Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  These patterns of regional origin appeared in the first large stream of migration during the years from 1632 to 1636. Once started they continued in what scholars call a pattern of chain-migration—families, friends, and neighbors who followed others they knew to America. The primary area of recruitment was a triangle that extended from the seaports of Dieppe and Honfleur inland to Paris, a hundred miles from the sea. The secondary area ran along the Bay of Biscay from Nantes and La Rochelle to Brouage and Royan, and reached inland as far as Tours and Loudon. This regional pattern developed from networks of investors, captains, outfitters, acquaintances and friends of Champlain in two areas of western France.

  It is a surprise to find that two other coastal regions of France were not prominent in these migrations to Quebec. Not so many immigrants came from the ports of Brittany or from southwestern maritime towns such as Saint-Jean-de-Luz. These other places had important American connections in other ways. They were major centers for the North Atlantic fisheries in the seventeenth century, but they did not contribute to the peopling of Quebec as did the northwest and the center west. To repeat, this pattern began to appear in the period of Champlain’s leadership, from 1633 to 1635.

  The importance of these regional origins was evident in the culture that began to develop in Quebec during Champlain’s era. One of the best ways to study its history is through its language.33 In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, visitors such as John Lambert (1809) observed that the Quebec speech had a distinct character. Linguists later studied this dialect in detail and found a close kinship to archaic patterns of speech in northwestern France during the early seventeenth century. Marker vowels are similar, and different from metropolitan French today. For example, e went to a, and a to o, and oi to e (froid became fret). Long vowels were (and are) diphthongs, as père became pèire. Final consonants that are silent in metropolitan French today are sometimes pronounced, and archaic suffixes such as eux in obstineux (obstinant) and téteux (stubborn) or niaiseux (irritating) persisted in the new world.

  Vocabulary of Quebec shows a similar pattern. Blueberries are myrtilles in France today but bluets in Quebec, as they were in the writings of Champlain. That usage was standard during the early seventeenth century, but is now archaic in Paris, where bluets have become French cornflowers. Many other seventeenth-century words from Champlain’s era have disappeared in France and persisted in Quebec. Linguistic rituals of courtesy and deference from early modern France still have an echo in Quebec. Mon oncle (my uncle) and ma tante (my aunt) have become single words. People speak of mon mononcle and ma matante, which are elided into the affectionate rhythms of momononcle and mamatante.

  The founders of Quebec came by sea from maritime towns, and the language of their descendants still has a nautical flavor that derives from the maritime coast of western France in the seventeenth century. Today a Québécoise will débarquer, or disembark from her car, as if she were stepping ashore from Champlain’s ship. When a Québécois is fed up with something, he may say j’ai mon voyage.

  This phenomenon is called colonial lag, and it appeared in many settler societies, but lag was only part of the process. Quebec was also very dynamic, and the pattern of creative dynamism began to appear in Champlain’s era. Examples are its creative borrowings from Indian languages for place names such as Canada and Quebec, and for flora and fauna: achigan for black bass, atoca for cranberry (canneberge in France), ouananiche for a freshwater salmon, ouaouaron for a bull frog, orignal for moose, and caribou for a genus of large deer. The first recorded use of “caribou” appeared in Champlain’s era. Everyday objects have Indian names: boucane for smoke, cacaoui for an older woman, mocassin for a soft shoe, micouène for a wooden spoon.

  Often, colonial persistence and dynamic creativity are combined, as in Quebec’s unique language of cursing, which draws on the rituals of the old Catholic mass. In a moment of fury a Québécois may say câlice (chalice) or tabarnak (tabernacle). This language of cursing of Quebec is very old and was common in Champlain’s France. But it is also very creative, and has been continuously reinvented even to our own time.34

  The culture of Quebec is a bundle of historical paradoxes. To listen to the speechways of Quebec in the twenty-first century is to hear an echo of Champlain’s world. It is also to observe a process of preservation and dynamism that began in Champlain’s era, and is the most fundamental key to understanding his legacy in North America.35

