25. Robert le Blant and René Baudry, Nouveaux documents sur Champlain et son époque, vol. 1 (1560–1662) (Ottawa, 1967), xii, xxiv.
26. Indian is the term of choice throughout this book. In meetings at the Newberry Library with Indian leaders from many parts of the United States, I asked them what they wished to be called. Invariably they wanted to be known by the name of their own nation. I asked what word we should use for all of them together. They said that Indian was as good as any other. They used it with pride. After much experiment with other clumsy terms, Indian sounds better and better. See also Appendix I below.
1. A CHILD OF BROUAGE
1. Samuel Champlain, Des Savvages, ov, Voyage de Samvel Champlain, De Brouage, fait en la France nouvelle, l’an mil six cents trois (Paris, 1603); in CWB 1:83; an excellent modern edition, Des Sauvages by Alain Beaulieu and Réal Ouellet, was published in Montreal in 1993 and is very helpful for its learned commentary.
2. Lancelot Voisin, sieur de la Popelinière, L’histoire de France enrichie des plus notables occurrances, 2 vols. (La Rochelle, 1581); as quoted in Eliane Vigé and Jimmy Vigé, Brouage, ville d’histoire et place forte (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1989), 12; and Nathalie Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain: A New Town Open to the World,” in Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, eds., Champlain: The Birth of French America (Montreal, 2004), 39.
3. The term derived from broue, a word in the langue saintongeaise related to the French boue, a muddy mix of water and clay. See “Le grand lexique du patois charentais,” Xaintonge hors serie 1 (2003) 48, s.v. “broue: boue;” and Alain Rey et al., Le Grand Robert de la langue française, nouvelle édition augmentée, 6 vols. (Paris, 2001) 1:1576, s.v. “boue;” for the etymology of brouage in the langue d’oïl, see Nicolas Chéreau, Visite historique de Brouage (La Mothe-Achard, 2003), 1.
4. Eliane Vigé and Jimmy Vigé, Brouage: capitale du sel et patrie de Champlain (Bordessoules, 1990); Marcel Delafosse and Claude Laveau, Le commerce du sel de Brouage aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Cahiers des Annales 17 (Paris, 1960) centers on the economic history of salt in the early modern era; Micheline Huvet-Martinet, L’aventure du sel (Rennes, 1995) is by an expert on the fiscal history of salt; J. F. Bergier, Une histoire du sel (Paris, 1982) is strong on iconography.
5. On the colors of salt, see Marc Séguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge (Ligugé, 2005), 108.
6. Examples include the Gap Portolano in the Archives of the Département des Hautes-Alpes, and the Dijon Portolano in the Bibliothèque municipale de Dijon. Both are of doubtful date; see Tony Campbell, “Census of Pre-Sixteenth-Century Portolan Charts,” Imago Mundi 38 (1986), 67–94. See also Nathalie Fiquet and François-Yves Le Blanc, Brouage, ville royale, et les villages du golfe de Saintonge (Chauray-Niort, 1997), 25; and Nathalie Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain; A New Town Open to the World,” in Litalien and Vaugeois, eds., Champlain, 35, 33–42.
7. Nathalie Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” 33–42; Séguin, Aunis et Saintonge, 92–96.
8. Delafosse and Laveau, Le commerce du sel de Brouage, 13–26; Michael Mollat du Jourin, “Les marais salants charentais: carrefour du commerce international (XIIe—XVIe siècles),” Annales de l’université francophone d’été Saintonge-Québec (1979).
9. Alice Drouin, Les marais salants en Aunis et Saintonge jusqu’en 1789 (Royan, 1999); Bernard Callame and Isabelle Delavaud, Brouage et son marais: pour une meilleure connaissance des marais littoraux en Charente-Maritime (Saintes, 1996); citing L. Papy, “Brouage et ses marais,” Revue géographique des Pyrénées et du Sud-Ouest 6 (1935), 281–323.
10. Nathalie Fiquet and François-Yves Le Blanc, Les Arsenaux de Richelieu: Brouage, Brest, Le Havre, vers l’arsenal idéal (Brouage, 2003), 25–27.
11. Plan of Brouage, c. 1570, manuscript in the Public Record Office, now the British National Archives, Kew and London. For a detailed discussion, see Fiquet and Le Blanc, Brouage, ville royale, 76–78.
