Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  The Approach in this Volume

  After this long controversy, how do we judge the Brief Discours? The first step is to ask what sort of text it was. As Morison and Glénisson pointed out, it was not a journal or diary or logbook. Also, it was not called a Voyage of Champlain, but rather a Brief Discours on “the most remarkable things that Samuel Champlain of Brouage observed in the West Indies.” It was also an espionage report, written for presentation to Henri IV.23

  Further, we should also ask how the Brief Discours was compiled. An important clue is its chronology. Champlain’s Discours and Spanish records used different ways of timekeeping. The Spanish record-keepers worked from documents and used calendar dates. Champlain worked from memory and reckoned time not by fixed dates but by intervals of weeks and months. He rarely referred to the calendar, and then only with vague references and never exact dates. In the absence of a log or journal, reliance on memory led to many errors, and also caused bias in time estimates. Throughout the Brief Discours Champlain tended to overestimate the length of time intervals in the past, a clear pattern of memory distortion. For example, he remembered the passage from Blavet to Vigo Bay as lasting eleven days; Spanish records showed that the voyage lasted five days. This sort of error occurred frequently in the manuscript. Champlain was unable to keep notes or diaries or records of any kind, and the entire work was drafted after his return from America. Here is more evidence that he was a clandestine passenger, as were at least six people aboard the San Julian.

  With these patterns in mind, we might approach Champlain’s manuscript in a constructively critical spirit. We might begin by comparing Champlain’s Brief Discours with other evidence. To do so is to find and correct many errors of dating and mistakes of other kinds. But instead of merely compiling a list of discrepancies as hostile critics did, a more useful step is to try to reconstruct Champlain’s travels in the West Indies in a coherent way that reconciles the main lines of his account with the evidence of other sources. The result of that effort appears in chapter 5 above. “A Spy in New Spain” is that sort of reconstruction, cast in the form of a narrative, with issues of interpretation discussed and documented in the notes, and historiography in this appendix.

  When that work was done, it was clear that the Brief Discours is frequently inaccurate but entirely authentic, and its main lines are consistent with evidence found by other scholars in Spanish archives. The Brief Discours is precisely what it purports to be: a manuscript by Samuel Champlain, a Frenchman of Saintonge, who made a report for his king of “the most remarkable things” he observed with his own eyes in Spanish America.

  The next step is to look at it yet again and ask what this document has to tell us about Champlain himself. The answer is that it is an important and revealing source. The Brief Discours is informative about his purposes and the process of his development. We find in it a consuming curiosity about the world, a fascination with other people, a strong interest in the native people of America and in African slaves, and an attitude of sympathy and respect. Champlain was a man of deep and abiding Christian faith. He was appalled by the cruelty of the Spanish conquest, horrified by the behavior of some Spanish clergy, and shocked by atrocities committed in the name of Christ. We see Champlain’s developing interest in settling close to native people, and his indifference to the pursuit of gold, silver, pearls, and precious gems. We also see his humane spirit and his ethical purpose in the world. In short the Brief Discours is not only an authentic work, but also a vitally important key to an understanding of Champlain himself.

  APPENDIX D

  CHAMPLAIN’S PUBLISHED WRITINGS

  A Question of Authorship

  Several writers have called into question the authenticity of Champlain’s voyages, and in particular his last book, Les Voyages de la Nouvelle France … (Paris, 1632). The Abbé Laverdière believed that Jesuits changed the text of this work, removed references to the Récollets, and added a celebration of their own order. “Not only had someone reviewed or even made alterations to the text of Champlain,” he complained, “but we can be certain that this work was done either by a Jesuit or by a friend of the members of that order.”1

  Other historians have disagreed. Biggar wrote: “As to the theory which has been advanced that the Jesuits had a hand in the production of this edition, I cannot find any grounds for accepting it. The few mistakes cited by the Abbé Laverdière are apt to occur in any large work of this kind and are doubtless chiefly printer’s errors.” Biggar believed that Champlain himself curtailed pas sages to the Récollets for two reasons. He was giving a résumé of his earlier works, and also he “no longer bore towards them the same friendly feelings as formerly, as a consequence of the conduct of Récollet father Georges in 1621 when Champlain thought that he had sent forged letters to the King.”2

  Biggar concluded that the 1632 edition reflected the judgment of Champlain himself, and that its strength and importance flowed from Champlain’s high integrity. “Champlain’s writings,” Biggar wrote, “are a source of the first value and however much one may regret the years he passes over in silence, yet this very loss enhances the value of the remainder by proving that it contains nothing but what was actually seen or experienced by himself.”3

  Secular scholars in the twentieth century have also doubted the authenticity of a pietistic tone that grew strong in Champlain’s later works. But his unpublished writings and his essays in the Mercure François showed the same interpretive patterns as the Voyages. One prime example is the manuscript text of his will. It is a stronger statement of Champlain’s growing faith than any published work that might have been altered by Jesuits or others.

