Champlain was shocked, all the more so because something similar happened with another interpreter, Nicolas Marsolet. As early as 1613, Champlain had recruited Marsolet from a village near Rouen, brought him to New France, set him to work in the Saguenay Valley, and called him the “Montagnais interpreter.” This young man also learned other Indian languages, but mainly he worked as a trader at Tadoussac. Marsolet came to know the Saguenay River as well as any European, and Champlain gave him positions of responsibility there in 1623–24. Like Brûlé, he moved deep into the country of the Indian nations, and also traveled back and forth across the Atlantic. Marsolet was in Paris on March 24, 1627, and back in Canada later that year.17 Then came the Kirke brothers, and the conquest of Quebec in 1629. Marsolet turned his coat, and began to work for British employers.18
Champlain was appalled by the treachery of his interpreters. On August 1, 1629, he met Brûlé and Marsolet at Tadoussac and hard words were exchanged. “I remonstrated on their faithlessness to their King and to their Country,” Champlain wrote. He accused them of abandoning their Catholic faith and said: “You remain without religion, eating meat on Friday and Saturday, and you are living freely in unrestrained debauchery and libertinism…. You are losing your honor; you will be pointed at with scorn on all sides.”19
The two interpreters said that they had been forced to work for the British. Champlain refused to believe a word of it and answered, “You say that they gave each of you a hundred pistoles and a certain amount of trade, and … on these terms [you] promised them complete fidelity.” He warned them: “Remember that God will punish you if you do not mend your ways. You have no relative or friend who will not tell you the same thing; it is they rather who will be most eager to bring you to justice. If you knew that what you are doing is displeasing to God and to mankind, you would detest yourselves.”
The more they talked, the angrier Champlain became. “To think of you,” he said, “brought up from early boyhood in these parts, turning round now and selling those who put bread in your mouths! Do you think you will be es teemed by this nation? Be assured you will not, for they only make use of you from necessity.”20 Brûlé and Marsolet replied: “We know quite well that if they had us in France they would hang us; we are very sorry for that, but the thing is done; we have mixed the cup and we must drink it, and make up our minds never to return to France; we shall manage to live notwithstanding.”
Champlain broke decisively with them. By the time he came back to Quebec in 1632–33, Brûlé had retreated to the Huron country and ran into more trouble there. Social historians think that his relations with Huron women became increasingly disruptive. Economic historians believe that Brûlé trespassed on Huron trading networks. Political historians suspect that he may have betrayed the Huron to the Iroquois, as he had sold out the French to the British. It is possible that all these things happened. Whatever the cause, the Huron turned against Brûlé and ordered him to leave their country. But he had nowhere else to go. The Kirkes were gone, and the French despised him as a traitor. The nearest thing that Brûlé had to a home was Huronia, but now he was unwelcome there as well. Finally, in June, 1633, after much agonized discussion, the Huron were driven to a desperate measure. They killed him and then told Champlain what they had done. He is thought to have been the only Frenchman that the Huron ever killed.21 The French leader said that he understood and that their action would not be held against them. In the end, nobody wanted Étienne Brûlé. This very gifted young man who moved so easily in many cultures was ultimately rejected by all.22
Marsolet had a different fate. For a time he also got on the wrong side of the French. Jesuit father Paul Le Jeune wrote angrily, “In all the years we have been in this country no one has been able to learn anything from the interpreter named Marsolet, who, for excuse, said that he would never teach the Savage tongue to anyone.”23 But Marsolet dealt with his difficulties by continuing to work as an agent among the Montagnais. He acquired his own boat, traded in furs with much success, and his profits brought him wealth and respectability. He came to be called “the little king of Tadoussac.” After Champlain’s death, Marsolet settled down, married a French wife, raised a family of ten children, acquired a seigneury from the Company of the Hundred Associates, and accumulated land and offices. He lived to the ripe age of ninety and died in 1677, a respected citizen of New France.
After his troubles with Brûlé and Marsolet, Champlain gave more attention to qualities of character in his interpreters. The result was a second generation of these young men, and some of them were very different from the first. Two men in particular were outstanding in that regard. Both began their American careers as assistant clerks for commercial companies in Quebec. They lived among the Indians and learned several languages. During the 1620s they began to work with Champlain, shared his large purposes, and had a long reach in the history of New France.