12. The historian La Popelinière wrote in 1581: “C’est une petite ville nommée Jacopolis du nom de son fondateur qui vers 1555 y fit édifier les premières maisons et distribua les places pour y bastir ce qui ce fit à grande difficulté … étant tout ce rivage un marais … tellement ce lieu semble avoir été conquis sur l’eau, qui paravant couvrait toute la place, et encore de présent, en hiver durant les grandes marées, les rues et bas de maisons sont tous plein d’eau.” Histoire de France enrichie, 439 verso.
13. Fiquet, “Brouage au Temps de Champlain,” 36, 39; my translation here. Other contemporary accounts of its commerce include la Popelinière, Histoire de France enrichie; Nicolas Alain, De Santonum regione et illustrioribus familiis (Bordeaux, 1598).
14. Robert Le Blant and René Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents sur Champlain et son époque, xxvi (Rouen, La Rochelle, Brouage, Gaspé, Spain, Marseilles, Le Havre, and home again in a hexagonal Atlantic and Mediterranean trade of high complexity); Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” 33–41.
15. Photo by Judith Fischer, June, 2006; with thanks to my brother Miles Pennington Fischer for help with the Dutch translation.
16. Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” 39.
17. A.-L. Leymarie, “Inédit sur le fondateur de Québec,” Nova Francia 1 (1925) 80–85; Marcel Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle France (Montreal, 1963–1979) 1:253.
18. For a discussion of the evidence, see Appendix A, “Champlain’s Birth Date.”
19. For Champlain’s marriage contract, see Champlain, CWB 2: 315–17; Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne, Samuel de Champlain, fondateur de Québec et père de la Nouvelle-France (Quebec, 1891, 1926) 1:399–403; for the new work by American genealogists, see Newbold Le Roy 3rd and Scott C. Steward, The Le Roy Family in America, 1753–2003 (Boston and Laconia, 2003), ix; I am grateful to Scott Steward for this information, and for a copy of the book.
20. For Champlain’s father, see Champlain, CWB 2: 315–17; Dionne, Samuel de Champlain, 1:399–403; Le Roy 3rd and Steward, The Le Roy Family in America; and also “Vente d’une moitié de navire par Antoine Chappelain, Dec. 23, 1573,” Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents, 1: xxv, 10–11. The editors observe that “very probably if not with absolute certainty” Antoine Chappelain was Champlain’s father. Guillaume Allène married Guillemette Gousse in 1563, and they were still married in 1579. Was she the stepsister of Margueritte Le Roy, or had one or another of them married before, or did Allène remarry? Pauline Arsenault, “Acadia in Champlain’s New France: From Arcadia to China,” in Litalien and Vaugeois, eds., Champlain, 120; Le Blant and Baudry, Nouveaux documents, 1:2, 12–13.
21. Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century (Baltimore, 1998), 35–36, 39–41, 122–23.
22. Ibid., 122–24, 87–92, 177–78.
23. Ibid., 82–83, 92–95, 100.
24. “Vente d’une moitié de navire” in Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents 1: 10–11.
25. This house was “sise derrière l’église rue Saint-Jean (actuelle rue du Port);” “situated behind the church on rue Saint-Jean (now rue du Port),” and was ceded to Du Carlo in 1616; for the mansion of Christophe Depoy, see Vigé and Vigé, Brouage: ville d’histoire et place forte, 292–93.
26. 1 Samuel: 7–8; King James version.
27. Several scholars date the “Hebrew invasion” of “font names” from the publication of the Geneva Bible in a compact quarto edition in 1560. See David Hackett Fischer, “Forenames and the Family in New England: An Exercise in Historical Onomastics,” in Robert M. Taylor, Jr. and Ralph J. Crandall, eds., Generations and Change: Genealogical Perspectives in Social History (Macon, Ga., Mercer University Press, 1986), 215–41.
28. The learned Abbé Laverdière, a great Champlain scholar, came to the same conclusion. He observed that the parents’ “deux noms” were “tout à fait catholiques” (“both the parents’ names were entirely Catholic”) and that the son’s Protestant name sugg
ested that “le père et la mère de Champlain avaient dû apostasier” (the father and mother must have renounced their faith). This historian agrees on all except “apostasier.” Cf. C.-H. Laverdière, Oeuvres de Champlain, publiées sous le patronage de l’Université Laval (Quebec, 1870) 1:xi (in my five-volume edition).
29. Leonce Anquez, Histoire des assemblées politiques des réformés de France (Paris, 1959), 162–65; these generalizations exclude towns controlled by individual Protestant nobles.
