Champlain's Dream

by David Hackett Fischer

  39. Older works identify this ship as the Don-de-Dieu, which appears in the registres de tabellion-age for the port of Honfleur, 1574–1670, as recorded in Bréard and Bréard, eds., Documents relatifs à la Marine Normande, 112, with an entry on April 4, 1608, for the “navire nommé le Don-de-Dieu, de 160 tonneaux, icelluy navire estant présent de présent en ce port et havre prest à faire le voyage de Canada à la conduite de Henry Couillard.” It was outfitted by Gilles Beuzelin, merchant of Rouen. This conclusion appears in Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:152 and Samuel E. Morison, Champlain: Father of New France (New York, 1972), 103, but the Don-de-Dieu of circa 150, 180 or 200 tons cannot be the ship in which Champlain sailed. This Don-de-Dieu did depart from Honfleur for America in the spring of 1608, but not until the period from April 30 to May 7, 1608, and her captain, Henri Couillart or Couillard, also went to Brouage and La Rochelle in search of a cargo of salt for the fishing trade (Le Blant, “La première bataille,” 119–20). A further complication is that her captain and part owner, Henri Couillard, had been engaged in litigation with de Mons shortly before the voyage; see Le Blant et Baudry, Nouveaux documents, 69, 70, 131, 139.

  40. Liebel agrees that Champlain could not have embarked in the Don-de-Dieu, and suggests that he may have sailed in little Levrette, which appeared in other records as outfitted in December 1607 for the cod fisheries off Newfoundland in 1608. She appeared again in entries of March, 1608, as bound for Canada with Pierre Chauvin, Izaac Levasseur, and François Longin (or Tongin) on board. Chauvin would be one of Champlain’s officers in Quebec, but there is no evidence of Champlain’s presence on board. If this vessel was Rossignol’s La Levrette, she was too small to carry the passengers and cargo of “the things necessary and proper for a settlement” that Champlain described. (Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 233n, citing a manuscript in the Department Archives of Calvados, 8E6521, folios 158, 169, 281, 284, 289, 318, 349, 353, 381).

  41. Liepvre in some accounts.

  42. Bréard and Bréard, Documents relatifs à la Marine Normande, 111; Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents, 92, 94; Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:152–53; Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 231–33; Le Blant, “La première bataille,” 119.

  43. Lescarbot, History of New France 2:367–68; Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:152.

  44. Le Blant, “Première bataille,” 115–16; Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 232–33.

  45. Paul Laramée and Marie-José Auclair, La Gaspésie: ses paysages, son histoire, ses gens, ses attraits (Montreal, 2003), 233–48.

  46. Champlain called him Darache. Le Blant identified him from documents in the Departmental Archives of les Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and summarized his findings in “Première bataille,” 125.

  47. Marcel Trudel writes that Pont-Gravé “made a habit of hunting contraband traders, which he did in a very aggressive way.” In 1604, he had arrested four Basque vessels in Acadia and seized their goods. He did it again in 1606. On other occasions Pont-Gravé seized furs belonging to a member of the De Mons’ Company, which compelled the sieur de Mons to pay damages. Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:153n, 66–67; Lescarbot, History of New France 2:526.

  48. Champlain CWB 2:12.

  49. Ibid. 2:12–13.

  50. Ibid. 2:13–14, with much supporting documentation in Le Blant, “Première bataille,” 122–25.

  51. Champlain, CWB 2:17.

  52. Le Blant, “Première bataille,” 120–21; Le Blant and Baudry, Nouveaux documents, 151, 162; Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 1:86–88; Mercure François 1:297 recto; Biard, “Relation” (1616), Jesuit Relations 3:162–64; Liebel, Pierre Dugua, sieur de Mons, 224, 278.

  53. Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 3:36.

  54. Ibid. 2:325, 368–69; Lucien Campeau, Monumenta Novae Franciae (Quebec, 1967), 1:120, 566, 568, 604–66, 661.

  55. CWB 2:22.

  56. Ibid. 2:23.

  57. Champlain’s measurements appear to have been inaccurate. He estimated that the island was six leagues long, with a breadth of a league and a half, smaller than its present size. Montmorency Falls appeared to him “nearly twenty-five fathoms [150 feet] high.” It is today 265 feet.

  58. CWB 2:23.

  59. Ibid. 2:24.

  60. Ibid. 2:25.

  61. Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:157.