Olivier Le Tardif (or Letardif, as he wrote his name) was born about 1604 in Brittany, where he was baptized in the bishopric of Saint Brieuc, and he moved to Normandy. Champlain called him “Olivier le Tardif de Honfleur,” and may have recruited him in that Norman port. He was in Quebec as early as 1621, perhaps earlier, working as an under-clerk for the Company de Caën. As a young man he traded actively with the Indians of the St. Lawrence Valley, lived among them, and learned their languages with remarkable success. Champlain began to refer to him as “Olivier le truchement” and wrote that he became as “skilled in the languages of the Montagnais and Algonquin as in those of the Huron,” an extraordinary achievement.24
People who worked with Le Tardif spoke highly of his ability and integrity. Pont-Gravé knew him well and wrote that “Olivier traded with the savages and … acquitted himself of his duties like a man of character.” Champlain praised him as a “very fit person” in character and ability. The Jesuit father Le Jeune called him “le sieur Olivier, truchement, honneste homme, and well suited to this country.” Le Tardif was described as “always pious and devout.” He gave strong support to Indian missions, encouraged the baptism of Indians and was godfather to many of them. The Indians held him in high esteem, and he remained very close to them. Like Champlain, he adopted three Indian children, raised them as his own, and helped them marry well.25
After the English conquest, Le Tardif left New France with Champlain and returned with him in 1633. He often appeared at Champlain’s side and worked closely with him as an interpreter in some of the most important meetings with the Indians from 1633 to 1635.26 After Champlain’s death, Le Tardif became a leading figure in New France. He rose steadily in the Company of the Hundred Associates, from sous-commis to premier commis, and then to commis général, and oversaw its affairs in the St. Lawrence Valley. He acquired seigneuries on the St. Lawrence River, became a developer of the Île d’Orléans, and married Louise Couillard, who connected him to the first family in New France. There would be a second wife and five children. Today his descendants include a progeny of Tardifs and Le Tardifs in Canada and the United States.27
A leader in Champlain’s second wave was his greatest interpreter, a man of extraordinary character and achievement. Jean Nicollet de Belleborne was a native of Normandy, born around 1598 in modest circumstances near the port of Cherbourg. His father was a royal courier who carried the mail between Cherbourg and Paris. Young Nicollet came to New France by 1619 as a trader for the old Company of Rouen and Saint-Malo.28 He was sent to winter with the Algonquin Indians on Allumette Island in the Ottawa River, a difficult assignment. Nicollet did well. He stayed two years as “the only Frenchman” in that place, learned the language and customs of the Allumette Algonquin, and explored the country. Unlike Brûlé, he impressed Indians and Europeans alike by his strength of character. The Algonquin accepted him in their lodges, admitted him to their councils, and were said to have made him one of their chiefs.29
After 1620, Nicollet moved to the Nipissing nation, who lived on the lake of the same name. Altogether he was with them f
or “eight or nine years,” built a trading post, went into business “fishing and trading for himself,” and returned to Quebec each year with his furs. He explored large areas of the western country and visited many Indian nations who lived between Huronia and Hudson Bay.30 While Nicollet was among the Nipissing, he lived with an Indian woman and had at least one child—a daughter named Madeleine-Euphrosine. Later he brought her to Quebec, where she married two Frenchmen in succession and had nine children or more.31
During the British conquest of New France from 1629 to 1632, Nicollet disappeared from Quebec and lived among the Indians on the western frontier. At least part of that time he was with the Huron, and learned their language. When Émery de Caën and a small party of French traders came back to Quebec in 1632, Nicollet returned and offered to help restore trade between the Indians and the French. Then Champlain and his immigrants reached Quebec in the spring of 1633. Soon after he arrived, Champlain heard that a large party of Nipissing in forty canoes had come to Sainte-Croix Island, the island of commerce in the St. Lawrence River upstream from Quebec. They were led by a “French interpreter” who must have been Jean Nicollet.32
Champlain tells us that he “went immediately to Sainte Croix” on June 20, 1633, and met Nicollet that very day. The two men began to talk.33 Together they planned a major expedition beyond the western frontier of New France. A Jesuit father who knew them well, Barthélemy Vimont, wrote that Nicollet was “delegated to a journey to the people called the Gens de Mer,” the People of the Sea who lived beyond the sweetwater sea.34