30. For Protestants in Poitou and Saintonge see Guide du Protestantisme Charentais (La Mothe-Achard, 2006), 19.
31. “Vente par Jacques Hersan et Marie Cameret à Samuel de Champlain, de la moitié d’une maison, à Brouage, Feb. 23, 1620,” Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents 1:170; Marcel Delafosse, “L’oncle de Champlain,” RHAF 12 (1958), 208–16; L.-A. Vigneras, “Encore le capitaine provençal,” RHAF 13 (1959–60), 544–49.
32. Thomas Platter, Le Voyage de Thomas Platter, ed. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 50, 573–77; Jean Glénisson, “Interview,” Litalien and Vaugeois, eds., Champlain, 282; Nathalie Fiquet disagrees, writing that “it is unlikely that Samuel was taught in an academy (reserved exclusively for the nobility),” but Platter observed explicitly that youths not of the nobility also attended the Brouage academy. Cf. Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” 37.
33. See Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, 1: 256; Le Grand Robert, s.v. “écuyer.” In medieval France, an écuyer had been something else, a squire who carried the weapons of a chevalier, and looked after the horses.
34. Glénisson, “Interview,” 282; and Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” 37, both drawing from Vigé and Vigé, Brouage, capitale du sel.
35. For example, on his map of 1612, he noted in English, “The Bay where Hudson did winter.” Samuel E. Morison, Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France (New York, 1972), 133.
36. Dionne, Samuel de Champlain, 1.
37. Champlain to Marie de Medici, Queen Regent of France, 1632, in The Voyages of the Sieur de Champlain of Saintonge. … (Paris, 1613), preface; CWB 1:209–10.
38. Ibid. For the other phrase, “après avoir passé trente huict ans de mon âge à faire plusieurs voyages sur mer,” see Champlain, Traitté de la Marine et du Devoir d’Un Bon Marinier, (Treatise on Marine Affairs, and the Duty of a Good Mariner) (Paris, 1632); CWB 6:255. See also Appendix C.
39. For Champlain’s ship-types see Appendix M.
2. TWO MEN OF SAINTONGE
1. Henry Percival Biggar, ed., The Works of Samuel de Champlain, 6 vols. and a portfolio of maps and drawings (CWB), (Toronto, 1922–36, reprinted 1971) 3:231–34.
2. Cf. Champlain’s name on three title pages: “Samuel Champlain, De Brouage,” in Les Sauvages (1603); “Sieur de Champlain Xaintongeois,” in Les Voyages (1613); “Sr. de Champlain Xainctongeois” in Les Voyages (1632); CWB 1:81–83, 202–07; 3:231–34.
3. Champlain’s biographers have not explored the importance of Saintonge in his life. Samuel Eliot Morison (Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France) and Narcisse-Eutrope Dionne (Champlain, Fondateur de Québec et Père de la Nouvelle France) make only a brief mention of the province; Morris Bishop (Champlain: The Life of Fortitude) and Joe Armstrong (Champlain) made no reference at all. One finds two classes of exceptions. The first are historians who lived in Saintonge such as Hubert Deschamps, Jean Glénisson, and Nathalie Fiquet. The others are French Canadian descendants of immigrants from Saintonge, such as the genealogist Jacques Saintonge.
4. Marc Seguin’s excellent Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge: le début des temps modernes, 1480–1610 (Poitou, 2005) is a recent contribution to a large literature, with a good bibliography. It is part of a series published under the direction of Jean Glénisson. For the persistence of old identities today see the lively popular journal called Xaintonge, which has been published in Saint-Jean-d’Angély since 1997.
5. Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars, Loeb edition (London, 1970) book I, 10–11; book VII, 75. For ancient sources and numismatic evidence of the Santoni see www:cgb.fr/monnaies/vso/v15/gb.
6. Nathalie Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” in Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, eds., Champlain: The Birth of French America (Montreal, 2004), 33; see also Maxime le Grelle, Brouage Québec: foi de pionniers (Saint-Jean-d’Angély, 1980), 11.
7. Hubert Deschamps, Les voyages de Samuel de Champlain Saintongeais, père du Canada (Paris, 1952), 3.
8. Hugh Johnson, The World Atlas of Wine (New York, 1971, 1977), 258–59.
9. Ibid.
10. Mage de Fiefmelin, Les Oeuvres du Sieur Fiefmelin, 44, quoted in Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, 104.
11. Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, 104, citing municipal archives of Bordeaux, ms. 776, 881 (14 July 1570).
