French Navire, detail from Champlain map, 1612, Library of Congress
French Patache, detail from Champlain’s map, 1604, Library of Congress
COLOR PLATES
A-1 Brouage, aerial view, n.d., circa 2000 © DoubleVue.fr
A-2 Dubois, “The Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, August 24, 1572,” Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, Switzerland, Photo © Held Collection / The Bridge- man Art Library International
A-3 “Martin Frobisher,” unknown artist, 1577 © Bodleian Library/akg-images
A-4 John White, Frobisher’s “Skirmish at Bloody Point,” 1577, © British Museum/Art Resource, NY
A-5 Spanish sailors coming from the West Indies, 1565, from Georg Hoefnagel, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana Venice/Alfredo Dagli Orti/© The Art Archive
A-6 Champlain, “Indians burned alive by the Mexican Inquisition,” watercolor, ca. 1600; Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University
A-7 Champlain, “Indian beaten with cudgels on orders of a Spanish priest for not attending mass,” watercolor, ca. 1600, Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University
A-8 Henri IV’s Grand Gallery at the Louvre, architectural model now at Fontainebleau © Château, Fontainebleau, France/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York
A-9 Ball at the Court of Henri IV © Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes, France/Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York
A-10 Port of St. Malo © Joseph Martin / akg-images
A-11 Port of La Rochelle © Musée d’histoire de Nantes /Château des ducs de Bretagne
A-12 Wagenaer, Mariner’s Mirrour in its first English edition, 1588 © National Maritime Museum, Greenwich/ The Bridgeman Art Library International
B-1 Catlin, Mandan Dance © Smithsonian Museum of American History, Washington, DC / Art Resource, NY
B-2 St. Croix Island aerial photo, ca. 2004, National Park Service, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Maine
B-3 Francis Back, “Settlement at Port Royal, 1603,” photo H. Foster, 1997 © Canadian Museum of Civilization, image S97–9646
B-4 Indians Fishing (Codex Canadiensis, Oklahoma), Courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, OK. Reproduced with the permission of the Museum
B-5 Mi’kmaq Warriors (Codex Canadiensis, Oklahoma), Courtesy of the Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, OK. Reproduced with the permission of the Museum
B-6 Francis Back, “Trading Scene at Quebec (1628),” Photo © Canadian Museum of Civilization, Francis Back Collection, photo H. Foster, 1996, image no. S96–25083
B-7 Rubens, “Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Marie de Medici,” © Peter Willi/SuperStock
B-8 (bottom left) Pierre Jeannin © Bibliothèque Nationale de France
B-8 (top right) Brûlart de Sillery © Musée National du Château de Pau, Pau, France/ Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
B-8 (top left) Brissac © Bibliothèque Nationale de France
B-9 Philippe de Champaigne, Richelieu, Triple Portrait, National Gallery, London, © Image Asset Management Ltd./SuperStock
B-10 La Consideratio delaMort, 1600, © Bibliothèque Nationale de France
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book had its beginning on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where everybody knows Samuel Champlain. In 1604, he gave the island its name, and a large part of its identity. For the 400th anniversary of his first visit, I was asked to give a lecture at the College of the Atlantic by two friends and fellow islanders, Steve Katona and Ed Blair. That invitation was the beginning of this book. It would not have happened without them.
In the work itself, many people have had a hand. I have a debt of fifty years to the great libraries of Massachusetts, and to the staffs past and present of the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Public Library, the Bostonian Society, the Brandeis Libraries, the Harvard Libraries, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Important for this project was the New York Public Library, for its collections of French and Canadian journals, monographs, conference reports, and for finding aids which indexed individual articles in a unique way. At Baltimore’s Peabody Institute Library long ago, I began to learn about Champlain in conversations with Lloyd Brown, a scholar of early cartography who was director of the library when I was a stack boy, discovering the camaraderie of bookmen.