The mission was conceived in the same spirit as Champlain’s early voyages. One purpose was to explore the country that lay west of New France and to study the quality of its land. Another was to map the rivers and lakes. Water courses were of great interest to Champlain, and the French leaders shared the stubborn dream of Lachine—a route to China through North America. In 1633, the French knew very little about the Great Lakes. Champlain had knowledge of Lake Huron, Lake Ontario, and Lake Erie, but not enough to map them accurately. He knew of another huge lake to the northwest, and was aware that a torrent of water flowed from this grand lac (now Lake Superior) to the mer douce of Lake Huron, through two leagues of falls and rapids. Champlain called them the Sault de Gaston; we know them as the Sault Ste. Marie. The Indians told Champlain that to cross the two great lakes was a journey of thirty days by canoe. He wanted to know more about their size and shape, and what lay beyond.35
The Indians spoke to Champlain of a distant nation called the Puan, who lived beyond the great lakes, and also were reported to have traveled farther west to the coast of a big salt sea. Nicollet was instructed to seek them out and to meet other nations along the way. Champlain was interested in extending alliances and expanding the fur trade. As always, he also wished to encourage peaceful relations between Indian allies and nations to the west.36
In the summer of 1633, Nicollet departed from Quebec for Huronia, where he picked up an escort of seven warriors. It was a very long journey. They followed the north shore of Lake Huron as it curved toward an intersection with Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. After he reached the end of Lake Huron, his route is not clear. He could have gone northwest along the rapids of the Sault Ste. Marie to the north shore of Lake Superior, Champlain’s “grand lac.”37 It is more than likely (though less than certain) that he went another way. Nicollet probably crossed the narrow northwestern neck of Lake Huron, found a way through the straits of Mackinac, and reached the northern and western coast of Lake Michigan. A short journey along the lakeshore would have brought him to Green Bay and the home of the Winnebago nation, who were probably the Jesuits’ Ouinipigous. Nicollet wrote that “the Ouinipigous had an unknown language, neither Algonquin nor Huron.” The Winnebago spoke a Siouian tongue—a family of Indian languages different from those to the east. All of these linguistic clues reveal that Nicollet and his Huron guides reached what is now Green Bay, Wisconsin.38
Nicollet and his companions came ashore at Green Bay, placed two poles in the ground, and put gifts on them to indicate they had come in peace. Two Hurons were sent ahead to announce that a Frenchman was coming in a spirit of amity, and a huge crowd gathered. Nicollet had Champlain’s sense of an occasion. According to a Jesuit who read the journal that Nicollet wrote about his trip, he put on a “grand robe of China damask, all covered with flowers and birds of many colors.” In each hand he carried a pistol, and fired both of them in the air. We are told that “the women and children fled at the sight of a man who carried thunder in both hands.” A throng of between 4,000 and 5,000 warriors received him, and chiefs invited him to a series of feasts. At one meal alone they served an entrée of “six-score beavers.” With high ceremony, the Huron warriors and their French interpreter made peace with these nations.39
Jean Nicollet, greatest of Champlain’s interpreters, lived among the Algonquin and Huron, was sent by Champlain beyond the Great Lakes, and reached the Fox and Illinois Rivers in the Mississippi Valley. This image shows his visit to the Winnebago nation. He is remembered through much of the American middle west.
After that meeting, Nicollet is said to have explored the country to the west. Perhaps the Indians told him of rivers that flowed to the west, and he may have gone in search of them. The Fox and Illinois Rivers are not far from Green Bay. He was very close to the tributaries of the Mississippi, but never found that great waterway. Even so, he had explored a large part of North America, and was the first European to see much of it. Each of these epic journeys inspired others on the frontier of New France, and more interpreters followed in his tracks.
Nicollet and his Huron guides started the long journey home, and reached Quebec in 1634. He probably reported to Champlain, but no record of that meeting exists. The original of Nicollet’s journal has disappeared but it was read by Jesuit fathers Paul Le Jeune and Vimont. Portions of it appear in the Jesuit Relations.