  A third line of criticism in the late twentieth century came from iconoclasts who argued that Champlain’s published works were shameless acts of self-promotion. How can we assess these and other lines of criticism, as well as the works themselves? The first step is to consider the purpose of these works. If we study the unpublished “Brief Discours” of 1601 and four major volumes that Champlain published in 1603, 1613, 1619, and 1632, we find several patterns. All Champlain’s publications were works of promotion, but not self-promotion. Their primary purpose was to promote a grand design for New France, more than to advertise Champlain himself. In that respect we might compare them with the works of Captain John Smith, who embellished his maps and books with a large self-portrait. Nothing like that appears in Champlain. As many scholars have noted, Champlain is also very taciturn about himself, his thoughts, and his feelings. This is not the style of a self-promoter. He is also very candid about failures and errors—for example, the decision to settle Sainte-Croix Island.

  Another clue appears in the rhythm and timing of these publications. These works were written and published at pivotal moments when the future of New France was hanging very much in the balance: the winter of 1603–04, the winter of 1612–13, the winter and spring of 1618–19, and the winter and spring of 1631–32. In moments of particular danger and opportunity, all of them promoted Champlain’s grand dessein, his great vision for New France.

  Further, Champlain’s promotional efforts centered on the French court and particularly on the monarch. His major books are dedicated to figures who were in a positions of power: Charles de Montmorency (admiral of France in 1603, and uncle of the future viceroy); Marie de Medici, the queen regent in 1612–13; the young King Louis XIII, who was taking power in 1618–19; and Cardinal Richelieu in 1631–32.

  The works changed not because the Jesuits were rewriting the later ones, but because Champlain was trying to reach powerful people who had different values and purposes. His books combined two themes. One was a theme of continuity in steadfast support for the grand design. The other was a theme of change in tone and substance, from attention to the values of Henri IV in the Brief Discours (1601) and Des Sauvages (1603) to concern for the attitudes of Marie de Medici in the Voyages of 1613. Later works gave more attention to the purposes of Louis XIII in the Voyages of 1619, and Rich
elieu in the Voyages of 1632. These promotional efforts were successful. They helped Champlain to sustain his great project.

  On the question of accuracy, Champlain’s published works all contain small errors, misstatements of fact, and confusions of dates. In moments of crisis they were rushed to the press, and have the appearance of haste in their composition. Some parts were clearly based on logs and journals. Biggar believed: “He must have kept a diary, and in several places the existence of some such source is betrayed. Thus at the end of the last chapter of the first part of the edition of 1613, there is an account of what occurred almost every day during the month of September 1607. This could not have been given unless he kept a diary of what took place.” Biggar observes that “a very faithful journal of observations was made” in that part of the book. In other passages, Champlain was writing from memory and errors crept in, as in the Brief Discours. But always Champlain was trying to be careful with his facts and usually tells us about his sources. Biggar found that Champlain “does little more than describe events of which he himself was an eyewitness and in which he usually took a very prominent part.” When he had a different source, he was usually careful to inform the reader, or add a disclaimer.4

  In our own time, it is increasingly possible to test the accuracy of much of Champlain’s Voyages against other sources in great variety. For the voyage in 1603 we have interlocking documentation from port records, the letters and edicts of Henri IV, and interviews later conducted by Marc Lescarbot for his history of New France. For the explorations of the Acadian coast in 1604, we have oral history from the Mi’kmaq which is consistent with French records. For the settlements at Sainte-Croix Island and Quebec, we have an extraordinary abundance of archaeological evidence. For the Port-Royal Colony, Marc Lescarbot confirmed the accuracy of Champlain’s texts in every important way, even when the two authors had turned against each other. Lescarbot did the same for the military campaign against the Mohawk. The more research is undertaken, the more corroboratory evidence we find for events in France, England, and America. The writings of Récollets and Jesuits, and pieces published in the Mercure François confirm the accuracy of Champlain’s voyages at almost every point where they can be compared. Increasingly, state papers and documents have been found to do the same. This evidence frequently corrects small mistakes in dates (a confusion of months was a common problem). Champlain also had strong biases and powerful purposes. But these are the writings of an honest and honorable man.

  APPENDIX E

  CHAMPLAIN’S TRAITTÉ DE LA MARINE

  An Essay on Leadership

  Near the end of his life, Champlain wrote a small treatise explicitly on the subject of how he went about the task of leading others. He published it with his last volume of Voyages in 1632 as a long appendix, but it is really a separate work with its own title page and theme. He called it a Traitté de la marine, et du devoir d’un bon mariner, a Treatise on Maritime Affairs, and the Duty of a Good Mariner. It is most accessible in the bilingual text edited by H. P. Biggar in his edition of Champlain’s major works.1

  Scholars have studied it in different ways. Morris Bishop, a scholar of French literature, read it as “Champlain’s most important literary achievement,” in which he made his “only effort to rise above the day-to-day journal, and create a work of conscious literary art.” Bishop thought of it as a work of “self-revelation” in which the “good navigator” is “the man he aspired to be.”2 Joe Armstrong, a Canadian businessman and map collector, interpreted it as a work “full of confidence, life and buoyancy of language,” and a key to “his contribution as a geographer, naturalist, and cartographer.3 Samuel Eliot Morison, a maritime historian and small boat sailor, studied it as “a seaman’s manual on the handling and navigation of ships.” Morison was specially impressed by Champlain’s “feel for the sea,” and translated excerpts for the instruction of young sailors in every generation.4

