Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  There was no reply. A year later, on August 18, 1634, Champlain wrote again. He reported that many artisans and families had arrived, and that the effort of the Hundred Associates had given him new courage. He mentioned that he had named a river after Richelieu, and also an island fifteen leagues above Quebec, on which he had built a fort to control movement on the great river. Once again he asked for 120 men.53

  These annual letters from Quebec must have been tiresome for Richelieu to receive. Perhaps he never even read them. He did not like to be hectored by his inferiors, particularly by this troublesome old commoner who was driven by a dream. If he replied at all, no letter has survived. When the cardinal’s thoughts turned to colonies in this period, he gave more attention to Guadeloupe than Quebec, more to Martinique than Acadia, more to North Africa than North America, more to the Indian Ocean than the Atlantic. For the Catholics of New France the cardinal’s inattention must have appeared a form of punishment. For the Calvinists of New England, it might have seemed a gift of Providence.54

  22.

  THE PEOPLING OF QUEBEC

  The Pivotal Moment, 1632–35

  Enfin des colons! At last, the colonists!

  —Marcel Trudel on the years 1633–361

  WHEN CHAMPLAIN returned to Quebec as governor in 1633, he found seventy-seven people living there. Their numbers were smaller than the eighty suffering souls who had settled on Sainte-Croix Island in 1604 three decades earlier. The peopling of New France had been his goal from the start, but for thirty years Champlain and other leaders made little progress. The French population of North America ebbed and flowed at low levels, with no sustained growth and scarcely any natural increase.

  For three decades most French inhabitants of North America were birds of passage—solitary males who stayed briefly and moved on. In the year 1632, when Jesuit father Paul Le Jeune arrived in Quebec, he reported that only one French family was living there.2 This was the Hébert-Couillard household, the extended family that Champlain had helped to establish in 1617. Hébert had died in the winter of 1626–1627 after a fall on the ice. His widow, Marie Rollet, remarried and remained in Quebec. Their daughter Guillemette Hébert married an illiterate ship’s carpenter named Guillaume Couillard, and by 1632 she had given birth to four daughters: Louise, then aged 8; Marguerite, 7; Elizabeth, 2, and Marie, 6 months.3 Father Le Jeune visited their home, “the oldest house in the country,” and wrote, “God is blessing them every day; he has given them very beautiful children, their cattle are in fine condition, and their land produces good grain.”4

  The Héberts and Couillards showed what could be done, but they had suffered much through the years. Commercial companies had cruelly exploited them. An Indian had killed one of their workers. French and English predators had looted their property. By 1632, the Hébert-Couillard family had lost heart, and Father Le Jeune was dismayed to learn that they had decided to give up and go home. “They were seeking some way of returning to France,” he wrote.5 Then, when the Héberts and Couillards learned that the French were coming back to Quebec, “they began to regain courage, and when they saw our ships coming in with the white flags on their masts, they knew not how to express their joy.”6

  A hopeful sketch of Quebec as St. Matthew’s shining city on a hill, with many spires and crucifixes. In the foreground are symbols of agriculture, commerce on the river, and industry on the water’s edge, where a small barque with a dangerously high poop is taking shape.

  In the spring of 1633, Champlain arrived with three ships and about 150 settlers. That event proved to be a pivotal moment in the peopling of Quebec. They were followed in 1634 by four ships with two hundred colonists, and in 1635 by six vessels with three hundred more immigrants. These thirteen shiploads of settlers marked the true beginning of a sustainable French population that was able to reproduce itself in Quebec.7

  Its rate of growth was still painfully slow. Between 1633 and 1636, as many as half of these new immigrants returned to France. Even so, the number of hivernants who wintered in Quebec increased from 77 in 1632–33, to 227 in 1633–34, and about 400 in 1635–36.8 Once started, this new trend continued for many years. A thousand immigrants arrived between 1636 and 1640; 3,500 more from 1640 to 1659; and 9,000 from 1660 to 1699. The “take-off” came during the years of Champlain’s governorship from 1633 to 1635, a moment of “deep change,” when one change-regime yielded to another.9

  Champlain’s dream of a self-sustaining French population in Quebec hinged on women such as this young Canadienne, with her pretty face, sturdy forearms, white cap, black shawl, and gleaming crucifix: an image of beauty, industry, virtue, grace, and piety.