12. For the Hundred Years War, I follow the traditional dates of Édouard Perroy and Kenneth Fowler. See Édouard Perroy, The Hundred Years War, introduction by David C. Douglas (1945; New York, 1965), 322; Kenneth Fowler, The Hundred Years War (London, 1971), 1. For trends in climate and the economy see Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine: A History of Climate since the Year 1000 (New York, 1971), 21, 67, 348–50; David Hackett Fischer, The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (1996), 4th printing (New York, 2006), 65–102; for the local impact of these large movements, see Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, 334–37 (1573–93), and 383–84 (1594–95).
13. Seguin writes of coastal Saintonge, “La mer offre ses ressources alimentaires qui rendent sans les disettes exceptionnelles.” On disettes, see Fischer, Great Wave, 31, 53, 77; and for disettes in Saintonge, see Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, 104, 334–37 (1573–74), and 383–84 (1594–95).
14. Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, 102, 103.
15. Fiquet, “Brouage in the Time of Champlain,” 34.
16. Seguin, Histoire de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge, 73; for the semantic history of “individualism” in France, see an excellent and pathbreaking study by Steven Lukes, Individualism (New York, 1973), 3–16.
17. Georges Musset, Marcel Pellisson, and Charles Vigon, Glossaire des patois et des parlers de l’Aunis et de la Saintonge 2 vols. (La Rochelle, 1922); a new dictionary has been in process of publication since 2003, Le grand lexique du patois charentais, in six livrets by the editors of the journal Xaintonge, hors série 1–6 (May 2003—December 2006).
18. An entire issue of the journal Xaintonge 2 (Oct.–Nov. 1997) 1–32, is devoted to the subject of “La Cagouille: l’emblême des Charentais,” with essays on “Légendes et croyances,” “Coutumes et traditions de la race Cagouillarde,” and “Des Cagouilles sur les églises.”
19. Jacques Rousseau, “Samuel de Champlain, botaniste mexicain et antillais,” Les Cahiers des Dix 16 (1951) 39–61.
20. Le grand lexique du patois charentais 2: 35.
21. Other examples include acheneaux for canals, and clairs for shallow places in the marshes.
22. “Tu nous dis tousiours quelque chose de gaillard pour nous resiouyr; si sela arriuoit nous serions bien-heureux.” Le Jeune, “Relation” (1633), Jesuit Relations 5:211; Bishop, Champlain, 337.
23. It has been translated from the parlanjhe into standard French as “qui va doucement, va sûrement,” which is not at all the same thought.
24. “Patoiser dans les Règles,” “Proverbes Charentais,” http://membres.lycos.fr/xaintong/lang.htm; J. L. Buetas, “Patoiser dans les règles,” (2007) 9–15.
25. “Patois Charentais,” Société d’Ethnologie et de Folklore du Centre-Ouest http://www.cths.fr/FICHES/Fisches_Societes/S_309.shtm; “Lexique du patois Charentais,” http:// membres.lycos.fr/xaintong/lexique.htm; http://membres.lycos.fr/xaintong/patois.htm.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Maurice Bures, Le type saintongeais (1908, Paris, 1991), especially chapters 3 and 4, “La Sain-tonge dans le passé,�
�� and “Le type social,” pp. 47–72. This book centers on the response to “la crise phylloxérique,” which did grave injury to the vineyards of Saintonge, until revived with plant stocks from America—a return for the contribution of Saintonge to the new world.
29. Bures, 70, 57–59.
30. Ibid., 57, 65–72.
31. Ibid., 69.
32. Biggar, CWB 1:4.
33. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Histoire du Languedoc (Paris, 1962; 6th edition, 2000), 28–29, 8–9, 41–45, 59–60.
34. Ibid. Like Champlain in another era, the cultural experience of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie carried him back and forth across the great cultural regions of France. He stayed with us on one of his many visits to America. In his company, we observed the same intense curiosity about other cultures and the same tolerance of diversity that appeared in Champlain.
35. Historians have written about Champlain’s religion in these terms, but religion was only one of many dimensions of diversity in his formative years: a diversity of region, language, culture, and environment.
36. Contemporaries referred to him in many different ways. Champlain wrote his friend’s nom de terre as De Monts; royal documents addressed him as De Montz. His nom de baptême was also spelled in different ways: Dugua, Du Gua, Du Gas, Du Guast. His very able biographer Jean-Yves Grenon calls him Pierre Dugua De Mons, and reports that “the spelling ‘Dugua de Mons’ is favoured by people of Royan and the Saintonge area today.” Cf. Grenon, Pierre Dugua de Mons: Founder of Acadie (1604–05); Co-founder of Quebec (1608) (Annapolis Royal, 1997, 1999, 2000), 2.
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