  The book belonged to a very large literature on seamanship and navigation in Champlain’s era. He lived at a time when the art of navigation became a science. Its most important contribution was not any particular discovery, but the invention of a process by which discoveries are made and shared with others. To that end, its most useful instrument was not a ship or cross-staff or astrolabe, but a printing press. Historian D. W. Waters has identified 203 treatises on navigation that were printed by Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch, and English authors before 1640.5 Some of these books were technical manuals on the tools of navigation. Others were textbooks on mathematics, or monographs on astronomy, or workbooks on logarithms, trigonometry, spherical geometry, cartography, and various special subjects. Chief among them was Pedro de Medina’s Arte de navegar (Seville, 1545), an excellent manual on methods of finding latitude from the sun and stars, with a very accurate table of the sun’s declination. It was translated by John Frampton as The Arte of navigation…. made by Master Peter de Medina (London, 1581). It also appeared in French, Italian, and Dutch editions, and was widely used throughout the world. The Dutch explorer William Barents carried Medina’s Arte de navegar on his last arctic voyage, and his copy was found in the nineteenth century, preserved in polar ice. Frobisher and Drake also used Medina’s book, and Champlain read it closely.6

  Other navigation books took the form of what would be called today Sailing Directions, or Pilots. Among the most important of that genre was Lucas Janszoon Wagenaer, T’eerste Deel Vande Spieghel der Zeevaerdt vandde Navigatie der Westersche Zee, “The First Part of the Mirror of the Navigation for Sailing the Western Sea.”7 It was translated into English as The Mariner’s Mirror. The title pages of the Dutch and English editions both show a group of seamen and scholars studying a globe which is also a spherical mirror that reflected the images of the men who sailed it.

  A third genre was favored by English explorers who created discursive dictionaries of navigation terms. The leading examples were two books by Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame. Smith’s first volume, in the words of its modern editor, is “little more than an omnium gatherum of names for the appurtenances and people that make up a ship and her crew.” His second is basically the same sort of work as the first, much enlarged. Other works of a similar nature included John Davis, The Seaman’s Secrets, in Albert Hastings Markham, ed., The Voyages and Works of John Davis, the Navigator; and also in Sir Henry Mainwaring’s “The Seaman’s Dictionary,” in G. E. Mainwaring and W. G. Perrin, eds., The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring (vols. 54 and 56). None are like Champlain’s Traitté.8

  Champlain read these works in a professional way and wrote of “the special pleasure” he had derived from “the perusal of books on this subject.” But he wanted to write another kind of book “for those who may be curious to learn more especially on those matters of which I have not found an account elsewhere.”9

  To study these other works and then to read Champlain’s Traitté is to discover that his book had a special character that set it apart from the field. By comparison, Champlain’s Traitté de la marine stands out as a book about how to lead men in extreme conditions, on dangerous ventures “into distant and unknown regions.” More than that, it became a treatise on leadership, based on many years of personal experience.

  Champlain began by addressing the reader as a comrade or colleague, amy lecteur, in an amiable tone that was fundamental to his style of leadership. He tells us that he had spent thirty-eight years making sea voyages, and had run many risks and been in many dangers, “from which God had preserved me.” He wrote of the pleasure that he found in his work, “having always been fond of making voyages to distant and unknown regions, and wherein I had great enjoyment principally in relation to navigation, learning by experience and by the teaching of many good navigators, as well as through the special pleasure I have described from reading books on the subject.” His purpose, he wrote, was to compose for his own satisfaction, a little treatise “on the qualities one should possess” to be a good mariner and an effective leader.10
/>
  Religion, Morality and Self-Discipline

  For Champlain, the first requirement of a good leader was to be “above all a good, God-fearing man.” This phrase had several meanings for him. It meant “not allowing God’s name to be blasphemed, always to have prayers morning and night, and if possible to take along a man of the Church or of a religious order to help the soldiers and seamen and take their confessions and keep them in fear of God.”11

  He believed that leadership also entailed a quality of trustworthiness. “Above all,” Champlain wrote, a good leader “keeps his word in any agreement; for anyone who does not keep his word is looked upon as a coward, and forfeits his honor and reputation, however valiant a fighter he may be, and no confidence is ever placed in him.” He is always faithful and loyal to his men, and looks after them. “Before sailing it is necessary to have everything requisite for giving necessary aid to the men.”12

  Champlain also thought that a good leader required strength, stamina, discipline—and most of all sobriety. A commander, in his judgment, “should live plainly, and accustom himself to hard conditions” and “not be delicate in his eating or drinking, adapting to places in which he finds himself.” He should be “robust and alert,” with good sea legs (le pied marin, literally, “sea foot”). He must be “inured to hardship and heavy labor, so that whatever happens he may be able to stay on deck, and in a strong voice give orders to each one as to what to do.” Most of all, “he should not allow himself to be overcome by wine; for when a captain or a seaman is a drunkard, it is not good to entrust him with command or control, for accidents are likely to happen while he is sleeping like a pig, or has lost all judgment and reason.”13