helped to draft, Champlain ordered the workers in the colony to build a new fort, large enough to shelter the entire population of Quebec “in a very good situation, on a mountain that commanded the channel of the St. Lawrence River.” He called it Fort St. Louis.

  The partners of the trading company were not pleased with this project, which they regarded as a distraction from their commercial purposes, and a heavy expense. Champlain, for his part, complained of their greed and folly, and their habit of planning for the short run. “It is not always best to follow the feelings of people who think only of momentary gain,” he wrote. “It is necessary to think farther ahead.”22 He worked on a different timescale from the merchant-adventurers, who centered their thoughts on immediate returns. He also had a different way of reckoning profit and loss, not merely in monetary terms but by the test of material progress toward a larger goal.23

  This lead and tin writing set was found on the site of Champlain’s habitation, and might have been used by him. It includes a quill holder, ink well, and sand dish (for drying the ink) and a box for pencils, a penknife, letter opener, sticks of sealing wax, and small seals. It is in the Interpretation Center, Place Royale, Quebec.

  Through the first year, Champlain kept some of his laborers at work on the fortification of Quebec and ordered others to repair the storehouse. Here again he was planning for the long run. These buildings were not temporary structures. For the storehouse he found a local source of “excellent limestone” and erected a solid building that was meant to last for centuries. Champlain’s design for the storehouse was also an instrument of control. He added an outside entrance to the cellar, “closing up a trap-door that was in our warehouse, through which some persons often went to drink our liquors without any compunction.”24

  Some of the dwellings were also built of stone, as was the farm of the Hébert family. Champlain meant to encourage as many people as possible to live on the land. Twelve years after settlement, Quebec was still dependent on food from France. He intended to change all that by using public resources to promote private effort in agriculture, with small farmers producing for their own gain. Like other French leaders, he did not favor communal farming, which had been tried without success in the early years of Jamestown and Plymouth.

  • • •

  Hélène was a strong presence in the small colony. Her husband tells us that she chose to come to America of her own free will. On arrival they were met by a small boat under the command of her brother Captain Eustache Boullé, who had been in the country for two years. He had expected to greet the commandant and was amazed to discover that Hélène too was on board. Champlain wrote that Boullé “was utterly astonished to see his sister, and to learn that she herself had made up her mind to cross a sea so dangerous, and was greatly pleased, and she and I still more so.”25

  The tone of the marriage had changed very much for the better. Hélène was now twenty-two years old. As befitting her husband’s station, she had come with many servants and a well-dressed lady-in-waiting, Isabel Terrier, to keep her company. With Champlain’s manservants, they made a ménage of more than half a dozen people. This was the first time that a commandant of Quebec had maintained something like a domestic establishment in New France. Its presence changed the character of the settlement.26

  Hélène had a great impact in Quebec, and she was long remembered by Indians and Europeans alike. The Indians were not prepared for her. In Acadia, Lescarbot wrote that male settlers had told the Indians that the ladies of France wore beards and mustaches. Then Hélène arrived, and the Indians were overwhelmed by her beauty, youth, grace, and refinement, as indeed were the French habitants. Francis Parkman wrote: “Madame de Champlain was still very young. If the Ursuline Tradition is to be trusted, the Indians [were] amazed at her beauty, and touched by her gentleness.”27

  She was also very bright. Like her husband she was filled with curiosity about this strange new world of North America, and she became deeply interested in the Indians. After settling in, Hélène studied the Algonquian languages of the St. Lawrence Valley, and learned them well enough to teach Indian children. Indian women also gathered around her. She nursed them through their illnesses, comforted them in their troubles, and talked to them of her Christian faith.