At Princeton in 1955–56 my first extended research in this field was a junior paper on French maritime history in the early modern era. My advisor was Elmer Beller, a scholar’s scholar of 17th-century Europe. He set a high standard for his students. At Johns Hopkins I studied with Frederic Lane, who combined an unrivalled command of sources in early modern maritime history with active experience of maritime affairs.
In the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, my old friend Jeffrey Flannery helped me use its large collection of manuscript materials on Champlain and New France from the archives of French ministries and the Bibliothèque National. The staff of the Map Division also allowed me to work closely with Champlain’s only surviving manuscript map.
It was a pleasure to visit the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond and talk with my friend and colleague and coauthor James C. Kelly and also with Barbara Clarke Smith of the Smithsonian, while they were working on their Champlain project. And at the Newberry Library in Chicago some years ago, Frederick Hoxie invited me to meetings with leaders of about thirty Indian nations. Those discussions had a major impact on this inquiry.
At the John Carter Brown Library in Providence, director Ted Widmer and his staff helped me use a great collection of early imprints, which include all of Champlain’s first editions, nearly all variant printings of Marc Lescarbot’s books, and a manuscript copy of Champlain’s Brief Discours with its luminous watercolors that must be seen in the original.
Also important for this inquiry was the research center at Fort Ticonderoga, New York, where director Nick Westbrook and his staff guided us through their holdings of imprints, maps, and papers. With Nick and Ann McCarty, Judy and I launched two canoes on Lake Champlain and followed the route he and his allies took past Willow Point, Sandy Beach, the promontory of Ticonderoga, and the Chute from Lake George.
On Lake Onondaga near Syracuse, New York, the staff at Sainte Marie among the Iroquois enlightened us on the Onondaga nation. Archaeologist Peter P. Pratt, of the State University of New York at Oswego, told me about his field work on Onondaga villages in a brief but helpful phone conversation, which guided us on visits to sites in Madison County.
The archives of Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor hold manuscript records of archaeological projects on Sainte-Croix Island. We are grateful to Stephen Pendry, the Park Service’s senior archaeologist in Boston, who directed the most recent projects and took an interest in ours. Thanks go to Paul Haertel and Sheridan Steele, superintendents of Acadia National Park, for their encouragement and support. In Calais, Maine, the new visitor center sponsored jointly by the National Park Service and Parcs Canada holds artifacts on the Sainte-Croix settlement. A Maine fisherman took us up the Saint Croix River in his boat. On the coast of Maine, Ed Blair, who got us working on this project, also took us exploring in his boat, following Champlain’s wake so closely that we came very near the same ledge that holed Champlain’s patache off Otter Cliffs. Through the years we have sailed the coast with our friends Colin and Virginia Steele and Richard and Jo Goeselt, and visited every harbor that Champlain mapped.
At the Library and Archives of Canada in Ottawa, we were fortunate to meet archivist George De Zwaan, who guided us through the vast holdings of that great treasure house, with its trove of manuscript material from many French archives, copies of rare French imprints, and scarce secondary writings. On several visits to the great Museum of Civilization in Hull, across the river from Ottawa, we found Champlain artifacts, and excellent materials on Indian nations and on Métis cultures.
In Quebec’s Center of Historical Interpretation in Place Royale we found the res
ults of archaeology on Champlain’s habitation and other sites. Also helpful was the old Musée de l’Amérique Française and the new Museum of Civilization in Quebec. In the parks of the province of Quebec, we rented a canoe and explored some of the rivers and rapids. We also studied the site at Cap Tourmente, now preserved as an environmental center, and the Wendake-Wendat Huron Reserve, where he studied the traditions of the Huron nation, and also were given a memorable lunch such as Champlain shared with his friends in Huronia. In Tadoussac the staff of the Chauvin Trading Post Interpretation Center and Museum showed us through their collections, added to our manuscript materials, and gave us a memorable lunch of marinated seal meat.