  62. Gustave Lanctot, A History of Canada: From its Origins to the Royal Régime (Toronto, 1963), 1:103. Much archaeology has been done in Quebec, and here again it confirms the accuracy of Champlain’s written accounts. For excavations in what is now the Place Royale in Quebec’s old town, see Françoise Niellon and Marcel Moussette, Le site de l’habitation de Champlain à Québec: étude de la collection archéologique (1976–1980) (Quebec, 1985), 26–78. Many artifacts were discovered, including what may have been Champlain’s writing set and a rich trove of other materials, some of which are now on display in the Historical Center at the Place Royale. Other helpful works are Norman Clermont, Claude Chapdelaine, and Jacques Guimont, L’occupation historique et préhistorique de Place Royale (Quebec, 1992); and also Camille Lapointe, Béatrice Chassé, and Hélène de Carufel, Aux origines de la vie québécoise (Quebec 1983, revised edition, 1994). These are merely three of more than 100 archaeological reports of very high quality that have been published by the 62.2279 Ministry of Culture and Communications in their series “Les Publications de Québec, Collection Patrimoines.”

  63. Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:157.

  64. Champlain, CWB 2:44.

  65. Ibid. 2:52.

  66. Ibid. 2:60–61.

  67. Ibid. 2:52.

  68. Ibid. 2:17.

  69. See above, 196–97.

  70. Champlain CWB 2:25–34; evidence to confirm Champlain’s account of this episode appears in Lescarbot, History of New France 2:334, 3:6, 303–04; Le Blant and Baudry, eds., Nouveaux documents, xxvi, 118, 154; Campeau, Monumenta Novae Franciae 1:90; Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:157–58.

  71. Champlain, CWB 2:26.

  72. Ibid. 2:34.

  73. Ibid. 2:34.

  74. Ibid. 2:35.

  75. Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:157.

  76. Champlain, CWB 2:45.

  77. Ibid. 4:53.

  78. Ibid. 2:69.

  79. Ibid. 2:69.

  80. Ibid. 2:52–53.

  81. Ibid. 4:50; for the history and culture of the Montagnais nation, who now call themselves Innu, we learned much from Martin Gagnon, ethnographer and historian at the Innu Cultural Centre on the Essipit Reservation east of Tadoussac on the St. Lawrence River. For published materials there is Peter Armitage, The Innu (The Montagnais Nagaspi) (New York, 1991). The Innu now have a publishing program for work in their own language. A very attractive book on the cultural legends of a hunting people is An-mani Saint-Onge André and Guilaine Saint-Pierre Bertrand, An-mani utipatshimunissima, published by the Institut Culturel et Éducatif Montagnais (Sept-Iles, Quebec, 1996).

  82. CWB 2:44–45; 4:50.

  83. Ibid. 4:53.

  84. Eleanor Leacock, The Montagnais “Hunting Territory” and the Fur Trade, American Anthropological Association Memoirs 78 (1954), 1–9.

  85. CWB 4:61.

  86. Ibid. 2:46.

  87. Ibid. 4:57–58.

  88. Ibid. 4:52, 55, 60.

  89. Ibid. 2:53.

  90. Ibid. 2:63; Kenneth J. Carpenter, The History of Scurvy and Vitamin C (Cambridge, 1986), 10–11, 153 passim.

  12. IROQUOIA

  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) 5:74–78.

  2. Captain Claude Godet des Maretz appears as Des Marais in Champlain’s writings (CWB 2:63, 73, 78, 80, 110, 116, 143; 5:97; Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:161n, 167, 473. He should not be confused with his son François Godet des Maretz, who was left at Quebec in Pont-Gravé’s place in 1629. See CWB 6:
32; Trudel, idem, 2:315, 473, 499. Claude’s brother was Jean Godet du Parc, who took command at Quebec when Champlain was away. This Percheron family was important in the early history of Quebec, more so than suggested by its historiography. Champlain trusted them and they strongly supported him. (Trudel, idem, 2:103, 173, 238, 245, 487, 489. For the pilot Jean Routier (Champlain’s La Routte), see CWB 2:73; Trudel, idem, 2:161n, 169, 483.

  3. CWB 2:63.

  4. CWB 2:108, Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:485.

  5. CWB 2:64.

  6. In the mid-twentieth century, some historians explained endemic warfare among the Indians as a response to the arrival of Europeans that brought about subsequent trade rivalries, political conflicts, cultural disintegration, and demographic crisis. See George T. Hunt, The Wars of the Iroquois (Madison, 1940); and Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill, 1975).

  Even Indian torture and scalping have been attributed to Europeans. For an incisive review of this literature see James Axtell, “The Unkindest Cut, or Who Invented Scalping? A Case Study,” and “Scalping: The Ethnohistory of a Moral Question,” in The European and the Indian: Essays in the Ethnohistory of Colonial North America (Oxford, 1981), 16–35, 207–41. Axtell was among the first to demonstrate the value for historical scholarship of research in ethnography, archaeology, and historical linguistics. For a discussion of assumptions that Indians were “generally peaceful” before Europeans arrived, see Lawrence H. Keeley, War Before Civilization (New York, 1996) 30–31; and for a general review of the literature see William Engelbrecht, Iroquoia: The Development of a Native World (Syracuse, 2003), 6–8, 41–46, passim.