  The vital factor was the growing proportion of French immigrants who were women and girls. In the autumn of 1632 Father Le Jeune counted five French females in Quebec, all in the Hébert-Couillard household. By 1636, according to historian Marcel Trudel’s count, at least sixty-five women were living in Quebec plus seventy-eight children.10

  As more women settled in the colony, other trends appeared. The proportion of single females who found husbands was very high, higher than in France. Their age at first marriage was low, far below European levels: before 1660 most Quebec brides married in their teens and had many children. In families that remained intact through the wife’s childbearing years, the average number of babies born alive was between eight and nine. Mortality of infants was high, but fertility was much higher. This dynamic population began to double every twenty-five years and it kept on doubling at that rate for many generations. From these small beginnings in the years from 1633 to 1635, the European population of Quebec grew at an extraordinary rate. It might be observed of New France, as of New England, that the only biblical commandment these Christians consistently obeyed was to increase and multiply.11

  The result was a genetic pattern in Quebec that astonished the demographers who studied it. The French population of Quebec and its kin in North America now number in the millions. One careful study of this large population finds that it grew from a small genetic base. More than two-thirds are descendants of 1,100 French women who came to Quebec between 1630 and 1680.12

  Champlain’s role was critically important. He actively promoted the peopling of Quebec in a spirit that was very different from that of other French leaders. He did all in his power to encourage it. Other leaders were more interested in regulating it. Cardinal Richelieu’s Hundred Associates had been ordered in letters patent to “populate the country with native-born French Catholics.” This was the wish of the Royal Council and Richelieu himself. Champlain favored a more open policy.

  A case in point was his relationship with the family of Abraham Martin, called Maître Abraham, l’Écossais.13 He was a seaman and fisherman of Scottish origin who turned up in the port of Dieppe. There he married a French woman named Marguerite Langlois before 1619, and they came to New France perhaps in the following year. Martin worked as a seaman and fisherman on the St. Lawrence River, rose to the rank of pilot and master of a company barque, and built a house in Quebec.14 A child was born and baptized Eustache Martin, son of “sieur Martin (Abraham) and Marguerite Langlois his wife” on October 24, 1621. Eustache is sometimes celebrated as “the first French baby born in America,” certainly the first recorded baptism in New France. The name suggests that the godfather may have been Champlain’s brother-in-1aw, Eustache Boullé, who was then in Quebec with his sister Hélène Boullé and Champlain. They did all in their power to support Abraham and Marguerite and their growing brood.15

  The Martin family lived in Quebec until the British conquest in 1629, when they returned to Dieppe. They remained there until 1632 and came back later that year or the next. Once more Abraham Martin went to work on the river. He and Marguerite had at least three sons who died without issue, and six daughters who married and produced many children. Large numbers of the French-speaking population of Quebec are descended from the daughters of Marguerite Langlois and Abraham Martin, l’Écossais.16

 
; Later in life, Abraham Martin continued to do his best to populate Quebec. In 1649, at the age of sixty-four, he got himself into trouble for fornication with a “jeune voleuse,” a juvenile delinquent who was sixteen years old. Historians observe that this episode did nothing to damage Maître Abraham’s reputation in New France. He did well as the master of a river barque, flourished in the fisheries, and remained an honored member of the community.17

  Champlain welcomed the Martin family, strongly supported them, and rejoiced in their fecundity. Abraham Martin received a grant of twelve arpents of land near Quebec in 1635, and later twenty arpents more from “friends.” Champlain himself dipped into his own wealth and bequeathed to Martin a sum of 1,200 livres to clear land and settle his offspring near Quebec.18 A persistent legend in Quebec tells us that Martin owned part of the high ground above the town, and that the Plains of Abraham took its name from him. Some historians believe that this legend is founded in fact; others dispute it.19 Beyond doubt, Champlain made a major effort to settle Abraham Martin’s family on the land above the town, surveyed the land with his own hand, built a fourteen-foot roadway up the hill, and helped Martin settle his children on the land.20 Champlain was happy to have a mixed French and Scottish family in Quebec. Thanks to the strong genes of Abraham l’Écossais, the fecundity of Marguerite Langlois, and the tolerant spirit of Samuel Champlain, many French-speaking Québécois today have an ancestral right to wear the kilt and sporran.