  As it was with language, so it would be with other aspects of culture. The same complex patterns of persistence and change also appeared in the vernacular architecture of Quebec, which have long preserved something of Champlain’s era and of French regional origins even as it adapted to a new world. Architectural historians have found that the buildings of Quebec derived from the provinces of northwestern France during the mid-seventeenth century, with modifications for the American environment. The early houses that survive in Quebec today tend to be of stone, usually fieldstone, with chimneys of French brick, and they show a strong Norman influence. One common form is a rectangular house with a steeply pitched four-sided, double-hipped roof, chimneys enclosed in gable ends, and simple doors beneath stone lintels, flanked by small French casement windows.36

  The linkages were often very specific. In Beauport and its vicinity, where Robert Gifford had his seigneury, old houses follow the vernacular architecture of Perche. Here one still finds fieldstone houses that are long and low, with a stone stair, elongated roof, triangular pitches, central chimneys, and distinctive small structures attached to the main building.37 In Quebec and Trois-Rivières, patterns of vernacular architecture had stronger associations with Normandy, as in the restored manor of Niverville, near the city of Quebec. The buildings of Quebec show a distinctive pattern of persistence and change that began to develop four centuries ago.

  The vernacular architecture of Quebec took form by 1635 and persisted for many generations. It derived from building ways of Normandy, Perche, and other provinces in northwestern France, with many creative adaptations to climate and environment.

  From 1632 to 1635, as the population in Quebec began to grow, its seigneuries were established, and a distinctive culture began to crystallize, the religious institutions of Quebec underwent a renewal. From 1604 to 1633, the clergy of New France had had a very mixed character: a scattering of Catholic priests, a Protestant minister, and lay preachers on ships in the river. In 1615, with the encouragement of Catholic hierarchy, Champlain turned to the Récollets. The first missionaries of that Franciscan order arrived in that year, three of them together. In total, sixteen Récollets came to New France between 1615 and 1629. Jesuits began to arrive in 1625—three priests and two brothers. The two orders worked side by side until the English conquest, when they were all sent back to France. Champlain had been comfortable with religious diversity, but Richelieu was not. In 1632, the Cardinal forbade the Récollets to operate in New France, and gave his support to the Jesuits, who quickly became dominant in Quebec In 1632, Father Paul Le Jeune arrived as superior, and the Jesuit presence grew very rapidly in the pivotal period from 1633 to 1635. Six Jesuit priests were working in the colony during the winter of 1633–34, fifteen by the winter of 1635–36. They began to operate missions from Cape Breton to Lake Huron. Champlain would have favored a more open system in which tolerance could flourish, but he yielded to Richelieu as he had to do. He supported the Jesuits, helped their missions, and became a very close friend of Father Le Jeune and other priests. He also supported two churches in Quebec, Notre-Dame-de-la-Recouvrance for the habitants, and Notre-Dame-des-Anges for the Jesuits and their Indian converts.38

  In the three years of Champlain’s governorship, these new trends were very powerful. The peopling of the colony began to grow apace, and the land began to be carved into seigneuries. A Quebec culture began to spread across the colony, and Jesuit missions multiplied. These processes put the colony on a firm foundation but a heavy price was paid, mostly by the Indians.
r />   With the establishment of a larger and rapidly growing European population, epidemic disease began to spread through the St. Lawrence Valley. Historians have found references to earlier local epidemics in the region as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Jacques Cartier wrote of an epidemic in 1535–36 among the Laurentian Iroquois people who lived at Stadacona near the site of Montreal. It may have spread from Cartier’s ships.39

  Champlain mentioned a sickness that appeared among the Algonquins at Tadoussac in 1603 and killed one of their leaders and many of their companions. The same thing happened in Acadia, where a missionary wrote in 1616 that the Mi’kmaqs were ravaged by disease after the French arrived and traded with them. It may have happened yet again in Huronia after Champlain’s stay there in 1615–16. Jesuit sources report that the Huron accused missionaries of poisoning them and making them ill. Some evidence suggests that the Huron displaced to the north to get clear of epidemics. But most of these infections appear not to have been widespread.40