Judy and I explored the lower St. Lawrence and the mouth of the Saguenay River by zodiac boat and Tadoussac harbor by kayak. Highlights of our travel in the lower St. Lawrence Valley east of Tadoussac were two visits to the Essipit Innu Reserve, where historian Martin Gagnon welcomed us, showed us through his excellent center at Miles Bay, introduced us to a trove of materials, and greatly deepened our knowledge of the history of the Innu nation (Champlain’s Montagnais). We learned much from a meeting with Jacques Martin in his home near Tadoussac crossing about the tabagie of 1603, of which he has great knowledge.
At Nova Scotia’s Port Royal National Historic Site and in Annapolis Royale we learned much from listening to Wayne and Alan Melanson, identical twins and leading experts on the early history of Acadia. Also very informative was the site of the early 17th-century Melanson farm, where major work has been done on Acadian aboiteaux. A visit to Université Sainte Anne was enlightening for the persistence of francophone culture in Acadia, as was the major center of interpretation for Acadian culture at Grand Pré.
On the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, the Fort Point Museum at La Have has copies of rare manuscript material and many artifacts. At Liverpool Harbor (Champlain’s Port Rossignol), Matthew Verge helped us in a major way on the oral history of the Mi’kmaq. In Lunenberg, the fascinating Museum of the Atlantic Fisheries is an important center for research and interpretation of its subject. We are grateful to its very hospitable staff, and to the crew of the schooner Blue Nose.
In the province of New Brunswick, we explored the coastal sites and rivers that Champlain had visited from Saint Croix to the St. John River and the Bay of Fundy. We much enjoyed a visit to the New Brunswick Museum in St. John, a center of scholarship and interpretation.
On our travels in France we tried to visit all places of known importance to Champlain, and everywhere we met the kindness of strangers. We remember with thanks the staff at the Champlain House in Brouage, and also at the Brouage Visitor Center, the La Rochelle museum, the naval base of Rochefort, where we stayed while we explored the area, and the historical museum at Royan. We are grateful to the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Kerdaniel for giving us a place to stay in Brittany, where we also visited the Marine Museum in Blavet/Port Louis, historic sites in Crozon, Quimper, Blavet-Port-Louis. In Normandy we remember with thanks the staff of the Musée Marine in Honfleur. In Paris our base was the hotel Jeux de Pomme, a converted 16th-century tennis court on which Champlain may have played. It was in easy reach of Champlain’s Paris: Louvre, the Musee Carnevalet, which holds many treasures, the church where he was married, and the Marais-Temple district, where he lived. Thanks go to the staffs of the French Maritime Museum in Paris and its branches in Rochefort and Port-Louis, and to the staffs of the Chateau Chenoncaex, and the Palace at Fontainebleau. For particular items we are grateful to the many libraries and museums that appear in the illustration credits.
As the book took shape, my agents Andrew Wylie and Scott Moyers were close collaborators. Before they tried to sell the book, Scott drew on his skill as an editor to tighten its structure. Andrew offered many suggestions, and both of them helped it in many ways. I formed high respect for their professionalism and complete integrity, and as we worked together, Scott and Andrew became colleagues and friends.
They arranged simultaneous publication by two great houses. Simon & Schuster in the United States has had great success in reaching a large public with serious works of history. It was a privilege to have the benefit of their experience and the encouragement of publisher David Rosenthal. It was a genuine pleasure to work with senior editor Bob Bender and to have the support of his professional skill and long experience in the field. He found the time to line-edit the manuscript, and I came to rely very much on his judgment.
The firm of Knopf Canada preserves the purposes of Alfred Knopf as a living tradition and publishes beautiful books of very high quality. Its founder and publisher, Louise Dennys, was my Canadian muse. She was a source of encouragement, support, sound judgment, and wise advice. It was pleasure to work with her, and with a first-class team that she has put together. The line-editing in Canada was done by Rosemary Shipton with the skill and attention that she has brought to so many books. Jane McWhinney was a superb copy editor who improved my errant English, cleaned up my French, and did it all with patience, intelligence, and grace. Kathryn Dean also was very helpful in copyediting the final draft.