  Another example of Champlain’s role in the peopling of Quebec followed in 1634. The largest single addition to the population of the colony in this period was the extended family of Robert Giffard de Moncel, a close friend of Champlain. Giffard was an apothecary and master surgeon, a man of wealth and rank from Perche, southeast of Normandy. He came to New France as a ship’s surgeon in 1621 or 1622 and liked what he saw. Giffard shared Champlain’s dream of New France and his vision of humanity in relations with the Indians. He sought to marry an Indian woman and settle permanently in America. She accepted his proposal, but her nation rejected him, and he went home to France.21

  The dream still haunted Giffard, and in 1627 he returned to Quebec and built a cabin at La Canardière near Beauport, a few miles below Quebec. When British freebooters captured New France, they made Giffard their prisoner and stole his property. He made his way home to France and with Champlain’s support asked the Company of the Hundred Associates to compensate him with a grant of land. They gave him a large holding on both banks of the Beauport River near the site of his old cabin. In turn Giffard undertook to bring colonists at his own expense and settle them on the land. Champlain helped with the arrangements in much the same way that he had helped the Hébert-Couillard and Martin families.22

  In 1634 Giffard came to America with his French wife, Marie Renouard, who was eight months pregnant. A week after their arrival she gave birth to a healthy daughter, and both survived. Giffard used his wealth to recruit a large party of relatives and servants. Altogether he brought forty-two people to New France in that year: ten men, eight women and twenty-four children, mostly from Perche. Another large group followed in 1635, and more thereafter. A census in 1666 found twenty-nine families and 184 people living on or near Giffard’s land, and they were multiplying at a mighty rate. Giffard himself was the driver, and Champlain was an enabler who helped in many ways, and in the face of many setbacks.23

  The beginning of sustained population growth in Quebec was fundamental to Champlain’s grand design, and an artifact of his intention. Its success, after many years of failed effort, came as a great relief to him. In 1634 he wrote to Richelieu, “Seeing so many artisans and families who have migrated this year gives me new courage.”24 At the same time Champlain’s leadership gave those French families the courage to go forward on their errand into the new world. The immigrants and their progeny regarded him as their patron and protector. A nineteenth-century descendant wrote that Champlain was “the providential man in whom was placed the confidence of all the families” who came to Quebec in the years from 1633 to 1635.25

  In these pivotal years, Champlain also had an impact on the development of the seigneurial system, which began to expand in Quebec during his governorship. It was designed to work as an engine of population growth. Champlain himself got it started in 1623 when he arranged a grant of land for Louis Hébert just outside Quebec and ordered workers in the colony to build a family home and farm. Champlain had also arranged for the seigneurial grant of the Île d’Orléans to Émery de Caën and his family.26

  After Champlain’s return in 1633, a general pattern of seigneurial grants became the standard way of organizing the land in New France. It was a system of elegant simplicity, centered at first on the St. Lawrence River. Each grant was defined by a survey line, commonly at right angles to the St. Lawrence, and also to other rivers and streams near Quebec and later Montreal. The result was a riparian pattern of landholding that was crisp and very clean. It was more orderly than the metes and bounds of Virginia, which created a pattern of landholdings like a crazy quilt; and it was more adaptable to the terrain than the rectangles which New Englanders spread west across the continent.27