  That pattern changed in 1634. In July of that year, Jesuits in Huronia reported a series of deadly epidemics on a new scale. Yet another epidemic followed in the fall of 1636 to the spring of 1637, and altogether at least four contagions spread between 1634 and 1640. The Huron suffered terribly. Huronia was vulnerable because of its dense population, but diseases also began to spread among many other Indian nations during the 1630s. Algonquins returning from the land of the Abenaki reported a variole that was very dangerous, and many thousands of Indians died.41

  Scholars have speculated on the cause of these epidemics and have tried to identify the diseases that caused massive loss of life among the Indians, but comparatively little mortality among Europeans. Specific diagnoses are much in doubt, but one conclusion is clear. This was a new period of deadly polydemics that were lethal to Indian populations, while Europeans grew ill but recovered. Something had happened to the structures and composition of these populations. One possibility is that growing numbers of children in Quebec turned the colony into an incubator for childhood diseases that were endemic in Europe but became epidemic in America and shattered Indian nations. In short, here was another pattern of deep change in Indian populations at a moment when one regime yielded to another. The pivot point appeared circa 1634. Just as the French population began its rapid increase, the Indian population started to decline in one of the cruelest events in modern history. Champlain did not live long enough to see what was happening. It would have broken his heart.

  But at the same time there were other great transformations in the peopling of New France, and some were more mixed and hopeful for Europeans and Indians alike. Many Indian nations suffered severely, but most of them survived. And in the midst of heavy mortality, other new Franco-Indian nations and cultures were born. One them appeared on the western frontier, and another to the east in Acadia. There again, Champlain had yet another role to play.

  23.

  THE CRADLE OF ACADIA

  Champlain and Razilly, 1632–35

  The settlers whom Razilly placed here were the ancestors of the Acadian people, to whom this place should be endeared as the cradle of their race in America.

  —William Ganong on Acadia1

  WHILE QUEBEC began to grow in a new way, something similar happened in another part of New France. After three decades of struggle and frustration, settlements suddenly started to multiply in Acadia. We have followed the troubled history of that region from the moment when the sieur de Mons and Champlain planted the first settlement on Sainte-Croix Island in 1604. It was abandoned in 1605, refounded at Port-Royal, abandoned again in 1607, revived by Poutrincourt in 1610, burned by English raiders in 1613, rebuilt by Poutrincourt in 1614, abandoned for another site in 1618, occupied once more by the French in 1623, and seized by Scottish adventurers in 1629. Through all these events, a few Frenchmen remained in Acadia. Some formed unions with Indian women and made a precarious living from the fur trade, but nobody had been able to found a French settlement that took root and grew of itself.2

  The critical moment came in 1632 when, at Champlain’s prompting, Acadia was added to the list of territories that England was obliged to return to France. The Hundred Associates quickly sponsored four subsidiary companies to support trading forts at strategic places along the coast. None were primarily colonizing ventures. That task went to a fifth subsidiary, the largest of them all, called the Compagnie de Razilly.3 Its leader, Isaac de Razilly, was one of the most able yet least remembered leaders in the drama of New France. He was a good friend of Champlain. They shared the same large purposes for North America and adopted similar policies. In difficult times they strongly supported each other, and they achieved similar results.

  Isaac de Razilly was forty-five years old in 1632, a battle-scarred naval officer with a patch over one eye and a hard look in the other. His noble family had an ancient seat in Touraine forty miles inland from La Rochelle, and was well connected at court—Cardinal Richelieu was a cousin. Razilly was raised to the profession of arms, and became a captain in the king’s marine. He won fame in five campaigns against the corsairs of Morocco, fighting with such ferocity that he was called the Loup de Mer, the seawolf of France. At the age of eighteen he became a Knight of Malta—a high distinction in that honor-bound world.4