The two presses divided tasks between them and worked pleasantly together. We had no major problems of coordination—which was due to Bob, Louise, and especially to our excellent traffic editor, Deirdre Molina, who was a gracious and good humored taskmistress.
For the new maps in the book, it was a great pleasure to work once again with Jeffrey Ward, the best historical cartographer in the business. His work uniquely combines creativity and rigor in a professional and collegial way.
The many contemporary images in the book are used not just as illustrations, but as artifacts, evidence, and interpretations. The enormous labor of bringing them together was done by four teams. In Maine and Massachusetts, Judy and I worked together to compile a preliminary list, and Judy also created digital scans and did photography in France. In New York, Bob Bender and Johanna Li played a major role. In the Knopf offices Michelle MacAleese and her colleagues in Toronto gathered many Canadian materials. Most important was the brilliant team of Alexandra Truitt and Jerry Marshall in Salem, New York. They drew on a vast network, found many new images, collected high resolution scans, obtained permissions, and coordinated our efforts.
In scholarship, I have a major debt to three men I have never met: Henry Percival Biggar and Charles-Honoré Laverdière, who established the French texts of Champlain’s work, and especially to Marcel Trudel, one of the truly great historians in our time. His many books and most of all the five volumes of his Histoire de la Nouvelle France (1963–83), have been vital to this inquiry. An indispensable new book is Champlain: la naissance de l’Amérique française (2004, also in an English edition), edited by Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois. They have carried the subject to a new level of rigor and seriousness.
Denis Vaugeois also took time from his own work to read a draft of my book in manuscript. He made many suggestions for improvement and gave me the benefit of his knowledge with a generosity that he has shown to many Champlain scholars throughout the world. I am grateful for his help.
Thanks go to Eric Thierry, one of the most distinguished Champlain scholars in France, who wrote to me about his excellent new book, La France de Henri IV en Amérique du Nord. I very much appreciate his kindness in sharing his work with me.
I am very grateful to Conrad Heidenreich and Janet Ritch for generous encouragement and wise advice, which flows from their unrivalled command of Champlain’s writings. Their forthcoming edition of Champlain’s works will be a major contribution to scholarship.
My Brandeis friend and colleague in French history Paul Jankowski was a source of generous advice and unfailing assistance and advice. A friend of many years, John Demos offered wise counsel. Dona Delorenzo and Judy Brown kept things running and made the office an oasis of happiness and calm in academe. My superb Brandeis students were also my teachers. And our very able president, Jehuda Reinharz, has been a colleague and friend for many years.
I
n Boston the Consul General of France, François Gauthier, and his gracious wife, Françoise, actively supported the book in many ways. Both are trained historians with an abiding interest in Champlain. They followed his travels as we have done, and in their work and lives they keep alive Champlain’s spirit of amitié and concorde.
This book was a family project. My brother, Miles, helped with the Dutch translation. Susanna Fischer saw several drafts and offered helpful suggestions, and Erik helped us with computers at a critical moment. Anne and Fred Turner were a source of unfailing encouragement, as also were John Fischer and Ann Fischer, William Fischer and Kirstin Fischer. The next generation were our inspiration: Althea Turner, Mathew Mueller, Eliza Fischer, Kevin Fischer, Samuel Fischer, and Natalie Fischer. My wife, Judy, took time from her work to be a partner in the project. We traveled together, she helped in the archives, gathered images, edited the text, and much more. My father, John, was once again my most trusted advisor. This book is dedicated to him, with the gratitude of all his growing family for the gift of his wisdom and judgment.
D.H.F.
Blasted Ledge, Mount Desert Island, Maine
June 23, 2008
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2009
Copyright © 2008 David Hackett Fischer
Maps copyright © 2008 Jeff Ward
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, in 2009. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, in 2008. Distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
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