  7. James W. Bradley, Evolution of the Onondaga Iroquois: Accommodating Change, 1500–1655 (Syracuse, 1987), 108; Dean R. Snow, Charles Gehring, and William A. Starna, eds., In Mohawk Country: Early Narratives about a Native People (Syracuse, 1996); Charles T. Gehring and William A. Starna, eds., A Journey into Mohawk Country and Oneida Country, 1634–1635 (Syracuse, 1988, 1991).

  8. CWB 2:143.

  9. CWB 2:63–64, 67–70. Others suggested a different motive. Marc Lescarbot wrote in 1610, “Champlain wishing to see the country of the Iroquois, to prevent the Indians from seizing the fort in his absence, persuaded them to go with him to make war.” See Lescarbot’s La Conversion des Savvages (Paris, 1610) rpt. in Jesuit Relations, 1:49–113. There is no evidence to support this hypothesis. Champlain had good relations with the Indians who lived near the settlement, and did not express fear that they would take Quebec. His campaign left most Laurentian warriors in the valley.

  10. Bruce Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (Montreal, 1985, 1994), 186; Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Fed-eracy (Norman, Okla., 1998), 245.

  11. CWB 2:64.

  12. Ibid. 2:64.

  13. Ibid. 2:65.

  14. Ibid. 2:65; 1:130–31.

  15. Ibid. 2:68.

  16. For Ochasteguin, see CWB 2:68–71, 186; 3:73; 4:67–70, 136–50, 260; for Iroquet, see CWB 2:69–104, 4:67–103; also Trigger, Children of Aetentsic, 246–49 passim.

  17. For discussion of orenda, see William Engelbrecht, Iroquoia, 4–6, 145–46; Hope L. Isaacs, “Orenda and the Concept of Power among the Tonawanda Seneca,” in Raymond D. Fogelson and Richard Adams, eds., The Anthropology of Power: Ethnographic Studies from Asia, Oceana, and the New World (New York, 1977), 168–73.

  18. The same thing happened when Dutch explorer Harmen van den Bogaert visited the Mohawk in 1634. Bogaert was asked again and again to fire his gun. A historian writes, “From the Iroquois perspective, Orenda can reside in an object, and clearly guns had power.” See Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, “A Journey into Mohawk and Oneida Country, 1634–1635,” in Dean R. Snow, Charles T. Gehring, and William Sarna, eds., In Mohawk Country: Early Narratives about a Native People (Syracuse, 1996), 1–13; Engelbrecht, Iroquoia, 4–6, 145–46.

  19. CWB 2:70–71; Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 175.

  20. Ibid. 2:71–72; for canoe types see appendix M below.

  21. Ibid. 2:72–73.

  22. Ibid. 2:73.

  23. Ibid. 2:73–74, 76–77, 1:136.

  24. Champlain called his opponents the Iroquois. Scholars agree that in this campaign he was fighting one nation in the Iroquois League: the Mohawk. The French would later call them agnier. Champlain referred to other Iroquois nations by their particular names (or in most cases the names given to them by the Huron). But he used Iroquois both for the Mohawk and for the entire League.

  25. CWB 2:76; Fenton, The Great Law and the Longhouse, 53, 54, 57, 473, passim; Engelbrecht, Iroquoia, 124–30. On the Mohawk see Snow, Gehring, and Starna, eds., In Mohawk Country.

  26. CWB 2:76–78.

  27. Ibid. 2:78–79.

  28. Ibid. 2:80; Lescarbot wrote in 1612 that Champlain was “accompagné d’un homme et d’un lacquais du sieur de Monts; Champlain was accompanied by a man and by a servant of the sieur de Mons.” See Marc Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France 2d edition, revue, corrigée et augmentée par l’auteur (Paris, 1612), 626. A copy of this very rare work is in the John Carter Brown Library, Providence. This passage appears only in the second edition, and also in the reprint of Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (Tross, ed.) 3:600. Lescarbot did not include it in his first edition, and removed it from the third. This “servant of de Mons” was probably François Addenin, who was identified as a “domestique du sieur de Mons” and was also a crack shot who was a hunter of game in Port-Royal. He may also have been the French soldier who was ordered by Henri IV to accompany de Mons as a bodyguard. His name was spelled both as Addenin and Admarin. See Lescarbot, History of New France 3:231; Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France, 2:63, 461, 486, 162. The other man cannot be identified, but was also a skilled arquebusier. Lescarbot’s reference to Addenin (who is not named by Champlain) means that he had a source other than Champlain’s works. Thus we have two accounts of the campaign against the Mohawks, one by Lescarbot, the first in print; and the other by Champlain. Lescarbot confirms Champlain’s accounts.