  A happy story has come down to us about her work with them. It was recounted in the nineteenth century by N.-E. Dionne, who wrote that it had been “the fashion of the time for a lady of quality to wear … a small mirror, and the youthful Hélène observed the custom.” The Indian women were fascinated by the mirror, which she wore on a chain around her neck. They gathered round and studied their reflection. One of the women asked why she could see her own reflection so close to Hélène’s breasts. Hélène replied, “because you are so near my heart.” One Indian remarked, “A lady so handsome, who cures our diseases, and loves us to so great an extent as to bear our image near her breast, must be superior to a human being.”28

  This “pretty story of the mirror, jolie histoire du miroir,” as one scholar calls it, was passed down by the Ursuline sisters who later lived with Hélène in France and knew her well. We have no reason to doubt its authenticity. It helps us to understand this remarkable young woman and her complex relationship with her husband. Since the discovery of documents about their troubled early years together, historians have tended to bring out the worst in the relationship and to extend it over the entire span of the marriage. An historical novelist has built a breathless two-volume work of romantic fiction on that assumption without a shred of evidence. Other sources strongly suggest that the marriage improved with time and maturity. Despite Champlain’s many Atlantic crossings, the couple managed to spend most of their time together. Historian Marcel Trudel calculated that in their three hundred months of married life (actually 255 months from December 1610 to December 1635, not including the initial separation), they spent more than 181 months living together.29

  When they were apart, business records indicate that Hélène supported Champlain’s work, managed his investments in commercial companies, defended his interests, and championed his grand design. We have very little information about her, but every piece of evidence for the later years of their marriage, and especially in the period from 1618 to 1633, indicates that they grew closer to one another than historians have assumed from their early troubles. Champlain and his wife lived and worked harmoniously together in Quebec. They shared an interest in the Indians, a spirit of humanity, and a growing piety. She also appears to have won the affection of Indians and habitants in Quebec, and especially the Hébert family, who asked her to be godmother for their children.

  Another person who strongly supported Champlain in Quebec was the intendant, Jean-Jacques Dolu. The viceroy and the king had ordered him to go with Champlain, live in Quebec, observe closely, and report on conditions in the colony. Champlain wrote that Dolu’s primary task in New France was “to introduce good order (bon règlement) there,” and he noted that the intendant “busied himself in it with entire devotion, burning with zeal to do something for the advancement of the glory of God and of the country, and to put our company into a better condition of prosperity than it had been.”30

  They se
em to have got on very well in America, as they had in France. Champlain wrote, for example, “I saw him on this subject and made him understand the situation, and gave him notes for his instruction.” Dolu returned to France in the late summer of 1620 and made his report. Early the next spring, the first ships of the season brought a bag of mail for Champlain, with letters from Viceroy Montmorency and the king himself. Dolu had delivered his evaluation. In the words of one historian it was a “damning report” on conditions in the colony but with high praise for Champlain. The letters that followed from the king were very positive, and Viceroy Montmorency doubled Champlain’s salary.31

  While the weather was still warm in 1620, Champlain began to prepare for the winter. He always remembered the colonies that had failed because they ran short of food, and he himself had lived through the agony of scurvy at Sainte-Croix, Port-Royal, and Quebec. He was determined that it would not happen again. “I took stock of the provisions,” he wrote, “so as to make them last till the return of the vessels [in the spring].”32

  The ships had brought from France a large supply of food, more than enough to support the entire population for a year. He reckoned the population that would winter over at “sixty persons all told, men, women, friars and children.” As winter came, he made a point of keeping them all occupied and well fed. When spring arrived in 1621, he wrote, “Everyone was in good health, save one man who was killed by the fall of a tree, which crushed his skull.”33 Nobody died of scurvy or any other illness—a great achievement for an infant colony in the seventeenth century. Thereafter, under Champlain’s command there would be no major problem with scurvy, except a small outbreak at Trois-Rivières in 1634–35. The habitants of Quebec began to receive more varied provisions from France. Champlain wrote that one vessel brought “some puncheons of cider, biscuits, peas and dried plums.”34 Spruce beer, which has antiscorbutic properties, may have helped, but the only remedy mentioned explicitly by Champlain was fresh meat.35