  Razilly was also a devout Catholic. In 1625, he commanded a squadron at the siege of Protestant La Rochelle, won a battle against a relieving English force at the Isle of Ré, and lost an eye when a captured Huguenot ship blew up in his face.5 While Razilly was convalescing from his wounds, Richelieu consulted him on maritime affairs. Razilly was a man of many gifts, with a statesman’s vision and a scholar’s way with ideas. His naval service gave him a global perspective and an interest in colonies. As early as 1612, he and his brothers had tried to found a Capuchin mission near the Amazon River. When it failed, they turned to North America and began to work with Champlain.6

  In 1626, Cardinal Richelieu asked Razilly to draft an aide-mémoire on colonies. The result was a document of great importance to the history of New France. Razilly made a strong argument for the role of colonies to the destiny of nations. He envisioned a global empire for France, with African fortresses at Guinea and Senegal, trading factories in South Asia and the East Indies, outposts in South America, and a major colony in North America. For New France he urged a new company with a capital of 300,000 livres, new settlements with 4,000 colonists, and military forces strong enough to expel British settlers north of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.7

  Razilly’s document had a major impact. Some of its language appeared in the charters that created the Company of One Hundred Associates. He and Champlain became members within five days of one another in 1628. They invested in its subsidiary ventures and actively supported each other in a common cause, even as they led different parts of it.8 Razilly persuaded Richelieu to send Champlain to Quebec as acting governor. Without his support Champlain would not have had the job at all.9 In turn Champlain supported Razilly’s plans for Acadia and wrote in glowing terms of “Monsieur the Commander de Razilly, who has all the requisite qualities of a good and perfect sea captain being prudent, wise and industrious, and possessed by a holy desire to increase the glory of God and to carry his courage to the country of New France.” Champlain predicted that his friend would “raise the standard of Jesus Christ and make the Lilies flourish there.”10

  Champlain also assisted Razilly in another way, as one of the few seamen who had explored virtually every harbor and inlet on Acadia’s long indented coast. He had also studied the natural resources of Acadia, planted test-gardens, and found places of extraordinary fertility that could indeed make the lilies flourish there. To travel in Nova Scotia during the growing season is to be impressed by its pockets of rich farmland and flourishing field crops, which are more abundant than New England’s in the same latitude. Champlain had studied Acadia’s great stands of timber and its unrivaled fisheries. Like Razilly he also had an eye for beauty in the land.11 />
  Champlain especially favored two sites for settlement. One was a very handsome and well-protected harbor on the east coast, which he named La Hève, today’s La Have. The other was Port-Royal on the west coast, with its great sheet of sheltered water inside the narrow entrance called Digby Gut today. Both places had protected harbors, defensible ground, sweetwater streams, abundant timber, fertile soil, and natural beauty. Many a good site was to be found along the coast of Acadia, but La Hève and Port-Royal were Champlain’s favorites. They moved to the top of Razilly’s list.

  In 1632, while Champlain was planning a return to Quebec, Razilly raised a capital of 150,000 livres for Acadia. It was very much a family venture. Richelieu himself contributed 10,000 livres and a fully equipped French warship called L’Espérance-en-Dieu. Her captain was another Razilly cousin, Charles de Menou, sieur d’Aulnay, who would become a major figure in Acadia. Another large vessel was commanded by Razilly’s brother Claude de Launay-Rasilly [sic].12

  Razilly made his plans for Acadia in much the same way that Champlain operated in the St. Lawrence Valley. Their purpose was the same: to plant a population that could sustain itself. Both found capital enough for a fleet of three immigrant ships in the first year. They planned to send other fleets in the next four years. Razilly selected a group of able leaders from his own rank and region. Some were of the nobility, as was d’Aulnay. Others were men of commerce such as Nicolas Denys, a man of modest origins and much ability who came from Razilly’s native province. He would be a major asset.13

  Altogether Razilly recruited three hundred settlers. Like Champlain he selected them carefully. A Paris gazette described them as “hommes d’élite.” They were men with many skills that would be useful in the building of a colony. Both leaders were mindful of religion. Where Champlain decided to go with the Jesuits, Razilly recruited three Capuchin fathers of the order that he and Richelieu specially favored.14