  29. Marc Lescarbot, La Conversion des Savvages (Paris, 1610), Jesuit Relations, 1:104.

  30. CWB 2:84.

  31. Ibid. 2:85. For a helpful study of this campaign in the context of military history, see Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War; Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000 (New York, 2005), 1–53.

  32. Dates are a problem here. Champlain tells us that he left the rapids on the River of the Iro-quois on “le 2. Juillet.” This date was an error. Close readers agree that it must have been July 12. They camped that night at “an island three miles long,” probably Sainte-Thérèse Island. The following day, July 13, they went up the river as far as the entrance to the lake. There they camped again, and “on the following day we entered the Lake.” That would be July 14, 1609. Cf. CWB 2:82–90. For the naming of the lake see Trudel, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France 2:162.

  33. Guy Omeron Coolidge, The French Occupation of the Champlain Valley from 1609 to 1759 (1938; Flieschmanns, N.Y., 1999), 8–15.

  34. CWB 2:90; Coolidge, French Occupation, 11.

  35. CWB 2:94. On the importance of the moon, I follow an excellent unpublished manuscript by Stephen P. Dechame, one of the best discussions of the battle that I have read. A copy is in the library at Fort Ticonderoga. This hypothesis is confirmed by NASA’s lunar calendars. See http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov; also http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/phase/phasecat.html.

  36. CWB 2:89, 94.

  37. Ibid.

  38. CWB 2:95; Engelbrecht, Iroquoia, 48; Anthony F. C. Wallace, “Dreams and the Wishes of the Soul: A Type of Psychoanalytic Theory among the Seventeenth Century Iroquoians,” American Anthropologist 60 (1958), 234–48.

  39. For Champlain’s probable meaning of cap, see the definition as a “pointe de terre souvent élevée qui s’avance dans la mer” in Alain Rey et
al., eds., Le Grand Robert la langue française, new expanded edition, 6 vols. (Paris, 2001) 1:1893, s.v., “cap.” The location of Champlain’s cap is the subject of controversy. Most historians agree that it was at Ticonderoga. For the evidence see appendix J below.

  40. In the nineteenth century, the rivière la chute was made into a millrace. In the late twentieth part of it became an attractive park in the town of Ticonderoga.

  41. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a gothic poem about Ticonderoga and its “strange outlandish name” that “sings in the sleeping ear,” with songs of death for many a Scot and Englishman and French and Indian too. Cf. his “Ticonderoga, A Legend of the West Highlands.”

  42. Much archaeology has been done on this site. See William A. Ritchie, The Archaeology of New York State (New York, 1980); John H. Bailey, “A Rock Shelter at Fort Ticonderoga,” Bulletin of the Champlain Valley Historical Society 1 (1937), 5–16; also Dechame, unpub. ms., cites other archaeological studies and Mohawk legends.

  43. CWB 2:95.

  44. An example of an Iroquoian elm boat survives today in the Peabody-Essex Museum, adorned with diagonal red stripes. That motif was repeated in the paddles and fishing equipment. See William N. Fenton and Ernest Dodge, “An Elm Bark Canoe in the Peabody Museum of Salem,” American Neptune 9 (1949), 185–206; for an early account, Baron de Lahontan, New Voyages to North-America, ed. Reuben G. Thwaites (1703; 2 vols., New York, 1970) 1:80; see also Engelbrecht, Iroquoia, 141–42; for canoes from five nations—Inuit, Montagnais, Têtes de Boule, Ottawa, and Algonquin—see Olive Patricia Dickason, The Myth of the Savage (Edmonton, 1984), 89, from Bécard de Granville, Les raretés des Indes, LAC C-33287.

  45. Champlain, CWB 2:96; Lescarbot, History of New France 3:12–13.

  46. CWB 2:96–97.

  47. Ibid. 2:97n. These passages follow the original French rather than the published English translation in Biggar.

  48. Iconoclasts and debunkers have asserted that our only account of the battle is from Champlain himself. This is not correct. The first account was published not by Champlain but by Marc Lescarbot in his Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (Paris, 1609), and his La Conversion des Sauvages qui ont esté baptizés en la Nouvelle France, cette année 1610 (Paris, 1610, rpt. in Jesuit Relations 1:49–113). These works were in print three years before Champlain published his first account. They agree on most important facts, including the first shot, but also add details that are not in Champlain’s accounts. Lescarbot also published other editions of the Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (1611, 1612, and 1618), with added details that vary from one edition to the next. We were able to study these variant editions in the superb collections of the John Carter Brown Library at Providence, R. I. They also confirm the main lines of Champlain’s testimony and add details that are not in Champlain’s account. They reveal that at least one of Lescarbot’s sources other than Champlain must have been an arquebusier who was with Champlain. These accounts were published while other participants were still alive. Even after Lescarbot had his falling out with Champlain, he continued to confirm and support Champlain’s account.