After his return in 1634, Nicollet made several short trips and helped Jesuit missionaries to find their way up the Ottawa River. He decided to settle down, sought a position with the Company of the Hundred Associates, and appears to have set himself up as a trader at Trois-Rivières. He married the daughter of Guillemette Hébert and Guillaume Couillard, and had a son and a daughter, in addition to at least one Indian daughter. By his marriage he also became the brother-in-law of Olivier Le Tardif. The two men were close friends and co-owners of a seigneury.
By all accounts Nicollet was a sterling character. A spirit of selfless humanity ran deep in him, and it was the cause of his death. In 1642, while visiting Quebec, Nicollet received a message that a Huron party had taken an Iroquois captive and were preparing to torture him to death at Trois-Rivières. Nicollet rushed to the assistance of an Indian he did not know. He took a shallop and raced up the St. Lawrence River with all sail set. They ran into a sudden gust of wind and Nicollet’s boat capsized. This man who had explored many great lakes and rivers of North America was unable to swim, and he drowned at the age of forty-four. The Jesuits wrote that Jean Nicollet was “equally and singularly loved” by both the French and Indians. He shared Champlain’s dream and enlarged it by his spirit.
Altogether, Champlain sent several dozen French interpreters to live among the Indian nations, and he also worked with many Indian translators. He was always looking for bright young men who could be recruited for these purposes. In the year 1629 alone, eleven interpreters worked for Champlain in Quebec, and fourteen were employed by the Hundred Associates. He met ships from France, and searched for “some of those people from our settlement whom I sent with the natives into the interior.”40
They tended to be restless young men from seaport towns and commercial cities of France. Many appear briefly in Champlain’s writings and the records of the colony. It is interesting to observe their origins and the course of their careers as Champlain sent them to live among the Montagnais, Algonquin, Huron, Nipissing, and many other Indian nations.41
One of them, whom C
hamplain called “Bouvier’s young lad,” began as an apprentice working for the captain of a patache on the St. Lawrence River. In 1611 he became an interpreter with the Huron, living and trading with them.42 Jacques Hertel de la Fresnière migrated as soldier to Quebec around 1626. He went to live among the Algonquin, became an interpreter for Champlain and the Jesuits, then acquired land and raised a family in Trois-Rivières.43 Jean-Paul Godefroy, who may have been the “Jean Paul” that Champlain mentioned in 1623, was a young man of good family in Paris, where his father held high offices at Court. He worked as an interpreter for the trading companies at Trois-Rivières and later became a ship’s captain, entrepreneur, and in 1648 a member of the Council at Quebec.44
There were many more. Thomas Godefroy was an interpreter to the Algonquin and Huron.45 François Marguerie worked among the western Indians and settled in Trois-Rivières.46 Jean Richer came from Dieppe and went as an interpreter to the Nipissing and Algonquin.47 Jean Manet lived among the Nipissing.48 One of those two men might have been Champlain’s “Gross Jean de Dieppe,” or perhaps he was a third interpreter. Another named Grenolle appeared in New France in 1623 as an “apprentice interpreter” to the Huron and the Pétun. He was a companion of Brûlé on his journey to Sault Ste. Marie and Lake Superior and later visited the Neutral nation and the Pétun. Another interpreter, La Valleé, also went to the Neutral nation and the Pétun people.49 Many of these interpreters made their homes in Trois-Rivières.50
Leaders who recruited these autonomous young men also tried to restrain them, but could not control them. Their numbers began to grow. Champlain’s dozens of interpreters and traders were followed by hundreds of free spirits who left the settlements of New France and went to trade among the Indians. They began to be called coureurs de bois, and French officials did not approve of their ways. In 1672, Intendant Talon wrote that they disrupted the agriculture of New France, shattered families, and created disorder. He tried to limit their numbers, with no success. In 1679, Intendant Duchesneau wrote a scathing report, and estimated the number of coureurs de bois at between 500 and 600, not counting others who were leaving “every day” for the woods. A year later he reckoned their numbers had grown to 800, out of a total population of 9,700 in New France. “There is at least one coureur de bois in every family,” he wrote.51
Champlain's Dream Page 59