  No original document has been found that established the seigneurial system in a definitive way. A pivotal moment was the grant of the seigneury of Beauport to Robert Giffard de Moncel on January 15, 1634, when Champlain was governor.28 From that moment, the system began to spread rapidly. Seigneurs received land and feudal privileges in return for a commitment to bring colonists to Canada at their expense. Quebec from the start acquired a nobility, or more accurately a landed gentry, under the auspices of the Company of the Hundred Associates. Later the Crown granted seigneuries mainly to nobles, but this was not a high nobility. With a few exceptions such as the Sillery family, it did not include families from the top ranks of the French nobility. There were no princes of the blood in Quebec, and nothing like the great ducal families whose châteaux dominated the French countryside and whose hôtels lined the Champs d’Élysées. Even so, an elite of feudal seigneurs became firmly established in New France. Below the seigneurs were sous-seigneurs and habitants working long narrow strips of fertile land that ran back from the river. Beneath them were the engagés, servants and a few slaves. The result was a truncated stratification system, but stratified nonetheless. It was “a society built on networks of kinship and patronage.” It began to flourish in Champlain’s time, with his encouragement.29

  And it kept on growing. Even today, four centuries later, this system of land use can still be observed in many parts of the St. Lawrence Valley. Visitors to the city of Quebec can see it by making a short drive across a modern bridge that leads to the Île d’Orléans. Here one still finds the long riparian strips, with old houses of modest size, and small stone-built parish churches. The seigneurs of New France did not as a rule build great châteaux in splendid isolation; they lived modestly and farmed the land beside their tenants.

  Another place to observe the remains of this old seigneurial system is on the south bank of the St. Lawrence River from Rivière-du-Loup downstream toward Rimouski. Here again one still finds the long narrow fields sretching back at right angles to the river. On a ridge of high ground parallel to the shoreline, the old houses still stand today, lovingly preserved with colorful paintwork that vividly displays their distinctive architecture.

  The same riparian system of land grants also appeared along the larger tributaries of the St. Lawrence. These patterns later spread south along the Richelieu River toward Lake Champlain, and some of these seigneuries continued to exist under the laws of the state of New York until 1854. It was also established in parts of what is now New Brunswick, and traces of it still appear in the state of Maine. On the eastern side of Mount Desert Island, traces can be seen at Hulls Cove in an estate called Cover Farm, with its long strip of land running back from the Frenchman Bay. Cover Farm was the seat of a seigneury given to a Gascon adventurer named Antoine de La Mothe Cadillac, seigneur de Douaquet et
des Monts Déserts. Later the seigneurie passed to Cadillac’s granddaughter, a formidable woman named Maria Theresa de Grégoire, who, with the help of the marquis de Lafayette, convinced the General Court of Massachusetts to accept her claim. The deeds for the homes of this historian’s family on Mount Desert Island descend from that old French seigneury.30

  As this system of land use began to develop in New France, something else started to happen in that same pivotal moment. A distinctive culture began to grow in Quebec. It was a creation of French immigrants, and of Champlain himself, and it began to emerge in the critical period from 1633 to 1635. This new culture developed from the interplay of a new environment and old folkways that the newcomers had carried from France. This hybrid was very much a product of an historical moment in the seventeenth century. Timing made a difference, and its place of origin was important too—not France in general, but particular regions within that kingdom.

  In the critical period from 1633 to 1635, immigrant ships to Quebec came mostly from Norman ports. The largest number of settlers were from Normandy itself. Their proportion has been estimated variously at between 18 and 31 percent of the whole. Perche, inland from Normandy, supplied another 4 percent, probably more. The Île de France, east of Normandy in the valley of the Seine, contributed 15 percent. Picardy and Champagne added 5 percent; Brittany, 3.5 percent; Maine, 3 percent; and the Loire Valley, about 7 percent. Altogether, about 60 percent of colonists in the St. Lawrence Valley came from these provinces in northern and western France, mostly between the valleys of the Seine and Loire.31

  They were joined by a smaller but important flow of migration from another region—four provinces in the west-center of France, which supplied about 30 percent of Quebec’s founders, of whom about 17 percent were from Aunis and Champlain’s Saintonge, 11 percent from neighboring Poitou, and 2 percent from Angoumois. All the other provinces of France together added only about 10 percent to Quebec’s colonizing families.32